What Influences City Council Adoption and Support for Reinventing Government? Environmental or Institutional Factors?

What influences the degree to which city councils support reinventing government (REGO)? Controlling for environmental factors that are likely to shape council policy adoption as well as the tenure of the chief administrator, the findings of this study underscore that the type of representation system is most consistently related to opposition to REGO. In addition, the economic health of the city and the tenure of the chief administrator are positively associated with council support. Overall, institutional factors affect council policy adoption more than either environmental factors or an administrator's seniority, at least in this policy area.     

Government supported industry-university research centers: Issues for successful technology transfer

In order to increase the use of federally supported research and development to increase U.S. industrial competitiveness, new partnerships are being developed among the research producers, users, and funders. This paper summarizes the evolution of federal technology transfer models with particular attention to university-industry cooperative research centers sponsored by the National Science Foundation. The advantages and potential problems associated with such centers are presented and the implications for technology and innovation are discussed.     

Aid Politics and Electoral Politics: Japan, 1970–1992

We broaden the analysis of aid flows by investigating the effects of domestic and transnational electoral politics on Japanese overseas development assistance(ODA). We also consider measures of external financial balance and Japan's importance in the international trading system. We present a method for assessing shifts in Japanese ODA policy. We find that Liberal Democratic Party popularity affects the size of the Japanese ODA budget and the way that ODA is allocated. There is also limited evidence that ODA allocations are sensitive to the timing of U.S. elections. By contrast, Japan's changing importance in the international trading system and its current account and exchange rate positions account for little of the inter-temporal variation in Japanese ODA policy.     

Risky Inference: Unobserved Treatment Effects in Conflict Studies

This article illustrates the importance of testing empirical models in samples appropriate to the theories the models are intended to test. While social science appears to mandate that we prefer general theories to limited ones, the generality of a theory rests in its logical application to a set of observations, not solely to its statistical survival in a large data set. Theories in international relations, especially those linking domestic turmoil and international conflict, are advancing, but are sometimes applied to samples larger than the related theories indicate. This paper examines the statistical consequences of estimation in overexpansive samples with unmodeled treatment effects; we argue that samples containing cases that cannot experience the causal phenomenon in question produce unmodeled treatment effects, and we reexamine three published articles whose samples are perhaps broader than their theories suggest they should be. The empirical analyses demonstrate that overexpansive samples can produce somewhat misleading results: the new models produce interesting findings that emerge as treatment effects are identified.     

The Continuing Value of Relief for Directors' Breach of Duty

The nature and scope of relief for directors in breach of their duties did not figure prominently in the Steering Group's fundamental review of company law. Little is proposed beyond removing one of the two pre-conditions for relief laid down in section 727 of the Companies Act 1985; the requirement of reasonableness. This article seeks to subject the relieving discretion to a more radical re-appraisal. Drawing upon the views expressed by its architects together with the current judicial approach adopted towards the provision, it is argued that its underlying rationale would be better met if the test for relief was based solely upon the court's determination of fairness. It will be demonstrated that such a model would better serve to bolster the fundamental tenets of transparency, simplicity and accessibility that underpin the approach of the Government's White Paper towards company law reform while also reinforcing the continuing value of relief.