FOSTERING COOPERATION AND DIALOGUE

The Xi-Obama summit provides a chance for frank discussion on how to improve bilateral ties The meeting between President Xi Jinping and President Barack Obama at Sunnylands,the former Annenberg estate in Rancho Mirage,California,on June 7-8 was unprecedented in its relatively informal     

Governance and Policing

The theme of this issue is governance, a term with multipleand often contested meanings. By governance, in its broadestsense, I mean those more or less systematic attempts to shapehuman conduct. In civil society, these can range from self-governancethrough prayer and exercise, family and commercial management,the organization of residential and religious communities, strugglesover turf by street gangs and organized crime networks, to paramilitaryand ‘terrorist’ networks. As radical feminists andevolutionary theorists argue, the core of collective governanceor state government is patriarchal. This is so whether or notthere is an effective sovereign     

Cultivating Public Service Motivation through AmeriCorps Service: A Longitudinal Study

The public service motivation literature has helped scholars and practitioners better understand who is attracted to public service and why. However, little is understood about how public service motivation in individuals may be cultivated or how it changes over time. This article uses panel data collected by the Corporation for National and Community Service to track the longitudinal effects of participation in the AmeriCorps national service program on participants’ public service motivation. Findings reveal that participation in AmeriCorps programs had positive effects on participants’ levels of commitment to the public interest and civic awareness immediately after the program; many of these program effects were sustained seven years later. However, when observed in isolation, the comparison group showed significant declines in levels of commitment to public interest and civic awareness over an eight‐year period, suggesting that public service motivation may initially decline upon entry into a public service career.     

US presidential elections and real GDP growth, 1961–2004

In this paper I show that, since 1960, an electoral cycle in US output growth can both be seen by the naked eye in the raw data and confirmed by a statistical analysis that allows for rational partisan effects as well as a wide range of control variables. That is, controlling for multiple lags of interest rate changes, inflation, money growth, energy prices, lagged output growth, government spending (or its growth) and temporary partisan effects, the timing of elections exerts a significant influence on quarterly real GDP growth.     

Operationalising participatory research and farmer-to-farmer extension: the Kamayoq in Peru

While rural poverty is endemic in the Andean region, structural adjustment programmes have led to a dismemberment of agricultural research and extension services so that they are unable to serve the needs of smallholder farmers. The NGO Practical Action has been working in the Andes to address farmers' veterinary and agriculture needs. The work has included the training of farmer-to-farmer extension agents, known locally as Kamayoq. The Kamayoq have encouraged farmer participatory research, and local farmers pay them for their veterinary and crop advisory services in cash or in kind. The Kamayoq model is largely an unsubsidised approach to the provision of appropriate technical services and encouragement of farmer participation. The model also illustrates that, in the context of encouraging farmer participation and innovation, NGOs have advantages over research organisations because of their long-term presence, ability to establish trust with local farmers, and their emphasis on social and community processes.     

A consultant's survey of the patients in a maximum security hospital

The patients at a state maximum security forensic facility were interviewed by a psychiatrist and their files reviewed. Only 43 of the 203 patients were judged to be suitable for the facility. Nearly 60% of the pretrial defendants were judged to be capable of proceeding to trial. Of the patients, 18% were judged to be malingering or avoiding trial or prison. The implications of these findings are discussed.