Foreign assistance and development in a small-island economy: The case of Fiji

In many works on comparative public administration and development management the arguments put forward are often presented within the framework of comparing developed and less-developed countries. However, within the latter category there are fairly substantial differences, usually categorized within the context of system of government, or degrees of per capita income. Rarely is the question of scale addressed head on. One dimension of this, for instance, is the nature and operation of public administration where the proliferation of traditional ministries, and the impartiality of the administration, become very problematic in terms of the extremely limited resources and the very personal nature of public life— especially in the microstates. In this paper the question of scale is addressed in the context of the relationship between one island state, Fiji, and its bilateral and multilateral partners. This is considered not just in terms of aid and loans, but in terms of such issues as the ‘critical mass’ of skilled professional people, and the problems of functioning in a system where the rules for such things as overheads seem to have been evolved in the context of the Third-World giants. It is shown that the scale variable is a very powerful one in both the effectiveness and efficiency of governments working in tandem with major external sources of capital assistance.     

Institutional innovation,development and environmental management: An ‘administrative trap’ revisited. Part I

In the first section of this two-part study the author considers the relationship between administrative structure and the persistence of broad ecological problems. This is set in the context of the issues leading to, and identified at, the Stockholm Conference on the Environment in 1972. It is evident that, despite all the interest and effort, the main parameters of environmental well-being show that the situation remains at least as bad. The case is made that there is a considerable dysfunction between the nature of ecological problems and the ‘problem-solving’ structures within the public arena. This dysfunction is here termed the ‘administrative trap’. This section concludes by reviewing three areas in which administrative innovation resulted very largely from the Stockholm initiative: Global Conferences and their attendant Global Institutions; Ministries of the Environment; and ‘reforms’ in the legislative apparatus.     

What Role Does the "Federalism Bonus" Play in Presidential Selection?

The conflicting outcome of the electoral and popular votes inthe 2000 presidential election provoked calls to abolish oralter the electoral college. One prominent criticism is thatthe institution distorts election outcomes by providing disproportionateinfluence to small states. If each state receives a number ofpresidential electors equal to that states' number of membersin the U.S. House of Representatives plus the two senators,then the "federalism bonus" represents the two electoral collegevotes that correspond to the position of each state as an equalentity in the Senate. This research examines how the "federalismbonus" influences presidential selection by addressing threequestions. First, why did the framers include a federal componentin the electoral college? Second, under what circumstances hasthe "federalism bonus" played a role in presidential selection?Third, how would the various alternatives for reform affectthe federal component of the electoral college, and what isthe likelihood of adoption for each?     

Demands of a Two-Horse Company

YANG Jie, 23, starts work at his office on Youth Road in Wuhan, Hubei Province at 9 am each day and returns to his dorm to sleep at 10 pm. He eats a modest lunch in the small restaurant downstairs and has a takeaway for supper. It was in the summer of 2005 that Yang Jie and Li Chao opened their Qi Hang Advertising Company. Their small firm deals with large and small concerns alike, and in order to stay solvent, they spend their lives either at the office, where they deal with clients an…     

The regulation of lobbyists

The authors gratefully acknowledge helpful comments from Charles Rowley, Robert Tollison, and a referee of this journal.     

The Baha’i minority in the State of Israel, 1948–1957

This article examines the virtually unexplored topic of the Baha'i religious minority in Israel's early statehood period based mainly on primary source documentation. It will be argued that while the number of Persian Baha'is in Israel after 1948 was minuscule — even smaller than the similarly minuscule Circassian and Armenian populations — the non-Arab and non-Muslim identity of the Baha'is, the lack of any historical antagonism between the Baha'is and the Jews, a shared history of marginalization in the modern Middle East, the Baha'is' principled commitment to non-violence as a basic tenet of their religious faith, their complete neutrality leading up to and including the 1948 War, (and their support for Jewish statehood after it), their lack of proselytizing in the state of Israel, and the fact that nearly all of their high-ranking administrators in post-independence Israel hailed from the United States — whose support Israel sought — led the state to cultivate this minority to a degree few other minorities experienced in post 1948 Israel.

A study of the flight and return of most (excommunicated) Baha'i adherents during and after the 1948 War, respectively, will form part of a separate, forthcoming article.