bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The State and Its Localities
Authors: Hattery Michael R.
Published: December 2012

This article addresses some traditional arguments about local government reform in New York. Counties, cities, towns, and villages are the four types of general purpose governments authorized by state law. The significant overlap in the size distribution for the four major municipal classes is noted. Home rule or the recognition of a sphere of local self-governing authority has a long history in New York's state-local partnership. Within the context of continued home rule, a number of problem areas exist in the state-local partnership that requires attention. The public choice approach underlines the significance of flexibility and effectiveness in dealing with revenue alternatives, innovation, regional approaches, and management in reforming local government. New York has made significant investments in shared management capacity and technology transfer. New York State government is an inseparable and influential partner in the intergovernmental web of service provision.
The Public Fisc in New York State
Authors: Brecher Charles
Published: December 2012

This article elaborates on the understanding of New York's public fiscal position. The choice of counting rules has a dramatic impact on the understanding of the size of government and interpretation of its fiscal health. The decentralized character of New York's public fiscal position derives from impacts of policy practices in four key areas: social welfare, education, public employee pensions, and collective bargaining. Debt is both a useful and respected tool of public finance and a dangerous temptation for elected officials. New York is among the most heavily indebted states in the nation. With respect to Medicaid and public assistance, the City of New York and virtually all counties favor increased state financing. The area with the greatest potential for change is the heavy decentralization of public fiscal matters in New York.
New York State Education Policy and Politics
Authors: Buckley Jack , Armour-Garb Allison
Published: December 2012

This article introduces the organization of prekindergarten to twelfth grade (P-12) education in New York. It reviews the history and recent developments in the areas of accountability, school finance policy, teacher policy and the role of the unions, and policies regarding school choice and educational alternatives to traditional public schooling. State-level institutions and actors play the greatest role in shaping New York's education system. New York has a reputation for holding students to high academic standards. The mayor's evidence for closing the achievement gap in New York City seems to be drawn in part from an analysis of data from New York's statewide testing program. The education system in New York City changed markedly over the long period of litigation. It is arguable that the most important improvements that New York can make to its education systems are improvements in the ways in which it collects, analyzes, and uses information.
Mental Health Policy in New York State
Authors: Pulice Richard T.
Published: December 2012

This article examines mental health policy in New York State. Mental health policy in New York State is driven by several complicated, interrelated, historically rooted components. The primary functions of the New York State Office of Mental Health (OMH) are addressed. OMH made a major commitment to funding community residences. The development of residential alternatives remains a high priority for OMH. The emerging role of the consumer in mental health policy was a move to ensure the civil rights of those suffering from mental illness. Timothy's Law served to provide parity between health and mental health care. OMH's inclusion of consumers' views on what is necessary for the development of sound public policy for the care of persons who are recovering from a mental illness represents a major step in the right direction.
Welfare Policy in New York State
Authors: Johnson Cathy M. , Gais Thomas L.
Published: December 2012

This article examines the welfare policy in New York State. In a new period of tight public resources, New York confronted the fact that making work pay is costly and does not address the entire problem of poverty. The Welfare Reform Act of 1997 authorized two major cash assistance programs—Family Assistance and Safety Net Assistance. Despite the growing economic needs since the early 2000s, state cash assistance programs are not serving a large number of the individuals hit by recession. Food stamps are an important resource for poor and low-income families and a central element of a “make work pay” strategy. New York's experience in recent years shows limits to what even a wealthy, historically liberal, and highly urbanized state can do to support and reward work among low-income families.
The Environment in New York State
Authors: Gerrard Michael B. , Woods Claire H.
Published: December 2012

This article explores the environmental policy in New York State. Science is significant as a driver of environmental policy, but public opinion is even more important. The story of the New York State's water supply is dominated by the historic quest to supply water to New York City. The State Environmental Quality Review Act (SEQRA) has been the most fertile source of environmental litigation in New York State courts. New York's solid waste expenditures have soared as it has had to pay commercial landfills and incinerators to take waste that had previously been cheaply dumped at Fresh Kills. New York began the modern era as a vigorous and innovative leader in environmental protection measures, but since the early 1990s, the paralyzing partisanship in the legislature and inconsistent leadership in the governor's office have moved the state considerably further back in the national pack on many environmental issues.
Transportation Policy and Politics in New York State
Authors: Derrick Peter , Paaswell Robert , Petretta Danielle
Published: December 2012

