The column, FROM OUR PERSPECTIVE, had instant appeal from a broad spectrum of the public. The readership grew rapidly, crossing gender, age, background, and geographical lines. This volume contains a compilation of the most successful and noted published columns, From Our Perspective, covering a period of five years. Most of the pieces follow a pubic policy theme, either foreign or domestic. Included, are several columns of local interest, with overarching conceptual implications which cut across cultural lines. It can be said that the brilliance of the authors' writing style is only eclipsed by the quality and comprehensiveness of the substance. When reading these selections, there is no need to wonder, "Where is the beef?" One should note, there is a generational age difference between the authors but therein lies the unique creative strength of the two columnists as a team. It is the bridging of this generational gap, with the individual strengths and talents of each author, which adds vibrancy, relevance, and dynamism to the Heichberger/Burr team and contributes greatly to this combined writing venture. Welcome to FIVE YEARS ON THE CUTTING EDGE. Robert L. Heichberger, Ph.D. M. Andrew Burr Through the past fifty-seven years, Dr. Robert L. Heichberger has been a teacher, public school and university administrator, college professor, and public policy consultant. M. Andrew Burr is an economist and advanced graduate student with honors in economic theory and practice. He is a self-made business entrepreneur. Currently, Dr. Heichberger and M. Andrew Burr are serving as leadership, public policy and organizational consultants. They specialize in developmental strategies in. strategic planning, conflict management, and organizational management. Dr. Heichberger and Mr. Burr are weekly newspaper columnists on domestic, world, and human affairs. Their Column has generated a considerable following and is popular among people of all ages and backgrounds.

This book is organized into eight parts: systemic reform; sociology and educational policy; national content standards and assessments; opportunity-to-learn standards; school to work; school, parent, and community support; professional development; safe, disciplined, and drug free schools; and the implications of federal legislation. The basic format of the sections provides a chapter on the major topic and response followed by an issue sheet. The issue sheets are responses to the chapters in this book originally presented at the 1995 conference Implementing Recent Federal Legislation and summarize issues discussed in the roundtable discussions that were conducted at tne conference in which all participants shared ideas and background information. These issue sheets were prepared for the Spivak Program of the American Sociological Association and were then compiled for this volume into one issue sheet per topic.

The book focuses on policy-making at the highest levels of the United States government. Chapter contributors examine political, military, and foreign policy processes from micro and macro perspectives in documenting how President Bush personally dominated U.S. national security policy and was the driving force behind the United Nations-backed coalition of nations against Saddam Hussein. The authors place the president's actions into political and historical perspective and examine the consequences of the Gulf War in both military and diplomatic terms. Among the subjects discussed by experts are the president's political and constitutional roles in war-making; the foreign policy implications and military issues in the war; the domestic implications; and the postwar environment and planning for peace.

This volume explores why Americans are among the least likely in the world to speak another language and how this U.S. foreign language deficit negatively impacts national and economic security, business and career prospects. Stein-Smith exposes how individuals are disadvantaged through their inability to effectively navigate the global workplace and multicultural communities, how their career options are limited by the foreign language deficit, and even how their ability to enjoy travel abroad and cultural pursuits is diminished. Through exploring the impact of the U.S. foreign language deficit, the author speaks to the stakeholders and partners in the campaign for foreign languages, offering guidance on what can and should be done to address it. She examines the next steps needed to develop specific career pathways that will meet the current and future needs of government, business, and industry, and empower foreign language learners through curriculum and career preparation.

