bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Predictors of Fatigue in Healthy Young Adults: Moderating Effects of Cigarette Smoking and Gender
Authors: Corwin Elizabeth J. , Klein Laura Cousino , Rickelman Kristin
Published: March 2007

Fatigue is a common complaint of patients seen in primary care. Factors that contribute to fatigue in a patient population include poor health status, psychological stress, poor nutrition, and pregnancy. Less well understood are factors that contribute to fatigue among healthy, nonpregnant individuals. Within the framework of the theory of unpleasant symptoms, 40 healthy young smoking and nonsmoking adults between the ages of 18 and 35 were evaluated to determine self-report level of fatigue and contributing physiological, psychological, and situational factors. Results indicate that while self-report of fatigue did not vary in this population based on gender, subjects who were moderate to heavy cigarette smokers were significantly more fatigued than were nonsmokers (F= 10.24, df = 1, 38, P < 0.01), with the effect being specific to male smokers. Self-report of fatigue did not correlate with body mass index, baseline inflammatory or immune status, or blood pressure. Positive psychological and situational predictors of fatigue included depression (r = 0.556, P < 0.001), state anxiety (r = 0.569, P < 0.001), sleep quality (r = –0.399, P < 0.05), and sleep quantity (r = –0.411, P < 0.05). These results suggest that psychological and situational factors are key contributors to fatigue in young adults and that smoking is a risk factor for fatigue in men.
Postcards from Arizona
Authors: Argyle Katie
Published: March 2007

Fascinated by the beauty of the desert, I am constantly aware of danger. Both the people and the land itself tell me this is a place on the edge. Boundaries are not as rigid as they seem, threatening to shift as suddenly as flash floods that consume dry land without warning.
The Impersonal Flâneur
Authors: Toiskallio Kalle
Published: March 2007

The framework of this article stems from the Simmelian urbanism: positive meanings of impersonality that resonate with the late Chicago School. The literature of the flâneur is used in this article to frame the impersonal attitude toward other persons in traffic. Data are drawn from six focus groups dealing with the daily journeys of dwellers of Helsinki, Finland. The data are assessed on the basis of a modal and enunciative analysis of semiotic sociology. Three ideal types of personal navigation and their maintenance of a certain amount of sociospatial distance to others show that the integrity and the flânerie's subtle resistance of acceleration still exist in contemporary urban traffic. Currently, the latter is done mainly by the flâneuse. The maintenance of distance is the carrying force of sociality in traffic. For urban studies, this traffic study gives field to search for functional and mental meaning of the general impersonality of urbanism.
Graduate Leadership Education for Dynamic Human Systems
Authors: Taylor Marilyn , De Guerre Don , Gavin James , Kass Raye
Published: March 2007

As global flux reshapes organizational life, demands on organizational leadership are shifting radically. This article reviews the trends in recent calls for revision of management education and presents a fundamentally different perspective with related design principles that hold promise for addressing the new leadership challenges in turbulent environments. This systemic approach to leadership education for organizational change leaders and consultants fosters attunement to social processes in the collaborative development of productive organizational contexts, the effective use of theory-in-practice, expertise for learning-in-action, and requisite self-knowledge. Educational programmes evolving with dynamic postmodern organizational realities are, by definition, incongruous with the underlying traditional operating assumptions of the university. The challenge of negotiating this paradigmatic interface is also discussed.
Questioning the Ethics of Management Development: A Critical Review
Authors: Snell Robin
Published: March 2007

Writing on ethics in management and management development draws on a limited range of perspectives. Assumptions behind statements about ethical prac tice for managers and management developers tend to remain unexamined. Calls for ethical codes have been made without paying sufficient attention to the need to explore and clarify ideological issues. I argue a case against the construction of an ethical code for management developers and suggest instead open discussion of ethical issues and, more importantly, that practice should be questioned and challenged as it happens, by colleagues and management learners. The difficulty of making progress in this way is acknowledged.
A Question of Appraisal?
Authors: Hogan David J.
Published: March 2007

The paper discusses aspects of performance appraisal in a bureaucratic setting from an appraisee point of view. The view taken is that occupational psychology emphasises a technological approach to the issue and fails to acknowledge the impact of an active appraisee in and on the process. The discussion is conducted with reference to experience gained by the author being a recipient of appraisals. The adoption of a more realistic framework to the process of appraisal is suggested.
Group Facilitation Skills for Managers
Authors: Westley Frances , Waters James A.
Published: March 2007