This article presents a description on the transportation policy, politics and network in New York State. As the Metropolitan Transit Authority (MTA) and New York State Department of Transportation (NYSDOT) plans confirm, the primary challenge facing New York is the maintenance and improvement of the current transportation infrastructure. The key transportation issues facing New York State in 2010 are discussed. It is noted that the new roads, together with the parkways and expressways, continued the transformation of the structure of the state's metropolitan areas. By 1980, the emphasis of transportation policy and politics in New York State shifted from expansion to rehabilitation and upgrading of existing capital assets. Much of the money used for transportation maintenance and improvement has come from the issuance of long-term debt. The state significantly increased its investment in capital renewal and improvement projects for the road and transit systems since the 1980s.
The Politics of Energy in New York State
Authors: DeCotis Paul A. , Ferguson Sean
Published: December 2012

This article deals with energy policy in New York State. It first introduces New York's interest in developing energy resources, dating back to the early part of the twentieth century. The Power Authority provides financial discounts to businesses and institutions to decrease their electricity costs through the Recharge New York program. The environmental benefits of pursuing clean energy development were consistent with efforts required under the federal Clean Air Act to reduce criteria pollutant emissions. The relationship among the state's energy agencies and authorities is examined. New York succeeded in decreasing dependence on oil for electricity generation, but did not follow through on offering incentives for the conversion of oil plants to coal. The leadership and vision demonstrated by governors and legislative leaders as well as individuals in government and special interest groups has collectively managed to guide and direct energy policy for the past few decades.
The Person and the Corpse
Authors: Olson Eric
Published: December 2012

This chapter examines the relation between the person and the corpse in the context of death. It analyzes whether the alternative to life after death is annihilation and discusses several arguments related to the person–corpse connection. These include the person/body argument, the essentialism argument, the psychological-continuity argument, and the dead-animal argument. The chapter also explains the concepts of corpse survivalism and corpse eliminativism.
Death in Socrates, Plato, and Aristotle
Authors: Matthews Gareth B.
Published: December 2012

This chapter examines the views of death by ancient Greek philosophers including Aristotle, Socrates, and Plato. It suggests that Aristotle offered no cheerful optimism similar to Socrates in his “Apology” and did not provide any arguments about the immortality of the soul like Plato in “Phaedo.” What Aristotle attempted to do was to help us face immortality that can enhance our chances of living worthy lives.
When Death Is There, We Are Not
Authors: Mitsis Phillip
Published: December 2012

This chapter analyzes the view of Greek philosopher Epicurus on the relation between death and pleasure. It explains Epicurus's views about death and their place in his overall ethical theory, and describes how ancient Epicureans conceived of a pleasurable life within the wider context of their ethical thinking. The chapter also discusses some features of Epicurus's hedonism to evaluate the kind of support it offers for his arguments about death.
The Badness of Death and the Goodness of Life
Authors: Broome John
Published: December 2012

This chapter, which examines the goodness of life and the badness of death, also analyzes what people lose by dying and explains the principle of the constant-length additively separable theories. It suggests that when people die, what they lose is the rest of their life, and suggests that the badness of this loss or death can be measured by how good the life was.
The Symmetry Problem
Authors: Sorensen Roy A.
Published: December 2012

This chapter analyzes the symmetry problem related to the philosophy of death. It offers solutions to the trilemma that “your posthumous nonexistence is bad for you,” “your prevital nonexistence is not bad for you” and “there is no relevant difference between your posthumous nonexistence and your prevital nonexistence.” The chapter also discusses several symmetry arguments, which include the symmetricized no-subject argument, reversing the symmetry, and the Nagelian Renaissance. It furthermore suggests that we care more about “personal time” than about time itself.
Death, Value, and Desire
Authors: Belshaw Christopher
Published: December 2012

This chapter examines the connection between value and desire with regard to death. It argues that having categorical desires is a necessary condition for death to be bad for those who die, and that the degree to which death is bad bears a close relation to the number and strength of those desires. The chapter also analyzes the principles espoused by Jeff McMahan in his book “The Ethics of Killing: Problems at the Margins of Life.”.
Death and Rational Emotion
Authors: Draper Kai
Published: December 2012

This chapter, which examines the relation between rational emotion and death, considers the question of whether one's own death can merit self-interested emotional distress and investigates whether it is rational to fear death. It also analyzes the relevance of Lucretius's symmetry argument and argues that the crucial notion of an emotion being merited by its object is both puzzling and problematic.
The Wrongness of Killing and the Badness of Death
Authors: Hanser Matthew
Published: December 2012

This chapter examines the wrongness of killing and the badness of death in the context of Jeff McMahan's so-called Equal Wrongness (of Killing) Thesis, explaining that McMahan's formulation of the thesis contains an open-ended list of factors said to be irrelevant to the strength of the pro tanto objection to killing. The analysis reveals that The Equal Wrongness of Killing Thesis is meant to hold only for those cases where the respect-based pro tanto objection arises.
Capital Punishment
Authors: Tännsjö Torbjörn
Published: December 2012

