Fighting Cosmic Warriors: Lessons from the First Seven Years of the Global War on Terror

This article argues that a successful strategy for fighting the Global War on Terror (GWOT) requires actions aimed not only at defeating the Al Qaeda network and denying its operatives sanctuary, but also efforts to delegitimize Al Qaeda's ideology; the United States has focused on the former at the expense of the latter. The GWOT requires a new strategy, one that continues to target Al Qaeda operatives and their assets, while undermining Al Qaeda's message. This requires a better understanding of Al Qaeda's ideology, how U.S. foreign policy may fuel that ideology, and a strategy for undermining militant Islam's worldview.     

EARLY NEUTRAL EVALUATIONS: APPLICATIONS TO CUSTODY AND PARENTING TIME CASES PROGRAM DEVELOPMENT AND IMPLEMENTATION IN HENNEPIN COUNTY,MINNESOTA

A program to apply Early Neutral Evaluation (ENE), a confidential, settlement‐oriented and accelerated alternative dispute resolution technique, to child custody and parenting time cases has been cooperatively developed by Hennepin county Family Court Services and the Minnesota Fourth Judicial District Family Court. Parties are referred by the court to a male/female team of experienced neutral evaluators for early feedback on the probable outcome of a full evaluation and an opportunity to negotiate a settlement. It has proven to be a highly successful program in its first 2 years, with the majority of cases reaching an early settlement. The ENE program reduces the stress and expense of custody disputes for clients, expedites judicial case management, maximizes Family Court Services staff efficiency, and focuses subsequent evaluations on critical issues.     

Pursuing Consilience: Using Behavioral Public Administration to Connect Research on Bureaucratic Red Tape,Administrative Burden,and Regulation

Behavioral public administration (BPA) research aspires not only to draw on developments in behavioral science but also, importantly, to address central themes in public administration. By focusing a symposium on bureaucratic red tape, administrative burden, and regulation, we encouraged BPA scholarship to engage with fundamental public administration topics that are also relevant for the broader literature on organizations and management. Indeed, the symposium contributions demonstrate how BPA can better meld the behavioral science and public administration literatures. They expand on existing conceptions of BPA, with respect to both methodology and topical focus, and provide a basis for demarcating what might and might not be usefully described as BPA. The symposium contributions provide a blueprint for how BPA research might usefully evolve and the introduction offers a philosophical reflection on the future development of BPA and behavioral science.     

Community environmental policing: Assessing new strategies of public participation in environmental regulation

This paper evaluates a new form of public participation in environmental monitoring and regulation advanced through local “bucket brigades,” which allow community members to sample air emissions near industrial facilities. These brigades represent a new form of community environmental policing, in which residents participate in collecting, analyzing, and deploying environmental information, and more importantly, in an array of public policy dialogues. Use of this sampling technology has had marked effects on local residents' perceptions and participation in emergency response and citizens' right‐to‐know. However, when viewed through the lens of the more developed literature on community policing, the bucket brigades are currently limited in their ability to encourage “co‐production” of environmental protection between citizens and the state. Means are examined to strengthen the bucket brigades and to more broadly support community participation in environmental regulation. © 2003 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Canadian energy security: the state of Canada's emergency preparedness system

Abstract: Because Canada has regions totally dependent on imported oil and is a trading nation dependent on international trade for a significant share of its national income, it is vulnerable both directly and indirectly to the consequences of oil supply shortfalls and the attendant price hikes. The Canadian energy emergency preparedness system, through Canada's membership in the International Energy Agency, is integrated into the iea's international emergency oil-sharing system. Despite being well over a decade old, the nature and state of Canada's system has never been independently analysed. By highlighting the close relationship between energy security and economic security, the argument is made that continued attention to energy security is prudent. The article attempts to make the very technical features of these systems comprehensible to non-energy specialists. The implications of iea membership for Canada are analysed and the relationship between Canada's responsibilities to the iea and its obligation under the free trade agreement with the United States is discussed. Sommaire: Dans la mesure où il a des régions entièrement dépendantes des importations de pétrole et où il est tributaire du commerce international pour une part importante de son revenu national, le Canada est vulnérable directement et indirectement aux conséquences d'un arrêt des approvisionnements pétroliers et aux montées des prix en résultant. Le plan d'urgence énergétique dont le Canada s'est doté dans le cadre de son appartenance à I'Agence Internationale de 1'Énergie est intégré au système international de partage de pétrole en cas d'urgence élaborré par cet organisme. Bien qu'il existe depuis plus d'une décennie, la nature et la situation du plan canadien n'ont jamais étéétudiées de façon indépendante. En attirant I'attention des lecteurs sur les relations étroites existant entre la sécurité en matière énergétique et en matière économique, les auteurs expliquent qu'il est prudent de prêter constamment attention à la sécurité en matière énergétique. 11s essaient égale-ment de vulgariser les caractéristiques extrêmement techniques de ces systèmes. Les auteurs analysent en outre les conéquences qu'entraîne ^Pappartenance du Canada à I'AIE et le rapport existant entre les responsabilités du Canada vis-à-vis de I'AIE et ses obligations dans le cadre de I'accord de libre-échange avec les États-Unis.     