This book advocates a holistic reform of the current monetary and financial system dealing with the issues of money creation, central banks, loans, stock markets, tax justice, pension security and the international monetary system - "Bretton Woods II". Its innovative approach presents several alternatives for each cornerstone, in addition to introducing a participatory democratic process whereby sovereign citizens can themselves determine the rules governing the new financial and monetary system. With "democratic money conventions" in each municipality, where the elements of this new money system are discussed and decided on in a participatory manner, and a federal money covenant which then elaborates a template for a referendum about the future "money constitution", a true "sovereign" could progressively convert money from a financial weapon into a democratic tool. The envisaged democratic monetary system, by providing equal opportunities for every member of society to participate in the development of the "new rules of the game", turns money progressively into a public good which increases the freedom for all. The new system furthermore drives the enhancement of constitutional and relational values such as human dignity, solidarity, justice, sustainability, or democracy. Money should serve life and should serve the common good. The "Bank for the Common Good" Project, which was initiated in Austria by the author Christian Felber, represents a practical example of his proposals.

In this timely book about the current state of research and practice of emergency management in China, the authors take as their basic premises that we now live in a risk society and that our collective ability to deal with disasters and their aftermath is more important than ever. Set within a multi-disciplinary framework that places risk, disaster and crisis, the three phases of emergency management, on an analytical continuum, and drawing on empirical data obtained through surveys, observations, and interviews, the study not only provides a thorough overview of recent progress in our theoretical understanding of the subject but also offers insights on how scientifically informed policies can improve the way emergency management is done in China.

Across the EU, populations are shrinking and ageing. An increasing burden is being placed on a smaller working population to generate the taxes required for pensions and care costs. Welfare states are weakening in many countries and across Europe, households are being increasingly expected to plan for their retirement and future care needs within this risky environment. At the same time, the proportion of people buying their own home in most countries has risen, so that some two-thirds of European households now own their homes. Housing equity now considerably exceeds total European GDP.

This book discusses questions like: to what extent might home ownership provide a potential cure for some of the consequences of ageing populations by realizing housing equity in order to meet the consumption needs of older people? What does this mean for patterns of inheritance and longer-term inequalities across Europe? And to what extent are governments banking on their citizens utilising their housing wealth now and in the future? "

This book addresses important questions and puzzles regarding the massification of higher education in Asia. It equips readers to critically evaluate and understand the consequences and challenges that massification entails, while also prompting policymakers and higher education administrators to tackle emerging issues related to the massification of higher education. Readers will gain a deeper, nuanced understanding of this trend, including its impacts and governance issues.

This book traces the events and developments that quickly discredited the Global War on Terror (GWOT), especially its failure to deal with the threat of global terrorism after the events of 11 September 2001. It examines the various strategies, including Global Counterinsurgency (GCOIN), which have been put forward as alternatives to the GWOT. While a consensus can be found on the key elements of a grand strategy, based on the mistakes and failures in the GWOT, it is far from clear if any GCOIN strategy could work. In fact, the US pursuit of a grand strategy is probably a chimera.

What is charity? How does it operate, who does it benefit and what should we expect it to do? This important book helps to tackle the most common misunderstandings and misconceptions of charitable activity in contemporary British society, especially insofar as these affect the thinking of politicians and policymakers. The authors present and discuss over a dozen studies, including public attitudes to giving, large datasets on the geography and funding patterns of third sector organisations, and interviews with a wide range of donors, charity leaders, fundraisers and philanthropy advisers. This data enables them to explore the logic of charity in terms of the distribution of resources across causes and communities in the UK, and the processes behind philanthropic decision-making, to reveal a picture of charitable activity at odds with widespread assumptions.

For a variety of reasons market-oriented improvement efforts are becoming increasingly visible on the educational reform landscape. In particular, privatization strategies, such as vouchers and contracting out, are receiving considerable attention at all levels of educational governance and administration. Our objective in this volume is to help the educational community develop a deeper understanding of the privatization movement in general and the major pathways to privatization in particular.

This volume closely examines the near-ubiquitous images of state security walls, domes, and other such defense enclosures flashing across movie screens since 2006, the year of the ratification of George W. Bush’s Secure Fence Act. This study shows that many of the films of this era enable us to imaginatively test the effects of these security mechanisms on citizens, immigrants, refugees, and other sovereign states, challenging our commitment to constructing them, maintaining them, staffing them, and subsidizing their enormous overheads. With case studies ranging from Atomic Blonde and Ready Player One to Black Panther and Elysium; Walls without Cinema serves as a timely counterpoint to the xenophobic rhetoric and abusive, carceral security conditions that characterize the Trump administration’s management of the Mexico-U.S. border situation.

