One‐nation pacifism: Japan's security problems and challenges to the US‐Japan alliance

It is hard to judge where Japan really stands on defense issues, and foreigners and Japanese alike over‐emphasize the importance of form and neglect real substance when trying to judge Japanese attitudes, according to Sam Jameson, the dean of American journalists in Japan, who has lived and worked here for 38 years. Japan is not as pacifistic a nation as Article 9 mandated it ought to be, but neither is it the innately militaristic country that some of its Asian neighbors believe it to be. Japan spends more money on wine and women and karaoke singing than on weapons. However, Japan needs to give more serious attention to defense issues; it cannot opt out of the world. It should amend its Constitution to accord with defense realities, acknowledge past aggression, adopt a needs‐oriented system of defense budgeting, and give its defense capabilities more depth. Jameson is a visiting scholar at UPS, and is working on a book about Japan.     

The Intergenerational Transmission of Values in National and Immigrant Families: The Role of Zeitgeist

Correspondence in value orientation between parents and their offspring may be due to actual transmission processes between generations, but it may also be due to influences from the general value context in society that are common to parents and their offspring. This common value context is referred to as Zeitgeist. The present study deals with one family relationship value (i.e., parents’ and adolescents’ obligations toward the family). Participants were 1,252 immigrant and 726 national adolescent–parent dyads from 10 Western countries. There were significant relationships between the value placed on family obligations among parents and offspring, and these were independent of gender. Zeitgeist effects, both intergenerational and intragenerational, were found. The strength of these Zeitgeist effects depended on the basis for defining Zeitgeist, either a person’s own ethnic group or the wider community including both nationals and immigrants. For explaining national adolescents’ acceptance of their family obligations, both the ethnic and the national Zeitgeist played a role, whereas in the immigrant groups only the ethnic Zeitgeist played a significant role. In short, in an immigration context it makes sense to distinguish the influence of a person’s own ethnic group from the influence of the wider community, including other ethnic groups. Explanations are suggested and implications are discussed.

Contested narratives of encounter from a bridge-building project in northern England

ABSTRACT

Recent years of community engagement under the war on terror in the UK have seen the co-option of bridge-building initiatives into wider narratives of securing communities. Through ethnographic insights into a peace building inter-faith initiative that made it onto the news as a ‘deradicalization’ workshop, I show how encounters in such projects are susceptible to being reframed into the very narrative in which encounters are sought after in the first place as a political settlement to growing inter-ethnic tension and conflict. This paper contributes to the growing geographies of encounter literature by making more explicit the narratives that shape how encounters function.     

The Development of Future Orientation is Associated with Faster Decline in Hopelessness during Adolescence

Hopelessness is implicated in multiple psychological disorders. Little is known, however, about the trajectory of hopelessness during adolescence or how emergent future orientation may influence its trajectory. Parallel process latent growth curve modelling tested whether (i) trajectories of future orientation and hopelessness and (ii) within-individual change in future orientation and hopelessness were related. The study was comprised of 472 adolescents [52% female, 47% Caucasian, 47% received free lunch] recruited at ages 12–13 who completed measures of future orientation and hopelessness at five annual assessments. The results indicate that a general decline in hopelessness across adolescence occurs quicker for those experiencing faster development of future orientation, when controlling for age, sex, low socio-economic status in addition to stressful life events in childhood and adolescence. Stressful childhood life events were associated with worse future orientation at baseline and negative life events experienced during adolescence were associated with both an increase in the trajectory of hopelessness as well as a decrease in the trajectory of future orientation. This study provides compelling evidence that the development of future orientation during adolescence is associated with a faster decline in hopelessness.     

