bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Work Organization
Authors: Cordery John , Parker Sharon K.
Published: September 2009

The past three decades have witnessed major changes to organizations and the work that is performed by their members, brought about in the main by technological changes and global competition. Terms such as lean production, manufacturing business process re-engineering, outsourcing, team-based working, kaizen, just-in-time production, empowerment, call centers, contingent workers, virtual teams, tele-work, and the learning organization are just some of the words that have entered the lingua franca of management, denoting ways in which organizations have attempted to respond to such changes. This article outlines a systems framework for describing the ways in which work activities are structured and coordinated by organizations in response to technological, economic, and social imperatives. In doing so, it is particularly mindful of the impact that evolving work configurations have upon an organization, its members, and the broader environment within which that organization operates.
Employee Voice Systems
Authors: Marchington Mick
Published: September 2009

Employee voice appears to be the latest in a long line of terms used to describe employment practices designed to allow workers some ‘say’ in how their organizations are run; previous variants include worker participation, industrial democracy, employee involvement, and empowerment. The term is rarely defined precisely, and voice tends to incorporate HR practices of both a direct and an indirect form, in unionized and non-union settings, and in task-related and off-line teams. This article first develops a framework within which different forms of voice can be considered. Second, it discusses links between embedded voice and worker perceptions, focusing on the use of multiple and ‘deep’ techniques. Third, it analyzes a number of factors promoting or impeding voice at national, organizational, and workplace levels, in so doing noting the tensions surrounding the concept. Finally, some conclusions are drawn.
Selection Decision-Making
Authors: Schmitt Neal , Kim Brian
Published: September 2009

Certainly, one of the most important sets of decisions an organization makes is the decision to employ personnel. All aspects of an organization's activities are directed and enacted by the people that comprise the organization. It is also not the case that just any person's activity will optimize organizational functioning. Nearly a century of work on the use of various employment procedures has documented that there are substantial individual differences in job performance and that the use of good selection procedures results in the employment of better performing individuals and greater practical utility for organizations.
HRM and the New Public Management
Authors: Bach Stephen , Kessler Ian
Published: September 2009

As human resource management (HRM) has developed as a field of study, the attention paid to public sector employment relations has been relatively limited. The preoccupation with the link between HR practice and corporate performance has been less applicable to public service organizations that are answerable to a range of stakeholders and in which HR policy has been geared to ensuring political accountability. There has been a recognition that the public sector confronts fiscal and political pressures that are altering HR practice. However, this observation has rarely been backed up by a sustained focus on people management in the public sector. This limited attention arises from characteristics of the sector. Defining the public sector is not straightforward because there are differences between countries in terms of the size, scope, and role of the sector.
Transnational Firms and Cultural Diversity
Authors: De Cieri Helen
Published: September 2009

Globalization has impacted significantly on many firms, with substantial implications for human resource management (HRM). Geopolitical, social, economic, and technological changes have created opportunities for managers and employees to interact with culturally diverse populations. The development of cultural diversity in the workforce presents substantial and complex challenges for HR scholars and managers as they strive to determine the potential implications of cultural diversity for firm effectiveness. This article examines cultural diversity issues, which are increasingly viewed as a critical aspect of management in transnational firms.
Modeling HRM and Performance Linkages
Authors: Gerhart Barry
Published: September 2009

This article focuses on methodology in the literature on human resources (HR) management and performance. Whenever a theoretical model of HR and performance is tested and estimated using empirical data, a binary decision regarding whether the model is supported (yes or no) is typically made. If support is found, it is either because the model is correct or the method is wrong (i.e. a false positive, or Type I, error of inference). If support is not found, it is either because the model is wrong or the method is wrong (i.e. a false negative, or Type II, error of inference). The article hopes to help readers to better evaluate the contribution of published research on HR and performance. Second, it hopes to help authors in preparing their work for publication and avoid problems that may otherwise lengthen the review process or adversely affect the publication decision.
After the Linguistic Turn: Post‐structuralist and Liberal Pragmatist Political Theory
Authors: Patton Paul
Published: September 2009

This article examines the linguistic aspects of post-structuralist and liberal pragmatist political theory. It analyses the differences and similarities between post-structuralist philosophy and liberal political theory. It explores the egalitarian and democratic presuppositions of post-structuralist critical strategies and the non-metaphysical and historical conception of liberalism that we find in the late Rawls. It also discusses the relevant works of Jacques Derrida, Richard Rorty, and John Rawls.
Modernity and Its Critics
Authors: Bennett Jane
Published: September 2009

