Performance health administration and the return of the French second empire

In the French health care system, cost-containment strategies have become the new priority. Novel instrumental values (e.g., benchmarking, incentivization or premiums, and Diagnostic-Related Groups) and reforms of the hospital governance via the 2009 HPST Act served an austerity agenda at the expense of more patient-centered approaches (e.g., patient choice and case management). Effecting actual changes proved more difficult than collecting data on the health system. Decision-making powers are increasingly concentrated within the welfare elite at the expense of the medical profession. Hence, a return to the earlier French tradition of Jacobinism. Transparency has yet to be achieved.     

Situating private equity capital in the land grab debate

This paper examines the private equity investment landscape in African land and agriculture markets by exploring two underlying questions: (1) Within the global land grab trend, how is power manifested for private equity investors? and (2) What are the development implications of private equity-backed investments? The essay begins with an overview of the recent rise of private equity in African land markets. It then analyzes the power relations embedded in this trend, particularly exploring the issues of information asymmetry and ‘creative destruction’ inherent in private equity finance, and their implications for governance and labour. Finally, the paper examines the power dynamics that characterize the relatively new relationship between private equity groups and development finance. Drawing on several illustrations of the World Bank Group's involvement in private equity-backed land investments, this paper demonstrates how the overlapping interests between development finance and private equity groups, in part, explain private equity's presence in emerging farmland markets.     

Business "Not" as Usual: The National Incident Management System, Federalism, and Leadership

Federal, state, and local governments did not work well together to provide an effective response to Hurricane Katrina. Some of this failure can be attributed to the power struggle between the federal and state governments. The National Incident Management System (NIMS) was designed to foster collaboration among governments and their departments and agencies. However, this system largely failed. To overcome this failure, many have proposed centralizing disaster response in the federal government. Centralized control would damage the basic federal structure of our government as the national government appeals to the ever-present dangers of terrorism and natural disaster to gain permanent primacy in the relationship. The current federal system actually can work better than centralization if leadership and organizational transformation are stressed. The National Incident Management System has many elements in place that can make the federal system of disaster response work if the proper stress on organizational transformation and leadership is applied.

If we ignore the systemic issues and simply replace people or re-assign responsibilities, we may simply fail again in the not too distant future with a different cast of characters.
John R. Harrald, director of the Institute for Crisis, Disaster, and Risk Management,
       George Washington University
U.S. House Committee on Government Reform hearing, September 15, 2005

     

TRADE‐OFFS IN FORMULATING A CONSISTENT NATIONAL POLICY ON ADOPTION*

Just as the courts must consider the trade‐off between the best interest of the child and parental rights in involuntary termination of parental rights, policy on international adoption must consider the trade‐offs between the best interest of the child and the long‐term interests of the nation. We argue that countries that suspend international adoptions do not maximize social welfare. A consistent national policy to maximize the well‐being of the children and society at large would be to devote resources today to the oversight of international adoption in accord with child protections under the Hague Convention, while at the same time developing a domestic system of care that provides for the physical and developmental needs of orphaned children in the context of permanent families.     

Trade mark registration of non-conventional marks: 'Coca-Cola' in Thailand

The Supreme Court of Thailand has issued a historic decisionrelated to registering non-conventional marks in Thailand byallowing the registration of the two-dimensional shape of theCoca-Cola contour bottle as a trade mark.