Increasingly, managers are required to work in groups, and overall managerial effectiveness increasingly depends on an individual's ability to facilitate group work. This article offers an introduction to group facilitation skills for managers. It describes a framework which will help managers to recognise group process problems, to diagnose the underlying causes of the most common group problems, and, most importantly, to consider how they might act to help a group get past its problems and work productively.
North American Experience With Business Policy Field Projects
Authors: Baetz Mark C. , Beamish Paul W.
Published: March 2007

This paper reports on student and site manager evaluations of Business Policy field projects from five universities in Canada and the United States. In total, there were over 900 detailed evaluations by students and site managers and more limited assessments from another 1200 students. A preliminary analysis is presented of various factors which potentially influ enced these evaluations. The single biggest negative aspect of the project was seen by students to be the time allocated to the project. This suggests that schools should modify their programmes to ensure students have the time to carry out the projects in a meaningful way. Another major problem with the project identified by students is the lack of faculty direction and unclear expectations. This suggests that faculty must clearly specify their objectives for the project so students will appreciate the many varied benefits from it.
Autobiographical Awareness as a Catalyst for Managerial and Organisational Development
Authors: Torbert William , Fisher Dalmar
Published: March 2007

This article argues and illustrates that autobiographical research, writing, and conservation that engenders autobiographical awareness, form a significant catalyst for managerial and organisational development toward continual quality improvement and the creation of learning organisations.

The article also argues that autobiographical writing and conversation is a key process - indeed, an indispensable process - in social scientific research based on the action inquiry paradigm (Torbert, 1991).
Refrain the Competency Debate
Authors: Brown Reva Berman
Published: March 2007

This paper offers a basis for examining the boundaries which presently constrain discussions about managerial competences. It is suggested that a fruitful way of refraining the current debate about the usefulness of competences for managerial effectiveness is to separate the notions of competence and meta-competence. A distinction is made between managerial processes which are competence-based-skills based on knowledge, and those which are based on meta-competences-the higher order abilities which have to do with being able to learn, adapt, anticipate and create. The paper connects knowledge with the concept of meta-competences, and suggests that metacompetences are a prerequisite for the development of managerial capacities such as judgement, intuition and acumen, as well as the capacity to undertake managerial tasks successfully.
Emotion and Management Learning
Authors: Fineman Stephen
Published: March 2007

This article argues that what and how learning takes place for managers is inextricably emotional, or of emotions. The traditional cognitive approach to management learning has obscured the presence and role of emotion. The conceptual positioning of emotion is reviewed, illustrated though `competencies' and `business ethics'. It is concluded that we need more explicit frameworks, derived from the wider organizational literature on emotion, to place emotion as both a product and process of learning. Special attention is required to the growth of corporate emotion engineering, flexible' work structures and `virtual' managing. These areas raise challenging technical and moral questions for `learning' theorists and practitioners.
Organizational Learning, Circularity and Double-Linking
Authors: Romme A. Georges L.
Published: March 2007

In recent writings on organizational learning an interesting debate between proponents of team learning and those defending hierarchy as an essential condition for learning has developed. Here it is argued that teams appear to be the key learning units in organizations, but hierarchies are necessary to store and accumulate important learning results. Thus, in larger organizations teams must be integrated into some kind of hierarchy. Several authors have dealt with the problem of combining the benefits of both hierarchical and team-like structures. Attempts by Likert and Ackoff to combine the benefits of both hierarchical and team structures are based on the ideas of circularity and the (single) linking pin. A further elaboration of these solutions involves the idea of double-linking, as it is used in several Dutch organizations. Double-linking between teams provides the kind of vertical linkages which support and safeguard upward as well as downward information processing. As such, through the principle of double-linking organizations may become reflexive learning organizations.
Globalizing the Intelligent Organization
Authors: Clegg Stewart
Published: March 2007

This article contrasts exploratory with exploitative learning, in order to argue for the importance of both-not just the latter. It considers three case studies briefly: Microsoft, Berlei and Patricks. While Microsoft may often be thought of as the epitome of an `intelligent' organization, the company has a reputation for unreliable products. Although the employees at the Lithgow plant of Berlei achieved world's best practice, their jobs were exported offshore, on the basis of the learning that they had achieved for the company. In the case of Patricks we can see the effect of managerial cleverness (advised by some of the best legal and accounting expertise available), producing fundamentally flawed attempts at re-organization that failed to consider the social, political or organizational dimensions or consequences of the type of learning unleashed. At the same time, this article argues a particular case for organization studies that situates itself within a classical tradition of sociology that stretches from Max Weber, through C. Wright Mills, to the present.
Educating Prospective Managers in the Complexity of Organizational Life
Authors: Aram Eliat , Noble Dorothea
Published: March 2007