This article looks at the concept of modernity and the philosophy of its critics. It discusses the epochal shift and the secularization of a traditional order that had been imbued with divine or natural purpose and suggests that the condition of modernity refers to a set of institutional structures associated with popular elections, rule by law and a secular bureaucracy. The article also contends that modernity is alive and kicking even within a theoretical framework of postmodernism.
Civil Society and the State
Authors: Chambers Simone , Kopstein Jeffrey
Published: September 2009

This article examines relationships between civil society and state. It explains that civil society refers to uncoerced associational life distinct from the family and institutions of the state Civil society is also often thought to be distinct from the economy, but their separation is a matter of some dispute. Despite differences in definitional boundaries, contemporary interest in civil society focuses predominantly on associational life rather than market or exchange relations. This article describes the six relationships between civil society and state, and suggests that these relations are not mutually exclusive and they do not necessarily compete with each other.
Impartiality
Authors: Mendus Susan
Published: September 2009

This article explores the conception of impartiality in contemporary political theory. It explains the though impartiality is widely accepted to reflect a commitment to equality, the scope of that commitment has yet to be worked out. It argues for an interpretation of impartiality as primarily a requirement on the moral and legal rules of society and shows that impartiality is best made manifest through the concept of agreement.
Recognition and Redistribution
Authors: Markell Patchen
Published: September 2009

This article engages in discussion on the concepts of recognition and redistribution in contemporary politic theory. It discusses the debate on the problem of identity-based injustice and the problem of economic injustice and charts the surprisingly diverse range of uses of the term recognition in recent political thought. It evaluates whether recognition is a discrete good or a general medium of social life and discusses the object of recognition and its relation to the idea of justice. It also analyses American critical theorist Nancy Fraser's views about the conflicts that arise between the politics of recognition and the politics of redistribution.
Liberty, Equality, and Property
Authors: Williams Andrew
Published: September 2009

This article describes the influence of under-acknowledged assumptions about property rights, akin to those more frequently associated with John Rawls' foremost libertarian critic, Robert Nozick, on the debate concerning liberty and equality. It shows that Nozick's challenge to egalitarians has played an important role in Ronald Dworkin's alternative statement of liberal egalitarianism and indirectly influenced later non-Rawlsian egalitarianisms. The article also discusses Rawls's initial formulation of the so-called luck-sharing project.
Nationalism
Authors: Miller David
Published: September 2009

This article describes the various forms of nationalism in political theory and the varieties of nationalism in practical politics. It discusses various elements of nationalism and suggests that the conception of nationalism depends on how national self-determination is understood. It argues that while nationalism serves to bind people to the place that they regard as their national homeland, it is liable for generating indifference or even hostility towards outsiders.
Human Rights
Authors: Donnelly Jack
Published: September 2009

This article offers a conceptual analysis of human rights, a brief account of their historical evolution, and an introduction to some leading theoretical controversies. It discusses the source and substance, the justification, and the duty-bearers of human rights. It suggests that we must be careful not to exaggerate the place of human rights in our political practices because while it prioritizes the rights of individuals, it also draws attention away from the legitimate interests and claims of states, societies, and families.
Political Secularism
Authors: Bhargava Rajeev
Published: September 2009

This article examines the flaws and criticism on political secularism. It explains that secularism is a beleaguered doctrine and it is also contested in political theory. Critics of secularism claim that it is linked to a flawed modernization, has a mistaken view of rationality and its importance in human life, and fails to appreciate the importance of communities in the life of religious people. This article discusses the conceptual and normative structure of secularism and evaluates what ethical gains or losses might ensue in the movement from a secular state to one that grants more importance to religion. It suggests that the Indian version of secularism is a modern alternative to its mainstream Western counterpart, one from which everyone may benefit in the future.
Paranoia and Political Philosophy
Authors: Glass James M.
Published: September 2009

This article examines the relation between paranoia and political philosophy. It suggests that internal psychological conflict affects political reality through the force of belief systems and explains that belief derives from the complex interplay between the structuralization of the inner self, its affective and developmental foundations, and what the external world produces as data and sensation. It also contends that both realms of experience, the psychological internal and the political external, infuse each other and each depends on the other.
Political Theory and Cultural Studies
Authors: Dean Jodi
Published: September 2009