This chapter examines the issue of death in relation to capital punishment in homicide cases. It argues that there are indeed good reasons to adopt a death-penalty system for homicide according to the most plausible version of retributive thinking. The chapter also explains that the death penalty can save the lives of potential victims, can spare some people from becoming murderers, and can save the lives of patients in vital need of organs. It furthermore compares the deterrent effect of the death penalty and long terms in prison.
Employment in Black Urban Labor Markets
Authors: Hellerstein Judith K. , Neumark David
Published: December 2012

This article examines the roles of place and race in determining black employment rates in urban areas. It begins by presenting some of the basic facts on labor market problems with respect to black urban employment. It then reviews evidence on the explanations for these facts, with an eye toward understanding the potential contributions of place-based policies to ameliorating these problems. New evidence establishes an important racial dimension to spatial mismatch—termed “racial mismatch”, which suggests that simply creating more jobs where blacks live, or moving blacks to where jobs are located, is unlikely to make a major contribution to increasing black employment. Some newer policies are considered that have attempted to blend place-based policies with targeting of incentives and other expenditures on the people residing in the targeted locations. There is some evidence that these policies may have been more effective, and one reason may be that they moved beyond a pure focus on location and in so doing took advantage of labor market networks. The article concludes by discussing the potential implications of this evidence for thinking about policies to do more to reduce these labor market problems for urban blacks, as well as for addressing similar problems faced by other minority groups—including immigrants—in both the United States and other countries.
Antipoverty Programs for Poor Children and Families
Authors: Currie Janet
Published: December 2012

This article reviews research on the effects of programs that attempt to remediate the effects of poverty on children. It suggests that cash-benefit programs are unlikely to ever do enough to remediate the effects of child poverty. Instead, we need programs targeted to the specific problems facing poor children. It discusses the lessons learned about programs that work to reduce the effects of poverty.
Poverty, Health, and Healthcare
Authors: Gaskin Darrell J. , Roberts Eric T.
Published: December 2012

This article discusses the relationship between poverty status and healthcare. The article is organized as follows. Section 2 reviews the empirical literature on the relationship between poverty and health. Section 3 discusses and gives an overview of Medicaid, the nation's public health insurance program for poor and disabled individuals. It then discusses five major issues that health economists have studied about the Medicaid program, including its impact on health outcomes for the poor and the extent to which it crowds out private insurance. Section 4 offers a conceptual framework to explain the relationships between poverty and health, and poverty and healthcare. Section 5 presents analyses of the association between poverty status and health and healthcare utilization by using the 2009 National Health Interview Survey and 2006 Medical Expenditure Survey. Section 6 concludes with a discussion of how public policy can address the problems created by the poverty-health and poverty-healthcare relationships.
Geographical Price Variation, Housing Assistance, and Poverty
Authors: Early Dirk W. , Olsen Edgar O.
Published: December 2012

This article examines the impact of correcting official poverty rates for geographical differences in the cost of living and housing. It calculates revised poverty thresholds by using improved housing-price indexes and by including in household resources the market value of housing subsidies. High housing costs increase poverty thresholds and the poverty rate, other things being equal. Subsidized housing increases household resources and reduces the poverty rate, other things being equal. Each of these factors working separately and together can impact poverty rates across regions, demographic groups, and selected cities. Adjusting thresholds and adding the market value of housing subsidies would reduce the aggregate poverty rate by 0.6 percentage points. Including the market value housing assistance would decrease the poverty rate for blacks and female-headed households by two percentage points. A voucher entitlement program is proposed that would cost no more than what is currently spent on housing assistance. While the impact of this program on the poverty rate is ambiguous theoretically, a positive by-product is that it would reach more of the poorest households.
Distributions in Motion
Authors: Ferreira Francisco H. G.
Published: December 2012

This article examines the relationships among growth, poverty, and inequality. If poverty is measured via an absolute poverty line, then the change in the poverty rate can be decomposed into two components: the first depends on the growth rate of average income and the second depends on changes in inequality. This fact places a restriction on what we can learn from macroeconomic data. Cross-country macroeconomic studies only reveal correlations between the three measures. A “meso-economic” approach uses data on subnational units for individual countries to examine how growth across sectors (primary, secondary, and tertiary) of the economy affects poverty. An insight of this approach is that not all growth is the same. In many countries, the response of poverty to growth differs across sectors. Further disaggregation permits consideration of full distributions of income or consumption expenditures in order to uncover more systematic sources of distributional change over time by examining the incidence of growth at different points in the income (or wealth) distribution. The analytical tool used in this method is the growth incidence curve (GIC). Changes in poverty, growth, and inequality are all alternative aggregations of the information in the GIC.
Poverty Transitions
Authors: Stevens Ann Huff
Published: December 2012

