Options for health financing reform are often portrayed as a choice between general taxation (known as the Beveridge model) and social health insurance (known as the Bismarck model). Ten years of health financing reform in Kyrgyzstan, since the introduction of its compulsory health insurance fund in 1997, provide an excellent example of why it is wrong to reduce health financing policy to a choice between the Beveridge and Bismarck models. Rather than fragment the system according to the insurance status of the population, as many other low- and middle-income countries have done, the Kyrgyz reforms were guided by the objective of having a single system for the entire population. Key features include the role and gradual development of the compulsory health insurance fund as the single purchaser of health-care services for the entire population using output-based payment methods, the complete restructuring of pooling arrangements from the former decentralized budgetary structure to a single national pool, and the establishment of an explicit benefit package. Central to the process was the transformation of the role of general budget revenues - the main source of public funding for health - from directly subsidizing the supply of services to subsidizing the purchase of services on behalf of the entire population by redirecting them into the health insurance fund. Through their approach to health financing policy, and pooling in particular, the Kyrgyz health reformers demonstrated that different sources of funds can be used in an explicitly complementary manner to enable the creation of a unified, universal system.
The fast process of urbanization in Brazil in recent decades has generated great discussions on urban reform, public policy and urban management. With 1988 Federal Constitution, these topics are in the spotlight, articulated by the city council as an equal federal entity and common jurisdiction in matters of urban policy. In this area, the question of housing policy becomes central and strategic for the city, as one of the main problems is the provision of adequate housing to the majority of the population. The Statute of the Cities (Estatuto das Cidades) in 2001, confirms this view. According to the National Housing Plan (Plano Nacional de Habitao) (Ministrio das Cidades, 2004), with the decentralization process, the management of social programs, among them the housing, either by themselves or by joining a federal program becomes responsibility of the state and city councils. It is in this context that new sources of financing are created sponsored by the federal government through Caixa Econmica Federal, benefiting both the state and local governments and also a share of the private sector. Therefore, this article will outline the path of housing policies in Brazil, through a survey of policies, plans and federal government programs, observing the neglect given to the planning of cities and the problems caused by unplanned urban expansion.
This journal has recently adjusted its requirements for research papers, referring to the World Medical Associationâs Helsinki Declaration on Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving Human Subjects.1,2 Many advances in medicine have been attained by research involving patients. Individual patientsâ best interests have sometimes been sacrificed for the benefit of future patientsâ health. Most countries have established legal regulations and procedures, based upon this declaration, along with institutional review boards (IRBs). Such universal requirements do not exist for education research or social science research in general. For this reason, many countries, but not all, have included medical education research in their ethical review procedures, which are designed for medical research. Human subjects here are usually students or residents, but teachers and patients can also be involved. This journal will now require proof of ethical research conduct before publication. This step can be considered to represent an advance in research standards and may be taken up by other journals in the field. Like patients, learners are potentially vulnerable subjects of research, specifically if the investigators simultaneously exercise power as teachers or examiners. The Netherlands is among those countries that do not require ethical approval for medical education research. Dutch IRBs typically respond to submitted requests for review of education projects with statements like âexempt from ethical reviewâ because, firstly, patients are not involved and, secondly, no medical interventions are applied. So far, journals have accepted and published such statements without further question. Researchers often find this a comfortable stance as it avoids the bureaucratic burden of approval that has seriously hampered research elsewhere.3â5 For instance, I saw the recent 3-month stay in the UK of one of my research staff end without the planned interview and questionnaire project carried out, only because of a late and negative response from the IRB. Not that the project was unethical; the application simply lacked the requisite paperwork, despite the fact that extensive written and oral information was supplied. The question here is not whether ethical review in medical education research is justified â of course it is â but whether existing IRB procedures are most suitable for medical education research.6 Dutch researchers find âexempt from ethical approvalâ a comfortable stance as it avoids bureaucratic burden Given the requirements journals will put upon submissions, in terms of providing other proof of ethical conduct of medical education research if institutional review is not possible,1,7 independent ethical review will also become important in those countries without relevant procedures, such as the Netherlands. In a recent survey about experiences with IRBs among clinical course directors in the USA, it was suggested that national guidelines for ethics review would enhance transparency and stimulate inter-institutional research collaboration.8 When suggesting that the Netherlands Association for Medical Education take the lead in devising such guidelines, I began to wonder what ethical review of education research should look like, vis Ă vis the Helsinki Declaration. I concluded that education differs from health care in a number of aspects that might affect how ethics review should take place. Patients usually need care because of ill health. They are often very dependent on doctors and hospitals for their essential wellbeing. Students are also dependent as they must abide by the regulations of an institution and its teachers to pass necessary examinations, but they themselves are responsible for whether or not they enrol in particular courses and for whether they attain their self-chosen goals in life. They are, by far, not as dependent as patients. Next, students determine to a large extent the outcome of educational interventions, much more so than patients can determine the outcome of medical interventions. Personal study effort is a major determinant of academic success; medical treatment successes are determined to a far greater extent by health care providers. Students determine the outcome of educational interventions far more than patients can determine the outcome of medical interventions Medical research may involve risks of harm to a patientâs health, which, in some cases, may be serious and irreversible. This type of research requires the utmost caution. Harm in education research may be defined as the risk that less than optimal education is provided, resulting in less acquiral of knowledge and skills, and harm to academic progress. Harm to progress can be serious. I have witnessed a financial claim by a medical student who argued that an examiner had caused loss of income as a result of failing this student on tests and thus extending the required course length. The claim was not sustained and in this case no research was involved, but an educational experiment could be envisioned to carry a risk for such potential harm. In other cases, harm may imply psychological stress and discomfort. Still, this type of harm does not compare with potential physical harm resulting from medical experiments. Potential harm resulting from educational experiments does not compare with potential harm from medical experiments Furthermore, there is no clear distinction between administration and research purposes in data collection on student progress and programme quality. Schools collect data on student progress and the quality of educational processes as part of their core business. This type of data collecting is usually not subject to ethical approval, as registering test results and, to a lesser extent, registering studentsâ opinions of education are unavoidable. Enrolment in education must represent the subjectâs tacit approval that his or her personal data are registered. These data serve both students and educational quality. Reports based on aggregated data of student progress and educational quality can be considered to serve a necessary research aim; indeed, not using these data to improve education could be considered unethical. The necessity of gaining ethical approval or informed consent to use these data as part of research results for publication in a journal is questionable if harm to students is clearly not at stake. Researchers now sometimes label investigations as âevaluationâ in order to avoid the burden and delay incurred by a review procedure, but this does not seem a proper way to go. Rather, clear specifications of the types of data collection and uses that require ethical approval should guide researchers in their ethical conduct. Education is a process that cannot easily be stopped. Programmes must be offered to enrolled students and schools should continue to aim to deliver high-quality curricula. Many medical schools evaluate and try to improve their curricula, either gradually or by instigating large innovations all at once. Viewed from a research perspective, an educational method can be considered an intervention, just as a medical treatment is an intervention. At variance with medicine, medical education is only at a very early stage in the development of evidence-based practice. Education research â still â offers only little evidence to support a claim that one method is superior to another, despite the growing medical education literature.9,10 One reason for this is that students themselves determine to a large extent the effect of education.11 The counterside of the coin is that institutions can change their educational methods if they feel the need to do this, with limited risk for damage to the curriculum or harm to students. Letâs now compare curriculum development with education research. Consider a complete overhaul of the medical curriculum for a new student cohort, say, from a traditional to a problem-based learning (PBL) format. Does this âexperimentâ require ethical approval? Not likely. Not even when national examination results are compared with those of the previous cohort and published in support of the new development. This holds true if the results of students from two medical schools with such different curricula are compared. Next, consider a complete overhaul of the second year of a curriculum for only part of a student cohort. Students could be randomly assigned to either a PBL or a traditional programme, and their scores on national examinations could be compared. Would this âexperimentâ require ethical approval? Most likely it would in most countries. But what is the difference in terms of potential harm to students? Probably none. In general, schools and curricula differ in their educational methods and it is often hard to claim that students are better off with one school or method than another. Twenty years of external review of the eight medical schools in the Netherlands have not raised any serious conclusions that one school is clearly superior to another. Of course, checklists were used and the scores calculated showed differences on points, but no sound basis has ever emerged in support of real qualitative differences in outcome. This example shows how close educational development is to education research. The difference may only be that one instance is considered research, as it has a systematic project description, labels a new method as an intervention, formulates outcome measures and analyses data. What actually happens with students â the basis for ethical review â may be the same in the other instance. This PBL example may not sound very experimental because the format of PBL has been researched extensively, but such research has usually happened only after PBL has been introduced into a curriculum, not before. In other words, is it logical to require ethical approval when methods are compared within cohorts, but not to do so with scientifically less sound approaches, such as historical or inter-institutional comparisons? Providing a completely new educational method to a new cohort without any comparison does not require ethical approval, but it is day-to-day practice in many schools. Why require ethical approval when methods are compared within cohorts, but not historically or inter-institutionally? One important element of ethical research conduct concerns the obligation to provide subjects with the option not to be involved in the investigation, so that potential candidates are asked to give their informed consent to participation and provided with options for withdrawal. In education research in a field setting, participation in research often equals participation in education. For example, introducing a new knowledge test â in fact, most knowledge tests in educational settings can be considered as ânewâ instruments if test items have not been used before â cannot include an option for non-participation when a pass/fail decision must be based on such a test. Informed consent can be sought, but often there is no alternative available. In conclusion, education research should be carried out ethically and the journals that publish such studies have a responsibility to stimulate ethical research conduct. This includes the proper protection of the interests of any human subjects. However, the criteria with which we may evaluate the ethical conduct of education research are not necessarily equivalent to those required in medical research involving patients. Ethical research requires the maintenance of a reasonable balance, between yin and yang, so to speak, or between the risks of harm to subjects and the expected scientific yield of the investigation. This balance may well differ between medical and education research.12 I believe it would help to formulate specific criteria with which we can evaluate the ethics of medical education research. Pugsley and Dornan cite a helpful list of 10 ethical questions for research involving students, formulated by Cardiff University.7 This might represent a starting point for the development of such criteria and could result in a review procedure that both upholds ethical research standards and stimulates, rather than discourages, teachers and students to engage in medical education research.