This article describes an interface between political theory and cultural studies, on that emerged with particular force and clarity in the work of American political theorists writing at the end of the twentieth century. It discusses the methodological contributions that resulted from this interface and analyses academic practices of political theory and cultural studies within national institutional histories. It suggests that the possibilities initially opened up by interfacial work need to be brought together into an integrated account of contemporary state power within the global capitalist economy.
Political Theory and Political Economy
Authors: Elkin Stephen L.
Published: September 2009

This article describes the connection between political theory and political economy. It argues that political theorists need to take account of political economy in theorizing about the contemporary world because capitalism is the most powerful force at work in shaping the modern sociopolitical world. It also explains that economic questions concerning economic growth, the distribution of wealth and income, and role of markets are at the core of the political life in democratic societies.
Political Theory and Social Theory
Authors: Helliwell Christine , Hindess Barry
Published: September 2009

This article analyses the relationship between political theory and social theory. The separation of political and social theory (and of political theory from other areas in the study of politics) is a relatively recent development. The most significant difference between conventional political theory and conventional social theory concerns the relationship between normative and descriptive/explanatory issues in the analysis of social/political life. In spite of their differences, however, political and social theory share the one set of historical roots and, partly in consequence, a core set of assumptions. They specifically share intellectual and cultural history.
Then and Now: Participant‐Observation in Political Theory
Authors: Connolly William E.
Published: September 2009

This article examines changes in the study of participant-observation in the field of political theory. It explains that in the early 1960s, political theory was widely considered as a moribund enterprise. Empiricists were pushing a new science of politics, designed to replace the options of constitutional interpretation, impressionistic theory, and traditionalism. But by the mid-1960s the end of ideology screeched to a halt because of growing outrage about the Vietnam War, worries among college students about the draft, and the emergence of a civil rights movement. The academic study of political theory was revived and a series of studies emerged to challenge the fact-value dichotomy, the difference between science and ideology, and the public roles of academics.
Exile and Re‐Entry: Political Theory Yesterday and Tomorrow
Authors: Saxonhouse Arlene W.
Published: September 2009

This article describes the changes in the conception of political theory. It provides a brief history of the study of political theory and considers the notable works of Robert Dahl, Leo Strauss, and George Sabine. It argues against the claim that political theorists today is too abstracted from the world in which we live and argues in defence of a reading of texts as a practice of political theory that continues as a vibrant method employed by a wide range of practitioners in the field and as one that should continue from this point on.
The Historical Roots of the Field
Authors: DeLeon Peter
Published: September 2009

This article attempts to understand why the Lasswellian charge for the policy sciences has not been realized. It traces the cognitive and political evolutions of the policy sciences, and also gives some advice with regards to how policy sciences may achieve some of the earlier goals. A review of the development of the policy sciences's approach is included in the article. The article indicates some of the ways the policy world and the policy sciences can become even more synchronized. Finally, an understanding of the disjunction between the goals of the policy world and the policy sciences is presented.
Policy Analysis as Critical Listening
Authors: Forester John
Published: September 2009

Interviews are often conducted in public policy work, in order to make new things happen, to find out what are the most efficient methods in politically uncertain and fluid settings, and to learn. This article explores the work of interviewing and listening to multiple parties in two ways. The first is noting the conceptual problems that arise during these activities. The second is to address what follows the practical problems that analysts encounter. The article shows that interviewing means listening to and learning from other people. Interviewing can only be done with the other person's cooperation or collaboration. Some of the most common obstacles in interviewing and how these can be overcome are also discussed.
Policy Analysis as Policy Advice
Authors: Wilson Richard
Published: September 2009

This article provides the viewpoint of a practitioner who has worked in government departments and even the Cabinet Office, specifically in a position of both giving and receiving advice. It first looks at the various definitions of policy, before moving on to the exercise of power in the government. The political context is shown to have the ability to affect the policy processes of government, while managerial advice is observed to be on the rise. The article also discusses the decline of the generalists, the concept of policy units, and the things that prime ministers want.
Arguing, Bargaining, and Getting Agreement
Authors: Susskind Lawrence
Published: September 2009

This article discusses three options that the article dubs as arguing, bargaining, and getting agreement. It emphasizes what seem to be usefully prescriptive norms of behaviour for the ‘combatants’ in the public policy arena. The article studies discourse between dialogue and discussion; the former refers to the exploration of options, while the latter refers to making decisions. Hard bargaining, negotiating, and organizational learning are the other concepts discussed in the article.
Policy Network Analysis
Authors: Rhodes R. A. W.
Published: September 2009