This article questions whether we can educate managers according to linear principles based on Newtonian laws and expect them subsequently to operate successfully in a world of increasing change and complexity where non-linear processes dominate. We explore this with the perspective of complexity science and through our experience of and reflections on recent examples which have arisen in our teaching practice. We argue that the increasing focus on outcomes in learning/teaching practice, both as a measure of learning and of quality in teaching, closes valuable areas of the learning/teaching experience to all participants in the process. Managers facing lives of ambiguity and anxiety for themselves and their organizations are let down by the very institutions whose role it is to support and prepare them.
On Bringing More Theory, More Voices and More Politics to the Study of Organization
Authors: Ferguson Kathy E.
Published: March 2007

Studies of organization need to be more theoretically informed, politically diverse and democratically practiced. The field would be enhanced by more robust encounters with three broad areas of inquiry: (1) contemporary theories of language, politics and subjectivity, which focus organizational studies on the constitution of identities, the practices of discourse and the arrangements of power; (2) analyses of gender, race and class, which call attention to diversities and inequalities within and between identities, languages, politics; and (3) democratic practices, which raise questions about our constituencies, our sources of data and our conventions of teaching and research.
Weber and Foucault: Social Theory for the Study of Organizations
Authors: Clegg Stewart
Published: March 2007

Weber, credited with having founded organization theory, did so inadvertently, as the study of the ideal type of bureaucracy. A contrary interpretation suggests organization analysis would be a branch of cultural studies with the analysis of values at its core.

The contemporary theorist who has come nearest to carrying out a Weberian project with respect to the analysis of organizations, without acknowledging that this was so, was Foucault. Foucault's imputed foundations for the analysis of organizations bring into effect two liberations from the Weberian legacy. The first liberation is from analysis of organizations principally as structure, the predominant interpretation of Weber in the literature. The second liberation is not to lapse into the obverse of the structuralist view, a perspective that seeks to interpret individuals through the practice of verstehende. Structural analysis has no truck with individuals and their subjectivity, unless these become privileged by being embedded in strategically powerful representations in the organization. By contrast, analyses that function principally at the level of interpreting the putative motives, intentions and other attributes of subjectivity that, supposedly, are recoverable from an interpretative understanding of the individuals that compose organizations, rarely grasps the means and forms whereby some subjective representations become strategically sovereign. While the former offers an overstructuralized account of organizations, the latter offers-one that is understructuralized. In the former, individuals are regarded as bearers of a structural rationality worked out by impersonal forces of size or efficiency, while in the latter individuals are conceived of as subjectivities abstracted from structure.

More appropriately, analysis should focus on how it is possible that certain structures of subjectivity and modes of what passes for rationality get constituted. At the core of this analysis are a post-Foucauldian, post- interpretative and post-structuralist account of power. Central to this are the analytically paradoxical interconnections of values, power, rules and discretion. Certain forms of organization structure seek to fix these in specific fields of force through contractualizing and otherwise freezing specific relations of meaning. Structure, in this sense, does not concern the scalar and other properties of bureaucracy that Weber identified so much as the forms of organization design that creative and dominant imagination envisages and concretizes.
`Work Hard, Play Hard': An Analysis of Organizational Cliche in Two Accountancy Practices
Authors: Anderson-Gough Fiona , Grey Christopher , Robson Keith
Published: March 2007

In this paper we explore one specific aspect of the way language is used in organizations—the use of cliche and slogans by organizational members. Drawing upon a 12-month qualitative study of two international accountancy practices ('Firm A' and `Firm B') we examine different instances of cliche in the discourse of their organizational actors. The cliches are seen to operate in several complex ways, but at a general level are understood to be intimately linked to the accomplishment of control within professional organizations.
Logics of Force and Dialogue:
Authors: FIERKE K. M.
Published: March 2007

Over the last decade, the USA and Britain have argued that Saddam Hussein only understands the language of force. Based on this reasoning, the Agreement on Mutual Understanding in early 1998 was made possible by the threat of force. The purpose of this article is to ask what happens if we analyse the agreement as arising out of a process of social interaction — as opposed to a monologue of force. In the first section of the article I explore a theory of inconsistencies, as a basis for understanding how actors embedded in one type of interaction, `change games' to another. In the second section, I examine a concept of abduction, as a tool for analysing the construction of two different contexts of interaction — the Gulf War and the UNSCOM crisis beginning in late 1997. In the third section, I expand the analysis of the UNSCOM crisis to look at how inconsistencies were introduced into the dominant Western typification of the conflict and spaces opened for an alternative solution. The conclusions return to the theoretical problem and reflect on the breakdown of the agreement with the renewed logic of force toward Iraq.
Former Yugoslavia:
Authors: ROE PAUL
Published: March 2007