In 1957, in his book Mythologies, Roland Barthes recommended mapping the multiple terrains in which various myths and ideologies were spoken (149). This paper follows in those footsteps by examining a pattern of discourse in American films after the events of September 11, 2001. An analysis of three recent films (and a comparison to a film from an earlier era) will reveal that the timbre of our discourse has modulated toward reliance upon (and valorization of) patriarchal authority, and away from reason. The author's fundamental theoretical assumption is that the relationship between American society and its cultural production is interactive, reciprocal, and mutually informing; films not only reflect society, but help to shape it. Since films are the result of conscious acts of representation and not some automatic process of reflection, films should be taken seriously as ideologically driven acts of speech. Million Dollar Baby won the Academy Award for Best Picture of 2004, as well as Oscars for director Clint Eastwood and lead actress Hilary Swank. The religious right criticized the film for its apparent endorsement of euthanasia, but may have missed the point. Million Dollar Baby is actually a film about then-Secretary of State Donald Rumsfeld and the Bush Administration's doctrine of preemptive war. The film stars Hilary Swank as Maggie, a bootstrapping, working poor waitress determined to make it as a professional boxer. Clint Eastwood stars as gym owner and boxing coach Frankie Dunn, who reluctantly takes Maggie under his wing. The narration by Morgan Freeman's character, Scrap, obscures the dynamics of the story. Maggie is the million dollar baby of the title, but whose baby is she? She is Frankie's. Indeed, the relationship between Frankie and Maggie becomes familial. Frankie has a grown daughter who returns his letters to her unopened and unread. The origin of the rift between Frankie and his daughter is unexplained by the film; the audience is not told what happened, and all we see are after-effects. Getting only one side of the story encourages us to sympathize with Frankie (at least he is trying to get it right, we reason). Before long, Maggie slips into the role of surrogate daughter. Maggie calls Frankie âBoss,â but âDaddyâ would be more appropriate. Her relations with her own family are frustrating and are an early clue about the film's conservative ideology. When Maggie wins enough money as a boxer, she buys her mother a house. Instead of being grateful, her mother (Margo Martindale) complains that the acquisition of a home is going to upset her welfare scam. Maggie's family also includes her sister Mardell (Riki Lindhome), an unwed mother, and her brother JD (Marcus Chait), soon to be released from jail. Now, whose stereotypes are these? Maggie's mother and siblings are cartoons of welfare-state parasites, the kind of sly poor folk whom conservatives theorize are sapping our nation of its vigor. Maggie's family is portrayed without a shred of sympathy. We do not feel for their poverty, ignorance, or lack of options; instead, the one-dimensional scripting encourages us to see them as selfish, ungrateful, and criminal. Following the debacle with Maggie's mom is a scene which plays a key part in foreshadowing coming events. Maggie tells Frankie about the time her father euthanized her beloved dog as an act of mercy, and then the pair stop at a diner and have some lemon pie. They bond. Subsequently, Maggie demonstrates her loyalty to Frankie by refusing to abandon him in favor of a more successful manager with better connections. Frankie's key piece of advice to Maggie, which he repeats several times throughout the movie, is this: Always protect yourself. That is the same advice Donald Rumsfeld and the rest of the Bush administration invoked to justify going to war in Iraq: we had to protect ourselves from weapons of mass destruction. Despite the constant reiteration of this advice, Maggie fails to keep her guard up and is clocked by a nasty boxer identified as a former East German prostitute (Trifecta: a figure not only representing two major military enemies of the U.S.A. in the 20th century, but also moral turpitude). After getting sucker-punched by her opponent, Maggie falls, sustaining spinal cord injuries that leave her permanently paralyzed and bedridden. She then requests that Frankie treat her as her father had treated her dog. It is at this point that it becomes clear that the film is about Frankie, and not about Maggie. The balance of the movie is about the difficulty of Frankie's choice. As a Catholic, Frankie thinks mercy killing is a sin. As Maggie's surrogate father, he cannot bear to see her suffer. What, then, to do? Well, thank God our patriarchs are old and wise, and are capable of making the tough decisions. The entire narrative logic of the film endorses the assumption that our elders know what they are doing, and the young do not. Frankie's priest is a younger man, whom Frankie treats mostly with disdain. In a sub-plot of the film, Scrap is called upon to defend Danger, a hapless wannabe boxer who is pummeled by a gym bully. The skilled, older boxer (even when reduced to the status of a janitor) is more than a match for the guileless youth of the bully; in fact, Scrap puts him away with one hand. For her part, Maggie demonstrates that she has finally learned Frankie's lesson about defending herself when she refuses to sign her financial assets over to her parasitic family. In every instance throughout the film, the logic of the narrative supports the idea that the combination of age and male gender confers wisdom. Frankie ultimately decides to end Maggie's suffering. In their last conversation, Frankie tells Maggie that the Gaelic nickname he gave her, Mo Cuishle, means âmy darling, my blood.â Family feeling triumphs over religion and law; Frankie knows that euthanasia is illegal, but he does it because he feels it is right. Insert your own joke about Bush administration policies and scandals here. Scrap's narration turns out to be a letter to Frankie's estranged daughter, explaining that Frankie never came back to the gym after ending Maggie's misery. âNo matter where he is, I thought you should know what kind of man your father really was,â Scrap concludes. The final image of the film is Frankie back at the diner, presumably having some of that lemon pie. The tone is nostalgic and sentimental. It is an odd chord to strike in a film about senseless tragedy and loss, and it only makes sense if we are supposed to identify with Frankie. This is a textbook example of how hegemony is supposed to work under patriarchy; we are presumed to mistake the patriarch's interests and point of view for our own. While democracy and maturity both involve necessary measures of self-determination in order to be free and responsible, patriarchy requires submission to the dictates of the father-figure. In his book Moral Politics, the cognitive linguist George Lakoff delineates paradigmatic differences in the politics of conservatives and progressives. Lakoff asserts that that the two groups both employ the metaphor of the family to conceptualize and articulate their political positions, but differ in the kind of family they theorize. According to Lakoff, conservatives embrace a Strict Parent model of family. In this model, a Strict Parent is deemed necessary because the world is thought to be a dangerous place, and children therefore need to be disciplined in order to survive the Darwinian ordeal of existence. Any leniency toward or indulgence of children is considered a moral lapse, because it fosters weakness that will ultimately endanger the child. In the Strict Parent paradigm, being strong is the same thing as being moral. Since morality and strength are thought to be the same thing, and since success is proof of strength and fitness for survival, success is also considered a sign of morality. Therefore, failure is a sign of weakness and immorality. The people who succeed or fail do so not because of structural inequalities (such as institutional discrimination against race, class, or gender), but because of their personal characters. Strength of character is formed through children learning self-discipline and self-reliance, qualities which are deemed necessary to succeed in life's harsh contest. These qualities are presumably learned through obedience to the authority of the Strict Parent, usually the father. Since the success or failure of children and (by extension) society is dependent on the discipline of the father, the exercise of parental authority is itself considered moral, justified, and paramount; conversely, threats to that authority are seen as immoral, unjustified, and misguided (Lakoff, 67-84). When the Strict Parent is a father, and when the family metaphor is extended to the whole of society and its institutions, Lakoff's Strict Parent model is a good description of the logic of patriarchy. If Lakoff is correct in his assessment of the Strict Parent model, it goes a long way toward explaining the conservative obsession with fathers and fatherhood. It also helps explain the logic behind the 2005 version of War of the Worlds, in which the solution to the problem of invasion is the restoration of patriarchal authority. The narrator of the classic novel The War of the Worlds is an unnamed character much like the author H.G. Wells himself, a writer with some scientific knowledge. Few of the characters in the novel are given names, and most are referred to by their occupation or station, for example, the curate, the artilleryman, etc. A few chapters detail the exploits of the narrator's brother, a medical student, after the arrival of the Martians (Mac Adam, xxvi-xxvii). The hero of the 1953 film version is atomic scientist Clayton Forrester (Gene Barry) who wants to get a good look at the Martians as much as he wants to escort his love-object Sylvia to safety. Sylvia (Ann Robinson) is a pretty weak movie heroine, even by 1950s standards: she is weepy and hysterical much of the time, and her skill-set seems mostly comprised of serving coffee, square-dancing, cooking breakfast, and driving a school-bus. Obviously, an update of the story would have to entail some changes; the characters would have to be drawn in such a way that contemporary audiences could recognize them as being realistic. The choices made in changing the story to update it for Steven Spielberg's 2005 version are therefore legitimate topics of criticism. Significantly, instead of replacing Sylvia with a modern woman, the character is simply written out of the 2005 remake. There are no adult women characters for the balance of the movie, or women whose actions matter to the resolution of the problem. Any trace of feminism's impact on our culture is erased. What we are offered instead is the story of a father and his children. In the 2005 version of War of the Worlds, the protagonist is Ray Ferrier (Tom Cruise), not a scientist but an Everyman. At the start of the film, we see Ray finish his shift as a longshoreman and race home in his vintage Mustang. Ray is late to pick up his kids from his pregnant ex-wife, Mary Ann (Miranda Otto), and her new husband, Tim (David Alan They have in a new which Ray to as a As the it becomes apparent that Ray is not the is a and he is an on his has no in his and no when he tells his kids to order out for Ray does not know how to with his and does not know how to his daughter even her is The narrative of the film mostly on as a father as he to escort his children to the Martians our The key in the film is or not Ray is good under When the Martians it It may as well While the of the film is an invasion which the audience knows is the of the film is to with the of This is through the of of and destruction. The of is the that when the from their of the of the film is on we see it in his the of the is in and the are the of When the and turns its on the feeling the scene much the of on of people from the of and by the of the The is the by the that Tim and Mary house. This no narrative and does to the but is of the that in on September The of is the of you seen this that Ray and his children with the to the These of were all over in the as the to who may or may not have in the If we of this recent version of War of the Worlds as a that is about that then are a of about the film that are is the of the in to their to the invasion is a to up with the to the to do so is by his who you leave who will protect a that both lack of in does to and a military that is the What is so is that his need not in of having to do but in of having to see the to it. This is in to the (and of who is from what is going on her on two when she is from at the and when Ray her he their children two about War on all those young who the military after to in and those of us on the home who have from or about what has going on because of the as when the a under the of to of war to The thing is the film's of in whose Ray and The character is an of two characters from the the and the discourse that of the artilleryman, but his is to that of the in the the protagonist the when the is on the of their in a to Martians (Mac Adam, In the 1953 film, the is to the character of of the and the What is so about the character and his in the 2005 version is the in which the and characters are and the logic to justify his What are the qualities that make a to Ray and is a and his him as events This is an but one which Ray never no is made to to stop a of with the of his is At with the but he is when the the in which the characters are After and after the Martians upon the of about in the under the and a This is the from the but to it is the that the a nation never an over not only from our own but also from the Significantly, this is one that to in and What is his own to a Ray not only because he is and but because fails to the of their and because the the of the Martians and a These for are to right of the to the war does not the of the world may in be dangerous to our own and is the of old who are on The of Tim as in of that with this conservative logic on a In a with and its logic of family for killing is to protect and his child. Always protect it for the In the film's only a and Tim is presumably to with a look at the look at the war look at or or The film's narrative has Ray to in Mary Ann him for is having the to the military he into is the film's last of This is in that it is the time Ray as and his patriarchal authority. had referred to his father as him to him from a after him had to do so in the narrative as in the film, Ray had to his him by his but his to be called if you your kids to for your authority, them to war. The film's is taken from the of the and also in the 1953 version is the For those with the the invasion of is when the are by the to which have of the has to the between and for example The and A is the with the novel and film version of War of the H.G. Wells some to God for on to defend our from While to God is religion is also the of in the in the figure of the The 1950s film a but the of the Spielberg's version of the film is of God or religion the when God is mostly as the of triumphs over the Martians because has has that is to upon the but not the from this as is from the discourse of is the of The of and by are the from right and The version