This article examines factors that determine transitions into and out of poverty using household data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics. Two key factors drive poverty transitions: changes in household structure and changes in labor market attachment at the individual or household level. For children, women, and men, a change in the household head is the single biggest factor in initiating or ending poverty spells. On average, poverty spells are longer for blacks, for those who are less educated, and for those who live in female-headed households. Poverty re-entry rates for these groups are also higher. The number of weeks worked annually by the household head is an important determinant of poverty exit, entry, and re-entry probabilities.
Obesity, Poverty, and the Ability to Pay for Calories
Authors: Averett Susan L.
Published: December 2012

This article examines the relationship between obesity and socioeconomic status (SES) for adults. It presents evidence indicating that women and white and Hispanic men with incomes below the poverty line are disproportionately more likely to be obese and that this is a particularly acute problem for black and Hispanic women. The article is organized as follows. Section 2 discusses measures of obesity used in the social science literature. Section 3 uses data from the Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System (BRFSS) to examine trends in obesity across time by SES, race and sex. Section 4 presents an economic framework for considering why the poor are more likely to be obese. Section 5 uses data from the 2005 cross-section of the BRFSS to explore these socioeconomic status differences in obesity by using the economic framework developed in Section 4 as a guide. Section 6 examines several other explanations for the rising obesity rates in the United States. Finally, Section 7 summarizes the findings and makes suggestions for future research.
Environmental Justice
Authors: Gray Wayne B. , Shadbegian Ronald J. , Wolverton Ann
Published: December 2012

This article examines whether poor and minority groups are “exposed to disproportionately higher levels of environmental hazards.” Data from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency and the U.S. Census Bureau is used to test whether the demographic characteristics of the community surrounding manufacturing plants located within 50 miles of four major cities (Los Angeles, Boston, Columbus, and Houston) influence the number of regulatory actions against the plants or the amount of harmful pollutants emitted from the plants. There is little evidence that regulatory activity is less intense in plants located near disadvantaged demographic groups. Plants located in minority neighborhoods, however, are inspected less often and face fewer enforcement actions, but these effects are nearly always insignificant, and plants located in lower-income areas seem to face more regulatory activity. Thus, there is little or no evidence for an environmental justice effect on the regulatory activity related to air pollution, as directed toward these plants.
Female Trust in Government and Gender Income Inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa
Authors: Elu Juliet U. , Price Gregory N.
Published: December 2012

This article examines the extent to which a regional government's ability to secure and enforce property rights for females in sub-Saharan Africa matters for a particular type of inequality—regional female income inequality. It considers the implications of a Hobbesian theory of government in which trust in its ability to secure and enforce property-rights matters for the distribution of female wealth and income relative to male wealth and income. With data from the Afrobarometer survey on households in 16 sub-Saharan African countries, the effects that trust in regional government has on the regional distribution of income for females relative to males are estimated. The study finds a positive and statistically significant relationship between a woman's trust in government and her position in the regional male distribution of income.
Crime, Incarceration, and Poverty
Authors: Raphael Steven
Published: December 2012

This article examines the relationships between poverty, low incomes, criminal participation, and the risk of incarceration. It begins with an empirical portrait of the incarcerated by using a nationally representative survey of U.S. prison inmates. It documents the demographic and human-capital characteristics of the incarcerated and how these characteristics vary between state and federal prison inmates. Next, it characterizes the relative risks of incarceration for various demographic subgroups within the United States. It presents a discussion of theoretical explanations linking poverty with higher rates of criminal offending, and consequently higher punishment levels. It considers the close connection between race and criminal offending in the United States. Finally, the relationship between human capital and participation in crime is discussed.
An Assessment of the Effectiveness of Antipoverty Programs in the United States
Authors: Ben-Shalom Yonatan , Moffitt Robert , Scholz John Karl
Published: December 2012