This article provides a critical examination of recent attempts by International Relations theorists to apply the security dilemma concept to the intra-state level to explain the outbreak of ethnic violence and war. It critiques the work of Barry Posen, Stuart Kaufman and Erik Melander. In doing so, the central claim of the article is that a specifically Butterfieldian interpretation of the concept is required if the security dilemma is to manifest its greatest explanatory value; where conflict between the parties involved is directly the product of misperception. It demonstrates how in failing to employ such a conception, Posen, Melander and Kaufman's work either completely neglects or fails to address satisfactorily what is arguably the essence of the security dilemma; what Butterfield came to describe as a `tragedy'. The article thus concludes that the application of the concept in terms of the former Yugoslavia is for the most part untenable.
Mainstreaming Gender in Global Governance
Authors: HAFNER-BURTON EMILIE , POLLACK MARK A.
Published: March 2007

In this article, we seek to explain both the origins of gender mainstreaming as a `policy frame' in International Relations, as well as the variable implementation of mainstreaming over time and across various international organizations. We emphasize that in the years since the UN Fourth World Women's Conference in Beijing (1995), mainstreaming has been endorsed and adopted not only by European organizations and governments, but also by nearly every important international organization, and we compare the adoption and implementation of mainstreaming in two international organizations, the World Bank and the United Nations Development Programme. We suggest, however, that the rhetorical acceptance of mainstreaming by various international organizations obscures considerable diversity in both the timing and the nature of mainstreaming processes within and among organizations. This variation, we argue, can be explained in terms of the categories of political opportunity, mobilizing structures and strategic framing put forward by social movement theorists.
Beyond Parsimony:
Authors: LEBOW RICHARD NED
Published: March 2007

Theories of deterrence and compellence incorporate behavioral and political assumptions. The behavioral assumptions place unreasonable informational and analytical requirements on policy-makers. The political assumptions misconstrue the process of risk assessment, exaggerate the ability of leaders to estimate the risks inherent in their threats and shape adversarial estimates of their resolve. These problems may help explain why deterrence and compellence often fail when practiced by rational and attentive actors against equally rational and attentive targets. Some of the political and behavioral assumptions of deterrence and compellence are unique, but most are shared with other rational theories of bargaining. My critique has implications for these theories, and they are spelled out in the conclusion. I illustrate my argument with examples from American and Soviet decision-making in the Cuban missile crisis.
Mapping the Multiplicity of the Self
Authors: GonÁalves Miguel M. , Salgado Joāo
Published: March 2007

In this commentary we offer a critique of the task devised by Hermans (2001): the PPR (Personal Position Repertoire). We first emphasize the important contributions made by Hermans and collaborators toward improving our understanding of the dialogical self, and then analyze several problems raised by this new method of studying the self. The issues we address are: the meaning of the concept of prominence; the possible reification of the positions adopted in this task; and the problem of the power differential between clients and psychologists.
The Dialogical Self: Converging East–West Constructions
Authors: Ho David Yau-fai , Chan Shui-fun Fiona , Peng Si-qing , Ng Aik Kwang
Published: March 2007

Prompted by the work of Hermans, we attempt to construct the dialogical self informed by Eastern traditions. To describe dialogical phenomenology, we turn to three resources: (a) Chinese intellectual traditions, (b) dreams and (c) daily life. Dialogical attributes are described: the dialogical self is capable of polyvocality, but also of achieving unity with diversity; metacognition is vital to its development. We attempt to clarify the relation between dialogics and dialectics: The dialogical self is capable of taking an active part in the interaction between inner and outer dialectics, and hence of participating in its own creation and transformation. Finally, we illustrate how the study of dialogical movements may be operationalized.
Paradox and Pedagogy: Double Binds and the Culture of Learning in South African Schools
Authors: Perold Jan J.
Published: March 2007

The culture of learning has been severely eroded in many South African schools. This article analyzes the relationship between this erosion and the legacy of apartheid in terms of the double bind hypothesis. Adouble bind occurs when (interpersonal or cultural) injunctions demanding certain itemsof behavior are regularly accompanied by higher-order injunctions forbidding the patternsof behavior that must necessarily result from obeying those injunctions. The hypothesis proposes that people caught in a double bind might lose the ability to distinguish between the two orders of injunctions. The analysis suggests that many Black South Africans have fallen victim to a double bind created by contradictions between the injunctions imposed by the school system and those imposed by the former regime’s racist socioeconomic policies. The resultant confusion between levels is evidenced in the fact that many pupils and teachers habitually misinterpret educational injunctions as symbols of political oppression.
Internet Haze: Why New Artifacts Can Enhance Situation Ambiguity
Authors: Mantovani Giuseppe
Published: March 2007

