Continuing Professional Education for Japanese Government Officials: Study Destinations and Motivational Factors

The Japanese government's Continuing Professional Education (CPE) programs have sent officials to graduate and professional schools in Japan and abroad. This research examines the destination choice patterns of CPE participants and the reasons they choose Japanese or U.S. universities. Interviews with CPE participants suggested that U.S. schools attracted Japanese government officials by offering a wider range of courses emphasizing the integration of theory and practice. Boshier's motivational orientation model was applied to better understand CPE motivations and reasons. Notably, no participant identified “social welfare” as an important motivator, but “employment benefit” and “upgrading personal market value” factors emerged.     

Political Institutions and Public R&D Expenditures in Democratic Countries

While research and development (R&D) expenditure is crucial in a nation's competitive advantage, factors determining levels of public investment in R&D have yet to be examined. This article seeks to fill this void, focusing on different democratic institutions such as presidential versus parliamentary systems, majoritarian versus proportional electoral systems, federal versus unitary systems, bicameral versus unicameral legislatures, and the effective number of parties. Building upon theories of political institutions and government size and utilizing public R&D appropriations data from 18 Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries between 1981 and 2007, this article reports that democratic institutions do matter in the levels of public R&D spending. However, the effect is more complicated across the different types and performers of research than expected. Additionally, the effect of one institutional dimension is found to be moderated by the existence of the other dimensions, which makes it clearly more challenging to sort out different degrees and directions of the relationships between R&D expenditures and political institutions.     

Customer Satisfaction Theory in Public Administration Education: Revisiting Student Evaluation of Teaching

How has the current austerity changed the public welfare organizations’ performance landscape in modern welfare states? Can public managers make their organizations adapt to the new performance landscape shaped by the austerity? These questions are answered on the basis of the Danish case of the provision of the services to the citizens with disabilities and/or social disadvantages. The result has implications, especially for public management in praxis. The case study shows that the managers’ most important managerial tool to make their organizations adapt to the new landscape is the challenging and decision-oriented dialogue.     

Liar,Liar, Pants on Fire: How Fact-Checking Influences Citizens’ Reactions to Negative Advertising

Electoral campaigns are dynamic and an important change in recent elections is the growth of fact-checking; the assessment of the truthfulness of political advertisements by news media organizations and watchdog groups. In this article, we examine the role that fact-checks play in shaping citizens’ views of negative commercials and political candidates. We rely on an Internet survey experiment where we vary people’s exposure to negative advertisements and a follow-up fact-check article (i.e., no fact-check, accurate fact-check, inaccurate fact-check). The results of our experiment show that fact-checks influence people’s assessments of the accuracy, usefulness, and tone of negative political ads. Furthermore, sophisticated citizens and citizens with low tolerance for negative campaigning are most responsive to fact-checks. The fact-checks also sway citizens’ likelihood of accepting the claims made in the advertisements. Finally, negative fact-checks (e.g., fact-checks challenging the truthfulness of the claims of the negative commercial) are more powerful than positive fact-checks.     

Competitiveness concerns in Hong Kong: business fears and government incomprehension

Much of the analysis of the anti-globalization movement that has emerged in the last five years has focused on the degree to which the Internet has played a crucial role in contemporary social movements. It is commonly argued that the Internet helps create ‘virtual communities’ that use the medium to exchange information, coordinate activities, and build and extend political support. Much of the commentary on the web as a means of political mobilization for social movements stresses the degree to which the Internet compresses both space and time, accelerating the exchange of information among whomever has access to this technology. Equally important in this view is the deterritorialized nature of on-line protest and the diminution in importance of ‘place’ in current anti-globalization campaigns. Certainly this argument features prominently in analyses of the campaign against the Multilateral Agreement on Investment (MAI) in 1997-98 and the protests against the World Trade Organization (WTO) meetings in Seattle in November and December 1999. Our examination of the antiglobalization movement in Australia however leads us to a different conclusion: that while the Internet does indeed compress time, it compresses space in a different, and indeed quite variable, way. We examine the way in which Australians protested against the MAI and against the WTO meetings in Seattle, and show the differences in the nature of protest in each case. In the MAI case, the protests were well-organized and national in scope, with the Internet playing an important role in organizing the movement. By contrast, in the case of the WTO, the movement was minor and relatively marginal, with the Internet playing little discernible role in galvanizing protest. We conclude that crucial to an understanding of the differences was the considerable difference in the importance of ‘place’ in each case.     

The Current Status and Future Direction of Nanotechnology Regulations: A View from Nano‐scientists

This article presents an up‐to‐date view of leading U.S. nanoscientists' perceptions about the regulation of nanotechnology. Our analysis draws from the results of a 2011 mail survey with 444 of the most prolific nanoscientists in the United States to explore their perceptions about existing nanotech policies, the development of new nanotech policies, and mandatory policies about the implementation of safe lab practices for federally funded nanoresearch. In addition to exploring the scientists' perceptions about these pressing policy issues, we also test relationships between their perceptions about regulation and control variables such as gender, disciplinary affiliation, and political ideology. Last, the results of the 2011 data collection are compared with a similar mail survey that was conducted in 2007 with leading U.S. nanoscientists to explore any changes over the four‐year time period in scientists' perceptions about nanotechnology policy making, and governmental involvement in nanotechnology research.     

Of Constitutions and Kings

Liverpool Law Review -     

THE (DE)CONSTRUCTION OF CONFLICT IN DIVORCE LITIGATION: A DISCURSIVE CRITIQUE OF “PARENTAL ALIENATION SYNDROME” AND “THE ALIENATED CHILD”

In high‐conflict divorce litigation involving custody and access, mental‐health professionals are often used to assess the case and make recommendations. Using Foucauldian theories of discourse, this article suggests that these assessments, which are intended to resolve the conflict or offer profitable information, often participate in the conflict by constructing assessments and diagnoses that fit with legal discourse, and thus with the outcomes of adversarial‐styled rulings and ideologically driven interests. This article suggests that so long as such professionals are driven by the privileged discourse of law and psychology/psychiatry, the best interests of those at the center of the conflict can have their experience co‐opted by the iatrogenic features of these discourses.     

Efficiency Measurement in Australian Local Government: The Case of New South Wales Municipal Water Services

Australian local government has experienced a series of reforms directed at increasing economic efficiency. An important element in the reform program has been the development of a number of partial indicators of local government service delivery in the states and territories. This paper attempts to augment this literature on performance measurement in Australian local government by using data envelopment analysis (DEA) with holistic indices of allocative and technical efficiency in New South Wales (NSW) municipal water services. It also seeks to incorporate qualitative indicators into efficiency measures. “Best-practice” councils are identified and the underlying causes of municipal water service efficiency are analyzed.