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Longer Run (longer + run)
Selected AbstractsIs there anything like a citizen?ENVIRONMENTAL POLICY AND GOVERNANCE, Issue 1 2010A descriptive analysis of instituting a citizen's role to represent social values at the municipal level Abstract Environmental policy-making can be challenging because of lobbying by strong private interests. This results in less consideration about what is best for the wider community. The main goal of this study is to evaluate to what extent it is possible to institutionalize a citizen's role in decision-support processes. While the literature makes a clear distinction between private and social values, very little research is undertaken on how the framing of the instituted process influences which types of value become legitimate. Two deliberative meetings with local inhabitants were conducted in a municipality in Norway focusing on land use policy in coastal areas. The meetings were framed to facilitate dialogue and to emphasize the most important values to protect, given the interests of the wider municipality in the longer run. A large majority of the participants found the framing appropriate. Analyses of the dialogues, letters written by participants before the meetings and individual interviews undertaken afterwards document that the format of the meetings influenced strongly which arguments were found legitimate. The setting favoured the identification and specification of social values for inhabitants of the involved municipality such as public accessibility in conserved nature areas along the coast. The data moreover give insights about how the framing influenced the process. Arguments in favour of private construction interests were present, but were found to be weak in legitimacy. The framing might, however, also have influenced which social values were emphasized the most strongly. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment. [source] Global Transformations and New ConflictsIDS BULLETIN, Issue 2 2001Mary Kaldor Summaries The central argument of this article is that a central feature of post-Cold War conflicts has been the delegitimisation of public authority, interacting with globalisation, through a process which is almost the reverse of state and nation-building. The political economy of the ,new wars' involves a mix of state and non-state, national and international violence. It creates vicious cycles, reinforcing the decline in the formal sector, breaking down the distinction between public and private spheres, and mobilising identity cleavages through strategies of fear and hate directed against civilians. These vicious cycles can only be broken by peace strategies, whose centrepiece, over the longer run, is the restoration of legitimate authority and the democratisation of politics. These strategies cannot, in a world in which the state has been eroded, be confined just to the state, but must also involve many other layers of political authority, from the local to the global. [source] The Jewish Emigration from the Former Soviet Union to GermanyINTERNATIONAL MIGRATION, Issue 2 2002Barbara Dietz Since the end of the 1980s a massive emigration of Jews from the former Soviet Union (FSU) can be observed. Israel and the United States were the most important receiving countries, followed by Germany, a comparatively new immigration destination for Jews from the successor states of the USSR. One of the reasons the German Government allowed the admission of Jews from post-Soviet states was the Jewish community's claim that this immigration might rejuvenate the German Jewish population in the longer run. Using an index of demographic aging (Billeter's J), the following article examines if this has actually happened. Findings suggest that immigration actually initiated a process of rejuvenation in the Jewish population in Germany. However, it was reversed during the end of the 1990s because of an unaffected low fertility. [source] THE CAPITAL STRUCTURE CHOICE: NEW EVIDENCE FOR A DYNAMIC TRADEOFF MODELJOURNAL OF APPLIED CORPORATE FINANCE, Issue 1 2002Armen Hovakimian Most academic insights about corporate capital structure decisions come from models that focus on the trade-off between the tax benefits and financial distress costs of debt financing. But empirical tests of corporate capital structure indicate that actual debt ratios are considerably different from those predicted by the models, casting doubt on whether most companies have leverage targets at all. In particular, there is considerable evidence that corporate leverage ratios reflect in large part the tendency of profitable companies to use their excess cash flow to pay down debt, while unprofitable companies build up higher leverage ratios. Such behavior is consistent with a competing theory of capital structure known as the "pecking order" model, in which management's main objectives are to preserve financing flexibility and avoid issuing equity. The results of the authors' recent study suggest that although past profits are an important predictor of observed debt ratios at any given time, companies nevertheless often make financing and stock repurchase decisions designed to offset the