Cocaine and benzoylecgonine excretion in humans.

Maximal urinary excretion of unchanged cocaine occurred within 2 h of the intranasal absorption of 1.5 mg/kg body weight of cocaine hydrochloride, and diminished rapidly thereafter. Excretion of benzoylecgonine was maximal 4 to 8 h following administration of the drug and diminished slowly over an interval of several days. Peak cocaine and benzoylecgonine concentrations observed were 24 and 75 microgram/ml, respectively. Benzoylecgonine/cocaine ratios were too varied to allow estimation of cocaine concentrations from benzoylecgonine concentration data or vice versa. Benzoylecgonine concentrations generally exceeded the corresponding cocaine values by a wide margin, but excretion of free cocaine in the absence of benzoylecgonine was observed in one subject. Cocaine was generally detected for only approximately 8 h, and for a maximum of 12 h, whereas benzoylecgonine was generally detected by chromatographic or enzyme immunologic assays for 48 to 72 h. Benzoylecgonine was positively identified in urine by raidoimmunoassay for 96 to 144 h after dosing.     

Merger Melancholia: An Empirical Analysis of the Perceptions of the Residents of the Forcibly Amalgamated Manilla Shire Council

Notwithstanding cogent reasons for the continued existence of small local authorities in the sparsely populated Australian hinterland, compulsory council consolidation has been a recurring theme throughout the history of Australian local government. Despite its ubiquity, especially in rural, regional and remote Australian communities, its local consequences have not yet been fully examined by scholars or policy makers. The present paper seeks to remedy this neglect with an exploratory study of the social and economic consequences of forced local government amalgamations through the lens of the ‘lived experience’ of the small rural community of Manilla, which was forced in merge with the much larger Tamworth in 2004.     

Too risk averse to stay honest?: Business corruption,uncertainty and attitudes toward risk

The presence of business-corruption provokes firms to make choices between legal business approaches and illegal bribery. The outcome of a chosen strategy will usually be uncertain at the time the decision is made, and a firm’s decision will depend partly on its attitude towards risk. Drawing on empirical results about business corruption, this paper describes the risks, uncertainties and benefits attached to bribery, and specifies their impact on firms’ propensity to offer bribes. It then demonstrates how risk averse firms can be more inclined to offer bribes than risk neutral and risk attracted firms.     

The new public personnel and the new public service

The New Public Administration sought a public service whose legitimacy would be based, in part, on its promotion of “social equity.” Since 1968, several personnel changes congruent with the New Public Administration have occurred: traditional managerial authority over public employees has been reduced through collective bargaining and changes in constitutional doctrines; the public service has become more socially representative; establishing a representative bureaucracy has become an important policy goal; more emphasis is now placed on employee participation in the work place; and legal changes regarding public administrators’ liability have promoted an “inner check” on their behavior. At the same time, however, broad systemic changes involving decentralization and the relationship between political officials and career civil servants have tended to undercut the impact of those changes in personnel. The theories of Minnowbrook I, therefore, have proven insufficient as a foundation for a new public service. Grounding the public service's legitimacy in the U.S. Constitution is a more promising alternative and is strongly recommended.

The New Public Administration, like other historical calls for drastic administrative change in the United States, sought to develop a new basis for public administrative legitimacy. Earlier successful movements grounded the legitimacy of the public service in high social standing and leadership, representativeness and close relationship to political parties, or in putative political neutrality and scientific managerial and technical expertise. To these bases, the New Public Administration sought to add “social equity.” As George Frederickson explained, “Administrators are not neutral. They should be committed to both good management and social equity as values, things to be achieved, or rationales. “⁽¹⁾ Social equity was defined as “includ[ing] activities designed to enhance the political power and economic well being of … [disadvantaged] minorities.” It was necessary because “the procedures of representative democracy presently operate in a way that either fails or only very gradually attempts to reverse systematic discrimination against” these groups.⁽²⁾

Like the Federalists, the Jacksonians, and the civil service reformers and progressives before it, the New Public Administration focused upon administrative reform as a means of redistributing political power.⁽³⁾ Also, like these earlier movements, the New Public Administration included a model of a new type of public servant. This article sets forth that new model and considers the extent to which the major changes that have actually taken place in public personnel administration since 1968 are congruent with it. We find that while contemporary public personnel reflects many of the values and concerns advanced by the New Public Administration, substantial changes in the political environment of public administration have frustrated the development of a new public service that would encompass the larger goals and ideals expressed at Minnowbrook I. Building on the trends of the past two decades, this article also speculates about the future. Our conclusion is that ultimately the public service's legitimacy must be grounded in the Constitution. Although its focus is on macro-level political and administrative developments, the broad changes it discusses provide the framework from which many contemporary personnel work-life issues, such as pay equity and flexitime, have emerged.     

Was the US Invasion of Iraq NATO'S Worst Crisis Ever? How Would We Know? Why Should We Care?

Abstract

This paper focuses on the NATO-in-crisis literature, particularly the variant claiming that the Atlantic Alliance is facing its worst crisis ever. The paper argues that this approach is an analytical dead-end, incapable of producing new, cumulative knowledge about NATO in particular and alliances in general. It also suggests ways of getting out of the blind alley that the NATO-in-crisis literature has become.     

Challenges to democracy building and the role of civil society

This article addresses the issue of the challenges of democracy building and the role of civil society in this process by focusing on three countries in southeastern Europe, Albania, Bulgaria, and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia. Since the 1990s, when these three post-communist states undertook the democratization process, formidable challenges and obstacles to the democratization process have been encountered by all three states which facilitates a comparative analysis, while differences remain as well, especially since Bulgaria became a member of the European Union in 2007. The development of an indigenous civil society is perceived as both a necessary prerequisite for a qualitative democracy to develop and be maintained in these societies, and as a project under construction that needs to be culturally contextualized to be relevant to the population it purports to serve.