Author Index of Volume 16

Authors Index

Author Index of Volume 16     

From Convergence to Divergence: Reforming Australian Local Government

The article maps local government reform in the six Australian states over the last decade. It identifies an earlier phase of reform that focused primarily on redefining the roles and relationships within local government, especially between state and local governments, principally through the reform of the state local government Acts. As state reform agendas have shifted more to focus on managerial improvement, significant differences between local government reforms between states have emerged, in focus, process and outcomes. These differences are such that the role of local government itself has been refocused in several states away from the traditional local democracy values that have for so long underpinned this third sphere of government.     

Long and Short Run Determinants of Small and Medium Size Enterprise Share: The Case of Venezuelan Manufacturing

Economic Change and Restructuring - Two recent studies of SME share determination have employed a partial adjustment model which specifies disequilibrium as the sole means of explanation....     

Left on the Shelf: Local Government and the Australian Constitution

When the Australian Constitution was first written, those framing it did not include specific reference to local government. The authors have examined the federation conventions, papers and formal discussions of the 1890s and noted the little prominence given to the case for including local government in the Australian Constitution. It appears that the leaders of the federation movement did not deliberately exclude local government; rather, there was little pressure to include local agendas and concerns, and few were willing to champion the case for the inclusion of local government.     

Book reviews

Computer Software — Legal Protection in the United Kingdom, 2nd edition Henry Carr and Richard Arnold Sweet and Maxwell 1992. ISBN 0 421 44380 4 £45

Legal Protection of Computer Programs in Europe — a Guide to the EC Directive Bridget Czarnota and Robert J Hart Butterworths 1991. ISBN 0 406 00542 7

Intellectual Property Rights in Sound Recordings, Film and Video J A L Sterling Sweet and Maxwell 1992. ISBN 0 421 4570 9

The European Market Place James Hogan Macmillan 1991. ISBN 0 333 51858 6

Intellectual Property D Bainbridge Pitman 1992. ISBN 0 273 034265 X     

How Exceptional Is India? A Test of Situational Action Theory

This study explores the generalizability of Situational Action Theory (SAT) in India by testing hypotheses related to the person–environment interaction in explaining offending. Drawing on data from a sample of 872 students between the ages of 14 and 17 from an Indian city collected as part of the International Self-Report Delinquency Study (ISRD3), we tested the hypothesis that Indian youths will report more delinquent acts if they have a higher propensity to commit crime combined with a greater exposure to criminogenic activities. Our findings show unequivocal support for the applicability of SAT in India where youths reported a slight increase in offending behavior if they exercised low self-control or if they were less moralistic (i.e., they were more crime-prone), or when exposed to criminal activities or peers. Consistent with tests of SAT in other contexts, we find that exposure to criminogenic environments increases offending for youth with higher levels of criminal propensity but does not impact youth with lower levels of criminal propensity. We speculate that the overall low rate of delinquent offending coupled with the cultural milieu of Indian youths may explain why criminogenic exposure may be less relevant in light of young people’s strong avoidance of rule-breaking.

     

Empowering women through the positive birth movement

Childbirth has been positioned as a life changing event that has profound long-term psychological effects upon women. This paper adopts a community psychology approach to explore the role that the Positive Birth Movement (PBM) may have in tackling negative birth experiences by supporting women before and after birth. Six women who all regularly attend UK-based PBM meetings and had given birth to at least one child participated in one to one semi-structured interviews designed to explore the support they received before, during and after their birth, as well as their experiences with the PBM. A Foucauldian inspired discourse analysis explores themes relating to the lack of support and information provided by the NHS and the function of the PBM as a transformative community space which offers social support and information. Within these themes a focus on neoliberalism, choice and the woman’s position as an active consumer of health care is critically discussed. It is argued that the PBM has the potential to prepare women for positive birth experiences but more attention needs to be paid to the wider contexts that limit women’s ability to make ‘free’ choice.     

Security-sector reform: development breakthrough or institutional engineering?

This article provides the academic background to the development community’s recent and growing interest in security-sector reform. It seeks to understand how this debate has evolved and the direction it may take, especially in relation to its impact on policy and the resources available for security-sector reform in developing states. Although there are numerous initiatives underway that relate to security-sector reform, the input of the development community would be valuable towards establishing a more holistic and comprehensive perspective. This provides an enormous opportunity to influence the transformation of the security sector in certain countries. Yet such progress requires a broad and sustained level of cooperation among a range of different government departments in donor countries. This has never happened before and the outlook is bleak, which will severely constrain future attempts to move from ‘institutional engineering’ to holistic security-sector reform.