This book discusses contemporary China's land use policy - the Link Policy - which calls for land consolidation and rural resettlement to achieve the goal of preserving farmland while also providing more space for urban development. Given the limited analyses and commentaries on the Link Policy in the literature, particularly in English-language articles, the book systematically presents and analyzes China's land use policy by assessing the impacts of the Link Policy on rural life and how effective the Link Policy is in achieving its objectives. It also examines how satisfied farmers are with the policy and what the contributing factors are. Drawing on a critical review of the literature, field observations and interviews with resettled farmers, the book offers insights into China's land use policy, and compares it with similar policy instruments in other countries. Presenting research findings that help readers gain a holistic understanding of the Link Policy in China and its implications, the book is a valuable resource for professionals in other developing countries that are facing similar challenges in terms of balancing urban development and farmland conservation.

White moves from a simple proposition maintaining that all individuals seek suitable surroundings to propose a provocative approach to social and political action. Rooting his position in modern life sciences and particularly in sociobiology and neurobiology, he establishes an "IMPish" model that is "interactional," "mentalist," and "populational." Interactional in that both heredity and environment are credited for due influence on individuals' traits; mentalist in that individuals' actions can be purposeful rather than simply determined; and populational in his insistence that the unique persona must not be slighted in the rush to fashion statistics. Applying his behavioral principles most notably relevant to self-selection and using examples derived from modern political action, White examines the importance of these fundamental orientations in the social and political orders. The work has implications for policy assessment and re-formulation. It constitutes a challenge to much of the widely accepted contemporary political theory and public policy approaches.

U.S. and German export control policies are compared, showing how these policies have responded to the changes in the international environment, including the end of the Cold War. The policy differences are explained through an analysis of differences in state interests and external constraints, state strategies, domestic support for export controls, and institutional constraints on policy change. The conclusion put forward is that despite a partial convergence of U.S. and German export control policies in the 1990s, diplomatic conflicts between the U.S. and European governments over export control issues will continue to erupt.

This book examines the politics of cancer, explains how our government is intrinsically tied to cancer research efforts, and documents how major political actors make cancer policy and are influenced in their decision making by political, social, scientific, and economic variables. Is whether we contract cancer—and whether we survive the disease, if we get it—largely just a result of good versus bad luck, or are these outcomes regarding cancer tied to the policies and actions of our federal government? Cancer-treating drug development and approval is overseen by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration, billions of dollars of federal money are devoted towards cancer research, and exposure of citizens to potentially cancer-causing environments or chemicals is regulated by the Environmental Protection Agency. Additionally, all of these factors can be affected by the political motivations of our most powerful politicians. The Politics of Cancer: Malignant Indifference analyzes the policy environment of cancer in America: the actors, the political institutions, the money, and the disease itself, identifying how haphazard U.S. government policy toward cancer research has been and how the president, Congress, government bureaucracies, and even the cancer industry have failed to meet timelines and make the expected discoveries. Whitman Cobb examines funding for the National Cancer Institute and the roles of the executive, Congress, policy entrepreneurs, and the bureaucracy as well as that of the state of cancer science. She argues that despite the so-called "war on cancer," no strategic, comprehensive government policy has been imposed—leading to an indecisive cancer policy that has significantly impeded cancer research. Written from a political science perspective, the book enables readers to gain insight into the realities of science policy and the ways in which the federal government is both the source of funding for much of cancer research and often deficient in setting comprehensive and consistent anti-cancer policy. Readers will also come to understand how Congress, the president, the bureaucracy, and the cancer industry all share responsibility for the current state of cancer policy confusion and consider whether pharmaceutical companies, for-profit cancer treatment hospitals, and interest groups like the American Cancer Society have a personal incentive to keep the fight alive.