This article discusses policy network analysis, which is the most common species of network analysis in political science. It provides a review of related literature on policy network analysis, and then distinguishes between theoretical, prescriptive, and descriptive accounts. Three descriptive uses of the term ‘networks’ are provided as well. The article also studies the debates and challenges that are found in the literature. It looks at the difficulties of synthesizing the findings from the growing case studies and on the critics of the ‘new governance’. The latter portion of the article is devoted to a discussion of the problems in managing the institutional void.
Smart Policy?
Authors: Christensen Tom
Published: September 2009

The main topic of this article is ‘smart policy’. This is a term used by reform entrepreneurs supporting the instrumental-technical perspective on New Public Management (NPM) to describe its supposed improvement of effectiveness and efficiency. This article discusses whether ‘smart policy’ is a defendable position or not, and addresses several questions. It also tries to determine if and how NPM-related reforms have contributed to more efficiency and effectiveness in the public sector.
Public‐Private Collaboration
Authors: Donahue John D. , Zeckhauser Richard J.
Published: September 2009

This article provides an overview of relevant literatures to the topic of public-private collaboration. A documentation of the extent of private involvement in public undertakings is conducted, using a number of metrics. The article carefully distinguishes collaborative governance from the other categories of public-private interaction, in order to situate it on a spectrum of collective-action models. The article also probes into some of the dynamics of shared discretion in the pursuit of public goals.
Globalization and Public Policy
Authors: Hay Colin
Published: September 2009

This article discusses globalization and public policy, as well as the significant tension between the two. It shows that no matter how influential the trade-off between globalization and public policy is seen to be, it is deeply problematic. The article seeks to bring to light the notion of globalization, while considering the many ways it can be seen as antithetical to public policy. The article also presents a review of the empirical evidence and the debate that has been generated.
The Logic of Appropriateness
Authors: March James G. , Olsen Johan P.
Published: September 2009

This article focuses on the rules of appropriateness in the context of formally organized political institutions and democratic political orders. It tries to determine how an understanding of the role of rule-driven behaviour in life may clarify thinking about political life. It sketches the basic ideas of rule-based action, and then describes some of the characteristics of contemporary democratic settings. It examines the relationship between action and rules, along with the elements of slippage in executing rules, the dynamics of rules, and the standards of appropriateness. The last section of the article highlights a possible compromise of different logics of action.
Economism and its Limits
Authors: Wolff Jonathan , Haubrich Dirk
Published: September 2009

This article addresses the difficulties that the phases of economic evaluations give rise to in theory and practice. It provides a brief outline of the meaning of economism — as a term and a concept — and then explores the issues that are related to the measurement and monetary valuation of the items to be included in economic evaluations, otherwise known as the valuation problem. The article also deals with the commensurability problem and the intrinsic value problem. Finally, some of alternatives and recommendations that can help avoid the pitfalls of economism are discussed.
Reflections on How Political Scientists (and Others) Might Think about Energy and Policy
Authors: Holden Matthew
Published: September 2009

This article specifies three important factors regarding energy and policy. The first is that energy policy will be greatly influenced by Russia, China, and India in the coming years; the last two being the biggest energy consumers in the world. The second is that energy patterns of the poorest countries of the world will become difficult, unless there are notable economic and technological changes. The third and final factor is that global energy policy will be influenced by climatic events. The article looks at how political scientists have looked at energy and considers the experiences from US policy making regarding energy.
Constructivist Institutionalism
Authors: Hay Colin
Published: September 2009

This article provides a summary of the distinctiveness of constructivist institutionalism and tries to identify the nature of the challenge that it poses. It considers the origins of constructivist institutionalism and the ontological and analytical distinctiveness of constructivist institutionalism's turn to ideas. This includes a discussion of the associated nature of the challenge that it poses on existing neoinstitutionalist perspectives. The article concludes with a section on the contribution to the analysis of complex institutional change made by constructivist institutionalism.
Old Institutionalisms
Authors: Rhodes R. A. W.
Published: September 2009

This article looks at the study of political institutions. It defines and gives examples of four different traditions in the study of political institutions: modernist-empiricist, idealist, formal-legal, and socialist. The main goal of the article is to show there are several long-standing traditions in the study of institutions in the Anglo-American world, and to illustrate that variety worldwide.
Exclusion, Inclusion, and Political Institutions
Authors: Holden Matthew
Published: September 2009