This article examines the impact of antipoverty programs on income poverty in the United States. Data from the Survey of Income and Program Participation shows that trends in per capita expenditures for the major means-tested and social insurance programs have shifted away from the very poor and unemployed toward the elderly and disabled. Since 1984, antipoverty policy has directed resources toward those just below the poverty line and the near poor (100 to 150 percent of the poverty line) at the expense of those at the very bottom of the income distribution. Means-tested programs, such as Supplemental Security Income, Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, and Supplemental Nutrition Assistance, have reduced overall poverty very modestly but their poverty-reducing impact on their targets has been more substantial. Social Security and Medicare have been the most effective social insurance programs for reducing poverty. The disincentive effects of antipoverty programs on the overall poverty-reducing impact of the social safety net are negligible. For the near poor, who are more likely to be attached to the labor market, the incentive effects of means-tested and social insurance programs are more significant.
Antipoverty Policy
Authors: Darity William A. , Lopez Mary , Ajilore Olugbenga , Wallace Leslie
Published: December 2012

This article examines how views on why people are poor can influence the design of antipoverty policy. It argues that, broadly speaking, theories of why people are poor fall into two categories. First, there are theories grounded in the view that the poor suffer from individual defects: inadequate human capital, self-defeating culture, and genetic inferiority. Second, there are theories grounded in the view that the poor are especially vulnerable to societal defects: unemployment, overpopulation, and obstacles to wealth accumulation. The persistence of high levels of poverty in the United States is the result of policies that follow from the perspective that the poor suffer from individual defects. The current path of antipoverty policy is likely to perpetuate poverty and the sentiment that the poor are deserving of their status.
What Makes Great Business Leaders?
Authors: Locke Edwin A. , Allison John A.
Published: December 2012

This chapter reviews the leaders of profit-making organizations, specifically considering a broad range of characteristics linked with being a successful chief executive officer (CEO) in a profit-making organization. These characteristics are divided into skills, traits, and values. The chapter then describes how John Allison made BB&T into one of the largest banking and insurance agency system(s) in America. One needs a variety of traits and skills in order to be a great CEO. These must be directed through daily thinking and effort to produce results. The ten primary values at BB&T—reality, reason, independent thinking, productivity, honesty, integrity, justice, pride, self-esteem, and teamwork/mutual supportiveness—are consistent with one another and are integrated. The full support of the team is important in the successful execution of a principled set of values. Furthermore, having the right values is the most significant foundation for business success and personal happiness.
Training and Developing Leaders: Theory and Research
Authors: Day David V.
Published: December 2012

This chapter summarizes the existing theory and research on leader training and development. The theoretical advances around the issues of leader identity and expertise development are emphasized. Then, programs of training and development research are outlined, highlighting the recent work on charting and the developmental trajectories of leaders. The team-leadership capacity can provide the resources needed for team resilience and adaptability, even under the most challenging circumstances. The results from the leader-training studies indicate that training is efficient in improving specific leadership-related skills. It seems that the role of leader identity construction is emerging as a central process in the effective development of leaders. Initial evidence reveals that individuals do not experience or benefit from leader development in the same ways. Examining issues of successful aging and their relationship to ongoing, lifelong learning and development could offer insights into how to keep older adults engaged and productive in later life.
Commentary: A Way Ahead
Authors: Rumsey Michael G.
Published: December 2012

This chapter evaluates the factors contributing to leader success, and also describes how attention to the issues can contribute to further progress on the question of what makes a good leader. There are multitude of attributes, including cognitive, personality, motivational and value attributes, and perhaps others as well, related to leadership effectiveness. By fostering positive leadership experiences, leader development can affect leader behavior by strengthening leader identity. Criterion issues arguably have received seriously deficient attention in leadership research. Leadership is a complex phenomenon, and there is no one way to assess leader effectiveness. Attributes such as intelligence and conscientiousness are in a sense abstractions that are difficult to relate directly to behavior. Training and development can focus on guiding initial tendencies in the desired direction, which opens up an entirely new set of questions.
Leading Teams: Past, Present, and Future Perspectives
Authors: Shuffler Marissa L. , Burke C. Shawn , Kramer William S. , Salas Eduardo
Published: December 2012

This chapter investigates the past, present, and future perspectives on leading teams. The three “traditional” approaches are addressed: transformational leadership, leader member exchange, and the functional approach. In addition, the chapter reports emerging areas of research in team leadership, including shared leadership, multiteam system leadership, and understanding team leadership in contexts such as multicultural, virtual, and extreme environments. The primary defining characteristic of team leadership is the emphasis at the collective level in terms of enhancing process and performance. Although transformational leadership is a prominent theory in the general leadership-research domain, its specific effect on team-level outcomes still requires much work. Shared leadership is an emerging area of interest in team leadership research that has much promise but many unanswered questions. Virtuality, culture, and extreme environments can influence how team leadership operates, and they are in need of additional research to fully understand their effects.
Organizational Leadership and Complexity Mechanisms
Authors: Marion Russ
Published: December 2012

