The Fatal Defect in the Federal Accounting System

For many years, the federal accounting system has focused on obligations. Beginning in 1949, several blue-ribbon committees recommended changing the focus to expenses. Focusing on expenses provides more useful information than focusing on obligations for both planning and control purposes. Unfortunately, the House Appropriations Committee continues to make appropriations on an obligation basis. The Federal Accounting Standards Advisory Board (FASAB) has developed a system that focuses on both expenses and obligations that was supposed to be operational in 1997 but in fact will not be operational until 2003 at the earliest. Even then, users will not pay much attention to the expense focus if funds continue to be appropriated on an obligation basis.     

How Big Is a Policy Network? An Assessment Utilizing Data From Canadian Royal Commissions 1970–2000

The subsystem approach to policy studies is now well established in theory. Despite many applications to empirical cases, however, many elements of the operationalization of this approach have remained problematic, prompting some critics to reject it as “unscientific.” Although the approach has been defended as “more than a metaphor,” it is certainly apparent that additional work is required to address fundamental aspects of the model and ensure that its application to specific cases is done in such a way as to meet basic methodological prerequisites of consistency and replication. This article builds on earlier work by one of the authors attempting to address some of these concerns. Specifically, it addresses issues surrounding the methods through which subsystem membership can be identified and attempts some preliminary conclusions with respect to the estimation of average subsystem size in contemporary advanced liberal democracies.     

Suicide by pipe bomb: a case report.

While lying down, a 23-year-old man detonated an improvised explosive device placed behind his head. The posterior neck and shoulders were singed, and much of the brain was avulsed. Death was due to laceration and partial avulsion of the cerebrum, midbrain, and brain stem. The injuries had a directional nature. Facts derived from the scene investigation and gross dissection, including nature, distribution, and extent of the wounds, in conjunction with preceding medical and social history, allowed for a reasonable reconstruction of the circumstances.     

Government expenditure on public order and safety,economic growth and private investment: Empirical evidence from the United States

The analysis begins by using annual data for the US from 1959 to 2003 to examine the macroeconomic relationship between government expenditure on public order and safety, output and investment. In practice, total spending on public order and safety is divided up into four categories (police force, fire service, law courts and prison service) so in the second part of the analysis we test for Granger causality between output, investment and each category of spending. But the division of aggregate spending may give rise to trade-offs/complementarities so in the final part of the analysis Granger causality tests are used to investigate this issue. Among other things, the results suggest that changes in output Granger cause changes in total spending on public order and safety. In particular, when total spending is disaggregated the findings suggest that changes in output Granger cause changes in spending on the police force and the law courts.