Editorial

International Environmental Agreements: Politics, Law and Economics -     

Reframing incrementalism: A constructive response to the critics

The concept of incrementalism has been widely cited over the past three decades, yet it has not served as the basis for a cumulatively developing line of empirical and theoretical inquiry. As a result, the highly promising incrementalist framework has contributed surprisingly little to improving our understanding of how decision-making processes can better adapt to humans' cognitive limitations. One indicator of the lack of progress is that policy scholars have never made a sustained attempt to explain how practitioners can become better incrementalists. To see whether the concept's original formulation may be obscuring the way to further progress, we summarize and appraise four enduring criticisms of incrementalism: its alleged lack of goal orientation, conservatism, limited range of applicability, and negative stance toward analysis. While questioning the validity of the critics' claims, we nevertheless propose a way to reframe the incrementalist endeavor, with the intention of stimulating both its critics and defenders to get on with the task of learning more about how individuals, organizations, and societies can proceed relatively intelligently despite the fact that humans rarely have a good understanding of complex social problems and policy options.     

Occupational satisfaction and competence of police officers as predicted by the Kuder Interest Inventory

A sample of 77 police officers who had been members of the Evansville, Indiana Police Department for at least two years had been given the Kuder Occupational Interest Inventory prior to being hired. Each was given the Zytowski Personal Data Questionnaire to obtain self-ratings of satisfaction and duty performance. A high percentage (81%) of the officers who had been hired and whose careers had continued in police work had Police Officer as one of their top ten occupations on the Kuder Interest Inventory. The Kuder was less successful at predicting satisfaction and performance. These data supported the concept that stress and burnout were more important predictors of satisfaction and duty performance than were interests.     

Fatal complications related to diagnostic barium enema

Thousands of barium enemas are performed in the United States each year without incident. Occasionally complications arise, only a few of which are fatal. Perforation is the most frequent serious complication of this procedure. Two instances of fatal perforation, one colonic and the other vaginal, are described, and the relevant literature is reviewed.     

Fungal cerebritis from intravenous drug abuse

Three intravenous drug abusers (predominantly cocaine) developed a fulminant fungal cerebritis without any other identifiable predisposing factor. Two died and one survived with a severe neurologic deficit. Zygomycetes (nonseptated fungi) were identified in the brain tissue of two victims and Acremonium alabamensis was cultured from the brain tissue of the third. Fulminant fungal cerebritis in intravenous drug abusers (in the absence of any predisposing illness) may represent a unique variant of the acquired immunodeficiency syndrome (AIDS). Future surviving patients should be evaluated for the possibility of a cellular immune deficiency state in order to confirm this impression.