effects of past profitability and move their debt ratios toward their target capital structures. This evidence provides support for a compromise theory called the dynamic tradeoff model, which says that although companies often deviate from their leverage targets, over the longer run they take measures to close the gap between their actual and targeted leverage ratios. [source] SOX 404 and ERM: Perfect partners , or not?JOURNAL OF CORPORATE ACCOUNTING & FINANCE, Issue 3 2007Jeffrey C. Thomson The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) Section 404 regulations and guidance have had a large impact on the adoption of enterprise risk management (ERM) in the United States. In the short run, SOX 404 has impeded the adoption of risk-based approaches because of its rules that are totally counter to a holistic, risk-based approach. In the longer run, SOX provides an opportunity for even faster adoption of ERM,but only if there is more radical thinking on the part of regulators and practitioners alike in training, education, and certification of this body of knowledge. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [source] Consequences of Decentralization: Environmental Impact Assessment and Water Pollution Control in IndonesiaLAW & POLICY, Issue 1 2010ADRIAAN BEDNER After having been one of the most centralized states in the world for more than thirty years, in 2001 Indonesia introduced a sweeping program of decentralization with important consequences for the management of the industrial sector. This article explores whether the decentralization process has led to substantial changes in Environmental Impact Assessment (EIA) and enforcement of water pollution law. Its main findings are that the general division of authority in both fields has become less fragmented and that differences between districts have increased, but, in practice, not so much has changed as one would have expected. For EIA, "horizontal" disputes between sectoral agencies have been supplanted by "vertical" disputes between different levels of government. Monitoring and sanctioning of industrial water pollution have mainly continued within the scheme of the provincial program started under Soeharto's centralized regime, with still few initiatives at the district level. If any, such initiatives are usually driven by public complaints. On the other hand, there are indications that in the longer run the institutional changes may have more significant effects on EIA and enforcement practice. For EIA, these seem to be negative; for enforcement of water pollution regulation this depends much on the situation within a district or a province. [source] "New Governance" and Associative Pluralism: The Case of Drug Policy in Swiss CitiesPOLICY STUDIES JOURNAL, Issue 4 2003Sonja Wälti Throughout the 1990s, hierarchical administrative governance structures have been replaced by self-governing networks for various motives, one of which is to improve the authenticity and democratic quality of public decisions. Thus, "new governance" has been praised for its propensity to provide a plurality of civil society organizations with access to the decision process. This article explores these claims based on the case of drug policy in Swiss cities. We show that self-governing networks indeed seem to have increased the involvement of civil society organizations in the policy process. However, we also find evidence that self-governing networks may in the longer run induce state control over civil society organizations, thus ultimately reducing associative pluralism. They do so either by imposing a policy paradigm or by excluding actors who do not comply with the dominant paradigm from the networks. We conclude by arguing that self-organizing networks should not be dismissed, given that former hierarchical bureaucratic approaches to drug-related problems have failed even worse. Rather, their long-term effects should be subject to further examination aimed at developing adequate responses to their shortcomings. [source] F. L. McDougall: Éminence grise of Australian Economic DiplomacyAUSTRALIAN ECONOMIC HISTORY REVIEW, Issue 1 2000Sean Turnell This paper examines the principal economic ideas of F. L. McDougall, a largely forgotten, sometime government official and ,amateur' economist who exercised an enigmatic influence upon Australia's economic diplomacy in the interwar years. Beginning with his conception of ,sheltered markets', the international manifestation of the Bruce Government's vision for Australia of ,men, money, and markets', the paper explores McDougall's later advocacy of a ,nutrition approach' to world agriculture and its extension into ,economic appeasement'. McDougall's ideas were theoretically unsophisticated, and realized little in the way of immediate achievements. In the longer run they could be viewed more favourably. Naive perhaps and idealistic certainly, McDougall's ideas were part of a broader movement that, after the Second World War, redefined the role of international economic institutions. If nothing else, McDougall's active proselytizing of his ideas lent Australia an unusual ,voice' in international forums at a time when it was scarcely heard. [source] | |||||||||||||