Utilizing Ostrom’s institutional analysis and development framework toward an understanding of crisis-driven policy

Policy Sciences - This paper examines the institutional dynamics of policymaking in a crisis. Crises have been termed a “perceptual category,” events that at least seem to be...     

Social Science and the Public Interest

Social Science and the Public Interest

Social Science and the Public Interest July/August 2011     

Disparities in the Spending Needs of Highland Municipalities

A certain rough consensus holds that highland municipalities have higher spending needs than others, because of the particularly adverse conditions in which they provide essential public services. However, there is no empirical evidence to support this assertion. This study examines whether any relevant differences actually exist in the spending policies of highland and lowland municipalities. To this end, we make logarithmic estimations of per capita municipal spending in order to determine whether the indicators selected, which are based on local government powers, adequately reflect spending needs. Our results point to the special circumstances of highland districts as a key explanatory factor for higher municipal spending, along with demographic factors, locational population patterns, economic activity, subsidies, and local fiscal capacity.     

A Chinese Vintage

<正>hen I was invited to visit east China’s Shandong Province for awine festival held on September 23-26, I erroneously believed I would be drinking beer in the coastal city of Qingdao, home of     

Book Review

Women Playwrights in England, Ireland, and Scotland, 1660–1823. David D. Mann and Susan Garland Mann with Camille Gamier. Bloomington &; Indianapolis: Indiana UP, 1996. 432 pp. $57.50 cl.     

Before and after Mau Mau in Kenya

Paul Collier and Deepak Lal, Labour and Poverty in Kenya, 1900–1980, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1986. Pp.296. £27.50.

Tabitha Kanogo, Squatters and the Roots of Mau Mau, London: James Currey, 1987. Pp.206. £25 and £8.95.

David Throup, Economic and Social Origins of Mau Mau, 1945–1953, London: James Currey, 1987. Pp.304. £25 and £8.95.

The author discusses three books on Kenya. Tabitha Kanogo's Squatters and the Roots of Mau Mau and Economic and Social Origins of Mau Mau by David Throup examine why there was agrarian revolt in Kenya during the 1940s and 1950s. This article raises questions about tragedy and community, the two key ideas upon which the two books rest. Another text, Labour and Poverty in Kenya, 1900–1980 by Paul Collier and Deepak Lal, proponents of the new liberal attack on development, is also reviewed. It is argued that Collier and Lal fail to grasp the basis of state intervention to support schemes of peasant production.     

Fatal poisoning from Nicotiana glauca leaves: identification of anabasine by gas-chromatography/mass spectrometry

Death of a worker occurred after ingestion of unknown amounts of Nicotiana glauca G leaves. The leaves were cooked after having been mistakenly considered to be spices of a type which grow in Thailand. After ingestion, two Thai workers collapsed, one with asystolia. Resuscitation efforts were successful only for one of the victims. A GC/MS method was used for the identification of anabasine as the main constituent in the leaves, food extract, blood, and the urine of the deceased. Lacking a standard, it was necessary to interpret the GC/MS spectrum to identify anabasine and establish its presence.