Social and psychological research on the Internet has been biased for a decade by the deterministic assumption that technology per secan have an ‘impact’ on individuals, groups and organizations. This presumption is challenged by a different perspective, which conceives of technology as a social production and relies on ‘ethnographic’ methodologies to investigate the specific ways in which social actors interact with technological tools. Adoption of new artifacts tends to disrupt existing task–artifact cycles and at the same time create new skills in social actors and new features in environments. For this reason new artifacts can enhance, rather than reduce, the ambiguity of everyday situations. The changes in the environment stimulated by the introduction of new artifacts may remain undetected for a while because social actors cannot rely on previous experiences to make sense of the new situation. The wide diffusion of the Internet can render more problematic the selection of information, its control by ordinary actors, interpersonal communication and self-presentation (which in cyberspace is exposed to special forms of deception), and the sense of presence in an environment. The ambiguity of the situations emerging on the Web can be reduced by awareness of the characteristics of cyberspace as an artifact under construction and by the development of shared cultural norms to regulate the exchanges taking place on the Web.
Culture and Future Thought
Authors: Oettingen Gabriele
Published: March 2007

Ernst E. Boesch went beyond the limited conceptualization of thinking about the future in terms of expectancy judgments prevalent in empirical psychology during the past 50 years. He explicitly focused on fantasies and analyzed their main source called 'fantasm'. Based on the theory of thinking about the future (Oettingen, 1996, 1997a), it is demonstrated how important it is when predicting motivation and action to differentiate between expectancy judgments and free fantasies. Thinking about the future in terms of positive expectancy judgments fosters motivation and action, whereas positiveness in spontaneous fantasies about the future are a clear drawback. However, this detrimental effect can be stopped if free positive fantasies are mentally contrasted with reflections on the contradictory negative reality. Given these circumstances, free fantasies are turned into binding goals which motivate goal striving. The presented findings have intriguing implications for Boesch's action-theoretical ideas as much as Boesch's suggestion to link action theory with cultural psychology has important consequences for the present theorizing. It is speculated that cultures may be characterized in terms of future-oriented thinking and it is analyzed how these differences have an impact on various cultural phenomena discussed by Boesch.
Do You Know Ragnar Rommetveit? On Dialogue and Silence, Poetry and Pedantry, and Cleverness and Wisdom in Psychology (An Interview with Ragnar Rommetveit)
Authors: Josephs Ingrid E.
Published: March 2007

Ragnar Rommetveit is Emeritus Professor of Psychology at the University of Oslo, Norway. He received his > PhD in 1954 at the University of Oslo, became Associate Professor in the same year, and has continued as Professor of Psychology D since 1959. He developed a hermeneutically based theory of communication as an alternative to representationalcomputational models of language and mind. In fact, he was the founder of the 'dialogical approach' in psychology-long before this notion has become popular in the 1990s. He has been interested in communication, intersubjectivity and the construction of meaning in language use, and was one of the early critics of attempts to formalize the semantic structure of language within the framework of Chomskian generative grammar. Ragnar Rommetveit was Visiting Professor at the University of Minnesota (1956-7), at the University of Michigan (1961), and at Cornell University (1964-5). He was Fellow at the Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Stanford, USA (1965-6) and the Netherlands Institute for Advanced Study in the Humanities and Social Sciences, Wassenaar (1972-3). From 1977 until 1983 he held the title of Andrew Dickson White Professorat-Large at Cornell University. He was given an honorary doctorate by the University of Linkhping, Sweden, in 1982, and by the University of Bergen, Norway, in 1990.
Losing Independence or Finally Gaining Recognition?
Authors: Raunio Tapio
Published: March 2007

Based on a survey of national parties represented in the European Parliament carried out in spring 1998, this article presents the results of the first comparative study on the relations between MEPs and their national parties. Due to the increased powers of the European Union, parties have an incentive to control their MEPs and to benefit from their expertise on European matters. The findings show that MEPs are still rather independent of their parties. Scrutiny of MEP behaviour is based on consultation rather than on voting instructions. MEPs have gained more political weight and their policy influence is particularly large in small parties.
Conservative Euroscepticism and the Referendum Party in the 1997 British General Election
Authors: McAllister Ian , Studlar Donley T.
Published: March 2007

