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Personal Gain (personal + gain)

Distribution by Scientific Domains
Humanities and Social Sciences75%

Selected Abstracts

Persistence, Principle and Patriotism in the Making of the Union of 1707: The Revolution, Scottish Parliament and the squadrone volante

HISTORY, Issue 306 2007
DEREK J. PATRICK
Since the 1960s most historians of the Union of 1707 have considered it a less than glorious chapter in Scotland's history. Driven by ambition and greed, Scots politicians, covetous of English wealth and swayed by promises and bribes, bartered their nation's independence for personal gain. Those genuinely committed to political union were in a minority. The following article maintains that this interpretation is based on an essentially short-term approach to the subject. Concentrating on the worsening relations between Scotland and England in the years immediately preceding the Union gives a distorted impression of what was a more enduring concern. It suggests the Revolution of 1688,9 had a far greater impact on the politics of union than previously anticipated, with the religious and political freedoms it guaranteed shaping the beliefs of a large number of Scots MPs who sat in Parliament 1706,7, almost half of whom had been members of King William's Convention Parliament with a majority supporting union. Focusing on the squadrone volante, one of the two much-maligned Scots unionist parties , the article traces the ideological roots of its key members and illustrates the various factors that led them to endorse an incorporating union which offered security for presbyterianism and a solution to Scotland's economic underdevelopment. Not denying that management and ambition played a significant part in securing the Union, it highlights the fact that amongst the Scottish political elite there was also a degree of genuine commitment and principled support. [source]

Congressional Ethics: The Fox and the Henhouse1

POLITICS & POLICY, Issue 2 2007
Joseph N. Patten
Members of Congress have conflicting responsibilities between advancing the public's interest while advocating for the private interests of constituents. This research examines the association between political corruption and the increased devotion to constituent casework. It creates a congressional corruption matrix that gives rise to four types of political corruption illuminated through descriptions of the Abscam Scandal, the Duke Cunningham Scandal, the Keating Five Scandal, and the Jack Abramoff Scandal. It makes a distinction between individual and institutional forms of corruption and differentiates between personal gain and career advancing varieties of corruption. This article contends that Congress is disinclined to enact and enforce substantive reforms in career advancing forms of corruption because of a shared institutional value in expanding politically beneficial activities. [source]

The Budget-Minimizing Bureaucrat?

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW, Issue 1 2002
Empirical Evidence from the Senior Executive Service
In a representative democracy, we assume the populace exerts some control over the actions and outputs of government officials, ensuring they comport with public preferences. However, the growth of the fourth branch of government has created a paradox: Unelected bureaucrats now have the power to affect government decisions (Meier 1993; Rourke 1984; Aberbach, Putnam, and Rockman 1981). In this article, I rely on two competing theories of bureaucratic behavior-representative-bureaucracy theory and Niskanen's budget-maximization theory-to assess how well the top ranks of the federal government represent the demands of the citizenry. Focusing on federal-spending priorities, I assess whether Senior Executive Service (SES) members mirror the attitudes of the populace or are likely to inflate budgets for their own personal gain. Contrary to the popular portrayal of the budget-maximizing bureaucrat (Niskanen 1971), I find these federal administrators prefer less spending than the public on most broad spending categories, even on issues that fall within their own departments' jurisdictions. As such, it may be time to revise our theories about bureaucratic self-interest and spending priorities. [source]

Moving methods: constructing emotionally poignant geographies of HIV in Auckland, New Zealand

AREA, Issue 3 2010
Jason Myers
As we strive to fully understand the meanings different people create and attach to places, we need methods that allow multiple and subjective experiences of place to be critically uncovered and understood. This paper reflects on the employment of photography and caption-writing in research with HIV-positive men-who-have-sex-with-men in Auckland, New Zealand. These methods contributed in constructing an argument that the acquisition of HIV affected experiences of both literal place as well as place-in-the-world for the research participants. With the ability to move with participants (both physically and emotionally), the methods helped to illustrate a range of (re)negotiations of self and place beyond diagnosis. Moreover, engagement with these methods resulted in personal gain for many of the participants in the research. It is concluded that the continued (re)development of creative (ethically sound) qualitative methods can add rigour to our attempts at representing the complexities inherent in the relationships between people and the places they occupy. [source]