Strategy first in international joint ventures

International technology- based joint ventures are proliferating despite their inherent complexity and high risk of failure. US firms continue to employ international joint ventures as a vehicle for collaborative research and development (R & D); foreign investors prefer the joint venture for investing in the emerging market economies of Eastern Europe. Tipping the balance in favor of successful joint ventures requires a strategic approach from the very advent of entering into an international R&D arrangement: an approach in which clear objectives are set and alternative ways to reach these objectives are systematically evaluated. Several frameworks are presented that clarify and facilitate the decisionmaking process during the initial phases of considering a joint venture in which project objectives are developed, alternative R&D arrangements are evaluated, and potential partners are identified and eventually selected.     

Comparing Attitudinal and Strategic Accounts of Dissenting Behavior on the U.S. Courts of Appeals

Students of judicial behavior have increasingly turned to strategic accounts to understand judicial decision making. Scholarship on the Supreme Court and state high courts suggests that the decision to dissent is better understood in light of strategic considerations rather than simply reflecting ideological disagreement. We investigate whether these findings comport with behavior by judges on the U.S. Courts of Appeals. We develop a spatial model of the decision to dissent that incorporates both attitudinal and strategic elements and subject this model to empirical analysis. We find that ideological disagreement between a judge and the majority opinion writer is a more persuasive explanation of the decision to dissent than a strategic account in which a judge conditions a dissent on whether circuit intervention would obtain the judge's preferred outcome. Though we do not discount the existence of other types of strategic behavior on the Courts of Appeals, our research suggests that strategic accounts of dissenting behavior are not generalizable to all courts .     

Expressive Voting and Government Redistribution: Testing Tullock's `Charity of the Uncharitable'

Models of expressive voting postulate that voters will`consume' ideological stances on issues by voting for them,even when they are against the voter's own narrow selfinterest, if the probability of being a decisive voter is low.When a voter is unlikely to sway the outcome, the odds that avoter will incur any real personal cost (a higher tax burden,for example) from her own expressive vote is small. We testand find support for Tullock's straightforward empiricalimplication of this model, that government welfare (transfer)payments are inversely related to the probability of being thedecisive voter.     

Long–Serving City Managers: Why Do They Stay?

The literature on council–manager government often mentions the political difficulties that city managers face with their elected officials and constituent groups. In addition, the generally accepted route to success for city managers is to move to larger and better–paying cities. As a result of these push–and–pull factors, the average tenure of city managers is short. There are, however, a relatively small number of city managers who enjoy long tenure in single cities. The authors identified the 146 city managers who are serving and have served for at least 20 years the same city and sought to determine the factors leading to their long service. The survey indicates that long–serving city managers are more likely to be found in smaller cities that are homogeneous and politically stable. The majority of these city managers are white males with above–average educational levels, strong support from elected officials, and personal commitments to the cities they serve.     

Environmental Justice and Information Technologies: Overcoming the Information-Access Paradox in Urban Communities

Scientific studies and resident testimony suggest that urban residents in low-income and minority communities have been subject to an unequal burden of environmental pollution and inequitable environmental enforcement practices. A key component of the equitable development and implementation of environmental policies is the participation of citizens and community-based organizations in the policy process. Such participation rests upon equitable access to agency-generated environmental information and effective use of that information by citizens. This article focuses on the adoption of Internet technologies by environmental agencies as a mechanism for disseminating information and the implications for low-income and minority residents in urban communities. A framework is developed to guide a programmatic response to overcome these implications. The results from several community-based projects are described and analyzed for their capacity-building effectiveness. Analysis of the projects indicates improvement in community capacity for information access and use, which bolstered community participation in the environmental decision-making process.     

Children's disability law: the more things change, the more they stay the same

The social security system insures both children and adults who are disabled. Over the years, the Social Security Administration and the courts have developed a number of tests to determine whether a child is eligible to receive social security benefits. In 1997, as part of its attempt to reform welfare, Congress laid out a new, arguably more restrictive standard that must be met before a child can be deemed "disabled." For all of the apparent changes, however, it is unclear how much the standards have changed in practice.