Ministers as strategic political leaders? : Strategic political steering after NPM reforms in Finland

This study explores strategic political steering after the New Public Management (NPM) reforms, with emphasis on the new role assigned to Government ministers in Finland. In the NPM model, politicians concentrate on broad, principal issues, while agencies have discretion within the limits set by politicians. In Finland, strategic steering was introduced with Management by Results (MBR), but the actual tools for strategic political steering have been the Government Programme, the Government Strategy Portfolio (GSP) and Frame Budgeting. This study addresses these tools as means of strategic steering conducted by the Cabinet and individual ministers within their respective ministries. The time frame of the study includes the two Lipponen Cabinets between 1995 and 2003. Interviews with fourteen ministers as well as with fourteen top officials were conducted. In addition, administrative reform documents and documents related to strategic steering tools were analysed. The empirical conclusions of the study can be summarised as follows: There were few signs of strategic political steering in the Lipponen Cabinets. Although the Government Programmes of both Cabinets introduced strategic thinking, the strategic guidelines set forth at the beginning of the Programme were not linked to the GSP or to Frame Budgeting. The GSP could be characterised as the collected strategic agendas of each ministry, while there was neither the will nor the courage among Cabinet members to prioritise the projects and to make selections. The Cabinet used Frame Budgeting mainly in the sense of spending limits, not in making strategic allocation decisions. As for the GSP at the departmental level, projects were suggested by top officials, and ministers only approved the suggested list. Frame Budgeting at the departmental level proved to be the most interesting strategic steering tool from ministers viewpoint: they actively participated in defining which issues would need extra financing. Because the chances for extra financing were minimal, ministers had an effect only on a marginal share of the budget. At the departmental level, the study shows that strategic plans were considered the domain of officials. As for strategies concerning specific substances, there was variation in the interest shown by the ministers. A few ministers emphasised the importance of strategic work and led strategy processes. In most cases, however, officials led the process while ministers offered comments on the drafts of strategy documents. The results of this study together with experiences reported in other countries and local politics show that political decision-makers have difficulty operating at the strategic level. The conclusion is that politicians do not have sufficient incentive to perform the strategic role implied by the NPM type of reforms. Overall, the empirical results of the study indicate the power of politics over management reforms.

The Vexing Case of Igor Shafarevich, a Russian Political Thinker

The Russian mathematician, academician and former dissident Igor Shafarevich (b. 1923) is commonly mentioned in Western scholarly studies on perestroika and post-perestroika-era Russian politics as one of the most notable anti-Semites and extreme nationalists of the country. This notoriety owes to Shafarevich’s old samizdat article Russophobia, which was published in 1988. The scandal surrounding Russophobia came to a head when the president of The National Academy of Sciences in the United States asked Shafarevich, its honorary member, to resign. Nothing like this had ever happened in the academy’s history. The present dissertation discusses Shafarevich’s political activities, his texts and ideas as well as their reception. Particular attention is given to Russophobia, whose detailed examination proves very clearly that its reputation as an anti-Semitic text is groundless. The reasons for Russophobia’s hasty but fierce condemnation were many, but only one was that when the Soviet system began to tumble, it was commonly assumed that a vigorous rise in anti-Semitism and extreme nationalism in the Soviet Union/Russia would be just a matter of time. Many observers were highly sensitised to detecting its signs and symptoms. The dissertation also shows that most of those to write the first criticisms of Russophobia and to liken Shafarevich to the ideologues of Nazi Germany were the same people he had criticised in Russophobia for their deterministic view of history and irrational manner of connecting things for the purpose of fanning the flames of distrust between Russia’s Jews and Russians. In retrospect, it is fairly evident that Shafarevich actually managed to effectively “neutralise” the message of many of those obsessed with the Jews among his Russian contemporaries and contributed to the fact that anti-Jewish sentiments have been a great deal less popular in post-communist Russia than so many had feared and expected. The thesis also thoroughly discusses Shafarevich’s other texts and activities before Russophobia’s appearance and after it. In the 1970s, Shafarevich was one of the best-known dissidents in the Soviet Union. He worked together with academician Andrei Sakharov in a dissidents’ unofficial human rights committee and co-operated closely with Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn before Solzhenitsyn’s exile. Then, during the chaotic years of perestroika, Shafarevich defended the basic rights of ordinary citizens and warned that the hype concerning democracy could become counterproductive if the most palpable result of the reforms was the disappearance of citizens’ basic security and elementary social justice. One of the conclusions of the thesis is that even if the world around Shafarevich has changed considerably, his views have remained essentially the same since the late 1960s and early 1970s.

