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Draws Lessons (draw + lesson)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	50%
Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting	37%

Selected Abstracts

Reinventing Government: The Case of National Service

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW, Issue 4 2000
Leslie Lenkowsky
When Bill Clinton embraced national service as one of his administration's priorities, he took a step forward on two of his key initiatives. Not only was national service a new initiative in its own right, but Clinton also held it up as a model of his efforts to reinvent government. It would be an exemplar of government that is catalytic, competitive, decentralized, and results oriented. This case study examines the theory and reality of reinvention. The Corporation for National Service and its programs have come under fire for being more political than catalytic, being simultaneously too centralized and too decentralized, and pursuing too many unclear goals. This article seeks to identify discontinuities between the rhetoric and the reality of reinvention in this instance and draw lessons for public-sector reform. [source]

Learning about Democracy in Africa: Awareness, Performance, and Experience

AMERICAN JOURNAL OF POLITICAL SCIENCE, Issue 1 2007
Robert Mattes
Conventional views of African politics imply that Africans' political opinions are based either on enduring cultural values or their positions in the social structure. In contrast, we argue that Africans form attitudes to democracy based upon what they learn about what it is and does. This learning hypothesis is tested against competing cultural, institutional, and structural theories to explain citizens' demand for democracy (legitimation) and their perceived supply of democracy (institutionalization) with data from 12 Afrobarometer attitude surveys conducted between 1999 and 2001. A multilevel model that specifies and estimates the impacts of both individual- and national-level factors provides evidence of learning from three different sources. First, people learn about the content of democracy through cognitive awareness of public affairs. Second, people learn about the consequences of democracy through direct experience of the performance of governments and (to a lesser extent) the economy. Finally, people draw lessons about democracy from national political legacies. [source]

The significance of a small, level-3 ,semi evacuation' hospital in a terrorist attack in a nearby town

DISASTERS, Issue 3 2007
Moshe Pinkert
Terrorist attacks can occur in remote areas causing mass-casualty incidents MCIs far away from level-1 trauma centres. This study draws lessons from an MCI pertaining to the management of primary and secondary evacuation and the operational mode practiced. Data was collected from formal debriefings during and after the event, and the medical response, interactions and main outcomes analysed using Disastrous Incidents Systematic Analysis through Components, Interactions and Results (DISAST-CIR) methodology. A total of 112 people were evacuated from the scene,66 to the nearby level 3 Laniado hospital, including the eight critically and severely injured patients. Laniado hospital was instructed to act as an evacuation hospital but the flow of patients ended rapidly and it was decided to admit moderately injured victims. We introduce a novel concept of a ,semi-evacuation hospital'. This mode of operation should be selected for small-scale events in which the evacuation hospital has hospitalization capacity and is not geographically isolated. We suggest that level-3 hospitals in remote areas should be prepared and drilled to work in semi-evacuation mode during MCIs. [source]

Food Security in Complex Emergencies: Enhancing Food System Resilience

DISASTERS, Issue 2005
Prabhu Pingali
This paper explores linkages between food security and crisis in different contexts, outlining the policy and institutional conditions needed to manage food security during a crisis and to rebuild the resilience of food systems in periods of relative peace. The paper reviews experiences over the past decade of countries in protracted crisis and draws lessons for national and international policy. It assesses the different alternatives on offer in fragile countries to address, for example, the disruption of institutional mechanisms and the decreasing level of support offered by international donors with respect to longer-term expectations. It proposes a Twin Track Approach to enhance food security resilience through specific policies for protracted crises that link immediate hunger relief interventions with a long-term strategy for sustainable growth. Finally, the article analyses policy options and the implications for both short- and longer-term responses vis-à-vis the three dimensions of food security: availability; access; and stability. [source]

The New Transatlantic Agenda at Ten: Reflections on an Experiment in International Governance,

JCMS: JOURNAL OF COMMON MARKET STUDIES, Issue 5 2005
MARK A. POLLACK
The 1995 New Transatlantic Agenda (NTA) represents anovel experiment in international governance, linking the institutions of the EU and the United States at the intergovernmental, transgovernmental and transnational levels. This article draws lessons from the NTA after its first decade, noting tensions in the Brussels-Washington relationship, a highly variable pattern of effectiveness in transgovernmental regulatory co-operation, and a largely ineffectual record of transnational civil-society co-operation. [source]

First (mediation) step: Stop the shooting

ALTERNATIVES TO THE HIGH COST OF LITIGATION, Issue 2 2009
Harry N. Mazadoorian
Violent Chicago streets are as tough a test for mediators as there is. Harry N. Mazadoorian, of Hamden, Conn., draws lessons for commercial ADR from the work of street mediators. [source]

Lessons Learned from Two Decades of Alternative Dispute Resolution Programs and Processes at the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW, Issue 6 2001
Rosemary O'Leary
Mediation, facilitation, and other alternative dispute resolution (ADR) techniques are being used in federal agencies, state and local governments, private-sector organizations, and among private citizens in an effort to prevent and resolve disputes in a timely, cost-effective, and less adversarial manner. The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), one of the pioneers in the application of ADR processes and techniques to public policy disputes, recently announced that it plans to in-crease the use of ADR techniques and practices across all agency programs. This article reports the results of a four-part evaluation of the use of ADR in enforcement actions at the EPA during the last two decades. Funded by the Hewlett Foundation, this effort utilized in-depth telephone interviews, government statistics, and archival records. The four groups interviewed were EPA's alternative dispute resolution specialists, potentially responsible parties (defendants) to EPA enforcement lawsuits, mediators and facilitators to EPA cases, and agency enforcement attorneys who had participated in agency enforcement ADR processes. Concluding that there are generally high levels of satisfaction with the EPA's enforcement ADR program, this article examines the sources of obstacles and assistance to ADR efforts at the EPA, suggests ways in which the EPA might improve its ADR programs, and draws lessons from the EPA's experiences that may be helpful to other public programs or organizations. [source]

EXCHANGE RATE REGIMES AND MONETARY COOPERATION: LESSONS FROM EAST ASIA AND LATIN AMERICA,

THE JAPANESE ECONOMIC REVIEW, Issue 3 2004
TAKATOSHI ITO
This paper analyses the mechanisms of, and draws lessons from, currency crises in Asian and Latin American countries in the 1990s and 2000s. In Asian countries fiscal deficits were insignificant in size, and were not part of a crisis trigger, while in Latin America they played a major role in the crisis story. Crisis management by international financial institutions has been evolving over the last 10 years, and private-sector involvement (PSI) has occupied centre-stage in efforts to reform the international financial architecture. Sovereign debts, a focus of PSI discussions, were neither a cause nor a propagation of the Asian crises. [source]