Representative Bureaucracy and the Willingness to Coproduce: An Experimental Study

Relying on the theory of representative bureaucracy—specifically, the notion of symbolic representation—this article examines whether varying the number of female public officials overseeing a local recycling program influences citizens’ (especially women's) willingness to cooperate with the government by recycling, thus coproducing important policy outcomes. Using a survey experiment in which the first names of public officials are manipulated, the authors find a clear pattern of increasing willingness on the part of women to coproduce when female names are more represented in the agency responsible for recycling, particularly with respect to the more difficult task of composting food waste. Overall, men in the experiment were less willing to coproduce across all measures and less responsive to the gender balance of names. These findings have important implications for the theory of representative bureaucracy and for efforts to promote the coproduction of public services.     

Three Theories of Religious Activism and Violence: Social Movements,Fundamentalists, and Apocalyptic Warriors

Numerous scholars have investigated religiously motivated violence, particularly in the wake of September 11, including discussions on the role of modernity in triggering religious violence, the increasing presence of religion in politics, the violence-prone nature of certain religions, and religion's correlation with ethnicity and other conflict-intensifying variables. However, religious activism and violence are not new phenomena. Few theories have been advanced that move across time and space and, broadly, seek to explain the conditions under which religion becomes involved in activism and violence. This article argues that three broad causal arguments for religious activism—social movements, fundamentalism, and apocalyptic warriors—help explain the conditions under which religiously motivated violence occurs across time and space. These three causal arguments offer a spectrum of goals within religious activism, ranging from challenging social practices and government policies, to defending specific interpretations and practices of the faith, to hastening the apocalypse. Furthermore, each of these theories proposes different ways that religion becomes involved in social, political, and religious activism and the conditions under which groups use violence to further their goals. The article concludes by suggesting countermeasures for each type of religious activism.     

Peasant participation and mobilization during economic crisis: The case of Costa Rica

During the three decades prior to the 1980s, the state-led development policies pursued by Costa Rica created a standard of living that was unique in Central America and among the most satisfactory in all of Latin America. However, the economic crisis of the early 1980s and the problems created by Costa Rica's foreign debt caused the nation's political and economic leaders to abandon the previous style of development and to the introduce neoliberal economic policies. The economic changes undertaken by Costa Rica in the 1980s were strongly supported by the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank, and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID). Among the social sectors most adversely affected by the opening to the international market were the small independent producers of basic grains and other agricultural crops primarily destined for the internal market. These peasant sectors were largely unorganized prior to the 1980s and they intensified their organizational efforts in direct response to what was viewed as the negative impact of the new economic policies. This article examines the economic crisis that engulfed Costa Rica in the early 1980s as well as the economic stabilization and structural adjustment programs that succeeded in easing the crisis and that will define the direction of development efforts in the 1990s. The bulk of the article investigates the attempts of the peasanty to organize and mobilize in order to influence the political system and to protect their economic interests. Costa Rica's principle peasant organizations are discussed and reasons are offered to explain the failure of peasant efforts to influence the formation of development policy. Gregg L. Vunderink recently received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Texas at Austin. The recipient of a Fulbright-Hays research abroad award, the author conducted research in Costa Rica and Nicaragua in 1987 and 1988. He is currently a visiting assistant professor at St. Olaf College in Northfield, Minnesota 55057.