Policymaking and the Control of the Nongovernmental Sector: Porfirio Díaz and the Grand Diet

Regimes and politicians seeking dominance of groups perceived as important to policy formation is not a new phenomena, and this is illustrated by the frustrated efforts of the Mexican president and dictator Porfirio Díaz to gain control of the Masonic lodges of his country. The Grand Diet devised by him as a pan Mexican Masonic alliance eventually collapsed, representing one of his few political failures and confirming the view that Mexican secret societies have seldom been amenable to central control.     

The Regional Innovation Paradox: Innovation Policy and Industrial Policy

This paper explores the regional innovation paradox and its policy implications. The regional innovation paradox refers to the apparent contradiction between the comparatively greater need to spend on innovation in lagging regions and their relatively lower capacity to absorb public funds earmarked for the promotion of innovation and to invest in innovation related activities compared to more advanced regions. Empirical analysis of the nature of the paradox shows that there are strong complementarities between business, education and government spending on R&D and that technology/innovation policy and industrial policies tend to work in opposite directions. Our analysis suggests that resolution of the paradox requires policies that: (i) increase the innovation capacity of regions by working both on the demand and the supply side of the system to increase both private and public sector investment in innovation activity; and (ii) integrate technology policy and industrial policy by encouraging expenditure on innovation activity within mainstream industrial policy programmes. The penultimate section of the paper outlines and assesses policy initiatives/experiments along these lines and suggests how they might be developed in the future.     

When Do People Find Cooperation Most Justified? The Effect of Trust and Self–Other Merging in Social Dilemmas

On the basis of goal/expectation theory, it was predicted that just as in interpersonal relationships, cooperation in social dilemma groups would increase only if both trust was high and group members had a common goal of cooperation. Introducing new measures of both these two processes to the social dilemma arena, the goal of mutual cooperation was assessed by the process of self—other merging (the IOS scale), and trust by assessing the extent to which one trusted others and one believed one was perceived as trustworthy by the others. The results showed that when both self—other merging and trust was high, cooperation was indeed highest. Implications for the specific functions of trust and self—other merging in social dilemmas are discussed.     

Physical Violence Between Young Adults and Their Parents: Associations with a History of Child Maltreatment

This study investigated the relationship between maltreatment during childhood, parental conflict tactics and the tactics employed by young adults during a disagreement with their parents. Four hundred and sixty nine university students completed the Conflict Tactic Scale and a Childhood History Questionnaire giving details on tactics employed during the previous year and information about their childhood respectively. Overall, 14.5% of students reported using violent tactics with their mother and/or father and 3.8% of them admitted to being severely violent to one or both of their parents. The conflict tactics used by the respondent were found to be significantly related to the reported tactics of their parents and the experience of being maltreated by parents in earlier years.     

Social Motives in Integrative Negotiation: The Mediating Influence of Procedural Fairness

Although a large body of research has examined the influence of social motives on integrative negotiation, little is known about how social motives affect procedural fairness judgments in negotiation. In two experiments concerned with small group negotiation, we manipulated group members' social motives (pro-social vs. egoistic), and measured joint negotiation outcomes and procedural fairness. Experiment 1 showed that, compared to group members with an egoistic motivation, those with a pro-social motive experienced more procedural fairness, which was partly responsible for the higher joint outcomes they obtained. In Experiment 2, we manipulated social motives and decision rule. Results showed that pro-social groups experienced more procedural fairness than egoistic groups when a majority rule was applied, but not when a unanimity rule was applied.     

The Emperor's New Computers: Y2K (Re)Visited

In order to deal with the threat of Y2K (the Millennium Bug) the UK Government directed an uncreative, resource-heavy, centralized operation with standardized reporting requirements. The project impacted almost all government systems, from the critical to the mundane. The government's position was made worse by administrative changes that it had initiated in the 1980s and 1990s that had created a much larger network of delivery partners while at the same time hollowing out IT expertise within the civil service. With little regulation in place, the government was vulnerable to IT opportunists who recognized the financial gains that Y2K offered. An alarmist media also exacerbated the problem. The paper ends by offering some observations regarding the government's management of IT and how this might be improved to allow the government to pursue its Modernization Agenda.

Things did not go right by accident.
Cabinet Office Press Release on Y2K, in Beckett 2000a

     

Identifying the Source of Mystery Waterborne Oil Spills—A Case for Quantitative Chemical Fingerprinting

Oil spills of unknown origin, so-called “mystery” spills, occur routinely in rivers, open water, and navigable coastal waterways. The natural resources damage (NRD) liability associated with even a small volume of oil released into the environment warrants that a thorough chemical characterization of the spilled oil be conducted by agencies and potentially responsible parties (PRPs). Chemical fingerprinting methods have played an important role in the identification of mystery oil spills. These methods fall into two categories, viz., qualitative and quantitative. The qualitative approach relies upon visual comparison of various chromatographic fingerprints obtained by GC/FID and GC/MS analysis of spill and candidate source oils and are represented ASTM methods. The quantitative approach relies upon measurements of the concentrations (relative or absolute) of dozens of diagnostic chemicals, typically PAHs and biomarkers, and a subsequent statistical or numerical analysis of various diagnostic parameters calculated from these concentrations. The quantitative approach is represented by the revised Nordtest methodology. The quantitative approach is preferable for most oil spill investigations since the means of interpretation are objective, whereas the ASTM methods are subjective. Quantitative fingerprinting data are particularly important when the mystery spill and source oils are qualitatively similar and are required when mystery spills may include mixed sources or prespill oil signatures.