Few issues have divided the British Conservative Party more seriously than prospect of greater European integration in the 1990s. In the 1997 election, Conservative candidates were divided almost equally between declared Eurosceptics, opposing a single currency, and those taking a `wait and see' attitude. In addition, the Referendum Party challenged the major parties from a Eurosceptical position. Using exit poll data and constituency results, we find that although Eurosceptical Conservatives gained a marginal vote advantage of 2.3 percent compared to other Conservative candidates, most of this can be attributed to incumbency and turnout differences across constituencies rather than positions on Europe. More significantly, the intervention of a Referendum Party candidate cost the Conservatives an average of 3.4 percent of the vote, even after a wide variety of other factors are taken into account. Extrapolating this finding to the constituency results suggests that the Conservatives may have lost around 16 seats directly as a result of the intervention of the Referendum Party, and a further two seats as a result of the anti-European UK Independence Party. This estimate is higher than previous analyses of this phenomenon.
Party System Institutionalization in 30 African Countries
Authors: Kuenzi Michelle , Lambright Gina
Published: March 2007

In their study of 12 Latin American countries, Mainwaring and Scully develop a framework to assess levels of party system institutionalization and explore the impact of the degree of party system institutionalization on democratic consolidation. In this paper, we provide a description of the levels of party system institutionalization in the African context. Employing three criteria adapted from the framework of Mainwaring and Scully, we systematically measure the level of party system institutionalization in 30 African countries. More specifically, we examine (1) regularity of party competition; (2) extent to which parties manifest roots in society; and (3) institutionalization, or the extent to which citizens and organized interests perceive that parties and elections are the means of determining who governs in the 30 countries. Our findings indicate that the level of party system institutionalization is generally lower in African countries than in those of Latin America. However, we find that the length of time during which a country has experience with democracy is an important factor in determining the level of party system institutionalization. The difference in performance between the five long-standing African democracies and those countries new to multipartyism was notable on all of the criteria.
The Correlates and Consequences of Anti-Partyism in the 1997 Canadian Election
Authors: Gidengil Elisabeth , Blais André , Nevitte Neil , Nadeau Richard
Published: March 2007

This article examines why anti-party rhetoric resonates with some citizens, but not with others, and how this affects their electoral behaviour. The data are taken from the 1997 Canadian Election Study. Social background characteristics turn out to have only a very modest effect on anti-party sentiment. Political sophistication is associated with a less critical view of political parties, while economic frustration and perceived system deficiencies make for more negative attitudes, but the key factor is issue alienation from the incumbent party. This is also the most important factor in influencing how citizens express their antiparty sentiment. Anti-partyism is more likely to result in an `anti-party' vote than in abstention. Those who are more involved and more informed are especially likely to work for change within the system.
Is the Grass Really Greener?
Authors: Bale Tim , Dann Christine
Published: March 2007

The motives, behaviour, treatment and fate of parties which, rather than joining governments provide them with a working legislative majority, are not well studied. In the light of coalition theory, we explore these issues by way of observation research on New Zealand's Green Party - since 1999 a support party to a minority centre-left government. We isolate three factors important in coming to this type of arrangement - ideology, calculation and the institutional environment - all mediated by party system variation. The relative importance of each factor, however, is less significant than the links and trade-offs between and within them. We go on to show how non-institutionalized support arrangements are unlikely to be `win-win' situations, leading to frustrations which themselves may become a factor in the decision to support or join after the next election.
European Integration and Ethnoregionalist Parties
Authors: De Winter Lieven , Cachafeiro Margarita Gomez-Reino
Published: March 2007

This article examines the impact of Europeanization on ethnoregionalist parties in Europe. In contrast to other European party families, traditionally this family has been characterized by the lack of ideological affinity and major differences in two dimensions - demands for political autonomy and traditional ideological orientations - that in the past jeopardized collective action and political cooperation. We argue that the process of Europeanization allowed the very constitution of a European party family from scratch. The article singles out the effects of Europeanization: the creation of a new structure of political opportunities for nationalist parties, changes in party behaviour at the European level, the definition of a new European internationalism and a common political European agenda based on the principle of the lowest common denominator.
Gender Struggles in the British Labour Party from 1979 to 1995
Authors: Perrigo Sarah
Published: March 2007

This report examines the internal struggles that have taken place in the British Labour Party since 1979 to make gender a salient political issue and to increase the representation of women. I argue that the culture and organization of the Labour Party in 1979 provided an inhospitable terrain for women to organize around gender issues, but that since that time women have been able to use the spaces created by other agendas for party adaptation and change, particularly demands for party democratization and party modernization, to develop a gender-party dynamic which has allowed women to press their claims more effectively, but only in ways that are congruent with the leadership's modernization strategy.
Electoral Reform and the Transformation of Party Politics in Italy
Authors: Katz Richard S.
Published: March 2007

