E-Government for Lowering Administrative Burden: An Empirical Research on European Rural Businesses

Administrative burden reduction is in the policy agenda in European countries and international organizations. The objectives of this article are to measure administrative burden of rural businesses in three European case studies and to assess the use of semantic electronic government services for its reduction. The main findings are that rural businesses do not perceive the administrative burden significance for entrepreneurship; public administration could implement semantic electronic government services to reduce rural businesses’ administrative burden; and future administrative burden reduction policies should take into account the type and location of businesses to achieve an efficient business environment.     

The difficulty with ethics education in public administration

This article suggests that ethics education has not become a regular part of the public administration curriculum for two reasons: (1) the issue has been misperceived as a pedagogical problem, and, more importantly, (2) the field has developed three competing paradigms for moral conduct-do what is right, do good, and do no harm. The origins of each paradigm and the implications for the teaching of ethics in public administration are discussed.     

UK Government Policy,Credit Unions,and Payday Loans

This article outlines how successive UK governments’ policies first created a three-tier system of credit unions and then posited credit unions as alternatives to payday lenders. The three-tier framework is used for an analysis of loans offered on credit union websites. The findings indicate that while the first two tiers of credit unions now offer loans to people who have not saved with them previously, they do so in ways consistent with credit unions’ original character, rather than in ways that replicate commercial payday loans. The other tier of credit unions appears unable to offer such loans.     

Austere State Strategies: Regenerating for Recovery and the Resignification of Regeneration

Through this paper, I seek to draw attention an apparent fundamental resignification of regeneration that has been taking shape over recent times. Conceptually, I engage with political economy theory in order to examine how élite economic interests have resignified the nature of state articulations of regeneration. The argument is developed that this implies a profound subversion of more marginal socio-economic interests traditionally at the heart of regeneration interventions or at least the customary ‘targets’ of such policy. Empirically, the analysis draws upon interviews conducted with those operating at the coalface of policy, politics and practice, augmented by my practical experience of the English regeneration milieu. Documenting the contested evolution of policy practice during what I term the ‘regenerating for recovery’ phase, I investigate the interactions and interconnections between meanings, modes and scales of practice. This analysis helps to demonstrate dual aspects of the resignification of regeneration as both cause and condition that has effectively legitimated and been legitimised by an austere state strategy.     

‘In fabrorum potestate’: Plautus and the Mother's Power in Ancient Rome

Plautus’ Mostellaria contains the first attestation of the attribution of potestas over children to both parents, the mother as well as the father, in ancient Rome. Such an early analogy between pater and mater regarding their social status as parentes, along with a certain correlation between the parents’ duties and their power over their children, seems to suggest that a new social conception of the Roman family was already spreading in Plautus’ day, concurrently with the progressive recognition of natural kinship (cognatio). Set in the framework of the legal and literary sources on this matter, the excerpt brings under discussion the traditional motionless view of the patria potestas and appears to be particularly significant in reconstructing not only the real social and legal status of the Roman mater but also the historical development of the legal system in ancient Rome.     

Looking Forward to Play: The Persuasive Strategies of a Dog

The author analyses, with semiotic tools, the behaviour of a dog that she observed in Trieste, along the famous promenade called “Barcola”. The animal had been playing with its masters on the seashore and then brought back onto the avenue ready to go home. The dog repeatedly tried, with different strategies, to convince its masters to return to shore and continue their play. The tripling of the trials that is so typical of fairy tales was observed to have been enacted: exactly three times, the dog reproduced the sequence of running towards the parapet, glancing over the sea with guile, running towards its masters, jumping and imploring in front of them, renouncing and walking in a backward position with a lolling head. It is argued that this behaviour demonstrates a highly structured semantic, narrative and communicative competence. This study aims at connecting Semiotics and the ecological approach to cognition that takes into account not only strictly cognitive activities but a wider spectrum of strategies through which an animal develops the adaptive behaviour requested by specific environmental conditions.     

The ROK＇s Perception of China＇s Role Interviews with the ROK General Public

North-East Asia is of strategic significance to major world powers such as the United States, China, Japan and Russia. It is a region full ofproblems, such as the North Korean nuclear crisis ano me uni...     

The EU,regional cooperation,and the North Korean nuclear crisis

North Korea poses a security threat by developing nuclear weapons. To address this source of regional insecurity, institutionalized frameworks of regional cooperation have been employed. Despite its usefulness as an alternative route to deal with the North Korean case, controversies still remain in terms of its relevance and effectiveness. Even so, the regional integration, consistently promoted by the EU as an integral part of its Asian policy, still requires systematic evaluation. This paper thus examines how and under which conditions regional integration can make a contribution to the transformation of the current crisis. In answering this question, it concludes that a long-term model-setting effect is hard to disregard, in spite of the mixed view of substantial compulsory and social learning effects. The underlying reasons are the ontological-seeking activities of North Korea, along with regional and global actors’ reservations about the contributions of the EU as a key security provider in Asian affairs and in its promotion of the regional integration scheme.