of by does not involve the or the of our better obedience to the will of God the father and to the as the of as by on God in a film to this author's by written after The film in at a film in and released in the on only a of with its on in of The film released on in of and has since of a in some and about the film's on The story two from and who get into a with some the in calls and to the of the but the are not the an and that God wants them to all that which is so that which is good may and They out to do with the of their a in the The of that the leave behind them is by at the and the to piece the events which the audience as a When he finally that the are out the he decides to help them than from the of the the of the a out of who is only as We are told is a and but one with he would not women or children. for the The when the in and it is a himself, he is their long the with their by an of the and their father. They in a in which their is by who patriarchal authority. The act as George Bush with that God is on their and with that their is There are no or characters in the The we is the who is for and in a scene about the of her The film with on the about the and of as if of morality. the of Bush administration policies the who process if you are you are the right While this author through written after it is that the film Obviously, the Bush administration not and patriarchal were in American culture the events of September What, then, are the of this If patriarchal have through American culture for what right has the author to the of films to the of the administration in and right politics in that we the back to of the film of that to the of the which a of the same In the like The and The work is not considered to be The film version of to the of the follows the of the a and by is as a but but usually right. of the of the film or not is in his right a in (and surrogate to him of In the the is to be a and is as not only but The of to the of the is the has and A scientist thinks the will itself but that the be from the by a The of the film the to the right at the right time to the the to the world are by the of religious will is written the are you that man even in his to not for us to but we If God that man should without a then does he us the will to to the of the but it a in American thought and cultural production that we could Following War in order to American from right and and American culture the of What this from into or an that it be seen in an and personal had to be to and of and that were to the not only the of but also the of the We see this in a of culture from the the of and on and in and some of the of Ray and the culture and both the and While upon his to have his way for much of to the of the his is on scientific and his to him in the In his own actions not through but by the authority of and have two for to authority. is to and is not. In a or the of God is and is for In the scientific are to and The differences between two have for both and American political asserts a logic to that of the people in know what they are they know what they are because they are the people in knows simply because he is the father. In the Strict Parent model by Lakoff, the in authority is presumed to have that through strength of as the authority is justified, and on or even of are presumed to be such logic is at with which free and September 11, the American people were from an The world to which they and The events of that our that the world us because we are the good In such a strong who a and may and the of is in a of requires us to for and to make our on not authority. The of as by and American who to should be as to that were in culture that The films under are not but As and we should be A culture that obedience to authority is not a culture that endorses free or kind of If we do not this lesson of the century, we may well be to some
Every regions government must be able increasing their own regional income. The finance of resources in fiscal decentralization era, such as: regional original income, general allocation funds and natural resources revenue sharing and tax revenue sharing This research aims to analyze the fiscal decentralization impact to economic growth at regional district in sub province Semarang. The tool of analisis is regression using panel data with Generalized Least Square (GLS) method and Fixed Effect model. It uses district-level data and supplied by the Indonesian Central Bureau of Statistics during 2002 - 2006 The regression result shows that regional income, natural resources revenue sharing and tax revenue sharing, and labor forces have positive impact on economic growth at regional district in sub province Semarang. General allocation funds have negative effect towards economic growth at regional district in sub province Semarang. Fiscal decentralization brings more advantages for regions to manage their own fiscal capacities. The regions governments must be have informational advantages concerning resource allocation with optimal Keywords: Fiscal Decentralization, economic growth, Fixed Effect Model
Some authors divide the approach of the autonomy into four categories: a group comparesthe autonomy with the right to act discretionary in some circumstances. The right is, in this case possessed by anindividual or by administrative organization. Others use the term as a synonym for independence. According to athird position autonomy is synonymous with decentralization, and a fourth opinion specifies that autonomousentities are those which have exclusive powers: legislative, administrative and judicial proceedings in specificareas. The latter is called political autonomy and it is the opposite of administrative autonomy, which is limitedto the power within the scope of the government. The hereby project seeks to answer to several questions suchas: What are the specific elements of administrative autonomy, and what are its benefits? What elements of theinstitutes declared autonomous allowed demonstrating their independence? What factors contribute to the brakedown of the existence of the concept administrative autonomy? What factors have slowed down the process ofself-governance and the decision within a certain area? What types of interest groups may affect thedevelopment of such a concept?
This project tries to look at decentralization of VAT revenue and administration to sub national governments in Ethiopia in light of the international practices. It used individual in-depth interview to collect primary data from Ethiopian revenue and custom Authority (ERCA), Addis Ababa regional city administration tax office and ministry of finance and economic development (MOFED). The methods used for analysis were both qualitative and quantitative. The project discusses the problems in connection with decentralization of VAT administration and assignment of VAT revenue. The project suggests that decentralization of VAT administration needs capable and autonomous regional government and strong central government that could monitor and evaluate decentralization; and the assignment of VAT revenue also needs the central governments' follow up to minimize the distortions and should be applied in consistent with the constitution
Professor Andharia has over 26 years of experience in the field of community organization and social development. Her areas of work focus on gender issues, environmental concerns, social planning and participatory development, addressing diverse forms of marginalization and vulnerability. She has been involved in policy work and has had a long association with grassroots organizations. She has been teaching at the Tata Institute of Social Sciences (TISS) for over two decades and was Head, Department of Urban and Rural Community Development before moving on as Chairperson of the newly created Centre for Disaster Management. Community organization (CO) has come to acquire a distinct meaning in India. This special issue reflects upon the nature of intervention of community workers and forces of transformation both in the lives of ordinary people, especially the poor and the marginalized, and within the sphere of knowledge related to community studies, across diverse institutions and socio-political contexts. The selection of articles in the issue captures the theoretical refinement of CO and also represents challenges that CO practice confronts at the practical level in the contemporary Indian scenario. The history of India as a nation is replete with organizing, asserting, demanding and fighting for rights. It is the collective assertion and courage of citizens that are often celebrated on 15 August â the date in 1947 when India got her independence. A relatively young nation, India covering an area of 3,300,000 km2 and housing a large diversity of ethnic groups1 is respected as one of the largest democracies in the world. CO was introduced as a method of social work in the 1950s in several western countries, and it was also during this period that the Department of Urban and Rural Community Development (URCD) was established in the first school of Social Work in India, generating several scholars and practitioners espousing diverse perspectives and ideologies. By 1980s the term âCommunity Developmentâ was generally regarded with disdain due to the failure of the official Community Development Programme, launched by the Government in the 1950s. In India the term âCommunity Organizationâ on the other hand was regarded as far more progressive and received an impetus through the mid-1970s up until early 1990s. In 1975â1977 the country experienced political upheaval when a state of Emergency was declared suspending official democracy. This simultaneously gave rise to a large number of protests with a democratic fervour and specifically in the form of mass-based movements and voluntary organizations. It also saw a critique of social work positioned largely as an apolitical enterprise. The failure of community development programmes to impact the poverty levels or people excluded from health, education, housing, sanitation and infrastructure services forced social workers and community organizers to re-examine its excessive emphasis on local development issues. They began to recast their work to include structural factors that shape local realities. The expanding critique of social work influenced CO teachers who redefined and reshaped CO to align with, contribute to and borrow from literature on diverse forms of organizing â social movements, trade unionism and mass-based people's organization and self-help groups (SHGs). Organizing communities against atrocities and against forms of dominance is evident in almost all parts of India and is not restricted to a particular discipline. In fact, sensitive social workers draw on the history of organizing within a region or of specific communities, metaphorically invoking historical events to reach out to the masses. A generation of teachers and activists from 1980s onwards who began to associate themselves with mass-based struggles, discovered different strategies and new allies and questioned conventional moorings of western forms of institutionalized social work and its relevance to India. Grass-roots empowerment took precedence over community development and saw greater involvement of community organizers and scholars in issues of exclusion, violation and assertion of rights, discrimination against dalits, tribals and other marginalized groups. (See Figure 1 for an overview of the trajectory of CO and CD in India.) A sharper ideological orientation gave CO a political edge much to the discomfort of certain social work professionals. Historical trajectory of CO and CD in India. Source: Andharia (2007, 103). The changing perspective of CO in particular compelled the social work fraternity to review its curriculum, the choice of field work agencies and the intervention processes with which scholars aligned themselves. Modes of intervention were questioned and revised, tools of analysis underwent a shift and political frameworks were consciously used, in more fundamental ways to shape both the practice and education in CO. Despite the strong imperative to move away from a traditional social work orientation based on a naĂŻve belief of âbridging gapsâ through simple welfare means, the transition within the academia was painstakingly slow. At the end of nearly three decades of debates, most of these changes remain undocumented even as CO confronts fresh challenges in contemporary times. For example, the fact that the economic reform agenda is pursued assiduously by the government, when poverty and inequality levels remain high, exploitation is legitimized by the state and the globalizing forces are moving ahead unabashedly, is all a matter of serious concern to community organizers. Withdrawal of the state from health, education and social security sectors has caused further exclusion and deprivation of the marginalized section. The special issue on CO in India is devoted specifically to locating the challenges of the context and possibilities which community workers in India need to familiarize themselves with and it is hoped that it renews interest in collective action for social transformation in a rapidly globalizing world. A community in some ways is a microcosm of a nation. One would assume that in a democratic nation, all institutions function democratically upholding values of equity with reference to citizens and their collectives. However, in practice, this does not happen and rights have to be asserted and structures are to be negotiated. As a result the understanding of democracy, citizenship and collective action are never static. A community gets mobilized when citizens organize to take a stand and work towards specific demands. Such assertions are fundamental to the empowerment of citizens and such shifts in power balance between people and institutions are fundamental to CO. The broader context for CO practice in India can be discerned from the country's performance on human development indices and the agenda for community practice may be drawn from a critical appreciation of processes that marginalize and alienate large sections of society. India is often called a country of contradictions. For example India prides itself as a nation on the move, a nation that has witnessed, during the last century â a transformation from a colonial, agrarian economy into a modern, industrial, knowledge-based economy. As a parliamentary democratic system, the country is an acknowledged home to people of diverse cultural, faith, ethnic and social identities. The constitution provides for democratic participation of citizens giving them a voice in politics. Popular movements and struggles are credited with ensuring that parliamentary democracy has retained its vitality over the last 60 years of independence. On the other hand, despite the political democracy, the country is faced with economic inequalities, concentration of wealth and regional imbalances that work in favour of exploitative social, political and economic structures. About 70 percent of India's population is rural and agriculture is the backbone of livelihood security system for nearly two-thirds of the population. Farmer's suicides, ethnic tensions created by right-wing Hindutva forces, poverty, malnutrition, disease