The intellectual legacy of J.E. Hodgetts

Abstract: J.E. (Ted) Hodgetts was influenced by both the political economy approach that he learned at the University of Toronto and by the comprehensive historical method developed by Leonard White, under whom he studied at Chicago. His first great project, Pioneer Public Service, convinced him that responsible government was impossible without responsible public administration. The authors examine how his response to management theories and practices evolved following his participation in the Glassco, Lambert and Gomery commissions. Hodgetts consistently refused the complete separation of politics and administration, and he promoted the use of management techniques to strengthen parliamentary supervision of the public service. The two key components of his legacy are thus a commitment to the democratic values of representative government and the comprehensive study of the internal dynamics of public administration in interaction with the relevant environmental factors.     

Roosevelt, Truman and the Development of Postwar Grand Strategy

After its victory in World War II, it was clear that United States should move beyond the disastrous policies of the 1930s, but it was less clear how. Ultimately, a lasting postwar strategy was forged under President Truman. Appreciating how Truman moved well beyond Roosevelt's guiding assumptions is essential to understanding the evolution of American grand strategy. One sees that wartime planning and grand strategy formulation can prove quite inadequate for dealing with postwar challenges. An administration cannot be locked into assumptions, but must constantly test them. Thus, the Truman administration eventually developed and adopted containment and moved far beyond FDR's approach. More substantively, the fundamental geopolitical lesson of World War II and the early Cold War was that the United States must assume the essential balancing role relative to other major powers.     

Speed/pure war/power crime: Paul Virilio on the criminogenic accident and the virtual disappearance of the suicidal state

This essay applies the theoretical concepts of pure war and speed-politics developed by the critical theorist and urbanist Paul Virilio to the concept of power crime. The aim of this paper is to present readers unfamiliar with Virilio’s work with a philosophical methodology of great potential significance to critical criminology. It is divided into two major parts. The first part re-considers power crime and the broader criminogenic environment in terms of the Virilian notions of velocity, optics, and pure war: criminogenic phenomena are shown to be the necessary and unavoidable by-products of the wider convergences among political, economic, and military systems governed by speed. The second part consists of an empirical case study illustrating the practical applicability of these abstract Virilian concepts: the federal prosecution of the private security firm Custer Battles for fraud. The systemic corruption of the US military procurement process and the inability of the federal judicial system to provide a remedy for the fraud perpetrated against the American public is read as a key sign of the suspension of the liberal juro-political order and the effective abolition of the rule of law by fast moving, or “high velocity”, criminogenic processes.     

Naturschutzrechtliche Vorgaben zur Verwendung gebietseigener Gehölze

Zusammenfassung  Die genetische Vielfalt ist oft übersehenes Schutzgut des Naturschutzrechts. Sie ist der Grund, warum zunehmend gefordert wird, Anpflanzungen nur mit gebietseigenem Pflanzmaterial durchzuführen. Rechtliche Probleme stellen sich hier an der Schnittstelle von Naturschutz- und Vergaberecht. Soll n?mlich bei der ?ffentlichen Auftragsvergabe zur Anpflanzung von Geh?lzen oder beim Einkauf von Pflanzmaterial nicht gegen vergaberechtliche Vorschriften versto?en werden, bedarf es hinreichender, im Naturschutzrecht verwurzelter Gründe, um ?ffentliche Ausschreibungen ausschlie?lich auf gebietseigenes Pflanzmaterial einzuengen. Diesen naturschutzrechtlichen Verpflichtungen geht der vorliegende Beitrag nach.     

Legislative Twitter Style: Electoral Vulnerability,Social Media,and Constituency-Building in Large Multimember Electoral Systems

How do legislators use social media to cultivate their constituencies in large multimember electoral districts? Colombia's Senate nationwide district offers a suitable case to examine how lawmakers, through their behaviour on Twitter, geographically target their audiences. We employ microblog user geolocation methods which infer locations using textual content in order to identify where Colombian senators' Twitter ‘home’ is. We find that senators' location targeting on Twitter largely mirrors the geographical distribution of their votes. Deviations from that pattern mostly stem from their vulnerability to intraparty competition and the nature of their parties' organisation.