This article discusses political institutions and exclusion and inclusion. It reveals that institutions are excellent at inclusion but poor at exclusion. It examines the hypothesis of the counter-attack and studies current political science and the double problem of inclusion and exclusion. It shows how different institutions deal with inclusion/exclusion, and examines dominant and subordinate groups. The institution of federalism and the legislative institution are discussed as well. This article ends with a discussion of the premises about the process of inclusion and the problem of exclusion.
American Federalism and Intergovernmental Relations
Authors: Sbragia Alberta M.
Published: September 2009

This article provides an analysis of the shape of American federalism. The first section looks at territorial politics, and is followed by a discussion of territorial governments and representation. Territorial interest, public policy, and intergovernmental relations are the topics of the next two sections. The nationalization of policy, money and regulation, and intergovernmental lobbying are discussed in the last sections of the chapter. It concludes with an argument that the conflict between territorial and functional politics actually lies at the heart of the politics of federalism in the United States.
The Regulatory State?
Authors: Braithwaite John
Published: September 2009

This article presents a sketch of the historical forces that have produced regulatory capitalism as a police economy. It shows that this police economy evolved from different feudal economies, the displacement of police with an unregulable nineteenth-century liberal economy, and the state provider economy that gave way to regulatory capitalism. This article determines that the reciprocal relationship between corporatization and regulation creates a world where there is more governance of all kinds.
Legislative Organization
Authors: Carey John M.
Published: September 2009

This article studies legislative organization, and examines the normative goals of democratic legislatures. The next section draws on the current research that reflects on how legislative organization reaches these ideals. It then examines the ways in which it frequently falls short. It suggests that the strength of political parties in organizing legislative agenda is critical to whether and what type of decisiveness problems are confronted. It also discusses checks, which is the last category of expectations regarding legislatures. This article serves as an outline to be used to organize some ideas about comparative legislative organization.
Comparative Legislative Behavior
Authors: Uslaner Eric M. , Zittel Thomas
Published: September 2009

This article talks about the increase in polarization and heightened partisanship in the United Sates Congress. This is where party leaders firmly control the agenda and where voters in congressional elections are more likely to divide along party lines. It also looks at the constituency demands in parliamentary systems before focusing on the changing role of political parties in legislative institutions, both parliamentary and congressional. One section examines the structural and behavioral roots of legislative behavior, along with the impact of different institutions. The article also includes a discussion of the varying relations between legislators and constituents and the varying informal rules of the game.
Comparative Local Governance
Authors: Stoker Gerry
Published: September 2009

This article discusses comparative local governance, and shows how the study of comparative local governance has taken on a ‘new’ institutional slant. It examines how the systems of governance are built via a complex interplay between informal and formal institutional forces. It determines that the key area of investigation in comparative local governance is the study of regimes, which are the ways of organizing power in complex societies in order to ensure outcomes similar to particular interests. The article also explores work on urban regimes as an exemplar of a more ‘new’ institutionalist understanding of comparative local governance.
Voters, Candidates, and Parties
Authors: Ansolabehere Stephen
Published: September 2009

This article introduces the modern political economic theory of elections. It discusses the theory's foundations, which were laid down by Anthony Downs in An Economic Theory of Democracy. It shows that the economic theory of democracy has helped transform political science and economics and has introduced a methodology for theorizing about political strategy. This theory has also specified the implications for what government does and how well the democratic government represents the public. Several concepts are discussed, including valence issues, interest groups, candidate preferences, and electoral institutions.
Rational Voters and Political Advertising
Authors: Prat Andrea
Published: September 2009

This article studies political advertising, starting with non-directly informative advertising and directly informative advertising. It then tries to determine how a microfounded model of campaign finance can be used to reinterpret the available empirical evidence. The expenditure function is also discussed in this article.
Political Income Redistribution
Authors: Londregan John
Published: September 2009

This article discusses political income redistribution, beginning with a section on a simple but widely used class of models. These models have a menu of redistributive options that is artificially restricted by limiting taxes and transfers to schemes that make post-tax income a deterministic and non-decreasing function of pre-tax income. The article next discusses models that put emphasis on the potential instability of redistributive politics and models that have built-in sources of stability. The final section focuses on several models of redistributive politics that try to explain the choice of redistributive instruments despite the availability of more efficient alternatives.
Coalition Government
Authors: Diermeier Daniel
Published: September 2009

