The policy cycle and vernacular globalization: a case study of the creation of Vietnam National University - Hochiminh City

This article examines the policy cycle and vernacular globalization in the context of higher education reform in Vietnam. Through an analysis of the development of the Vietnam National University - Hochiminh City as part of the post-1986 reconstruction of Vietnamese higher education, the article considers the complex interrelationship between globalized policy discourses, national interests and history in Vietnam, and the specific politics of policy implementation within one institution. Vietnam National University - Hochiminh City was created through an amalgamation of a number of smaller universities, and against the backdrop of social and economic restructuring aimed at promoting industrialization and a market orientation within socialist governance. The article reveals the dynamic tension between these local and global influences on higher education policy and practice, and more specifically, the dilemmas associated with top-down policy implementation when a new organization consists of older organizations with powerful provenance and reputations. In so doing the article demonstrates the necessity to globalize policy theory.

Strategic trade policy under uncertainty: Sufficient conditions for the optimality of ad valorem, specific and quadratic trade taxes

In most previous work on strategic trade policy the form of government intervention has been prescribed in advance. In this paper, we apply a solution concept discussed by Klemperer and Meyer for games in which the strategy space consists of the class of all (non state-contingent) price quantity schedules. We examine a series of specific assumptions on demand and supply conditions and derive the associated equilibrium trade policies. We derive welfare implications for all cases examined.

Computer technology - A political player in social policy processes

The absence of considerations of technology in policy studies reinforces the popular notion that technology is a neutral tool, Through an analysis of the role played by computers in the policy processes of Australia's Department of Social Security, this paper argues that computers are political players in policy processes, Findings indicate that computers make aspects of the social domain knowable and therefore governable, The use of computers makes previously infeasible policies possible, Computers also operate as bureaucrats and as agents of client surveillance. Increased policy change, reduced discretion and increasingly targeted and complex policies can be attributed to the use of computer technology, If policy processes are to be adequately understood and analysed, then the role of technology in those processes must be considered.

Supporting contexts in program refinement

A program can be refined either by transforming the whole program or by refining one of its components. The refinement of a component is, for the main part, independent of the remainder of the program. However, refinement of a component can depend on the context of the component for information about the variables that are in scope and what their types are. The refinement can also take advantage of additional information, such as any precondition the component can assume. The aim of this paper is to introduce a technique, which we call program window inference, to handle such contextual information during derivations in the refinement calculus. The idea is borrowed from a technique, called window inference, for handling context in theorem proving. Window inference is the primary proof paradigm of the Ergo proof editor. This tool has been extended to mechanize refinement using program window inference. (C) 1997 Elsevier Science B.V.