This book explores recent social policy reforms and innovations in Chile. Focusing on four major reform episodes - health, pensions, childcare, and maternity leave - Silke Staab unveils the complex interplay of factors that have shaped the successes and failures of actors pursuing positive gender change in social policy. She shows that even in highly constrained settings positive gender change is possible, but that its scope and quality are bound to vary in response to sector-specific institutional constraints and opportunities.

This book offers an account of the social production of (ill) health. The author theorizes how health and ill-health can be produced via the interaction of individual-level discourses of contingent work and broader socio-political contexts. One of the most important changes affecting work and workers in (non)industrialized countries over the last two decades is the spread of contingent forms of work. Contingent employment is a mode of work organization characterized by transitory employment relationships, such as short- or fixed-term contracts, part-time, casual/on-call, self-employment, seasonal, and temporary help agency work. It emerged as a significant form of employment in the context of the global capitalism-- globalization of trade, investment, production, intensified economic competition, and associated corporate responses such as organizational restructuring, downsizing, and outsourcing. In Canada, contingent work accounts for 13% of total employment, up from 9.7% in 1998. In the United States, upwards of 30% of workers are engaged in some form of contingent work. Similar labor market shifts are apparent in European countries.The increasing prevalence of contingent work has prompted concerns about its health implications for people who do these types of work. Nonetheless, the relationship between contingent work and health is poorly understood because existing research findings are inconsistent or inconclusive. The research reported in this book casts light on these discrepant health-related findings by examining contingent work from the perspective of workers, through an exploration of how they experience and understand this form of work and how these experiences and understandings might affect health. The study revealed a strong discursive aspect to workers' experience, and these discourses are the focus of this book. A theoretical premise of this study is that experience is inseparable from discourse. In other words, the language in which workers articulate their experience both constitutes and reflects that experience--how they experience their work is embodied in their discursive practices for talking about it. Thus, their experience can be understood, at least in part, through an analysis of the discourses of which they avail themselves. Informed by a constructionist theoretical perspective, the book describes and discusses the different kinds of discourses workers use to portray their experience of contingent work and how these discourses are related to evaluations of contingent work as inferior or stigmatized work and to broader socio-political and economic contexts. Another assumption of this study is that discourses are inseparable from the broader socio-political contexts in which they are constructed; indeed they exist in a recursive relationship with these social contexts. The findings reveal how individual-level discourses about contingent work shape, and are shaped by, neoliberal rationalities. That is, how individuals talk about and experience their work is formed in important ways by broader societal conceptions of work and citizenship. In turn, their individual discourses constitute and reinforce these existing societal notions. With arguments premised on the theoretical assumption that discourse is a form of social action, the book argues that the discourses of contingent work constitute a form of management of stigmatised work and that they cast workers as different kinds of citizens. It concludes with a discussion of the health implications of these neoliberal-inspired discourses. This book will be an important addition to collections in public health and public policy.

This book focuses on the tensions between and conflict resolution processes concerning minority ethnic groups in Myanmar's rural areas and the State. It covers topics such as relations and communication between the central government, the Kokang Chinese community and the Kachin State; the impact of cyclone Nargis on remote settlements in the Ayeyarwady Delta; the impact of depletion of mangrove forests and Yangon's fuel needs on a Karen minority group; and the collapse of a community forestry project in a Pa-O village in Shan State. Written by young scholars from Myanmar, some of whom belong to minority groups, the book provides firsthand reporting and scholarship that, for the past sixty years, have not been available. Offering in-depth, unique insights into minority change issues in the interior and at the periphery of Myanmar, as seen from local perspectives, it offers a valuable resource for academics, students and researchers in the fields of sustainable development, social and political studies, and development communication in Asia.

Most of the scholarship on the Job Guarantee up to now has been in the context of industrialized nations such as the United States and Australia. Employment Guarantee Schemes directs attention to challenges and opportunities of enacting direct job creation policies in developing countries and BRICS, including China, Ghana, Argentina, and India. This book also investigates how the Job Guarantee might interface with other policy goals, such as environmental sustainability. Eschewing narrow individualistic and economistic approaches, these interdisciplinary, historical, and comparative studies delve deeper into how both unemployment and true full employment can affect community.