and deprivation, falling per-capita intake of food grains are often said to reflect the erosion of democratic principles and secular fabric of the nation. The media and the judiciary have played a significant role in highlighting the backwardness and social injustice and inequalities based on caste, class, gender and ethnicity. Besides popular struggles, new social movements led by trade unions, women's organizations, voluntary organizations and committed individuals have responded to the overwhelming poverty, illiteracy displacement, dispossession of land and rising food insecurity. Criticisms about the ability of the development agenda to ensure social inclusion and equality of opportunity for all have sparked vigorous debates about addressing the âdemocratic deficitâ. In India, the Constitution through its amendments has devolved more powers to local bodies, but they are yet to be empowered in full. Their capacity needs to be built and financial powers to be strengthened before we can expect them to adopt best practices in governance. The dalits constitute 16 percent of India's population and the tribals constitute 8 percent. According to government estimates, some 125 districts spread over 12 states, covering more than a quarter of the landmass mostly in the central part of India, is affected by extremist Naxalite activities. A combination of economic and socially oppressive factors is identified as the major cause of rise of Naxalism in India. The next section highlights the democratic deficits' that will enable an appreciation of the Indian social, economic and political fabric which constitutes the context in which community organizer sets an agenda and chooses specific strategies for action. The focus is on food security, education, access to potable water, health care facilities and housing â all of which constitute fundamental rights of every citizen â basic requirements for a life with dignity. During 2007 escalating food prices and vanishing global food reserves added about 75 million to the hunger trap of which nearly 30 million are from India according to a Food and Agriculture Organization Report [2007]. Data from the National Family Health Surveys paint a grim picture. More than one-third of the Indian population lives in sub-human poverty and a recent World Bank estimate put nearly 42 percent as absolutely poor by international standards. More than three-fourths of the population has a daily purchasing power of less than 20 rupees a and nearly the are The Development India out of a of and in the India has to out of Food security a issue in According to Development Report India the hunger the million people, nearly are in India. This it the country housing the largest food population. It in the of Despite years of economic India than nearly and all of of India's rural population or over million people are the food intake of the country's economy is percent with a population of about people, in every are It is that hunger and are in On the other hand, India its into the 12 The wealth of the was to about percent of India's in with less than percent in According to the also as the in India individuals wealth to almost a of the in were the in The Food and Agriculture organization also that percent of the poor in India, as the percent. This the of wealth and are social inequalities in the According to economic be development when it does not into of the of the of the poor in of and as as for health, housing, education and political with economic are and rise in according to be as to people's social and political India's not basic such as to and inequalities are with access to food and before a â it the of between the of 1 and by about one economic does not into hunger More of and health services and action to based on and are and progressive CO practice these issues. to food and and factors as environmental health work and This can be through a of political will and and people's and CO to the and the to work with the of the The of and global factors significant in the analysis of a context and The emphasis is on structural of and The of organizations with National Rural in in or that of in and in all the of work and the of CO. of these are in the articles in this teachers of CO to with these and their of CO move towards a more involvement in ensuring social and political rights, a life with for the The by strong global forces have had a impact on the and rural the is of an to food for and their for a in international prices of the especially who are to their For example, across districts in western nearly have committed over the last of an of poor failure and On an two were to take their lives in the last districts saw two financial several and a for who within the The impact has not been A population that and and in their social and political and to The to education in India are education in government and of and and the of of the school to or local of these constitutes significant areas of intervention by community organizers towards action and to in percent of India's population is percent of India's can the of 75 percent of in India from and the is 42 percent of the received all the and access to education and health care in India. with a rise in prices and the health has for the the in of who is from it and needs to be health and education to ensure that economic development is with and human to is of fundamental for and sanitation have a with health, a human international The by India to access â daily within a â of the World Health of at the end to be as level According to government about percent of the country's have been This is serious as about percent of the from are up or are have and are and major on and are by and The traditional of services has been and are into infrastructure does not the of the government is the need to communities in from and new such as and and take to and This has come about through a of work by rural development by the and may be but it will to a or an environmental and social on the country can put and in The 2007 is a in the history of human for the first the and rural population of the is It is that has new economic and to people who to However, it has also created the of all over the world. According to the of the one in three in are areas people not have access to basic for life with such as water, housing or that from Urban India for 30 percent of the population and its is to rise to about percent by In of a policy and housing in the housing in Indian is on the In 2007 the housing was about million and it is to 26 million by About percent of this to groups. The economy by government especially on agriculture and forced serious the history of organizing and in â the of India the population lives in Community organizing housing rights through the 1980s has been to some but She that political and a for community Her the of CO can be all and education and organizers to with experienced by the the last three decades Indian in participatory democracy, collective by social movements, and organizations a to and reflect on CO. are a of ways of in the with and The and of analysis often the forms of involvement and the choice of strategies In the contemporary of community and CO are rapidly as areas of and practice They draw from political critical and and such as environmental studies, and This nature of CO in India has received in the country has had a and experience in CO and 1950s. The country's political history is replete with movements of people of diverse cultural, social and identities. movements and struggles a strong of a democracy. CO has been through of social action of movements, movements, and is as new social movements women's to a constitute some of the most and of new social movements in human For example, special economic have been up across India with concern for the and that they are over for this The the development of specific areas as and â with infrastructure that would have a capacity and for as a new of at and large they are to be in their and local and The policy and its have serious for groups and communities their and their are largely as a trade capacity development with a to economic A number of community organizers are struggles against across India. The issues to the and of in the of environmental concerns, the to the on rights to organize and and the in which has not been in India. The political of of for development is the most critical of the the largest number of has strong from in and who have themselves into and the which have all a struggles have been in and who were to land by and in the of development. In India, popular movements that the of development is from to led will the imbalances in of economic and power at local and regional levels intervention a political is evident is that over the last three CO in India has experienced through work on health, education, housing, food security or with dalits and has a refinement at the practice level the of collective action and a strong and ideological The of assertions through in the form of trade or in the form of organizations or organization is This is it the that the one are not but collective â a shift towards understanding social issues in or structural with a critical understanding of the power of major development is a of the of CO with other or as community political and studies, community media and of these are in this special issue with The articles and the of CO and the shift and refinement of CO the in social work education in India on in India and the for equality provides an to of the that we in India as a democratic nation. on democratic which is of The for equality a collective form in CO. However, that the of communities impact the of in communities are based on the context and have of communities of caste, and gender needs to on the one hand, within the democratic against of the of and the within community to its of in the exclusion of For example, in a democracy, has an and is on who them and their against equality and gender dignity. at communities on and to the rise of right-wing forces and of of against in the in over a This the of a which to be built on principles of and in a democratic nation. are between two communities which shape both and collective which in often into and Community organizers to despite the of and and for the need to diversity and as fundamental to CO The strategies to and community the organizers to have a understanding of issues, factors and processes and in the It and to that and in community addressing and at and and communities are when CO is committed to human rights and social In this the role of social action the and of food especially on and sections of society. the exclusion faced by marginalized sections India is a food nation and that assertion of rights and community is the The work of Development is by has a with from 75 in of In with other they on education, and and at level food It has also in the specifically on and CO that towards and over local and socio-political institutions through and to the and rise of communities in the of and its The by the drawn between and CO over a â a which has and teaching of CO in India. It in the of the struggles of workers in and a strong for community practice to at issues of work and and for social workers a sharper understanding of of strategies and in grassroots organizing, especially in the of the Indian economy. and the of the for the to in of the of within the government which A long by the rural poor and activists democratic and in the of one of the most progressive in the in It is as a of that the of the citizen with the and voluntary of of and facilities by is greater and is for citizens to the of progressive community organizers are in this area and have been with the India has to In people on part of government to In of of has been from the India has had a strong women's with a of to organizing from which community practice has drawn and in diverse on the of a rising number of and activists have out that in areas have on exploitative created and for to in the and a of women's women's citizenship rights are asserted through by which the agenda of The economic of in out their and women's based on education and empowerment are by that have a financial agenda with focus on rights and social the women's several about By over to the and of work and are generally has been of government such as the Development and the the state is as the for poverty and institutions are of and of The strategies of have of activists across the world. In India, for community an of and at a when is not more and but also more They and values are to be in daily lives by individuals and to and up possibilities and can be to global as a large number of on the â â have been a social by and a young the work by in and for community organizers in a and from a strong in her work with tribals in and districts of are in this The first in rural India and both regarded as economic The on human development in rural India and such as and its education, of education, health care and in development across social groups. The is a of on that are more human than the contemporary political or and have a broader The last a on and in India. CO has political interest distinct from most which largely within of the groups or communities or a both of which have a It to the need or the is in and are through forms of and CO in India is in organizing, on development critical and is based on an analysis of state power and of It is a which all that to power that contribute to the experience of discrimination and CO not at the level of communities but with social structures and with democratic institutions of governance. to activists and a They are or and in different parts of the through are and the system is to the people's organization and their against organizers on or which remain for also their ability to out and education in CO needs to to with these this it is to that community workers have often received their orientation in social they have their of knowledge from a of In their practice, community workers are to specific issues and in of and with a focus on social equality and access to This has a sharper political and CO has in practice has drawn from the context of exclusion, violation of rights, of services and a of issues, of which are in the selection of articles in this special
Decentralization has the potential to lower corruption and alleviate poverty across the world. The true effects of this process are unclear since there are relatively few studies on decentralization and many of these studies, both theoretical and empirical, give conflicting results. One major problem in the literature for the effects of decentralization on corruption has been sample selection bias. The main cross-country dataset for decentralization, the IMF's Government Finance Statistics (GFS), has data for only about 40 countries, and most of these are developed. I attempt to mitigate this sample-selection problem by first estimating a Heckman model for decentralization in order to predict values for unobserved countries and then using these predicted values to estimate decentralization's impact on corruption. My results show that decentralization has an insignificant effect on corruption, suggesting that decentralization alone may not be a useful tool for mitigating corruption.