Advocates of the 1993 reform of the Italian parliamentary electoral system intended it profoundly to alter the structure of the party system and the relationships among parties, interests and voters. The content of the reform is summarized and the expectations raised by its advocates are reviewed and tested against the outcome of the 1994 parliamentary election. While Italian politics has changed dramatically on the surface, analysis of events before and since the election raises questions about the degree to which these developments can be attributed to the electoral reform, and about whether they really signal a fundamental change in the nature of Italian party politics.
Thinking Ahead to Mixed-Member Proportional Representation
Authors: Denemark David
Published: March 2007

When New Zealand's voters in 1993 approved the transformation of the nation's electoral system in 1996 from first-past-the-post to mixed-member proportional representation they brought about fundamental changes to the tactics, organization and technologies used by parties in their electoral campaigns, since parties' appeals and the techniques for conveying them reflect the constraints of the electoral law within which they occur. New Zealand's political practitioners, during the current 3-year interregnum between the old and the new system, have begun to contemplate those changes and a variety of alternative avenues for maximizing electoral gain. This essay, drawing from interviews with 18 individuals at the centre of electoral politics in New Zealand, examines the implications of the switch to mixed-member proportional representation on marginal seats, targeting, issue constituencies, mass media appeals and other aspects of electoral campaigns.
Party Identification, Political Preferences and Material Conditions
Authors: Brynin Malcolm , Sanders David
Published: March 2007

The paper reports the results of analysing the first two waves of the British Household Panel Survey, conducted in 1991 and 1992. The connections between respondents' party identifications and voting choices are examined and related to a range of exogenous factors, including social location, ideology, policy preferences and changing material conditions. It is argued that identifications may be indistinguishable from voting choices and that, as a result, models that include party identification as an explanatory variable may be mis-specified.
Party Change and Party Membership Decline
Authors: Tan Alexander C.
Published: March 2007

What is the impact of declining party membership size on party organizations? Since existing theory is constructed with the expansion of party membership in mind, one might infer that the relationships observed during periods of growth can simply be reversed in periods of decline; i.e. declining party membership size will lead to declining complexity and decentralization of power. However, there is no a priori reason for us to expect this relationship to be true. The paper present a dynamic theory that explains why complexity and centralization of power remain unchanged despite declining membership. Using time-series data from the Party Change Project and the Party Organizations Project, the author provides systematic tests of the impact of declining party membership size. The empirical findings suggest that the impacts of declining party membership size may affect complexity and centralization of power for some but not all parties.
Compromise, Party Management and Fair Shares
Authors: Hanley David
Published: March 2007

The French UDF has failed in its attempt to become a party capable of dominating the right at the expense of the Gaullist RPR. It is best regarded as an underdeveloped party which has difficulty in acting as a unitary organization. This failure is due to the exceptional historical and institutional context of its birth but also to the preference of its leaders for their existing organizations. To preserve these they have elaborated a sophisticated and measurable system of compromise between themselves and with the RPR which guarantees significant rewards. This underdeveloped status will probably continue indefinitely. In a wider context the UDF's failure sheds light on the difficulty of creating genuinely new partisan organizations.
Subject Choice in Scottish Secondary School Physical Education: Higher Grade Physical Education
Authors: MacPhail Ann
Published: March 2007

This article investigates the notion of subject choice in physical education and the factors that encouraged or discouraged students from studying Higher Grade Physical Education (HGPE). The increase in the type and number of school subjects students are now able to choose from is addressed as is the pressure that market-based reforms of state schooling have put on teachers to attract students to their particular subjects. The affective and utilitarian reasons that Woods (1984) has reported as affecting subject choice are used to frame the issue of subject choice in physical education (PE) and the subsequent discussion of results. Results are reported from two groups of students (17 to 18 years old) from one Scottish secondary state-run school. One group had chosen to study HGPE while the other group had chosen not to. Affective factors such as liking or disliking the subject area and utilitarian factors such as the perceived usefulness of the subject in pursuing a particular career were found to be important reasons for choosing (or not) HGPE. Students’ expectations of examinable PE and teachers’ promotion of such an opportunity are identified as two issues that require further research.
The Evaluator's Apprentices
Authors: Murphy Dermot F.
Published: March 2007

To judge from the handbooks currently available, many are convinced of the value of training practitioners in various fields to use evaluation in their work. However, it takes time to learn to carry out evaluation, and the handbooks do not make clear what the process of learning to carry out evaluation will be like. Three cases of training teachers to carry out evaluation are examined for what they reveal on this topic, and are judged against criteria for usefulness to the practitioners, for the use made of the evaluations, and for the continued use of evaluation by the practitioners. Implications for policy on and practice in training are discussed.
Conceptual Challenges Confronting Cluster Evaluation
Authors: Worthen Blaine R. , Schmitz Constance C.
Published: March 2007

