Reexamining the Relationship Between Fiscal Stress and Outsourcing

The determinants of outsourcing in local government are widely studied from a variety of frameworks. One concept consistently used to explain local government outsourcing is fiscal condition, with many noting that outsourcing is more likely when a local government’s fiscal condition declines into fiscal stress. Despite the ubiquity of this expectation in the outsourcing literature, several articles reviewed suggest that the findings for this relationship remain uncertain. As a result, the research presented in this article sought to examine and extend what is known about the relationship between fiscal stress and outsourcing in U.S. municipalities. The research includes previous measures of fiscal stress and adds new measures. In addition, it tries to overcome the limited theoretical testing of the relationship between fiscal stress and outsourcing by examining both direct and indirect effects of fiscal stress on outsourcing. It finds that municipalities in the United States that are experiencing fiscal stress are more likely to engage in outsourcing, particularly municipalities that are experiencing fiscal stress and have a positive evaluation of the external market to provide services.     

Punishing coaching: bukatsudō and the normalisation of coach violence

At the beginning of 2013 two independent cases made the headlines of Japanese newspapers. The first case involved the suicide of a high school student that was allegedly triggered after he received several beatings from his basketball coach for failing to perform well enough. The second case involved fifteen female judoka, including competitors in the London Olympics, who filed a letter with the Japanese Olympic Committee complaining of violence by two coaches, including the head coach of the women's team. Both these cases caused a national debate about the practice of taibatsu (corporal punishment) in sport in Japan. This article is based on the outcomes of focus groups that were conducted with students at ten universities from across Japan in 2013. In particular, we examine the ways in which students’ normalised acts of violence from coaches, accepting them as necessary forms of discipline and, in many cases interpreting such acts as indicative of caring coaching and kindness. Further, we consider the responses of students, which suggest that these forms of corporal punishment are necessary in producing a uniquely Japanese form of identity. The complex relationship between sport and education in Japan suggests that attempts to change the ways in which bukatsudō operate, including coach/athlete relationships, is problematic and may require major reconsideration of the role of sport in education.     

The Purse Strings of Peace

This article examines how commerce promotes peace between states. It diverges from the commercial peace literature and its predominant focus on international trade by looking inside the domestic economy to see how its structure influences conflict. Drawing on selectorate theory, I argue that substantial quantities of public property generate fiscal autonomy for governments, strengthen their hold on the domestic reigns of power, and create opportunities to pursue more aggressive foreign policies. A series of statistical tests shows that greater quantities of publicly held assets increase the likelihood that a state will participate in military conflict. Given that the predominance of privately held property is one of the defining institutions of capitalism, these results support the claim that capitalism promotes peace.     

Minorities and Modernity: The Crisis of Liberal Secularism

The Enlightenment as the origin of modernity and as the foundation of moral universalism has been much invoked by social theory in recent years especially by writers influenced by Michel Foucault's essay on the subject. Postmodernism and cultural anthropology have made the question about Enlightenment universalism ever more pressing. At one level the issue is very simple. By its emphasis on universalism in knowledge and ethics, the Enlightenment made particularity a problem and it resulted in a stigmatization of those social groups that patently departed from its magisterial interpretation of rationality appear to be irrational, premodern and dangerous. Aamir Mufti claims uncontroversially that the Enlightenment idea of universalism set up a series of contrasts between the universalism of the bourgeois world of civility, civilization and citizenship on the one hand and local practices and customs on the other. The result was to construct a classification of social minorities who were deemed to be in need of education, moral reform, modernization and assimilation. Enlightenment in the Colony involves a comparison between “the Jewish Question” and the Partition of India. The particularity of Jews and Muslims is examined in the context of modern assumptions about universalism, especially the notion of universal citizenship.     

AMPFlSTR Identifiler STR allele frequencies in Tanzania, Africa

POPULATION:  Identifiler—Employees and students of Muhimibili University College of Health Sciences in Dar es Salaam representing 19 widely distributed administrative districts and 42 tribes within the country.