The paper intends to analyse a model of decentralization specific to Continental Europe, which shows that a transferof responsibility to the local authorities has not always been appropriately followed by a transfer of resource, the consequencebeing the appearance of budgetary imbalances at the level of local communities. In this situation, the local communities areforced to identify the funding source and, therefore, they have used the most rapid instruments provided by the law and thefinancial institutions â the borrowed sources. As long as the borrowed funding sources have been used to the restoration of thepublic infrastructure and, therefore, to the public investments, the solutions identified by the public manager are not to beblamed, the problem being the use of borrowed sources in order to cover certain consumerism needs which illegitimatelycharges, in our opinion, the public cost, the obligation to finance the maturity rates including the interest falling back on thefuture generations.
James O. Young, professor and head of the department of philosophy at the University of Victoria, has given us a clear, concise, and overwhelmingly informative introduction to the complex subject of the ethics of cultural appropriation. This book could only have come about through many years of travel and scholarly investigation. It is a valuable introduction for those not familiar with the literature on this interesting subject. Youngâwhose writing voice is always confident, displaying an authoritative grasp on the relevant issuesâmanages to bring to the work a fastidious clarity of thought and the ability to lead the reader by the hand through his arguments. In five chapters, Young lays out what is at stake in the various kinds of cultural appropriation of artworks, his own views about what should and should not be considered morally wrong about cultural appropriation, and his recommendations for what part public policy should play in this area. His motivation for writing this book is clearly to defeat as many arguments against cultural appropriation of artistic elements as possible. In this, he is mostly successful. In chapter 1, Young introduces the topic and stresses his position that the understanding of what constitutes culture need not be too precise for the views he presents to have value. There are two main types of appropriation he is interested in here: They can be roughly thought of in terms of content (the taking of an idea or a style) and object (the taking of an artwork itself). He further breaks cultural appropriation into five different, more specific types, namely: tangible objects, content, style, motif (influenced by the art of a culture), and subject. He also discusses various objections to cultural appropriation that different writers have offered, objections that have tended to become the orthodoxy in scholarly debates. For example, one might say that cultural appropriation is wrong because a culture is harmed, or that a work or a style or an idea has been stolen from it, or that an artwork in a culture's style by an outsider is profoundly offensive to members of that culture, or that appropriation is wrong not for ethical reasons, but because there are aesthetic flaws when outsiders take something from insiders. The rest of the book is organized according to these different possible aesthetic and ethical wrongs. Chapter 2 addresses the question of whether culturally appropriated artworks always suffer aesthetically. There are two versions of what he calls the aesthetic handicap thesis: The first maintains that outsiders will always necessarily employ aesthetic content ineffectively; the second says that the mere fact that the content has been appropriated from another culture constitutes an aesthetic flaw. Some have argued that an artist must be a member of a culture in order to produce aesthetically valuable artworks distinctive of that culture. This he calls the cultural experience argument. Young's answer to this argument is that many cultural outsiders in fact have produced such artworks. For instance, Eric Clapton, Stevie Ray Vaughn, and others have played blues music so well that they have won awards and praise from African American cultural insiders. Working in a given style is like learning a language, Young tells us, so that the language can be learned by anyone, even outsiders (p. 41). It is here that I encounter my first difficulty with Young's arguments. While it is certainly true that someone with enough talent can master most any style, even one that arose from outside of one's own culture, I do not think Young does the cultural experience argument justice. I think he mischaracterizes the claims made by proponents of the view. For instance, Young quotes Charlie Parker as having said, âIf you don't live it, it won't come out of your hornâ (p. 35). This statement does not sound as strong to me as it apparently does to Young. I would paraphrase it something like this: The manner in which you perform music is crucially formed, in part, by the unique life experiences you have had, and so if you try to perform music as if it were coming from someone who had different experiences, you will be in some way unsuccessful. But Young takes this quote and others like it as saying that if one has not had a particular cultural experience, one will necessarily produce works of poor quality in that style. This seems an overly simplistic interpretation of the view. One with a nonâAfrican American background can certainly produce music in the blues style, especially if one has had oppressive cultural experiences of one's own (which is often the subtext of much of the blues), and the resulting music can in fact be very good. Young mentions several examples of white blues musicians who have even been praised by black blues musicians (as if this is any kind of proof that there is no difference!). But what white blues musicians cannot produce is blues music that reflects the oppressive cultural heritage of African Americans. This is the point, I think, that all of Young's quotes on this topic make. In chapter 3, the large topic of cultural appropriation as theft is discussed. Two types of theft structure the discussion: (1) theft of objects and (2) theft of styles, motifs, and subjects. Young leans heavily on the issue of who (a culture or an individual) can own an object or a style and why. Here as elsewhere in the book, Young is a strong advocate for the maximum freedom of artists to appropriate subject matter, as he finds the idea of a culture's owning subject matterâby inheritance, traditional law, or as have being given it by gods, for instanceâto be unfounded. Young argues that only individuals can own things, and only concrete things at that. This Eurocentric position is evident in many of his arguments against any moral obligation to regard property (intellectual or artistic) as collective. While I tend to agree with the outcome of his argument here, his argument itself seems to rest on assumptions that not everyone would accept. Chapters 4 and 5 cover cases where cultural appropriation could be wrong due to the harm and the profound offense it does to the culture's members, respectively. With regard to harm, misrepresenting the style of a culture can do that culture harm; however, that harm can be done by both insiders and outsiders. With regard to offense, even though it is prima facie wrong to engage in activities that are profoundly offensive, Young argues that, nevertheless, appropriation that causes profound offense is not always wrong. Borrowing from Joel Feinberg's works in philosophy of law, Young holds that two considerations are important for determining whether causing offense is a moral wrong: the availability of alternative arrangements and the reasonableness of the offense. I think there are a pair of dichotomies implicitly lurking beneath the surface of this book. The first is an observableâunobservable dichotomy about aesthetic properties; the second is a consequentialistâdeontological dichotomy about morality. With regard to the first, there are those who hold that only observable properties are relevant in evaluating an artwork on the one hand and those who hold that much of what is unobserved about an artwork is relevant for aesthetic evaluation on the other. All Young's aesthetic arguments lean toward countenancing only strictly observable aesthetic properties, which may explain why he so often comes down in favor of free and open cultural taking (though there are exceptions). In other words, if an outsider can make a work that appears to be aesthetically equivalent to an artwork made by a cultural insider, then that work is just as aesthetically authentic and valuable as a work made by an insider. While this may seem initially plausible, after further and deeper thought, it seems that many works do in fact have unobservable, aesthetically significant properties. With regard to the second dichotomy, Young appears to give a largely (though again, there are one or two exceptions) utilitarian evaluation of the ethics of cultural appropriation. This theoretical position leads to what feels, to a westerner, like an agreeably simple formulation in which pleasure and freedom are maximized. This is a laudable outcome in most cases. But this hidden orientation also allows Young to too quickly claim unarguedâfor ethical priorities; he merely takes them for granted. For instance, when he discusses the idea that some cultures believe that they have been given artworks or property as gifts from their gods or ancestor beings, he suddenly says that âclaims to have been given something by the gods or ancestor beings are falseâ (p. 78). Of course, Young is entitled to his beliefs, but especially in a book of philosophy, whose grounds are presumably always open to question, this seems particularly abrupt. No argument for this is even attempted. All in all, however, Cultural Appropriation and the Arts is a commendable achievement. I had fun arguing with this book, and it must always be appreciated that it is only in clearly written works that one can find positions presented lucidly enough to argue with. Cultural Appropriation and the Arts will become the standard work in this field for many years to come, and undergraduates could gain every bit as much from its interesting examples and clear arguments as graduate students and professionals can. In the current world political climate, with national boundaries becoming ever more amorphous, we should be having lively debate on the ethics and aesthetics of the cultural borrowing and stealing of artworks. Young's book serves as a sterling contribution toward this important goal.
A hallmark of post-apartheid South Africa has been the introduction of bold and innovative policy in areas ranging from the national Constitution to resource management policy. In line with this approach, there has been a clear commitment to principles of decentralization and participatory development, with Local Economic Development (LED) featuring prominently in national, provincial and local government pronouncements and planning. Despite considerable policy and funding support for LED, results at best can be described as only modest. This paper critically reflects on the importance attached to LED in South Africa, what has been attempted over the last decade, and the various reasons that might explain the limitations experienced with applied LED, including those that are inherent in the nature of LED and those that can be attributed to local factors. The paper draws upon field-based research undertaken over more than a decade and the findings of a major study undertaken by an international development finance organization. The paper raises challenging questions about the nature, focus and potential of LED as an appropriate development intervention.