In this paper, the authors describe an approach to evaluating large-scale initiatives that span multiple project sites and respond to multiple evaluation needs at the project and program levels. Known as 'cluster evaluation' by those working with and for the W. K. Kellogg Foundation, a private philanthropic institution in the US, this approach encounters problems and offers solutions that are similar to other 'devolved' evaluation strategies for dispersed programs in the UK and several other European countries. This paper positions cluster evaluation in the literature and practice of evaluation by (I) describing cluster evaluation's key features, (2) relating it to core concepts in the evaluation field, (3) distinguishing it from other forms of multi-site evaluation, and (4) outlining a number of conceptual challenges that need to be resolved for the approach to achieve broader applicability and success.
The Problem of the Body in Deleuze and Guattari, Or, What Can a Body Do?
Authors: BUCHANAN IAN
Published: March 2007

You never reach the Body without Organs, you can't reach it, you are forever attaining it, it is a limit. People ask, So what is this BwO? - But you're already on it, scurrying like vermin, grouping like a blind person, or running like a lunatic: desert traveller and nomad of the steppes. On it we sleep, live our waking lives, fight - fight and are fought - seek our place, experience untold happiness and fabulous defeats; on it we penetrate and are penetrated; on it we love. (Deleuze and Guattari, 1987: 150)
Tattoos and Heroin: a Literary Approach
Authors: McCARRON KEVIN
Published: March 2007

This article suggests that a parallel exists between the practice of tattooing and the injection of heroin as both activities are represented in a body of literature here called `Junk Narratives'. These texts include William Burroughs' Junky, Irvine Welsh's Trainspotting, Jerry Stahl's Permanent Midnight and David Foster Wallace's Infinite Jest. In these books, act and meaning, as in life, are inseparable: tattoos can be interpreted, but that they are tattoos, that they have been indelibly inscribed into the flesh, is also stressed. In these books tattoos are represented as, in addition to whatever specific interpretive significance can be attached to them, visible markers of the hatred junkies feel for their own bodies. It will be suggested throughout the article that the body in these texts is always a source of shame and horror. Tattoos in these books do not decorate a body, rather they visibly emphasize its pathetic corporeality: no flesh, no image. The central dynamic of these texts is toward the transcendence of the body by the injection of heroin, a use of the needle which mimics the practice of tattooing and stresses the subservient, inessential nature of the body.
Joking a Part
Authors: SHAKESPEARE TOM
Published: March 2007

This article discusses the different contexts in which disabled people encounter and deploy humour, both as victims and as agents, and provides examples. It raises questions about identity and audience and interpretation and about embodiment itself.
Second-Generation Chinese in Thailand: A Study of Ethnic Identification
Authors: Gardiner Harry W. , Lematawekul Dalad
Published: March 2007

This study investigated the ethnic identification of second-generation Chinese in Thailand. One hundred and seventy-six adolescents 14-18 years of age (92 male, 84 female) were separated into (1) those who used Chinese family names and those who used Thai family names and (2) those who had attended Chinese schools and those who had not attended such schools. The following measures were employed: Behavioral Differential Scale, Assimilation-Orientation Inventory, California Fascism Scale, Conformity Scale, and the Gough-Sanford Rigidity Scale. It was hypothesized that (1) second-generation Chinese who used Chinese family names would have a higher degree of identification with Chinese than those who used Thai family names; (2) those who had attended Chinese schools would identify more closely with Chinese than those who had not attended such schools; and (3) scores on the F-scale, C-scale, and R-scale would be positively correlated with the degree of Chinese identification. Analysis of results indicates support for the first two hypotheses but not for the third. Possible areas of future research are suggested.
Ritual Abuse: Conceptions and Reality
Authors: Frude Neil
Published: March 2007

This paper questions the growing tendency to regard `ritual abuse' as an additional category of child maltreatment, alongside physical abuse, sexual abuse, emotional abuse and neglect. There are problems with the definition of all forms of abuse, and the adoption of different criteria for what constitutes a `case' has major effects on estimates of prevalence and effects and on treatment and prevention considerations. Ritual abuse raises a number of special conceptual difficulties and the process of `diagnosis' (recognizing a case) is beset with problems. Some cases which might be recognized as examples of ritual abuse reflect an abusive motive of the perpetrator, but others do not. Some actions which might be considered abusive reflect the practices of organized religious groups. Child-protection issues can be adequately addressed in all cases by applying the established categorization system and avoiding the addition of `ritual abuse' as a separate category.