This chapter, which evaluates the organizational leadership from a complexity-theory perspective, defines an interactive model of complexity mechanisms and the conditions under which complexity mechanisms thrive. It also describes the leadership of complex processes. Complexity theory, and complexity leadership theory, are based on the assumption that the collectivist actions of interactive agents and ideas are responsible for social and organizational outcomes. The contextual conditions that foster complexity are assessed. Aggregation mechanism, the building block of complex systems, temporally leads the information-processing mechanism. Heterogeneity is a significant requirement of complexity leadership. Leaders need to understand their organizations in terms of groups more than as entity processes. An organization can best foster change if leadership is an enabling function rather than heroic personalities. It is argued that leadership is the management of complexity mechanisms, and that is a rather dramatic departure from traditional leadership focus.
A Five-Dimensional Integrated Framework of Strategic Leadership: Application to the Emerging Markets and Implications for the Industrial Markets
Authors: Gupta Vipin
Published: December 2012

This chapter, which reports an approach to organizational leadership that ascribes to the leader a more active role in defining the strategic direction of the organization and guiding it in that direction, considers five dimensions: strategic planning, sequence programming, performing model, consequential profiling, and sustainable development. Strategic leaders strive to interpret the future and take charge, regardless of the uncertainty they may themselves face. Moreover, the implications for strategic leadership in the industrial markets are highlighted. The practitioner's perspective, public organization perspective, and scholarly strategy perspective are significant in the emerging markets. An approach for sustainable development is vital for strategic leadership, the peculiar challenges of which in the emerging markets are becoming relevant for efficient strategic leadership in the industrialized markets. Effective context-sensitive strategic leadership in planning, programming, and performing determines the profit consequence, and translates into sustainable development.
Commentary: When It Comes to Leadership, Context Matters
Authors: Klimoski Richard
Published: December 2012

This chapter explores the interpersonal situation, the task situation, the emotional situation, and the psychological situation, and also investigates the situations in an organizational context and in a leadership context. The interpersonal component of a situation is significant and will influence behavior. It is noted that, with a careful analysis of a particular situation, the ability to take on the perspective of people in a situation, and with a firm grasp of the literature, scientists or practitioners can make an informed prediction of what to expect. The normative pressures of a work unit are probably a good place, if one were looking, to find the reasons behind employee turnover. The leader should be considered as a “player,” fully capable of choosing or determining the business environment in which to work. Furthermore, it is observed that the context can influence leaders, who, in turn, affect the contexts of their followers.
Presidential Leadership: Performance Criteria and Their Predictors
Authors: Simonton Dean Keith
Published: December 2012

This chapter evaluates the very special case of presidential leadership—specifically, the president of the United States—and tries to determine the predictors of presidential leadership as explored by both subjective expert evaluations of presidential performance and objective researcher measurements of specific leader behaviors. Truly great presidents might even be willing to compromise their momentary popularity ratings to achieve significant long-term objectives. Years in office can serve as an objective leadership criterion and as a potential predictor of subjectively evaluated leadership. For better or worse, an ex-president has little personal ability to revise his reputation after he leaves office. Both subjective and objective criteria can be successfully predicted, even though the prediction of the former has proven far easier than the prediction of the latter.
Historiography on the Jews in the ‘Talmudic Period’ (70–640 ce)
Authors: Schwartz Seth
Published: December 2012

This article presents a narrative history of the Jews between the destruction of the Second Temple (70 ce) and the Arab conquest of Palestine (c.640 ce). After the destruction, Palestine was made into a standard Roman province in a way which at least curtailed the Jews' traditional autonomy. Nevertheless, the Jews rebelled again, with disastrous results. The Diaspora Revolt (115–17 ce) seems to have ended in the decimation or destruction of the Jewish settlements in Egypt, Libya, and several other places, while the Bar Kokhba Revolt (132–5) brought an end to the Jews' hopes for the restoration of Jerusalem and the Temple and, more tangibly, to Jewish settlement in the district of Judaea. The historiography of the past sixty years on the Jews in the ‘Talmud period’ can be divided into two very broad tendencies, which may be designated Israeli and non-Israeli.
The Narratives of Medieval Jewish History
Authors: Dan Joseph
Published: December 2012