1 Physische und kulturelle Mobilitat-Die Fuhrungskraft als Europaer.- 2 Freizeitmobilitat im Erlebniszeitalter.- 3 Internationaler Tourismus als Wirtschaftsfaktor.- 4 Ich fahr' mal schnell zum Joggen Freizeitverkehr und Lokale Agenda 21.- 5 Freizeitverkehr - Ein Widerspruch in sich?.- 6 Handlungsbedarf im Freizeitverkehr aus der Sicht.- Freizeitmobilitat im Alltag.- Die Wiederentdeckung der Nahe im Stadt-Land-Verbund.- Ironbridge-Auf dem Weg zum sozial akzeptierten Freizeitverkehr*.- Ferntourismus-Risiko oder Chance fur eine nachhaltige Entwicklung?.- Virtuelles Reisen als kulturelle Erfahrung.- Virtuell um die Welt* Neue Formen der Vergnugungsreise im Cyberspace.- Wie nah, wie fern, wie virtuell? Neue Herausforderungen im Freizeitverkehr.- Die weite Ferne nebenan? Freizeitmobilitat und Tourismus im Spannungsfeld zwischen globalem Wachstum und Nachhaltigkeit. UEberlegungen fur ein neues Forschungs- und Politikfeld.- Physical and Cultural Mobility-The Executive as a European.- Leisure Time Travel-A Contradiction in Terms?.- Ironbridge-Towards Socially Acceptable Leisure Transport.- World Voyaging The New Modalities of Leisure Travel.- Die Autoren.- Die Experten.

Under which conditions do companies engage in the provision of collective goods and services if the state lacks the capacity to do so? To what extent do multinational firms engage in a 'race to the top' fostering rather than undermining regulation? The empirical analyses in the individual chapters look at business responses to some of South Africa's most pertinent governance challenges, HIV/AIDS and environmental pollution. The contributors look at firms in four industry sectors: the automotive industry, the mining industry, the food and beverage industry and the textile industry. These four sectors comprise a significant number of foreign as well as local companies, with or without brand name, which cater to different market segments within South Africa, differ in size and are exposed to varying pressure from NGOs and foreign competitors.

Startling changes are taking place in Western Europe; this study argues that the U.S. strategic response should be no less dramatic. Michael J. Collins describes a creation of a new type of political organization--a new way for nations to integrate themselves politically in Western Europe--and contends that this new model is dynamic enough to rival older historical paradigms. Western Europeans are making massive changes in their international arrangements, with each other and the outside world, to permit a natural evolution of national cultures along with the development of an intra-European culture. This changing political and economic situation in Europe has already affected the way the United States looks at the world diplomatically, and it may soon alter the general thrust of U.S. military strategy with regard to NATO. Europeans and Americans alike are questioning how much longer a united Europe can expect American troops to defend them against the Soviet Union, now that the Cold War era has ended. U.S. military strategy must change because the world is changing, and the increasing power of Western Europe is a major factor in the equation.

Collins concludes that the Common Market Countries can no longer be understood as a simple collection of nation-states joined in a cartel or economic alliance, calling for a change in U.S. foreign policy and strategy. Chapter 1 describes the developments in Western Europe since World War II. Chapters 2 and 3 discuss how the new Western European alliance interacts along both military and political lines. Chapter Four describes the character of Western Europe and the replacement of the nation-state concept with a new flexibility in dealing with each other and the surrender of sovereignty by the constituent states in limited but decisive areas. The final two chapters suggest possible policy and strategic responses by the United States. A chapter on strategic implications is bound to be controversial, particularly to traditional military strategists. These thought-provoking analyses and policy implementations will interest scholars and students of European History and Politics, Comparative Politics, United States Foreign Policy and Defense, as well as government policy makers and decision makers in international business.