Young people and AIDS in Thailand and South East Asia

In 1999, 1.5 million Asians were infected with HIV (compared to 5.6 million people worldwide).² The epidemic, spurred by the sex industry and intravenous drug use in south east Asia, is tragically concentrated among the young: 50% of the 6.5 million living with the infection worldwide are under 25.³ There is great cause for concern, but also vast potential for change and, until there is a vaccine, prevention is the key. Thailand's example offers proof that prevention efforts in many Asian countries can meet with success if they are well conceived and applied. As in Thailand, youth is a key factor in combating the epidemic for the rest of south east Asia.     

Reporters who cover Congress

This article is based on his testimony before the Bipartisan Task Force on Ethics in the United States House of Representatives on September 20, 1989.     

Encouraging Local Compliance with Federal Civil Rights Laws: Field Experiments with the National Voter Registration Act

Can state officials increase local officials’ compliance with an important federal civil rights law with subtle interventions? The National Voter Registration Act of 1993 (NVRA) requires voter registration services at certain government agencies, but many counties fail to comply with the act. Working with officials in two states, the authors conducted field experiments to determine whether two methods commonly used by state officials increase compliance with the NVRA. Findings show that although the effects of the methods on output were sizable relative to recent performance, agency performance remained poor overall, with many offices continuing their history of registering no voters. The authors also discovered that gains in performance were largest for the offices that had performed best in the past. These findings suggest that while subtle interventions by state officials can produce increased compliance, stronger tactics may be needed to secure implementation of this federal law by local government agents.     

Community in Public Policy: Fad or Foundation?

Both internationally and within Australia public policy is experiencing a rush back to the idea of community. After 15 years of discourse about the new public management and economic rationalism a much older discourse is slipping back into public policy. It is a normative discourse about changing relations between state democracy, market capitalism and civil society in which the idea of community is a central ‘new’ relation used to manage both state and market failures. Already new policy tools emerging from this discourse can be seen with innovations based on concepts such as partnerships, place management, and a raft of community consultation mechanisms. Much of the rhetoric about community as a new foundation for public policy, however, remains confused. The result is a muddle of ideas in which this potentially useful concept is in danger of becoming just another public policy reform fad. This article looks at what policy makers are saying about community, identifies problems in this current usage and offers ways of thinking about community with a view to establishing its policy utility.     

Public sector reform and the public interest in Australia

Contemporary public sector reforms in Australia have been dominated by efficiency, productivity and contestability considerations captured in the National Competition Policy (NCP). Both in the reform process in general and in the NCP processes in particular, the lack of priority attributed to non‐economic concerns such as co‐ordination, equity, representation, political accountability, consultation and distributive outcomes has been a serious omission. The idea of public interest, once central to democratic public administration, has re‐emerged to challenge the perceived excesses of economic rationalism as the unifying idea of reform. In this article it is argued that substantive situational manifestations of public interest can be used to complement rather than undermine the efficiency, productivity and contestability objectives of public sector reform.     

Like Zealots and Romans: Terrorism and Empire in the 21st Century

The paper defines terrorismand gives a rough classification of itstraditional forms: repressive terrorism,insurrectional terrorism ofethnic/national/separatist character andsocial-revolutionary terrorism. To explainthese forms of terrorism, scholars used twomodels: the psychiatric model and thesociological model. Both were – and are –not just objects of scholarly debate, butpart and parcel of a political conflictover the legitimacy of terrorist actions.In the last decade, new forms of terrorism(most prominent: fundamentalist Islamicterrorism) have developed as a reaction toglobalization and Empire-building. We haveseen a development from provincialterrorism to terrorism of global reach,from terrorism as a form of political crimeto terrorism as criminalized war. Thetraditional explanatory models have,therefore, to be supplemented by adiscussion of the dialectical relationbetween the growing American Empire and aspecific form of military opposition.Defined as terrorism, this opposition has,ironically, become a rather useful enemy inthe process of Empire-building. There ishope that the Empire will, in the not sodistant future, be able to monopolize thelegitimate use of military force,criminalize all other forms of violenceand, thus, turn the terror of wars into amere war on terrorism.     

The Contested Terrain of the Parallel Society: The Other Natives in Contemporary Greece and Germany

This article takes issue with two assumptions associated with the permanent return migration of ethnic Greeks and ethnic Germans from the former Soviet Union. It suggests that their return has turned out to be less ethnically motivated than policy makers have assumed and that many returnees, immigrating permanently as fully fledged citizens, continue to retain elements of circularity in their lives, of different nature and intensity. Both returnee groups experience varying degrees of social and economic exclusion and this might explain why some members maintain links with their area of origin. Adopting a comparative approach, this article draws on insights from ongoing fieldwork, with particular focus on interviews with return migrants in both countries.