Social(ist) engineering. Taming the devils of the Polish Bieszczady

This article explores the background of social engineering in the Bieszczady in the 1950s and 1960s, when a revolutionary political leadership ventured to impose a new socialist order in an area ravaged by war and ethnic cleansing. The article addresses two questions: first, what were the conditions that resulted in the failure of socialist engineering in the Bieszczady, and second, what were the consequences of this failure for relationships at the local level? One thesis put forward is that the relative weakness of the Polish state vis-à-vis the local setting left plenty of room for local residents to develop a dynamic social order of their own.     

Scholarship and intelligent discussion

‘A book may be good for nothing; or there may be onlyone thing in it worth knowing; are we to read it all through?’(Samuel Johnson) This section is dedicated to the review ofideas, articles, books, films and other media. It will includereplies (and rejoinders) to articles, the evaluation of newideas or proposals, and reviews of books and articles both directlyand indirectly related to intellectual property law.

Intellectual Property Rights and the EC     

Trust,vulnerable populations,and genetic data sharing

Recent policies and proposed regulations, including the Notice of Proposed Rulemaking for the Common Rule and the 2014 NIH Genetic Data Sharing Policy, seek to improve research subject protections. Protections for subjects whose genetic data is shared are critical to reduce risks such as loss of confidentiality, stigma, and discrimination. In the article ‘It depends whose data are being shared: considerations for genomic data sharing policies’, Robinson et al. provide a response to our article, ‘The Growth and Gaps of Genetic Data Sharing Policies’. Robinson et al. highlight the importance of individual and group preferences. In this article, we extend the conversation on models for improving protections which will mitigate consequences for individuals and groups that are vulnerable to stigma and discrimination.     

A cross-national analysis of policies affecting innovation diffusion

Innovation diffusion is important for both firms’ profitability and countries’ economic growth. For these reasons, policies that aim to reduce the main barriers to innovation diffusion are a relevant issue on the agenda of most policy makers. Although the importance of this topic is widely recognized, few studies explore public policies that aim to enhance innovation diffusion. This article attempts to fill this literature gap. Specifically, the study aims to clarify the role of policy makers in promoting new technology diffusion, to identify the barriers that affect the process of innovation diffusion and that are relevant for public policy makers and to analyze potential policies to overcome the main barriers to the diffusion of new relevant technologies. This study shows that public policies must simultaneously address the most relevant barriers to the diffusion of a new technology to be effective. Focusing on only specific barriers by developing policies with a too narrow scope may lead to poor results. The study explores a topic that is almost neglected in the innovation management literature. On the one hand, the article provides a conceptual framework for analyzing public policies. On the other hand, it proposes an overview of the repertoire of policies that policy makers can use to overcome the most relevant barriers to the diffusion of a new technology. In doing so, it also contributes to the debate about the role of the policy maker in the process of innovation development and diffusion.     

Targeting the Treatment: The Strategy behind Lyndon Johnson's Lobbying

Lyndon Johnson woke up studying whip counts, went to bed reading the Congressional Record, and invested countless hours in between translating that political intelligence into a lobbying offensive. The result, famously christened “The Johnson Treatment,” remains the archetype practitioners and political scientists cite when appraising presidential leadership on Capitol Hill. Yet Beltway folklore aside, we know little about how LBJ helped forge winning legislative coalitions. Stepping back from the (countless) colorful anecdotes, this study offers a new and systematic look at Lyndon Johnson's lobbying. Specifically, after exploring theoretical models of presidential coalition building, we then investigate their operational tenets using original data on all President Johnson's contacts, with each member of Congress, in both chambers, for every day he was president.     

Introduction: two spaces of subsidiarity?

ABSTRACT

Scholarship on subsidiarity conducted since the nineteenth century has developed two strands of interpretation suggesting competing models of social organisation as far as the potential location of decision-making power is concerned. While this intellectual effort has mainly concentrated on political experiences in continental Europe, and gained further traction with the principle’s recognition in European Union law, the institutional architecture of Commonwealth countries has experienced relative neglect. This collection, however, examines the debates around competing ordering principles with evidence coming from operational problems of Westminster style democracies in four world regions, and considers how a multi-disciplinary perspective can guide comparative analysis.