Foreign policy planning and coordination in Canada: the Policy Planning Staff at External Affairs

Abstract: This paper considers policy planning from the perspective of practitioners. It examines the evolution of policy planning in comparison with planning staffs' original objectives. It contrasts the practice of policy planning at External Affairs with policy planning theory, and argues that policy planners' contribution to the policy process lies less in forecasting or futurology and more in policy integration, challenging existing policy, developing new initiatives, and serving the department's policy-making machinery. Sommaire: Dans cet exposé, la planification des politiques est envisagée du point de vue des praticiens. On y examine l'évolution de cette planification en la comparant aux objectifs d'origine du personnel de planification. On y compare la planification des politiques, telle que pratiquée au ministère des Affaires extérieures, à la théorie de la planification des politiques. L'exposé soutient qu'en ce qui concerne Ie processus d'élaboration de cellcs-ci, la contribution des planificateurs réside moins dans la prévision ou la futurologic que dans l'intégration des politiques, la mise en question des politiques existantes, l'élaboration de nouvelles initiatives et dans le maintien du bon fonctionnement des mécanismes mettant au point les politiques du ministère.     

The self-image of adolescents: A study of four cultures

This paper describes the utilization of the Offer Self-Image Questionnaire (OSIQ) for research purposes on a variety of adolescent populations and demonstrates the OSIQ's effectiveness in meaningfully separating normal, juvenile delinquent, and emotionally disturbed adolescents; older and younger teenagers; males and females. It also considers the utilization of the OSIQ in four different cultures (United States, Ireland, Australia, and Israel) and concentrates on the results obtained when the OSIQ is given adolescents in these four cultures. It discusses the findings and points to some of the methodological problems which are inherent in doing cross-cultural research.Presented at the American Educational Research Association meeting in San Francisco, California, April 20, 1976.Received his M.D. from the University of Chicago. He interned at the University of Illinois and took his psychiatric residency at Michael Reese Hospital and University of Chicago. He is a graduate of the Institute for Psychoanalysis in Chicago. Major interests have been concept of mental health and the developmental psychology of adolescence.Received his Ph.D. in human development from the University of Chicago. Research interests are adolescence and delinquency.Received his Ph.D. in psychology from the University of Chicago. Major interests are psychotherapy research and adolescence.     

Racial Vote Dilution: Impact of the Reagan DOJ and the Burger Court on the Voting Rights Act

Since passage of the 1965 Voting Rights Act (VRA) and the subsequentregistration of millions of minority voters, racially basedvoting discrimination has shifted from a strategy of vote denialto one of vote dilution. The VRA, especially Section 2 and 5,is the dramatic congressional effort to eliminate strategiesthat deny effective political participation to millions of citizens.However, the VRA has to be aggressively implemented by the U.S.Department of Justice (DOJ), and it has to be broadly validated,in concrete cases and controversies in federal courts, if itis to blunt the vote discrimination/dilution strategy. Whilethe Warren Court saw Section 5 as a radical but legitimate toolto end the perpetuation of voting discrimination, the BurgerCourt has seen Section 5 in less sweeping terms. And while theCarter administration DOJ aggressively supported minority plaintiffsin federal voting rights litigation brought under Sections 2and 5, the Reagan administration has redirected civil rightspolicy, including the methodology of implementing Sections 2and 5 of the VRA.     

Turning Up the Heat: The Impact of Electric Utility Competition on K–12 Education Funding in Ohio

Ohio, like many states, is currently-considering deregulation of the retail electric power industry. This issue is made more complex in Ohio because structural change in the delivery of electric power is also likely to have a negative effect on state and local government revenues. This effect occurs because of three main forces: the elimination of differential property tax treatment of utilities relative to general businesses, the likely decrease in state electricity excise tax revenues as a result of falling power prices and administrative difficulty in taxing out of state providers, and the potential for stranded costs to diminish the taxable value of electric generating equipment. This article provides an overview of these issues and a brief analysis of the extent to which these problems will be shared by other states. The article then demonstrates the impact of deregulation-induced tax changes on both state and local school district revenues in Ohio and concludes with a discussion of how the state's ability to insulate local governments from these adverse fiscal effects is made both more imperative and more difficult by a recent Supreme Court Ruling on school funding Finally, the issues discussed in the article are placed in a more general context of the challenges of adjusting tax policy to changing circumstances     

Reviews

Janos Kornai, The Socialist System: The Political Economy of Communism. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1992, xxvii + 644 pp., £35.00 h/b, £9.95 p/b.

R. W. Davies, M. Harrison & S. G. Wheatcroft (eds), The Economic Transformation of the Soviet Union, 1913–1945. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1994, xvi + 381 pp., £40.00 h/b, £15.95 p/b.

Michael H. Bernhard, The Origins of Democratization in Poland: Workers, Intellectuals, and Oppositional Politics, 1976–1980. New York: Columbia University Press, 1993, xv + 298 pp., $57.00 h/b, $20.50 p/b.

Rein Taagepera, Estonia: Return to Independence. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, xv + 268 pp., £33.50 h/b, £11.95 p/b.

Silviu Brucan, The Wasted Generation. Memoirs of the Romanian Journey from Capitalism to Socialism and Back. Boulder, CO, San Francisco, CA and Oxford: Westview Press, 1993, xii + 227 pp., £19.95.