BACKGROUND: During the Suharto era public funding of health in Indonesia was low and the health services were tightly controlled by the central government; district health staff had practically no discretion over expenditure. Following the downfall of President Suharto there was a radical political, administrative and fiscal decentralization with delivery of services becoming the responsibility of district governments. In addition, public funding for health services more than doubled between 2001 and 2006. It was widely expected that services would improve as district governments now had both more adequate funds and the responsibility for services. To date there has been little improvement in services. Understanding why services have not improved requires careful study of what is happening at the district level. METHODS: We collected information on public expenditure on health services for the fiscal year 2006 in 15 districts in Java, Indonesia from the district health offices and district hospitals. Data obtained in the districts were collected by three teams, one for each province. Information on district government revenues were obtained from district public expenditure databases maintained by the World Bank using data from the Ministry of Finance. RESULTS: The public expenditure information collected in 15 districts as part of this study indicates district governments are reliant on the central government for as much as 90% of their revenue; that approximately half public expenditure on health is at the district level; that at least 40% of district level public expenditure on health is for personnel, almost all of them permanent civil servants; and that districts may have discretion over less than one-third of district public expenditure on health; the extent of discretion over spending is much higher in district hospitals than in the district health office and health centers. There is considerable variation between districts. CONCLUSION: In contrast to the promise of decentralization there has been little increase in the potential for discretion at the district level in managing public funds for health - this is likely to be an important reason for the lack of improvement in publicly funded health services. Key decisions about money are still made by the central government, and no one is held accountable for the performance of the sector - the district blames the center and the central ministries (and their ministers) are not accountable to district populations.
SCIENTIFICALLY based professionals face the dilemma described by James Oberg, National Aeronautics and Space Administration engineer and space journalist: âYou must keep an open mind, but not so open that your brains fall out.â1Startling advances, such as the role of Helicobacter pylori in the etiology of stomach ulcers,2remind us of the need to be receptive to unexpected discoveries that challenge our beliefs.As practitioners of a science-based profession, physicians have a responsibility to patients to (1) critically interpret their medical history, (2) critically read and evaluate the scientific literature, and (3) critically plan their therapy using evidenced-based medicine. How well do we meet this standard?Anesthesiologists are arguably the most experienced practitioners of cardiopulmonary resuscitation. For example, my general anesthetics typically start with a ventilatory arrest (usually by intent), followed by need for cardiovascular support. The 2005 American Heart Association guidelines for cardiopulmonary resuscitation assess the evidence for âbest practicesâ in resuscitation.3Class I recommendations describe interventions that unambiguously improve outcome and should always be provided. These include defibrillation, tracheal intubation, and (remarkably) taping the endotracheal tube. Class IIa recommendations, whose benefits almost always exceed risks, include many widely accepted interventions, such as administering oxygen, confirming carbon dioxide returning from the airway, the use of various airway maintenance devices, proper use of a defibrillator, magnesium for the treatment of torsade de pointes, fibrinolysis for suspected pulmonary embolus, and use of the impedance threshold device to improve recovery.In all probability, you have never heard of the impedance threshold device, also a class IIa recommendation, despite the fact improved outcome has been demonstrated in more than 50 animal and clinical trials of resuscitation. The device is a special valve that attaches to a facemask or advanced airway device (fig. 1). In the absence of a positive-pressure breath, it seals off the airway when the chest recoils during the decompression phase of cardiopulmonary resuscitation, thereby generating more negative pressure in the thorax to draw more blood into the great vessels and heart. This also decreases intracranial pressure. The device doubles cardiac output during cardiopulmonary resuscitation. According to a recent meta-analysis, the impedance threshold device nearly doubled short- and long-term survival after cardiac arrest, at a cost of approximately $99 per unit.The American Heart Association Guidelines characterize epinephrine and amiodarone as class IIb recommendations, meaning that benefit may exceed risk. Lidocaine and atropine are class III recommendations, indicating insufficient evidence. What does it mean that few anesthesiologists have ever used the impedance threshold device, which roughly doubles survival at nominal cost, and has stronger evidence for benefit than epinephrine, amiodarone, lidocaine, and atropine, mainstays of current practice? In my view, it means that we are not as scientifically based in our practice as we would like to believe. Instead, our clinical practice reflects traditions and beliefs instilled during training, which only gradually adapt to scientific progress.As practitioners of a science-based profession, we also have a responsibility to the society in which we live to function as role models for critical thinking. The public is surprisingly naive about the scientific method. How else can one explain the marketing of such unlikely marvels as running your car on water,â a heater that produces more energy than used,âĄor curing cancer with magnets?§Consider the following urban legend: A businessman in New Orleans meets a prostitute in a bar. They go to her hotel room, where he blacks out. The next morning he awakens in a bathtub, with a note telling him to call 911. The dispatcher tells him to feel for a tube protruding from his lower back. He finds one, and is told his kidney has been stolen.Clinicians will readily dismiss this story because of the impossibility of performing a donor nephrectomy in a hotel room, and the sheer weirdness of awakening from surgery and anesthesia in a bathtub with a tube in your back. However, the claim has been so widely circulated that the National Kidney Foundation issued a formal repudiation.â„However, when this âinnocentâ urban myth circulated in South America, there was a 90% decrease in cadaveric kidney donations.4Considering that many individuals waiting for transplants die before receiving a transplant, this âharmlessâ urban legend may have resulted in significant morbidity and mortality. Ignorance has consequences!You have likely received e-mails promising fortunes in exchange for some nominal effort, such as helping transfer money from Nigeria or contacting an agency that has chosen your e-mail address in a previously unknown lottery. When the victim attempts to procure the money, he or she is instructed to pay increasingly large advance fees to facilitate the transaction. Such transparently bogus schemes net billions of dollars every year from gullible individuals.#Millions of gullible individuals firmly believe in alien abductions, crystal healing, channeling, psychic power, touch therapy, and implausible dietary wonders because they do not have the intellectual tools to evaluate fraudulent claims. More broadly, our political process, our allocation of national resources, our foreign policy, and our stewardship of the planet all suffer from an endemic resistance to think critically as a society. As physicians, we need to lead by example.If we are to be role models of critical thinking, we need to understand how to evaluate claims based on evidence. James Lett, Professor of Anthropology at Indian River Community College, proposed a taxonomy of six essential elements for reasoning from evidence: falsifiability, logic, comprehensiveness, honesty, replicability, and sufficiency (table 1).5Falsifiability refers to whether a claim can be disproved by evidence. If the truth of a claim is completely immune from all evidence against it, the claim cannot be evaluated scientifically. For example, some cultures believe that everything has a spirit, including the rocks, the trees, and even the wind. This belief does not yield any testable predictions. How can you disprove that the wind has a spirit? As these beliefs cannot be proved or disproved from evidence, they are simply beyond the realm of science.A lot of ânew ageâ thinking suffers from lack of falsifiability. Can people really channel their thoughts through crystals? If this leads to testable predictions, then it can be prospectively evaluated. If not, the claim is scientifically meaningless. The same is true for many claims from practitioners of âalternative medicine.â How can one evaluate a treatment that promises to âimprove your well-beingâ? If that cannot be defined, it cannot be tested.Infinite excuses are often used to protect pseudoscientific viewpoints from falsifiability. For example, creation âscientistsâ hold that God created the earth and its life forms based on literal reading of the Bible. The mountain of evidence for evolution through natural selection, drawn from epidemiology, evolutionary biology, comparative biology, geology, statistical modeling, paleontology, molecular biology, and genetics, including the sequencing of the genomes of many species, is entirely dismissed. Why are dinosaur bones buried in the earth? âGod wanted it that way!â Not only is creation âscienceâ devoid of falsifiable propositions, but infinite excuses preclude rational debate about the merits of creationism.Similarly, believers that the earth has been visited by extraterrestrials answer all criticism regarding the complete lack of evidence for extraterrestrial visitation on the basis that the evidence is suppressed by the government. It is all kept under lock and key in Area 51! This permits infinite excuses and prevents falsifiability of the claims. This is the essence of junk science.Logic involves valid methods of inference. Some methods are self-evident. If I say that all dogs have fleas, and Roxy is a dog, it follows that Roxy has fleas. However, if I say that all dogs have fleas, and Roxy has fleas, it does not follow that Roxy is a dog. Roxy could be the neighborâs kid.Logic can be devilishly confusing. Consider the 1960s television game show Letâs Make a Deal hosted by Monty Hall. This show was based on a stage with three doors. Behind one of the doors was a valuable prize, frequently âMontyâs Cookie Jarâ stuffed with money. Behind the other two doors were joke prizes, typically goats. The contestant was instructed to pick one of the doors. Letâs assume the contestant picks door 1.At this point in the show, Monty would typically open one of the two doors not chosen by the contestant, invariably revealing a goat to howls of inexplicable laughter from the audience. (Since Monty knew where the cookie jar was, did they think that Monty would reveal the cookie jar and spoil the game?) Letâs assume that Monty has opened door 3, revealing the goat. Ha ha! At this point the contestant is offered a choice: stay with door 1, the original selection, or switch to door 2. Nearly all contestants chose to stay with door 1.The logic could not be simpler: There are just three doors, and one question: stay or switch? It is remarkably nonobvious that the probability of winning Montyâs Cookie Jar is doubled by switching to door 2. The reason is that in opening door 3, Monty has told the contestant nothing about door 1. There was a one-third probability that this was the correct choice when the choice was made, and there is still a one-third probability after door 3 is opened. There was a two-thirds probability that Montyâs Cookie Jar was behind doors 2 or 3, and that is still the case. However, because there is zero chance that Montyâs Cookie Jar is behind door 3, there is a two-thirds probability that it is behind door 2. Therefore, the probability of winning Montyâs Cookie Jar is doubled by switching.**The same problem has confounded research in psychology for several decades. In studies of cognitive dissonance, a monkey is offered a choice between a red and a blue M&M. Let us assume that the monkey selects red. The monkey is then given a choice between a blue and a green M&M. The monkey is approximately twice as likely to pick green. Assuming that there was a 50:50 chance that the monkey would pick either color, the preference for green was assumed to represent âcognitive dissonance,â psychological angst over the selection of the previously rejected blue M&M. This has been the basis of decades of research in cognitive dissonance.However, there is not a 50:50 chance of the monkey picking a green M&M versus blue M&M. As pointed out by Keith Chen,6this is the Monty Hall problem. Assume that the monkey has a true preference among the three colors. Figure 2shows the six possible preferences. The monkeyâs preference for the red M&M over the blue M&M rejects half of the possible preferences, shown as a line through three of the six possible preferences in figure 2. Among the remaining three possible rank orders, green is preferred over blue in two cases, and blue is preferred over green in one case. Therefore, the animal is twice as likely to pick the green M&M as to pick the blue M&M, not 50:50 as was assumed. The Monty Hall and monkey M&M choice problems are striking for the nonobviousness of the correct answer, which is particularly remarkable given the exceedingly simply structure: three doors or three M&Ms.Logic can be distorted by the ambiguity in our language. For example, many would agree that a ham sandwich was better than nothing. It is similarly evident that nothing is better than eternal happiness. If both statements are true, does it not logically follow that a ham sandwich is better than eternal happiness?Logic also involves statistics. Statistics can be thought of has having two flavors: Fisherian and Bayesian. 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In this paper, we prove classical coin-flipping secure in the presence of quantum adversaries. The proof uses a recent result of Watrous [Wat09] that allows quantum rewinding for protocols of a certain form. We then discuss two applications. First, the combination of coin-flipping with any non-interactive zero-knowledge protocol leads to an easy transformation from non-interactive zero-knowledge to interactive quantum zero-knowledge. Second, we discuss how our protocol can be applied to a recently proposed method for improving the security of quantum protocols [DFL+09], resulting in an implementation without set-up assumptions. Finally, we sketch how to achieve efficient simulation for an extended construction in the common-reference-string model.