This article focuses on coalition government, beginning with important empirical work that has motivated an institutionalist shift in the study of government coalitions. It discusses the most widely used institutionalist approaches, along with two alternative approaches. The consequences of the institutionalist perspective for empirical work are then discussed, and this is followed by a section on recent work that relies on structural estimation as its methodology to study coalition government empirically.
The Political Economy of the US Presidency
Authors: Cameron Charles M.
Published: September 2009

This article looks at the political economy of the US Presidency. It provides a brief review of how the American political and constitutional order helps shape the presidents' incentive structure and how it defines the available tools of governance. It examines the intellectual roots of the political economy approach, before looking at significant developments. The article also claims that scholars have been able to identify three causal mechanisms at work in presidential governance, namely: proposal power, veto power, and strategic pre-action. A review of works on these three causal mechanisms is included in the article.
The Judiciary and the Role of Law
Authors: McCubbins Mathew D. , Rodriguez Daniel B.
Published: September 2009

This article discusses the judiciary and the role of law. It talks about the implications of the approach for issues in statutory interpretation, and then examines the relationship between the legal and political controls of bureaucracy. The last section in the article focuses on the implications for judicial independence within the larger separation-of-powers system. The emerging literature on Positive Political Theory (PPT) further stresses the political nature of legal decision-making and the dynamic relationship among the legislative, judicial, and executive branches.
Constitutionalism
Authors: Hardin Russell
Published: September 2009

This article discusses constitutionalism, particularly the two main schools of constitutional theorizing: coordination theories and contractarian theories. It then tries to determine what constitutions can do for the people, before focusing on the two main problems of modern constitutional democracy. The first is the nature of representative democracy, while the second is the problem of placing enforceable limits on government.
Self‐Enforcing Democracy
Authors: Przeworski Adam
Published: September 2009

This article examines the conditions under which a self-enforcing democracy would last. A summary of the early nineteenth-century views according to which democracy could not last because it was a mortal threat to property is provided in the first section. The article then summarizes two models that are motivated by a possibility regarding the insufficiency of the degree of income redistribution. Finally, interpretations and extensions of self-enforcing democracy are discussed.
The Protection of Liberty, Property, and Equality
Authors: Epstein Richard A.
Published: September 2009

This article discusses areas that involve political issues, which contain ‘preferred freedoms’ or ‘suspect classifications’ that attract higher standards of review. The economic and property interests that are subject to some key exceptions are also discussed. The article traces the pattern of judicial review as it applies to political, moral, and social issues, and moves on to the parallel discussions for matters of economic liberty and private property.
Political Economy of Fiscal Institutions
Authors: von Hagen Jürgen
Published: September 2009

This article discusses and reviews research on fiscal institutions. It deals with ex ante rules and discusses the roles of electoral institutions. One section in this article also considers the budget process. The research that is reviewed in this article uses the principal-agent relationship between the voter and the politicians and the common-pool property of public funds as its starting points.
Electoral Systems and Economic Policy
Authors: Persson Torsten , Tabellini Guido
Published: September 2009

This article discusses recent empirical and theoretical research on the electoral rule, which is one feature of modern democracies. It determines that the electoral rule systematically shapes economic policy. An outline of some key objectives of electoral rules is presented in the first section; it further notes the stability and systematic selection that characterize real-world constitutions. It then introduces the main concepts that categorize different electoral rules, and explains how these elements help shape the accountability of government and the size of political rents and corruption. Finally, the article deals with representation in government and a variety of fiscal policy choices.
Economic Geography
Authors: Venables Anthony J.
Published: September 2009

This article discusses economic geography and aims to outline some of the main issues and ideas found in this emergent field. It looks at the implications and patterns of development in the world economy, as well as in urban systems. The final section in the article attempts to answer why this topic is considered important for students of political economy.
European Integration
Authors: Eichengreen Barry
Published: September 2009

This article discusses European integration and its various conceptions of the political economy in terms of three generations of academic work. The normalization of European integration studies is discussed in the second section of the article, this is followed by models of non-ergodic processes. The article ends by trying to determine the future of this field.
Politics and Scientific Enquiry
Authors: Buchanan James M.
Published: September 2009

This article studies politics and scientific inquiry. It first determines what the state is, and examines the ethical norms for guiding the behaviour of decision-makers. The unitary-mind model is discussed in one section, and this is followed by the theory of ‘democratic’ politics. The object of collective action, normative relevance, and the operational science of politics are some of the topics discussed in this article.
On confronting some common myths of is strategy discourse
Authors: Galliers Robert D.
Published: September 2009