Links Between Adolescents’ Expected Parental Reactions and Prosocial Behavioral Tendencies: The Mediating Role of Prosocial Values

The purpose of the present study was to examine relations between adolescents’ social cognitions regarding parenting practices and adolescents’ prosocial behavioral tendencies. A mediation model was tested whereby the degree to which adolescents perceived their parents as responding appropriately to their prosocial and antisocial behaviors was hypothesized to predict adolescents’ tendencies toward prosocial behavior indirectly by way of adolescents’ prosocial values. Adolescents (N = 140; M age = 16.76 years, SD = .80; 64% girls; 91% European Americans) completed measures of prosocial values and of the appropriateness with which they expected their parents to react to their prosocial and antisocial behaviors. In addition, teachers and parents rated the adolescents’ tendencies for prosocial behaviors. A structural equation model test showed that the degree to which adolescents expected their parents to respond appropriately to their prosocial behaviors was related positively to their prosocial values, which in turn was positively associated with their tendencies to engage in prosocial behaviors (as reported by parents and teachers). The findings provide evidence for the central role of adolescents’ evaluations and expectancies of parental behaviors and of the role of values in predicting prosocial tendencies. Discussion focuses on the implications for moral socialization theories and on the practical implications of these findings in understanding adolescents’ prosocial development.     

Barcelona 2002: law, ethics, and human rights. Advancing research and access to HIV vaccines: a framework for action

In light of the continuing spread of HIV infection and the devastating impact of the disease on lives, communities, and economies, particularly in the developing world, the investment in new treatments, vaccines, and microbicides has clearly been inadequate. Efforts must be intensified to develop effective HIV vaccines and to ensure that they are accessible to people in all parts of the world. This article is a summary of a paper by Sam Avrett presented at "Putting Third First: Vaccines, Access to Treatments and the Law," a satellite meeting held at Barcelona on 5 July 2002 and organized by the Canadian HIV/AIDS Legal Network, the AIDS Law Project, South Africa, and the Lawyers Collective HIV/AIDS Unit, India. In the article, Avrett calls for immediate action to increase commitment and funding for HIV vaccines, enhance public support and involvement, accelerate vaccine development, and plan for the eventual delivery of the vaccines. The article briefly outlines steps that governments need to take to implement each of these objectives. The article also provides a menu of potential actions for vaccine advocates to consider as they lobby governments.     

Assessing the Impact of Bureaucracy Bashing by Electoral Campaigns

The literature on the implications of electoral "bureaucracy bashing" for public management is thin. This is partly because of the difficulty of defining basic terms and measuring results in meaningful ways. Using focus group data, this article explores how senior federal managers perceive campaign bureaucracy bashing and assess its consequences. The participants perceive that candidate-based bashing affects federal management on two levels: one emotional, the other programmatic. The emotional impact is pronounced, producing frustration and hostility from senior managers toward political candidates, political appointees, and the media. Senior managers report that bashing adversely affects policy implementation through low morale, poor recruitment, and training and by fostering an environment of distrust toward bureaucracy. Grounded in a diverse literature relating to public administration, the presidency, campaigns and elections, and political communication, this inquiry finds that senior managers confirm many of the speculations these works raise about how bashing affects public employees and public policy.     

What could be achieved with greater public hospital autonomy? Comparison of public and PNFP hospitals in Uganda

The policy of hospital autonomy has been discussed for some time in Uganda. There is little evidence from Uganda or elsewhere that increased autonomy will improve hospital performance. This article compares the performance of three private not‐for‐profit (PNFP) and public hospital pairs to address this question. PNFP and public hospitals have similar management structures but PNFP hospitals had better trained managers and a church affiliated chair in the hospital management committee. Both types have problems with personnel management but these appear more pronounced in public hospitals. Drug supply management appears better in PNFP hospitals. Overall, workloads are similar, but analysis of patterns of utilisation and prices across services suggest that patient choice of facilities is influenced by relative price levels, and that willingness to pay is higher for PNFP services. PNFP hospitals are more successful at generating revenue. There are no clear differences in efficiency between PNFP and public hospitals but there is some evidence of higher quality levels in PNFP hospitals. PNFP hospitals' performance is plausibly related to three areas of managerial autonomy. First, better management of drug supply is facilitated by their freedom to purchase drugs from the open market. Second, greater success with personnel management is plausibly related to their greater autonomy over staffing. Third, higher levels of cost recovery are enabled by their freedom to set fees. However, differences in accountability and competence of hospital management, and population willingness to pay for services may also help to explain differences. Further, the use of PNFP financing strategy by public hospitals has implications for universal access to hospital services. Although there appear to be potential advantages from greater public hospital autonomy, the Ugandan government should ensure it has developed strategies to enhance public hospital management and to protect access to public hospitals before advancing further with hospital autonomy policy. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.