Seen from France, this report underlines how far we still have to go in our country to reduce social inequalities in health. France is not one of the partner countries of the Commission1 and the conceptions of health determinants which are developed in the report appear far removed from the paradigm which predominates in our country. We can no longer say that France is at the âpre-contemplativeâ stage:2 data exist, the phenomenon of social inequalities in health is known and well documented for numerous states of health. But these efforts, which issue largely from the world of research, have not resulted in a system of routine statistical surveillance. Furthermore, at this âcontemplativeâ stage, there is no explicit public policy and no objective written down in law. In the law on public health policy of 2004, objective 34 touches on this question, but restricts it to the state of health of the most precarious populations. As stated in the report, reduction of social inequalities in health is above all a political problem, but it is essential to provide evidence. In this respect, the report lends support to those who, in France, think that it is important to continue to increase our knowledge of the subject, but that the most pressing question is how we can move on to the active stage. It is strange to see how our country, always ready to give others lessons on human rights, tolerates a problem as well documented as social inequalities in health. Although the right to optimal health is laid down in a number of texts, this question of social justice and ethics does not mobilize opinion. This is so in France, but also throughout the world. The question thus remains to find out on what basis opinion and the decision makers can be mobilized. Though today it is unfortunately a fragile argument, it seems to us that the ethical imperative put forward in the report must remain central. The fact that the reduction of social inequalities can be a source of economic gain, as shown in a Canadian report,1 is an argument to be developed in order to remove economic objections, but it cannot be the central argument for mobilization. This report may well enjoy less popularity in France than a previous WHO report.3 In its World Health Report 2000, the World Health Organisation had no hesitation in describing the French health system as one of the best in the world. In that report, the conception of health determinants was in line with the prevailing conception in France. The health system was described as being the essential factor of the good health of a country. âIf Sweden enjoys better health than Ugandaâlife expectancy is almost exactly twice as longâit is in large part because it spends exactly 35 times as much per capita in its health systems.â3 On the basis of this analysis, since 1945 France has enjoyed a system of social protection which proclaims, among its objectives, the improvement of the population's level of health. Within this system of social protection, the general health insurance system, completed by specific schemes for the poorest among the population, should allow widespread access to health care. The number of French people who have the benefit of insurance against ill health has constantly increased over the years and now almost the entire population is covered. In 2002, according to the Health and Social Protection survey, 91% of residents in France also had complementary coverage.4 At the same time, the mortality statistics remind us that in this country social inequalities in health are particularly marked in comparison with our European neighbours. This apparent paradox calls into question such a conception of health. The 2008 report puts the determinants back into perspective in a most useful way. On a world-wide scale, access to drinking water, to a diet which prevents malnutrition, protection against the vagaries of the climate are the major decisive factors in social inequalities in health. In line with this analysis, the report emphasizes actions which target determinants outside the health system and the need for a coherent policy in order to achieve health equity. A large number of spheres are involved, some of which seem a priori far removed from health: these are not only education, but also access to employment, working conditions, the age of retirement, the housing policy and lastly policies of redistribution, through taxation and direct financial aid. These are all relevant to social inequalities in health in France. The impact of investments concerning children at the very start of life and young people, in particular relating to education and training, is strongly pertinent to social inequalities in health, especially because of the links between education, qualification and health later in life. The role of unemployment and working conditions1 and of housing and transports are emphasized. In agreement with studies which have shown the protective influence of social networks and social support, and the role that a sense of control over one's life can play, citizens are encouraged to participate actively in decisions related to healthâand this theme is a far-reaching one. Behaviour change is not mediated only by individual approaches to health education. The prices of food products, the industrial processing of foods, institutional catering, advertising, legislative measures and regulations are all paths to be explored. We must thus be delighted that the report stresses the intersectoral aspect of the fight against social inequalities in health, as this is a key issue. For example, the report points out the contradictions which were observed in certain Northern European countries when the common agricultural policy of the European Union came to thwart the efforts of the health authorities, themselves supported by the government.5 It thus will help to promote an intersectoral approach to health, at a national and at a European level, a choice which involves fundamental policy choices. For example, the increase in precarious employment, obligatorily part-time work, poorly paid jobs and their detrimental effects clearly shows that what is at stake here is the choice between a potential political determination and the predominantly economic (and short term) approach which is that of the liberal ideology. Just as for the issue of climate change, the fight against social inequalities in health is clearly revealed here as a global combat implying a choice of development strategy. Measurement and surveillance are one dimension of the solution. With the partial exception of death certificates and of a longitudinal survey of mortality based on the Permanent Demographic Sample, in France social characteristics are ignored by nearly all routine statistics, whether hospital information systems, health insurance data or registers of specific diseases. The data produced by research studies, generally based on one-off surveys or at best surveys repeated every few years, do not allow us to grasp changes in inequalities over time. The proposals for a minimum statistic system and a system which covers social determinants are important and should be developed in France. The information systems of healthcare institutions, starting with those of hospitals, are silent as to the social situation of those who use them, and this evidently restricts their ability to adapt their services to the needs of these persons. Naturally, the report does not elude the question of healthcare and advocates universal access to quality care. At a time when health expenditure is strictly limited, it is important to examine the question of patientsâ share in these expenses and its effects on care consumption and health in the light of health inequalities. The Rand Corporation study,6 carried out in the 1970s in a sample of American families, followed for 3â5 years and randomly assigned to health insurance plans which differed by levels of reimbursement and the share to be paid by the household, is still topical. The conclusions of this randomized study showed that the amount of care consumed decreased markedly as soon as >25% of the cost was borne by the patient. No difference in state of health was observed in the population as a whole. But the impact of the cost to be borne made itself felt as soon as the poor population was concerned. It is interesting to point out that the share borne by the patient in France has been around 25% during the last 20 years, a proportion which has tended to increase. But the tendency in France is to increase the participation of households in health expenses, including (particularly) persons who are in a precarious situation because of their state of health, with in due course an impact on social inequalities in health. The report stresses the need for health systems to be proactive. Taking the need for proactivity into account is particularly pertinent in France, where the system is still widely based on a logic of offer. Issues related to secondary access to care are somewhat briefly dealt with in the report, which is strongly centred on primary access. But to ensure that this first phase is well organized is not sufficient if the system is ineffective in other respects, or if its malfunctions concern mainly the most disadvantaged patients.7 The report suggests that the role of the healthcare system goes beyond the treatment of diseases. Physicians and the other health professionals are leaders of opinion, who influence conceptions and representations of health. Finally, this is where analysis of health determinants is put together and where the directions taken by public health and research are given value. This last remark underlines the importance of giving professionals training on social determinants of health. Their commitment is undoubtedly essential to negotiate the turn towards less biological or medicinal concepts of health. The way in which behaviours are conceptualized in fact determines the way in which they will be taken into account by public health. In agreement with what we have said above, the presentation in the report of the aims of research in public health is particularly pertinent: research on the causes of social inequalities in health, on interventions aiming to reduce them, analysis of public policies and lastly statistical measurement and surveillance. In view of the issues at stake and of the nature of the determinants, research on health should be more interdisciplinary and should integrate social determinants. Redressing the balance towards these objectives should enhance their value, unlike a primarily biological or disease-oriented approach. The complexity of the interventions and so of the methods used to evaluate them justifies not only the interdisciplinary approach, but also a reflection on the notion of proof. Going beyond randomized trials, the question is how to make use of qualitative as well as quantitative data. Evaluation of interventions and strategies to reduce social inequalities in health raises a difficult problem, particularly when these are interventions of a structural type or which aim at long-term modifications. Assessing a research programme carried out in the Netherlands on social inequalities in health, it was found that the interventions subsidized by the programme had been specific, targeted interventions that were easy to evaluate. The projects evaluated were all of this type, to the exclusion of any wide ranging, far-reaching public policy.8 The causes of inequalities are multiple, and several levels of explanation coexist, proximal and fundamental causes. We pay tribute to the very ambitious nature of this report, which runs counter to the policies of international bodies (WTO) and so underlines the most fundamental causes of health inequalities. The main messages of the report are all the more essential as the financial and economic crisis may worsen inequalities by affecting the weakest first. Can health be the theme to mobilize us towards humane objectives, not only economic ones? The report stresses that the sector of health and healthcare professionals, including the minister or ministers responsible, could take position as defenders of wide societal objectives giving health and health equality their rightful place as a marker of progress. This supposes that professionals and politicians become aware of the importance of social determinants of health. This task is a particularly important one in France, and it is without doubt one of our primary challenges.