It is surprising to realize that no historian of Judaism wrote a history of the Middle Ages in Jewish history. Between 1923 and 1926 a Jewish historian, Shlomo Bernfeld, wrote a three-volume historical work, consisting mainly of an anthology of sources, entitled Sefer ha-Demaot, ‘The Book of Tears’. These volumes present a history of the Middle Ages up to the ‘Age of Reason’, which the author hoped would be the beginning of a new age in which the fate of the Jews would be different, yet this hope, he states in the end of his work, seems to have been unfounded. This article examines such narratives: the way narratives shape the chronological boundaries of the Middle Ages; their consequences concerning the examination of the relationships between Jews and non-Jews in the medieval world; and the place of history of ideas in the descriptions of the Middle Ages.
Medieval Jewry in the World of Islam
Authors: Cohen Mark R.
Published: December 2012

Islam arose in the seventh century in Arabia through the preaching of the prophet Muhammad (d. 632). Nineteenth-century Jewish historians of the ‘Wissenschaft des Judentums’ school painted the experience of medieval Jewry in the world of Islam in idyllic, almost mythic terms and in stark contrast to the sorrowful, oppressive, persecutory history of Jews living in medieval Christendom. This rosy comparison between the ‘Golden Age’ under Islam and the era of persecution under Christendom, sketched against the background of the political agenda of nineteenth-century Central European Jewish intellectuals, was carried forth into the twentieth century, reinforced by the brutal Nazi persecution of the Jews culminating in the Holocaust. On the other hand, the Arab-Jewish dispute over Palestine generated a fresh political issue which impacted on the historiography of medieval Jewry in the world of Islam.
The Study of Hebrew Literature of the Middle Ages: Major Trends and Goals
Authors: Rosen Tova , Yassif Eli
Published: December 2012

This article aims at a critical examination of modern research on medieval Hebrew literature. Here, the definition of ‘medieval Hebrew literature’ excludes writing in Jewish languages other than Hebrew, and singles out literature from other types of non-literary Hebrew writing. The variety of literary types included in this survey ranges from liturgical and secular poetry to artistic storytelling and folk literature. Both early liturgical poetry (piyyut) and the medieval Hebrew story are rooted in the soil of the Talmudic period. The beginnings of medieval Hebrew storytelling were even more deeply connected to the narrative traditions of the Talmud. However, the constitutive moment of the birth of piyyut and narrative as distinct medieval genres had to do with their separation from the encyclopedic, all-embracing nature of the Talmud.
Sephardi and Middle Eastern Jewries since 1492
Authors: Stein Sarah Abrevaya
Published: December 2012

Despite significant achievements, certain challenges still confront the student of Sephardi and Middle Eastern Jewries. This article delineates four such challenges. First, the conceptual language and categories still need to be rethought: what is to be gained and lost by grouping Sephardi and Middle Eastern Jewries into one historical category? Second, while recent scholarship has challenged the ‘Sephardic Mystique’ and the ‘neo-lachrymose view of Jewish-Arab History’, there are other influential teleologies that warrant reconsideration, among them the teleologies of Westernization, modernization, and Zionism, all of which assume a Eurocentric perspective. Third, there remain numerous important gaps in the knowledge of Sephardi and Mizrahi culture and history, including social history, women's and gender history, comparative and inter-ethnic history. Fourth, there is still the task of using the scholarship on non-Ashkenazim to reconsider pre-existing assumptions about Jewish culture.
Western and Central European Jewry in the Modern Period: 1750–1933
Authors: Rechter David
Published: December 2012

For many years, historical writing about the Jewish experience in modern western and central Europe was guided by emancipation and assimilation. Historians focused either on the transformations of Jewish society that accompanied the achievement or on the response this engendered in society at large. While this is still for the most part true, there has been a substantial broadening and deepening of the definitions, contours, and content of these concepts. This article provides an overarching framework looking at the core issues of identity, the minority perspective, the still-regnant emancipation paradigm, the Jewish Question, and the east-west divide. Such issues pertain to the search for the modern. In other words, the many and various ways in which European Jews became modern is now a staple of historical discourse and can be said to characterize the historiography in this field.
The Holocaust
Authors: Friedländer Saul
Published: December 2012

Notwithstanding almost six decades of scholarship and a fast-swelling stream of publications, the historiography of the Holocaust still remains divided in its initial and traditional clusters: the history of the perpetrators, that of the bystanders, and that of the victims. Most of the historical publications about the Holocaust deal with the perpetrators (the Germans and their collaborators) and their anti-Jewish policies and measures in the Reich and throughout occupied Europe. The history of Nazi policies and measures often tends to be considered as equivalent to the history of the Holocaust as such. The second cluster of monographs examines the attitudes and initiatives of the bystanders, of local authorities in occupied countries, of the European populations, the churches, the neutral countries, and the Allies. The third historiographical cluster deals with the life and death of the victims.
Mysticism
Authors: Alexander Philip S.
Published: December 2012