Reconstituting identity and history in post-war Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina

This paper by Carl Grodach demonstrates the careful unravelling of complexity, diversity, contestation and contradictions involved in the reconstruction of symbolic urban spaces after violent conflict, and the allied processes of cultural reinterpretation, political reconfiguration and material revaluation which accompany it. The paper analyses the reconstruction and redevelopment of the 16th-century historic centre of Mostar, Bosnia-Herzegovina, following the Bosnian Wars of 1992–1995. Reconstruction efforts centre around Stari Most, the 16th-century Ottoman bridge destroyed by Bosnian Croat military in 1993. In Mostar, both international and local organizations are in the process of reinterpreting Bosnia’s legacy of Ottoman city spaces. This research and analysis illuminates how such spaces can be central to contemporary projects to redefine group identities and conceptions of place. It provides insight into the ways various groups are attempting to reshape outside perceptions of the city—and Bosnia’s ethnic conflict—to articulate a new definition of local identity and ethnic relations and to remake a stable tourist economy through Mostar’s urban spaces.

Creative writing: A practice-based account of designing and facilitating life-writing workshops for a group With severe mental illness

This chapter is based on the experience and findings of a pilot project developed to investigate the feasibility of providing a writing workshop for people participating in psychosocial rehabilitation programmes provided by a non-government agency in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. It was a qualitative study, making use of observational data, interviews with participants, and informal reports. We did not seek to test theoretical models concerning the link between creative writing and recovery through the pilot project, but rather to evaluate the immediate impact of a writing workshop conducted in the manner outlined in the preceding chapter by Philip Neilsen (chapter 7).

Factors influencing seasonal and monthly changes in the group size of chital or axis deer in southern India

Chital or axis deer (Axis axis) form fluid groups that change in size temporally and in relation to habitat. Predictions of hypotheses relating animal density, rainfall, habitat structure, and breeding seasonality, to changes in chital group size were assessed simultaneously using multiple regression models of monthly data collected over a 2 yr period in Guindy National Park, in southern India. Over 2,700 detections of chital groups were made during four seasons in three habitats (forest, scrubland and grassland). In scrubland and grassland, chital group size was positively related to animal density, which increased with rainfall. This suggests that in these habitats, chital density increases in relation to food availability, and group sizes increase due to higher encounter rate and fusion of groups. The density of chital in forest was inversely related to rainfall, but positively to the number of fruiting tree species and availability of fallen litter, their forage in this habitat. There was little change in mean group size in the forest, although chital density more than doubled during the dry season and summer. Dispersion of food items or the closed nature of the forest may preclude formation of larger groups. At low densities, group sizes in all three habitats were similar. Group sizes increased with chital density in scrubland and grassland, but more rapidly in the latter—leading to a positive relationship between openness and mean group size at higher densities. It is not clear, however, that this relationship is solely because of the influence of habitat structure. The rutting index (monthly percentage of adult males in hard antler) was positively related to mean group size in forest and scrubland, probably reflecting the increase in group size due to solitary males joining with females during the rut. The fission-fusion system of group formation in chital is thus interactively influenced by several factors. Aspects that need further study, such as interannual variability, are highlighted.

Role of Arg-401 of cytosolic serine hydroxymethyltransferase in subunit assembly and interaction with the substrate carboxy group.

In an attempt to identify the arginine residue involved in binding of the carboxylate group of serine to mammalian serine hydroxymethyltransferase, a highly conserved Arg-401 was mutated to Ala by site-directed mutagenesis. The mutant enzyme had a characteristic visible absorbance at 425 nm indicative of the presence of bound pyridoxal 5'-phosphate as an internal aldimine with a lysine residue. However, it had only 0.003% of the catalytic activity of the wild-type enzyme. It was also unable to perform reactions with glycine, beta-phenylserine or d-alanine, suggesting that the binding of these substrates to the mutant enzyme was affected. This was also evident from the interaction of amino-oxyacetic acid, which was very slow (8.4x10(-4) s-1 at 50 microM) for the R401A mutant enzyme compared with the wild-type enzyme (44.6 s-1 at 50 microM). In contrast, methoxyamine (which lacks the carboxy group) reacted with the mutant enzyme (1.72 s-1 at 250 microM) more rapidly than the wild-type enzyme (0.2 s-1 at 250 microM). Further, both wild-type and the mutant enzymes were capable of forming unique quinonoid intermediates absorbing at 440 and 464 nm on interaction with thiosemicarbazide, which also does not have a carboxy group. These results implicate Arg-401 in the binding of the substrate carboxy group. In addition, gel-filtration profiles of the apoenzyme and the reconstituted holoenzyme of R401A and the wild-type enzyme showed that the mutant enzyme remained in a tetrameric form even when the cofactor had been removed. However, the wild-type enzyme underwent partial dissociation to a dimer, suggesting that the oligomeric structure was rendered more stable by the mutation of Arg-401. The increased stability of the mutant enzyme was also reflected in the higher apparent melting temperature (Tm) (61 degrees C) than that of the wild-type enzyme (56 degrees C). The addition of serine or serinamide did not change the apparent Tm of R401A mutant enzyme. These results suggest that the mutant enzyme might be in a permanently 'open' form and the increased apparent Tm could be due to enhanced subunit interactions.