This article has a strategic focus and therefore focuses on two key considerations — one more prevalent in the 1980s, the other a focus of attention in the 1990s and into the twenty-first century — namely, competitive advantage and knowledge management. The third consideration — alignment — has been a major focus, and a source of some contention, and the article incorporates this to treat the subject matter. The article focuses more on the process of strategizing than on the outcome of the process, that is, the strategy itself. It argues that benefit is to be gained from a more inclusive, exploratory approach to the strategy process. This perspective is set against the common view, which is concerned more with exploiting the potential of ICT systems for business gain. Implicit in the arguments is the view that it is to be intellectually bankrupt to accept these myths as ‘self evident truths’.
Information technology sourcing: Fifteen years of learning
Authors: Willcocks Leslie P. , Lacity Mary C. , Cullen Sara
Published: September 2009

The information technology outsourcing (ITO) and business process outsourcing (BPO) services markets, together with more recent offshore variants, have been dynamically expanding revenues, capabilities, and associated rhetoric, in equal measure, for over a decade. Outsourcing makes up a substantial and rapidly rising part of expenditure across corporations and government agencies alike. According to one estimate, ITO global revenues exceeded $US200 bn per year at the end of 2005. For many organizations, outsourcing is well above the parapet in sheer expenditure terms. However, much of this increase has been happening incrementally, as a response to immediate market conditions and specific opportunities to cut costs, rather than through long-term strategic thinking. Moreover, despite the accumulated experience, learning has been painfully slow; there has been mixed success, and much conflicting advice.
New media literacies: At the intersection of technical, cultural, and discursive knowledges
Authors: Graham Phil , Goodrum Abby Ann
Published: September 2009

As a field of study, media literacy emerged along with the study of radio propaganda in the 1930s. More recently it became a field of research that has responded to the television saturated consumer cultures of the late-1960s onwards. Unlike literacies of pre-electronic media environments, those that have been studied within electronic environments have been almost solely concerned with analytical ways of reading multimedia texts. In contrast, literacies in the written word have typically involved the production of written texts as integral to curricula. The new media environment provides opportunities and challenges for research in new media literacies, not the least of which is understanding what it means for people to have a widespread potential to write themselves into global, multimediated conversations. This not only involves technical, cultural, discursive, and aesthetic knowledges, it also involves the need to be politically and economically literate in the implications of a dispersed, participatively produced, multimedia environment as distinct from the ‘broadcast’ literacies of past media environments. This article situates new media literacies in an historical framework, emphasizing the close connections among technology, culture, discourse, and related changes in political economic structures.
The interrelations between online and offline: Questions, issues, and implications
Authors: Orgad Shani
Published: September 2009

Questions of literacy raise questions of the nature of the relationship between what goes on on-line and what off-line. A wide range of areas where this agenda has been identified has been reviewed, but in each case it still needs further discussion: in e-commerce, in journalism, in civil society, but above all in the fine grain of action in everyday life. It has been argued that it is still the case that thinking is dominated by a kind of ‘two-realm’ approach, which will consistently fail to understand the intensity of their interrelationship. What is required is a political economy which stresses the materiality of power inscribed across both domains, and a broadly ethnographic perspective, where, likewise, there is every intention of exploring the mutual contextualization of life which is simultaneously both on-line and off.
ICTs and political movements
Authors: Downing John D. H. , Brooten Lisa
Published: September 2009

Communication technologies, despite their huge corporate, military, and surveillance applications, also afford opportunities within political movements to debate, mobilize, reflect, imagine, fantasize, critique, archive, and inform, and will be pivotal to developing a future for humans rather than for capital. This article focuses on some possibilities offered by three such technologies, radio, the Internet and the mobile phone, to political movements. It provides a variety of illustrations of their uses and applications in social struggles, large and small. First, however, it dwells briefly on some of the issues and concepts in the air at the time of writing, which may help to frame and thus interpret the specifics.
ICTs and communities in the twentyfirst century: Challenges and perspectives
Authors: Jung Joo‐Young , Ball‐Rokeach Sandra J. , Kim Yong‐Chan , Matei Sorin Adam
Published: September 2009