Few fields, if any, in the study of Judaism have been dominated by one man as Gershom Scholem has dominated mysticism. For present purposes the most important item in Scholem's massive oeuvre is his Major Trends in Jewish Mysticism. This article is divided into two parts. First, following broadly Major Trends, it surveys briefly the detailed phases in the history of Jewish mysticism, noting specific areas where Scholem's views have been supplemented, corrected, or contested. Second, it considers overarching questions regarding the tradition as a whole — the limits and the nature of Jewish mysticism, methodology, and mysticism's place in Judaism — which Scholem's work provokes, in order to assess the extent to which Scholem's paradigm still holds, and to get some idea of where the subject may be going.
Jewish Philosophy and Theology
Authors: Mendes-Flohr Paul
Published: December 2012

The academic study of Jewish philosophy and theology is bedevilled by definitional and methodological ambiguities. There are scholars who hold that the very concept of Jewish philosophy is dubious. For if by its nature philosophy addresses universal truth-claims, then it cannot be modified by any delimiting national, ethnic, or religious attribute. The multivalent character of the concept of Jewish thought, designed to complement the rather circumscribed notion of Jewish philosophy, eventually led to the establishment at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem of two separate but parallel departments: the Department of Jewish Philosophy and Kabbalah, and the Department of the History of Jewish Thought. The former tended to limit its purview to medieval sources, emphasizing rigorous philological and text-critical methods. The latter had a pronounced preference for the methods of intellectual history and had a larger thematic scope.
Art, Architecture, and Archaeology
Authors: Levine Lee I.
Published: December 2012

This article addresses three related, though not identical, academic fields of study that crystallized only in the twentieth century. Beforehand, it had generally been assumed, whether for political, social, or religious reasons, that Jews eschewed art and architecture, either because they were visually uncreative, preferring the audile to the visual, or owing to the restrictions imposed on them by the Second Commandment. However, there emerged in the Post-Emancipation era an awareness that, in the course of their history, particularly in the later Middle Ages and modern times, Jews had produced an impressive array of artistic, mostly ceremonial, objects worthy of appreciation and display. This realization that a uniquely Jewish art and architecture existed in the past crystallized in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, finding expression, inter alia, in the establishment of Jewish museums throughout Europe, America, and Israel.
Music
Authors: Bohlman Philip V.
Published: December 2012

The growth of Jewish studies has made it possible to talk about Jewish music in entirely new and even radically different ways. Since the 1970s, the study of music has developed as one of the most productive areas of research in Jewish studies itself, and since the early 1990s discussions about Jewish music have assumed a position as one of the most challenging arenas for research and debate in musicology and ethnomusicology. For the purposes of this article, the subdisciplines and subfields of musical scholarship that have entered into productive dialogue with Jewish studies are included under the larger disciplinary umbrella of ‘Jewish music research’. The shift from Judaism and Jewish practice to music and musical practice has unfolded slowly during a period of about two centuries, but accelerated rapidly in the second half of the twentieth century, during which Jewish music research has virtually exploded.
Jewish Theatre
Authors: Belkin Ahuva , Kaynar Gad
Published: December 2012

This article describes the history of the Jewish theatre, Jewish theatre studies, the history of the Israeli theatre from 1889 to 2001, and Israeli theatre studies. Although Jews were known as the People of the Book, and despite the very rich literature attached to Judaism, the dramatic genre never became an integral part of Jewish civilization, and theatre as an institution was never a part of its cultural life. This may be in part because the Bible and the book of oral law — the Talmud and later rabbinical writings — contain vehement exhortations against the theatre. In Judaism, jesters are identified with idleness and heresy. Meanwhile, the extent of performative activity in Israel is impressive for a country with no theatrical tradition and a population of merely 4.5 million Jewish and Hebrew-speaking inhabitants. Between 1970 and 1990, Israel held first place in the world in theatre attendance per capita.
Jewish Folklore and Ethnography
Authors: Hasan-Rokem Galit
Published: December 2012

This article describes folklore as a unique form of cultural creativity and expression and discusses Jewish folklore through the ages and the scholarship of Jewish folklore. Folklore is a form of creativity and expression that exists in all the cultures we know. It is characterized by its qualities of collectivity and tradition, by its oral mode of expression, and usually by anonymity. Folklore is created and transmitted among individuals and groups through all the audio-visual interpersonal channels of communication. The discussion offers remarks on the field of folkloristics, to facilitate the application of accepted general terminology to the survey of Jewish folklore. The collective aspect of folklore is expressed both in the immediate interaction established between performer and audience, and in the concept of authority and ownership of the work, that is considered as belonging to the group and not an individual.