‘Three Chinas’ and international organizations after 1997

This article analyzes the effects of the transfer of Hong Kong's sovereignty to China in 1997 on the participation of Hong Kong and Taiwan in international organizations. It identifies the conditions under which China tolerates co‐existence with Taiwan as members of eleven intergovernmental organizations as of 1996. It concludes with two observations: one, international organizations are not monolithic entities; two, although China has overwhelming influence over Hong Kong's participation in these organizations, it depends also on how the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region government is going to manage its relations with China.     

Debt and the Local Economy: Problems in Benchmarking Local Government Debt Affordability

Debt creation imposes an obligation to repay borrowed funds from a wealth base that for most local governments is capitalized in property values. Therefore, the ability to afford debt is tied to the local economy, a factor often overlooked by localities in the analyses of their own position. However, debt levels are also relative, as the many debt affordability studies among governments and by bond rating agencies suggest. We argue here that economic concentration and interjurisdictional coordination fundamentally provide a broader analytical approach to the question a locality asks: can we afford more debt?     

Institutional technology and economic growth

An endogenous model of constitutional changes and economic growth links the temporal decline in private market returns when technology is constant with the returns to rule changes realized in a political market. There is a steady state constitutional setting in which all rule changes have been incorporated that is analytically equivalent to the neoclassical steady state. As in the neoclassical model, private-sector technological progress postpones the steady state. To the extent the original constitutional setting promotes innovation, the evolutionary process toward the steady state is delayed. The model yields a theory of revolution based on forces leading to the adoption of inefficient changes in the constitutional setting.     

The intergenerational transmission of running away: Childhood experiences of the parents of runaways

Research into the etiology of running away has long provided evidence for the influence of family factors such as abuse, parent-child conflict, and child stress on an adolescent's decision to leave home. This paper offers evidence for the possibility that running away may be deeply entrenched in patterns of family interaction that extend across generations. Using data from the National Incidence Study of Missing, Abducted, Runaway, and Throwaway Children (NISMART), the influence of parents' own childhood experiences with running away on the behaviors of their children is illustrated. The importance of examining the influence of such intergenerational transmission factors, separate and in addition to more traditional predictors of running away, is demonstrated.This research was supported in part by funds from the Office of Juvenile Justice and Delinquency Prevention under Contract No. 91-JN-CX-0005. An earlier version of this paper was presented at the meetings of the American Society of Criminology in New Orleans, Louisiana, November 1992.Received a Ph.D. in sociology from the University of New Hampshire. Present research interests are in the area of criminal victimization of children.Received a doctoral degree in sociology from the University of New Hampshire. Current research interests focus on missing and abducted children.     

The real lessons of Japanese research consortia

US consortia were right to look to Japan back in the mid-1980s for a model, but details on how Japanese achieved success were scarce and the Americans did not look closely enough. The Japanese have developed an effective way to use competitive forces to promote innovation in a consortium. The US must put industry in the lead in order to develop programs that reflect broad strategic priorities. And industry associations must play a more active role in diffusing the innovations developed by the consortia.     

The specificity of public service reform

Despite universal recognition of the decline of public services and the need for reforms, considerable divergence of views exists on the strategy and sequencing of reform for individual countries according to their capacities and level of development. This article reflects on the general contours of public service reform, emphasising past experience, the need to be pragmatic rather than idealistic, the mudding of the waters by the New Public Management movement, the complications of structural adjustment programmes of international financial institutions and the damage resulting from the imposition of universal solutions unfitted and unsuitable to local circumstances. Reform needs political and bureaucratic champions, careful preparation, patience and necessary investment, and capacity to neutralise opposition. Ultimately, one has to allow for a shifting combination of history, culture, politics, economics, sociology, ideology and values in each country. This analysis is applied to the possibility of reforming the public service of India, the second most populous country in the world, and the lessons to be gleaned for developing and implementing the strategy. The article then concludes with an outline of some universal problems facing public service reformers all around the globe such as corruption, the future role of government, shape of the civil service, reversing its erosion and addressing issues of fragmentation, compensation and diversity. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Identity and intimacy: An initial investigation of three theoretical models using cross-lag panel correlations

This investigation specified three models regarding the association between identity and intimacy formation and investigated their potential validity using a longitudinal cross-lag panel design. Seventy-one males and 71 females completed identity and intimacy measures on two occasions over a 5-week period. The primary findings are (1) individuals with a clear sense of identity are more likely, 5 weeks later, to have a more advanced sense of intimacy for both sexes when sex-role identification is removed from gender comparisons; (2) sex-role orientation mediates the identity/intimacy association, while for females, a masculine orientation is associated with a pattern similar to that observed for either masculine- or feminine-oriented males; and (3) femininity is associated with a more fused connection between identity and intimacy for females. This report provides an initial investigation studying the identity/intimacy association during late adolescence based on three theoretical perspectives. Theoretical interpretations and conclusions are offered.Partial support for this project was provided by grants to the second author from the Utah State University Agricultural Experiment Station and the Office of Research, Utah State University. Approved as journal paper No. 3917.Research interests are adolescent identity development in the family context, adolescent sexuality, and sex-role development.Research interests focus on personality and social development during adolescence.