This article is organized around four of the major challenges that seem necessary to address in the effort to tease out this complex relationship. After introducing the challenges, it examines how past studies have tackled them. It concludes with an assessment of how well these challenges have been addressed and where we should go, in theory and research, to move beyond the present understandings. One of the first challenges is to go beyond utopian and dystopian visions of the new ICTs. New communication technologies that reach a critical mass of adoption generate a litany of hopes and fears — utopian and dystopian visions of how the technology will afford solutions to previously intractable problems, or will create intractable problems. In the case of ICTs in the late twentieth and early twenty-first centuries, the perceived decline in the viability and vitality of communities of place was one of the main problems addressed by ICT visionaries.
Philosophy of Language in the Twentieth Century
Authors: Baldwin Thomas
Published: September 2009

During the first half of the twentieth century philosophy took a ‘linguistic turn’. (The phrase, which comes from Gustav Bergmann, was made famous by Richard Rorty as the title of an anthology of papers in which this development is set out and assessed.) The first clear signal of this development was Ludwig Wittgenstein's remark in his Tractatus Logico-Philosophicus (1921) that ‘All philosophy is “Critique of Language”‘ and this work by Wittgenstein (which is discussed in this article) remains a classic presentation of the thesis that philosophy can only be undertaken through the critical study of language. Thus during the twentieth century philosophical approaches to language, the kinds of theorizing now known as ‘philosophy of language’, have been developed in a context in which language has been taken to be a primary resource for philosophy, and as a result there has been a two-way relationship in which conceptions of language and of philosophy have been developed together.
Languages and Idiolects: Their Language and Ours
Authors: Higginbotham James
Published: September 2009

An idiolectal conception of language is compatible with a substantive role for external things — objects, including other people — in the characterization of idiolects. Illustrations of this role are not hard to come by. The point of looking outward from the individual is pretty evident for the case of reference to perceptually encountered objects: had the world been significantly different, a person with the same molecular history would have acquired, and called by the same familiar names, different physical and other concepts. An idiolectal conception of language is by no means committed, and has some reason to be opposed, to internalism, and to individualism in Burge's sense; that is, to the view that the organization of the body, abstracting from external things, is constitutive of any linguistically significant aspect of language.
Semantic Internalism and Externalism
Authors: Farkas Katalin
Published: September 2009

The function of certain expressions in the language is to refer to things, and expressions refer to things in virtue of their meaning. This is so obvious that it almost defies explanation or supporting argument. What we learn when we learn the meaning of the expression is precisely that it is used to talk about a certain thing. And if two expressions like the ‘Morning Star’ and the ‘Mont Blanc’ refer to different things, this must be in virtue of the difference in their meanings. Of course, there are names like ‘Pegasus’ which do not refer to anything, but this is also a consequence of their meaning; compare ‘Pegasus’ and ‘Bucephalus’.
What Does it Take to Refer?
Authors: Bach Kent
Published: September 2009

This article makes a number of points about reference, both speaker reference and linguistic (or semantic) reference. The bottom line is simple: reference ain't easy — at least not nearly as easy as commonly supposed. Much of what speakers do that passes for reference is really something else, and much of what passes for linguistic reference is really nothing more than speaker reference. Referring is one of the basic things we do with words, and it would be a good idea to understand what that involves and requires before worrying about the linguistic means by which this is done.
Formal Semantics
Authors: King Jeffrey C.
Published: September 2009

Semantics is the discipline that studies linguistic meaning generally, and the qualification ‘formal’ indicates something about the sorts of techniques used in investigating linguistic meaning. More specifically, formal semantics is the discipline that employs techniques from symbolic logic, mathematics, and mathematical logic to produce precisely characterized theories of meaning for natural languages (i.e. naturally occurring languages such as English, Urdu, etc.) or artificial languages (i.e. first-order predicate logic, computer programming languages etc.). Formal semantics as we know it first arose in the twentieth century. It was made possible by certain developments in logic during that period. This article chronicles those developments and how they led to the development of formal semantics.
Two‐Dimensional Semantics
Authors: Chalmers David J.
Published: September 2009

Two-dimensional approaches to semantics, broadly understood, recognize two ‘dimensions’ of the meaning or content of linguistic items. On these approaches, expressions and their utterances are associated with two different sorts of semantic values, which play different explanatory roles. Typically, one semantic value is associated with reference and ordinary truth-conditions, while the other is associated with the way that reference and truth-conditions depend on the external world. The second sort of semantic value is often held to play a distinctive role in analyzing matters of cognitive significance and/or context-dependence. In this broad sense, even Frege's theory of sense and reference might qualify as a sort of two-dimensional approach.