Budget Deficits in the States: Virginia

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Blogging and Environmental Advocacy: A New Way to Engage the Public?

While there is a growing literature on weblogs (or “blogs”), most studies focus on a few high profile blogs, or on blogs written by individuals. This study assesses the little‐researched area of organizational blogging through a content analysis of blogs by 40 national‐level environmental organizations. I examine the general purposes that these blogs serve and the extent to which organizational blogs differ from traditional websites. Additionally, I explore two blog features—interactivity and personalized content—that offer the potential to strengthen the connections between group leaders and their supporters. I find that groups use their blogs primarily to inform readers about policy developments and news headlines, but that the level of interactivity between blog authors and readers is low. Thus, while the potential exists for blogs to enhance grassroots support for environmental groups, that potential is far from being realized.     

Towards state activism： Long live public administration

The last two decades of human civilization has witnessed fast changing in polity, society, economy and almost every sphere of state activities. The era of new economic order and revolution in the information technology sector has compelled the public administration to adopt the new paradigms. However, the new concepts such as NPM, public choice approach and state minimalism are being questioned in the framework of welfare state and emerging needs of the regulatory administration. It has been realized by almost all the modern and democratic nations that the state and its instrumental part （public administration） are not the evils; rather they are inevitable institutions for mankind. Terrorism, cyber crimes, disaster management, economic meltdown, sustainable development, capacity building, international relations, development of heavy and basic infrastructure and protection of human rights etc. are the prime and exclusive functions of the public administration. The 9/11 attack on US and 11/26 attack on India, plus the recent recession with the global warming worries have proved that we have to move towards state activism.     

Level Two Negotiations: Helping the Other Side Meet Its “Behind‐the‐Table” Challenges

A long analytic tradition has explored the challenge of productively synchronizing “internal” with “external” negotiations, with a special focus on how each side can best manage internal opposition to agreements negotiated “at the table.” Implicit in much of this work has been the view that each side's leadership is best positioned to manage its own internal conflicts, often by pressing for deal terms that will overcome internal objections and by effectively “selling” the agreement to key constituencies. Far less frequently have analysts considered how each side can help the other side with its “behind‐the‐table” barriers to successful agreement. Following Robert Putnam's two‐level games schema, I characterize such “behind‐the‐table” or “Level Two” barriers more broadly, offer several innovative examples of how each side can help the other overcome them, and develop more general advice on doing so most effectively. As a fuller illustration of a Level Two negotiator helping the other side with its formidable behind‐the‐table challenges, I pay special attention to the end‐of‐Cold‐War negotiations over German reunification in which former American Secretary of State James Baker played a key role.     

Reimagining race and gender in public administration and public policy: Insights from an interdisciplinary systematic review

Public administration scholarship on race and gender is motivated by normative concerns about social equity, and dominated by work on bureaucracy and its representativeness. Despite decades of research on race and gender in public administration, there has been limited engagement with racializing and gendering processes. Relatedly, scant attention is paid to other disciplines that center on race and gender in theorizing. The purpose of this review is to explore public administration scholarship on race and gender in the context of allied social science disciplines, reveal limits of current approaches in public administration, and articulate strategies for enhancing understanding of race and gender in public administration scholarship. We use bibliometric and content analysis methods to map the intellectual structure of social science scholarship on race and gender, highlight public administration's place in this structure, and compare public administration scholarship on race and gender with other social science disciplines.     

Political ideology and nuclear energy: Perception,proximity, and trust

Political ideology is an increasingly powerful force in support of public policy. Historically, nuclear energy has found more support among political conservatives. This study updates the literature on political ideology and support for nuclear energy by examining how political ideology is associated with perceptions of nuclear energy and trust of nuclear information sources. After excluding participants with incomplete data, and participants within 50 miles of a nuclear reactor, the analytical sample size for the analysis examining political ideology and perceptions of nuclear energy was 4153. The analytical sample includes a total of 1035 participants within a 50-mile radius of INL, 710 participants from within Idaho who lived further than 50 miles from INL, 1899 participants from other states (more than 50 miles from a nuclear reactor), and 509 Non-Idaho participants living within 50 miles of a nuclear reactor. Logistic regression was used to determine how political ideology was associated with perceptions of nuclear energy and trust in different sources regarding radioactive waste, after controlling for demographics and location. While liberal participants near INL were less favorable towards nuclear energy, and more trusting in impact scientists to tell the truth about radioactive waste than their conservative counterparts, this was not consistent across the US. Our findings reveal the complexity of political ideology and the perceptions of nuclear issues and how proximity influences perceptions. The perceptions of political moderates were particularly important in providing a more complex understanding of political ideology and nuclear energy issues.     

Gold mining and corporate social responsibility in the Wassa West district,Ghana

Despite a boom in gold mining in Ghana's Wassa West district (WWD), unemployment and poverty have deepened, partly due to loss of farmland to surface mining but more so because of the limited opportunities for wage employment in the district's ‘revived’ gold-mining industry. However, the large-scale mining companies are implementing some alternative livelihood programmes (ALPs) as part of their corporate social-responsibility (CSR) agenda. While the ALPs have provided some employment and income-earning opportunities and skills training, the prospects for their sustainability depend on how the challenges confronting the various programmes are addressed. This will require a well-coordinated approach involving all the key stakeholders.     

Eco-regional conservation and development in Madagascar: a review of USAID-funded efforts in two priority landscapes

The need for eco-regional or landscape-scale conservation and development has been widely recognised in Madagascar, yet implementation remains problematic. The approach was initially driven by biodiversity-conservation concerns, without enough emphasis on sustainable development, especially agriculture. Current challenges include consensus building for eco-regional visions, strengthening partnerships with government institutions, and negotiating land-use trade-offs within focal landscapes. Increased attention to revenue generation from agriculture and forest products, as well as enhanced communication and widespread participation by all stakeholders, should augment the success of broad-scale conservation and development programmes.     

Participation in the Knowledge Society: the Free and Open Source Software (FOSS) movement compared with participatory development

The possibilities and limits of participation at the ‘bottom’ (represented, for example, by PRA and PLA) have been well articulated in development literature. However, the emergence of the Knowledge Society has opened up spaces for what we could call participation at the ‘top’ (free software, wiki, open access), the implications of which Development Studies is only beginning to grapple with. Building upon recent debates on the issue, we take the cases of the free software movement and participatory development, arguing that they share common ground in several ways. We aim to offer a few pointers on conceptualising development in the Knowledge Society.