Variations in enforcing equality: a study of provincial human rights funding

Abstract: This paper reports on a study of public funding for provincial human rights legislation and programs across Canada. In the field of human rights legislation, much has been said of legal cases but little of funding and enforcement issues. Our purpose was to identify factors responsible for different levels of human rights funding on the basis of a per capita spending comparison among the provinces. The aim was also to link our findings to the applicability of theories of public policy. Factors examined were provincial revenues, the size of minority groups, interest group pressures, the administrative structure of commissions, the number of women in cabinet and the political party in power. Our findings point to the importance of party and ideology and to the applicability of the state-centred theory of public policy. Sommaire: Cet article est le compte rendu d'une étude sur le financement public des lois et programmes pmvinciaux concernant les droits de la personne à travers le Canada. En ce qui concerne les lois régissant les droits de la personne, de nom-breuses études ont porté sur les questions juridiques, mais peu ont touché les questions de financement et de mise en application. Nous avons voulu cerner les fadeurs à l'origine des divers niveaux de financement des activités de droits de la personne à partir d'une comparaison des dépenses par habitant, parmi les provinces. Nous voulions également rattacher nos constatations à l'applicabilité des théories de politique publique. Nous awns examiné les facteurs suivants: revenus provinciaux, importance des minorités, force des groupes d'intérêt, structure administrative des Commissions, présence de femmes au Conseil des ministres et enfin, parti politique au pouvoir. Nos constatations soulignent l'importance du parti, de l'idéologie et de la théorie des politiques publiques axée sur l'État.     

THIRD WORLD URBANIZATION AND AMERICAN FOREIGN AID POLICY: DEVELOPMENT ASSISTANCE IN THE 1990s

Over the next decade, the demographic and economic characteristics of countries to which the United States government provides technical and financial assistance for economic development will change substantially. Rapid urban population growth, the expanding role of cities and towns in national economies, continued migration of population from rural to urban areas, explosive growth in the size of the labor force, and shifts in the occupations of the labor force from agriculture to manufacturing and ser- vices will require a reorientation of American development assistance. Yet, program objectives and budget allocations of the U.S. foreign aid program fail to reflect these changes in the characteristics of its clientele. The US. Agency for International Development lacks an overt strategy for coping with urbanization in developing nations. Without an urban strategy, the American foreign aid program is likely to incur increasing opportunity costs and fail to address critical problems arising from fundamental shifts in the economic and social structure of developing countries.     

NASA Technology Utilization Program: A concept paper on options

The NASA Technology Transfer Program has taken on a variety of roles during the past twenty years. This paper briefly reviews these roles. It presents then several organized approaches that could be adopted to maximize the cost/benefit of technology transfer from NASA to the private sector.     

One size does not fit all: Matching breadth of stakeholder participation to watershed group accomplishments

The role of the public in US policy making has shifted substantially during the past several decades. This shift is particularly evident in environmental policy, where collaboration among multiple stakeholders is on the rise. Much of the literature on collaborative environmental management emphasizes the need for widespread community involvement, especially from private citizens. Many proponents of collaboration have argued that broad inclusion can lead to better environmental solutions while also establishing legitimacy, building social capital, and overcoming conflicts. Yet such broad inclusion may be costly in terms of time, energy, and resources, and it may not yield the desired results. Thus, a key question is how the breadth of public involvement is linked to collaborative group accomplishments. This study, using watershed groups in Ohio, demonstrates several links between group membership and results. Groups with a broader array of participants tend to excel in watershed plan creation, identifying/prioritizing issues, and group development and maintenance. In addition, groups comprised of a relatively balanced mix of governmental and non-governmental participants are more likely to list planning/research and group development and maintenance results than are groups comprised primarily of non-governmental participants. In contrast, groups with a narrower membership and groups that are composed primarily of non-governmental participants may focus more on pressuring government for policy change.     

Gillard,Rudd and Labor Tradition*

Julia Gillard replaced Kevin Rudd as prime minister and Labor leader in June 2010. She describes her government as being firmly in the “tradition of Labor”. To locate it in the broad ideological continuum of Labor governments, and to test the suggestion that she is travelling a reform path set largely by the Hawke and Keating governments, I analyse the positions taken by Rudd and Gillard on a range of issues, beginning with economic policy. On social issues Gillard has been even more cautious than Rudd and this reflects her analysis of the electoral impact of Howard's Culture Wars. Her focus on educational opportunity suggests she is the logical successor to Gough Whitlam, Bob Hawke and Paul Keating. As Labor leaders, Rudd and Gillard each embraced market‐reliant policy positions. Rudd even claimed to be an “fiscal conservative”. However, with Rudd venturing a critique of neo‐liberalism, it is Gillard whose stance is closer to Hawke and Keating's “economic rationalism”. Indeed Gillard's insistence upon the centrality of markets leaves Labor with a dilemma: if there are no significant problems with relying on markets then why does Australia need a social democratic party?     

Results of the 2018 Rapid DNA Maturity Assessment

Three commercially available integrated rapid DNA instruments were tested as a part of a rapid DNA maturity assessment in July of 2018. The assessment was conducted with sets of blinded single-source reference samples provided to participants for testing on the individual rapid platforms within their laboratories. The data were returned to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for review and analysis. Both FBI-defined automated review (Rapid DNA Analysis) and manual review (Modified Rapid DNA Analysis) of the datasets were conducted to assess the success of genotyping the 20 Combined DNA Index System (CODIS) core STR loci and full profiles generated by the instruments. Genotype results from the multiple platforms, participating laboratories, and STR typing chemistries were combined into a single analysis. The Rapid DNA Analysis resulted in a success rate of 80% for full profiles (85% for the 20 CODIS core loci) with automated analysis. Modified Rapid DNA Analysis resulted in a success rate of 90% for both the CODIS 20 core loci and full profiles (all attempted loci per chemistry). An analysis of the peak height ratios demonstrated that 95% of all heterozygous alleles were above 59% heterozygote balance. For base-pair sizing precision, the precision was below the standard 0.5 bp deviation for both the ANDE 6C System and the RapidHIT 200.     

Rethinking Representation from a Communal Perspective

Most foundational theories of congressional representation were developed during an era of less polarized and less partisan politics. These theories viewed the incumbency advantage as buttressed by the fact that some constituents were willing to support legislators from the opposite party because of their “home styles.” But in an era of policy immoderation in Congress, this perspective leads to an assumption that citizens evaluate their members of Congress based on what those legislators do for them individually, rather than what they do for their districts more broadly. In this paper, we ask whether citizens take the interests of their fellow constituents into account when evaluating their members of Congress. Using both survey data and an experiment, we uncover support for the notion that citizens take a more communal view of representation as at least part of their evaluations of their representatives. This suggests individuals may have a more nuanced understanding of representation than purely self-interested approaches tend to assume.