Expanding the Story of Japanese American Internment

Greg Robinson, By Order of the President: FDR and the Internment of Japanese Americans. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2001. 322 pp. Eric L. Muller, Free to Die for Their Country: The Story of the Japanese American Draft Resisters in World War II. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001; paper, 2003. 229 pp. Since the passage of the Civil Liberties Act of 1988, the story of the Japanese Americans interned during World War II has spawned a cottage industry of popular histories, museum exhibits, public memorials, biographies, novels, memoirs, children's fiction and non-fiction, documentary and feature films, and, of course, scholarly studies. The Redress legislation, which required the U.S. government to pay $20,000 in reparations to each living survivor of America's concentration camps, ushered in a new era of legitimacy and popularity to the internment story. An Internet check on “Books in Print” lists 101 titles with the keywords “Japanese American internment.” Professional historians sit at the intellectual helm of this internment boom, and, accordingly, the amount of their output too has expanded. While the production of monographs and dissertations has increased in the recent past, more interesting to observe are the changing ways in which scholars have approached the internment. Since the 1940s, historical researchers focused on the most obvious architects of the decision to remove 110,000 persons of Japanese ancestry from the West Coast; three decades later the innocent victims of this wartime policy took center stage. Now the spotlight of innovation shines on those who have long been considered minor players in the internment drama. Two recent and highly notable monographs, Greg Robinson's By Order of the President and Eric L. Muller's Free To Die for Their Country, epitomize this historiographical trend. In focusing on the shadows of the internment story, these books compel a reconsideration of some of the basic elements to the internment narrative.     

Critical Factors for Enhancing Municipal Public Hearings

Although public hearings are the most common form of citizen input, they often fail to achieve their objectives. This nationwide survey of city administrators identifies factors that contribute most to successful public hearings. The most successful hearings have (1) a greater number of prehearing educational methods, (2) more media types and greater media frequency in the formal presentation, (3) more control over speakers' presentation time, (4) greater use of open follow-up meetings, and (5) more use of newspaper and direct mail to communicate posthearing decisions to the public. The qualitative data reveal city managers' 10 critical factors that are essential to the success of public hearings: effectively notifying and educating the public before the hearing; carefully planning the meeting; giving a clear, media-rich presentation of the issues; properly facilitating the meeting; and conducting appropriate follow-up.     

判例法中的理性与命令

一尽管本杰明·卡多佐(Benjamin Cardozo)是我国涌现出来的三四个伟大法哲学家之一,但他很少,精确地说是从来没有被人们称为任何具体"法学理论"的创立者。于他而言,各种流派的法哲学代表了人类事务中的重要力量,他花费了很多时间致力于其研究。同时,他自己那并非中庸的法哲学却始终远离了理论争锋的角斗场。于他而言,这不是     

Catastrophe theory as a paradigm for development administration

Catastrophe theory, a field of applied mathematics developed by Rene Thom and others in the 1970s, offers some promise as a paradigm for the study of developmental administration. The dynamic and qualitative nature of this approach can lead to various insights that some current and previous models lacked.

The application of catastrophe theory to the political situation in Malaysia in the early 1960s demonstrates how such a theoretical approach can be fitted to specific political systems and situations.

The author concludes by suggesting other national political settings where catastrophe theory might be fruitfully applied in the study of development and comparative administration.     

Latin american municipal government:the rise of metagovernment

Metagovernment, the extra-legal and informal government that has developed in the squatter settlements and informal economic sectors of Latin American nations is rapidly becoming the most relevent form of government for many Latin Americans. The roots of this phenomenon can be found in the early history of Latin American municipal governments and the persistence of an exclusionist and elitist set of institutions and va:ues from colonial times to the present The social and economic forces contributing to the rise of metagovernment emanate from the rural regions ane the high levels of population growth in the reglor toqether with the unbalanced patterns of regional development in the region. Metagovernment is a response to the exclusionist and elitist political cutture, and :he prcduct of new social forces and groups arising in urban Latin Amerlca.