Promotion of fibronectin independent invasion by C5a peptidase into epithelial cells in group A Streptococcus

Background & objectives: Group A Streptococcus, causative agent of several clinical manifestations codes for multiple protein invasins which help the bacterium to enter non-phagocytic cells. C5a peptidase (SCPA) is a surface protein conserved among different serotypes of M1 strain. The present study was taken up to study SCPA promoted fibronectin independent entry of GAS into epithelial cells. Methods: An isogenic 90226 emm1DeltaAB (M1(-)) mutant was constructed, with thermosensitive pGhost vector. This isogenic M1(-) mutant expressed SCPA on the surface as determined by Western blotting and immunofluorescence. Results: On preincubation with anti-SCPA serum, the isogenic M1(-) strain exhibited 54 per cent decreased invasion as compared to the bacteria incubated with control serum. Also, purified recombinant SCPA proteins blocked internalization of M1(-) streptococci into HEp-2 cells. The M1(-) strain invaded at the same efficiency in the presence or absence of fibronectin. Interpretation & conclusion: These results suggested that SCPA acted as a potential invasin of group A streptococcus and promoted invasion independent of fibronectin.

Lobbying by ethnic groups and aid allocation

We develop a political-economic model of foreign aid allocation. Each ethnic group in the donor country lobbies the government to allocate more aid to its country of origin, and the government accepts political contributions from lobby groups. Initial per-capita income of the recipients and those of the ethnic groups are shown to be important determinants of the solution of the political equilibrium. We also examine the effects of changes in the degree of corruption, aid fatigue, and ethnic composition, in the donor country on the allocation of aid.

The BglG group of antiterminators: a growing family of bacterial regulators

The product of the bglG gene of Escherichia coli was among the first bacterial antiterminators to be identified and characterized. Since the elucidation ten years ago of its role in the regulation of the bgl operon of E. coli,a large number of homologies have been discovered in both Gram-positive and Gram-negative bacteria. Often the homologues of BglG in other organisms are also involved in regulating β-glucoside utilization. Surprisingly, in many cases, they mediate antitermination to regulate a variety of other catabolic functions. Because of the high degree of conservation of the cis-acting regulatory elements, antiterminators from one organism can function in another. Generally the antiterminator protein itself is negatively regulated by phosphorylation by a component of the phosphotransferase system. This family of proteins thus represents a highly evolved regulatory system that is conserved across evolutionarily distant genuses.

The Noether-Lefschetz theorem for the divisor class group

Let X be a normal projective threefold over a field of characteristic zero and vertical bar L vertical bar be a base-point free, ample linear system on X. Under suitable hypotheses on (X, vertical bar L vertical bar), we prove that for a very general member Y is an element of vertical bar L vertical bar, the restriction map on divisor class groups Cl(X) -> Cl(Y) is an isomorphism. In particular, we are able to recover the classical Noether-Lefschetz theorem, that a very general hypersurface X subset of P-C(3) of degree >= 4 has Pic(X) congruent to Z.

Image, Political

Political communication scholars, journalists, and political actors alike, argue that the political process, and deliberative democracy (democracy founded on informed discussion inclusive of citizens), have lost their rational authenticity in that image and media spectacle have become more central to public opinion formation and electoral outcomes than policy. This entry examines the validity of that perception, and the extent to which “image” has emerged as a more significant factor in the political process. And if image is so important in political culture, what the impacts might be on the functioning of democratic processes.

