The management of institutional innovation: Lessons from transferring the land grant model to India

The US and India collaborated on a successful institution building programme in the 1950s and 1960s to develop capacity for agricultural education, research and extension. This paper analyses that process for lessons that might bear on efforts to build similar institutions in other countries. India was an especially favourable environment due to the sophistication of its scientific base, the openness of its leaders to institutional innovation, the presence of public sector enterpreneurs to mobilize support for reform, and a food crisis that made it urgent to find new technology. The US did not fund institutional changes that had little demand in India, but it did influence Indian preferences over the long run by creating several mechanisms to exchange information about the American land grant system. These exchange mechanisms enhanced India's capacity for agricultural science and, less often noticed, contributed to the political support essential to new institutions.     

Aggression and delinquency: Family and environmental factors

Juvenile delinquency has become an increasing concern to society; aggressive behaviors are particularly harmful. This study examined parent and youth behaviors and personality types that may influence delinquent and aggressive behaviors. Youths were referred by the court to an intervention program; ratings of delinquency and aggression were derived from parent reports, self-reports, and court referral data. Results showed that high parent ratings of youth aggressiveness were related to high turmoil in the home and to youths' positive opinions of delinquent peers, while high aggressiveness of the youths' referring offenses was related to lax punishment. Developmentally, this suggests that in adolescence both the peer group and home influences are important in shaping different aspects of the youths' aggressive and delinquent behaviors.This study was partially conducted under University of Virginia Research Policy Council Grant No. 199505. The study was funded in part by a NICHD Training Grant (HD07289) to Dr. D. W. Fulker. Preparation of the paper was facilitated by grant RR-07013-20 awarded to the University of Colorado by the Biomedical Research Support Grant Program, Division of Research Resources, National Institutes of Health.Received Ph.D. in psychology from University of Virginia. Current research interests are intelligence and prosocial and antisocial behaviors from a developmental behavior genetics perspective.Received Ph.D. in psychology from Michigan State University. Current research interests are developmental pathways to problem behaviors of youth in high-risk communities.Current research interests are volunteer interventions with adolescents at risk for delinquency.Current research interests are clinical applications and intervention with adolescents and families.     

Sex in transition, 1900–1980

Changes in the proportion of college-aged males and females participating in coital relationships are analyzed through a review of 35 studies conducted between 1903 and 1980. Two major trends are apparent: there has been a major increase in the proportion of young people reporting intercourse, and the proportion of females reporting coital involvement has increased more rapidly than the proportion of males, although the initial base for males is greater. Prior to 1970, about twice as many college men as women reported having had intercourse; since 1970, the proportions of men and women reporting coital involvement are nearly equal. These changes are seen as supportive of major shifts in the standards governing sexual behavior from the double standard to the single standard of permissiveness with affection [Reiss, I. F. (1967).The Social Context of Premarital Sexual Permissiveness, Rinehart and Winston, New York] to the current standard of intercourse being appropriate in love relationships (without the requirement of progression toward marriage) and permissible in causal relationships without exploitation.     

Cultural Resistance,Output Measures,and Audit Practice: Impact on Non-Implementation of Program-Based Budgeting in Nigeria

Excessive spending on recurrent expenditure hampers economic growth. A program-based budgeting approach has been proposed to discipline fiscal excesses of agencies outside direct civil service machinery but government is inactive. This study hypothesized that difficulty in securing output measures, resistance from politicians, agency heads, and workers; current audit practice; and cost–benefit considerations, hinder implementation. Analysis of perceptual data reveals that resistance from politicians and employees is the major factor that hinders implementation of a program-based budgeting in Nigeria. In addition, difficulty in securing measures to quantify outputs thwarts implementation initiatives, and current audit practice whereby private audit firms audit operational activities of agencies only at year-end subvert program reviews. The study recommends that politicians be advised on political considerations in budgetary allocation; a performance measurement committee be set up to develop measures of outputs acceptable to workers; and a body of auditors be nationalized to undertake audit of government agencies.     

When Can Politicians Scare Citizens Into Supporting Bad Policies?

Many people claim that politicians use fear to manipulate citizens. Using a model, we examine how select attributes of fear affect a politician's ability to scare citizens into supporting policies that they would otherwise reject. In the model, the politician can alert citizens to the presence of a threat. But his claim need not be true. How citizens respond to this claim differs from most game-theoretic models. Our representation of this response follows from research in psychology, has distinct conscious and subconscious components, and does not presume efficient processing (i.e., Bayesian updating). Our conclusions counter popular claims about when politicians will use fear to manipulate citizens. They also highlight issues (abstract, distant) and leaders (secretive) for which recent empirical findings about how fear affects politics will—and will not—generalize to other cases.