Phylogeny of a taxonomically difficult group and evolution of host location mechanism

The parasitic wasps are one of the largest insect groups and their life histories are remarkably variable. Common to all parasitic wasps is that they kill their hosts, which are usually beetles, butterflies and sometimes spiders. Hosts are often at a larval or pupal stage and live in concealed conditions, such as in plant tissue. Parasitic wasps have two main ways of finding their host. 1) They can detect chemical compounds emitted by damaged plant material or released by larvae living in plant tissue, and 2) detect the larvae by sound vibrations. Even though pupae are immobile and silent, and therefore do not cause vibration, parasitoids have, however, adapted to find passive developmental stages by producing vibration themselves by knocking the substrate with their antennae, and then detecting the echoes with their legs. This echolocation allows a parasitoid to locate its potential hosts that are deeply buried in wood. This study focuses on the relationships of the subfamily Cryptinae (Hymenoptera: Ichneumonidae) and related taxa, and the evolution of host location mechanism. There are no earlier studies of the phylogeny of the Cryptinae, and the position of related taxa are unclear. According to the earlier classification, which is entirely intuitional, the Cryptinae is divided into three tribes: Cryptini, Hemigasterini and Phygadeuontini. Further, these tribes are subdiveded into numerous subtribes. This work, based on molecular characters, shows that the cryptine tribes Cryptini, Phygadeuon¬tini and Hemigasterini come out largely as monophyletic groups, thus agreeing with the earlier classification. The earlier subtribal classification had no support. In addition, it is shown that modified antennal structures are associated with host usage of wood-boring coleopteran hosts. The cryptines have a clear modification series on their antennal tips from a simply tip to a hammer-like structure. The species with strongly modified antennae belong mostly to the tribe Cryptini and they utilise wood-boring beetles as hosts. Also, field observations on insect behaviour support this result.

Ligand Specificity of Group I Biotin Protein Ligase of Mycobacterium tuberculosis

Background: Fatty acids are indispensable constituents of mycolic acids that impart toughness & permeability barrier to the cell envelope of M. tuberculosis. Biotin is an essential co-factor for acetyl-CoA carboxylase (ACC) the enzyme involved in the synthesis of malonyl-CoA, a committed precursor, needed for fatty acid synthesis. Biotin carboxyl carrier protein (BCCP) provides the co-factor for catalytic activity of ACC. Methodology/Principal Findings: BPL/BirA (Biotin Protein Ligase), and its substrate, biotin carboxyl carrier protein (BCCP) of Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mt) were cloned and expressed in E. coli BL21. In contrast to EcBirA and PhBPL, the similar to 29.5 kDa MtBPL exists as a monomer in native, biotin and bio-5'AMP liganded forms. This was confirmed by molecular weigt profiling by gel filtration on Superdex S-200 and Dynamic Light Scattering (DLS). Computational docking of biotin and bio-5'AMP to MtBPL show that adenylation alters the contact residues for biotin. MtBPL forms 11 H-bonds with biotin, relative to 35 with bio-5'AMP. Docking simulations also suggest that bio-5'AMP hydrogen bonds to the conserved `GRGRRG' sequence but not biotin. The enzyme catalyzed transfer of biotin to BCCP was confirmed by incorporation of radioactive biotin and by Avidin blot. The K-m for BCCP was similar to 5.2 mu M and similar to 420 nM for biotin. MtBPL has low affinity (K-b = 1.06 x 10(-6) M) for biotin relative to EcBirA but their K-m are almost comparable suggesting that while the major function of MtBPL is biotinylation of BCCP, tight binding of biotin/bio-5'AMP by EcBirA is channeled for its repressor activity. Conclusions/Significance: These studies thus open up avenues for understanding the unique features of MtBPL and the role it plays in biotin utilization in M. tuberculosis.

Room temperature metathesis of aryl isocyanates and aromatic aldehydes catalyzed by group(IV) metal alkoxides: An experimental and computational study

Aromatic aldehydes and aryl isocyanates do not react at room temperature. However, we have shown for the first time that in the presence of catalytic amounts of group(IV) n-butoxide, they undergo metathesis at room temperature to produce imines with the extrusion of carbon dioxide. The mechanism of action has been investigated by a study of stoichiometric reactions. The insertion of aryl isocyanates into the metal n-butoxide occurs very rapidly. Reaction of the insertion product with the aldehyde is responsible for the metathesis. Among the n-butoxides of group(IV) metals, Ti((OBu)-Bu-n)(4) (8aTi) was found to be more efficient than Zr((OBu)-Bu-n)(4) (8aZr) and Hf((OBu)-Bu-n)(4) (8aHf) in carrying out metathesis. The surprisingly large difference in the metathetic activity of these alkoxides has been probed computationally using model complexes Ti(OMe)(4) (8bTi), Zr(OMe)(4) (8bZr) and Hf(OMe)(4) (8bHf) at the B3LYP/LANL2DZ level of theory. These studies indicate that the insertion product formed by Zr and Hf are extremely stable compared to that formed by Ti. This makes subsequent reaction of Zr and Hf complexes unfavorable.