The paper deals with the equivalence between taxation and emission permits according to different viewpoints: the first one sets prices, the second one quantities. But equivalence is more formal than substantial: taxation is the generating fact, the market of permits does not exist spontaneously. Its price is unstable because supply is not independent from demand. It is manipulatable either ex ante when free allowances are allocated or ex post during the period of compliance through Walrasian tatonnement. A real economic determination of prices exists only when there are unit taxes or penalties on emissions exceeding the quotas. In order to avoid these drawbacks, pay-as-bid auctions must be used and free allowances avoided. Taxation or the price of emission permits are the real option value of changing techniques. An assignment rule is proposed : taxes are assigned to reduce average emissions and permits to reduce marginal emissions. In order to transform the cost into a real change of techniques, it is necessary to finance the sector of research and development of an amount greater than the taxes levied on pollution, which serve at paying the rent of innovation. These extra subsidies are used to move factors of production as capital from industry towards the innovation sector. The tax equivalence is ternary and concerns the taxes on pollution, capital and energy, because extracting fossil fuels is similar as innovation. Decentralization through market schemes induces that depollution has a marketable cost.
Every regions goverment must be able increasing their own regional income. The finance of resources in fiscal decentralization era, such as: regional original income, general allocation funds and natural resources revenue sharing and tax revenue sharing This research aims to analyze the fiscal decentralization impact to economic growth at regional district in sub provinsi Semarang. The tools of analisis is regression using panel data with Generalized Least Square (GLS) method and Fixed Effect model. It uses district-level data and supplied by the Indonesian Central Bureau of Statistics during 2002 - 2006 The regression result shows that regional income, natural resources revenue sharing and tax revenue sharing, and labour forces have positive impact on economic growth at regional district in sub provinsi Semarang.General allocation funds has negative effect towards economic growth at regional district in sub provinsi Semarang. Fiscal decentralization brings more advantages for regions to manage their own fiscal capacities. The regions governments must be have informational advantages concerning resource allocation with optimal Keywords: Fiscal Decentralization, economic growth, Fixed Effect Model
In two important recent books, John Hawthorne and Jason Stanley each argue that non-evidential factors, such as the cost of being wrong and salience of possible error, have a place in epistemological theorizing. This point is familiar from the work of epistemological contextualists, who emphasize non-evidential speaker factors: factors which, when present in a speaker's conversational context, affect the semantic content of her knowledge attributions. According to Hawthorne and Stanley, the appropriate focus is on the subject, rather than the speaker: when the relevant non-evidential factors are present in a subject they can affect whether the subject knows. This suggests a reorientation for epistemology, away from the standard âintellectualistâ (Stanley's term) model, endorsed even by contextualists, according to which only evidential or more broadly truth-related factors (evidence, safety, sensitivity, reliability, etc.) bear on whether a subject knows. If Hawthorne and Stanley are right, then the contextualist program should give way to a program of anti-intellectualist invariantism, or to use a more common label, subject-sensitive invariantism (SSI).1 The books explore in insightful and original fashion a range of important issues in epistemology, all focused on the concept of knowledge: the lottery puzzle, skepticism, the knowledge rule of assertion, the relation of knowledge to objective chance, epistemic closure, etc. Here, we limit ourselves to the relative merits of SSI. Stanley claims that the only plausible argument for contextualism is based on intuitions about certain stakes-shifting cases (like Keith DeRose's bank cases and Stewart Cohen's airport case). (84) This is because he takes the contextualist about knowledge attributions to be positing a sort of context-sensitivity which departs significantly from the familiar sorts. He painstakingly backs up this claim in chapters 2 and 3. In chapter 2, âknowâ is shown not to be a gradable expression (it doesn't admit modifiers and has no associated comparative), and so the assumption that gradable expressions are context-sensitive is no evidence that âknowâ is. Chapter 3 argues for two general points: first, our use of propositional anaphora (âwhat I saidâ) and speech reports (âI said that I knewâ) doesn't follow the pattern displayed by familiar context-sensitive expressions (like modals, demonstratives, quantifiers, gradable expressions); second, we do not find the sorts of intra-discourse context-shifts that we find with the uncontroversial examples and which we would expect to find given the plausible assumption that context-sensitivity has its source in particular occurrences of elements in logical form.2 Stanley's conclusion is that if the intuitions in the stakes-shifting cases can be explained away adequately without resorting to contextualism, we would have little reason to accept contextualism.3 If Stanley is right about the dialectical situation, the ramifications for epistemology are significant. Contextualists have wanted to argue that, because these cases force us to acknowledge dramatic shifts in epistemic standards across contexts of use, we have good reason to think that even more dramatic shifts could be the source of the appeal of skeptical arguments. Without an independent reason to think that dramatic shifts occur, contextualists have no good answer to the charge that their response of skepticism is ad hoc, the sort of easy response available to solve almost any philosophical puzzle. With all this in mind, here are DeRose's original (1992) bank cases: Bank Case A (Low Stakes). My wife and I are driving home on a Friday afternoon. We plan to stop at the bank on the way home to deposit our paychecks. But as we drive past the bank, we notice that the lines inside are very long, as they often are on Friday afternoons. Although we generally like to deposit our paychecks as soon as possible, it is not especially important in this case that they be deposited right away, so I suggest that we drive straight home and deposit our paychecks on Saturday morning. My wife says, âMaybe the bank won't be open tomorrow. Lots of banks are closed on Saturdays.â I reply, âNo, I know it'll be open. I was just there two weeks ago on Saturday. It's open until noon.â Bank Case B (High Stakes). My wife and I drive past the bank on a Friday afternoon, as in Case A, and notice the long lines. I again suggest that we deposit our paychecks on Saturday morning, explaining that I was at the bank on Saturday morning only two weeks ago and discovered that it was open until noon. But in this case, we have just written a very large and important check. If our paychecks are not deposited into our checking account before Monday morning, the important check we wrote will bounce, leaving us in a very bad situation. And, of course, the bank is not open on Sunday. My wife reminds me of these facts. She then says, âBanks do change their hours. Do you know the bank will be open tomorrow?â Remaining as confident as I was before that the bank will be open then, still, I reply, âWell, no. I'd better go in and make sure.â (913) How do these cases support contextualism?4 It seems (premise 1), you speak the truth in both cases. But (premise 2) you have the same evidence and generally the same truth-related factors regarding the proposition in question. Therefore, (conclusion) the sentence âI know that the bank will be open on Saturdayâ must differ in semantic content in these two contexts of use, due to a difference in content associated with âknowâ: contextualism is true.5 Stanley grants both premises but denies the conclusion. The conclusion follows only on the assumption of intellectualismâonly on the assumption that, if the content of âI know that the bank is open on Saturdayâ is the same in the two cases, a difference in the sentence's truth-value across the cases requires a difference in the evidence for the bank is open on Saturday. But perhaps intellectualism is false: even if âI know that the bank will be open on Saturdayâ has the same content across the cases, it could be true in one case but false in the other because the practical facts differ. SSI can handle the bank cases just as well as contextualism. DeRose's bank cases are cases of first-person present-tense knowledge attributions in which the attributor is aware of his practical interests. SSI delivers the same results as contextualism for these cases. The same goes for first-person versions of the lottery puzzle. The contextualist says that the sentence âI don't know my ticket is a loserâ is true in a context in which the possibility that one wins is salient, even though it wasn't true in a previous context when that possibility wasn't salient (e.g., because, as in Hawthorne's example, one is thinking about whether one will have enough money to go on Safari next year). For the contextualist, the change in truth-value is due to the association of a higher epistemic standard in the later context than in the former, and this association is made possible by the content-shifting power of salience. The SSIist, piggybacking off the contextualist, may say that salience destroys knowledge. When the possibility of your winning wasn't salient, you knew you would lose. Now that it is, you don't know. And the same case could be made for skeptical arguments. The SSIist might say that the salience of the possibility that one is a brain in a vat strips one of much of one's empirical knowledge. These anti-intellectualist manoeuvres incur an explanatory burden, for it is unclear how salience of possible error, or raised practical stakes, could destroy knowledge. But the view does at least match contextualism in its claims about the truth-values of first-person present-tense knowledge attributions and denials. Moreover, the SSIist doesn't make the vindication of our intuitions about cases dependent on delicate use/mention issues, such as the distinction between the question of whether what is said in uttering âI know that pâ is true and the question of whether the subject knows that p. It appears, then, that we have a prima facie case for thinking that either contextualism or SSI is true. But which? One consideration that might seem to favor contextualism is the fact that SSI predicts the truth of odd-sounding temporal and modal embeddings. It sounds wrong to say âI don't know that p, but, assuming p is true, I used to know that p,â or âIf I didn't have so much at stake, then if p were true, I'd know it was.â But SSIists seem committed to the potential truth of both of these utterances. Is this a reason to favor contextualism over SSI? Stanley suggests (pp. 107â13) that contextualists might find themselves committed to similarly peculiar temporal and modal embeddings, depending on how they explain the source of context-sensitivity. If so, these oddities would be no reason to favor contextualism over SSI. He considers in particular David Lewis's (1996) contextualism, according to which knowledge-ascribing sentences contain a context-sensitive quantifier under semantic analysis. Under Lewis's account, âS knows that pâ is true in a context iff âS has evidence which rules out all possibilities in which not-pâ is true in the context, with âall possibilitiesâ contextually restricted to those that are not being properly ignored in the context, where attention to a possibility is one way of not being properly ignored. Because the best semantic account of quantifiers holds that they express properties, it would seem that Lewis is committed to thinking that the relevant property is not being properly ignored by A, where A is the attributor. But then we should expect that a sentence such as âIf A were properly ignoring more possibilities than he is, S would know that p, if p were trueâ to be acceptable, which of course it isn't. We have a reservation about Stanley's argument. Consider his example of âevery bottleâ. In a context of use, this expresses a property, e.g., being a bottle on such and such shelf. Which property it expresses depends on what is salient to the attributor or conversational participants, but the property expressed itself is not about salience to a certain attributor. Thus, âJohn bought every bottle but wouldn't have if I had been thinking about a different grocery storeâ won't come out true. Similarly, it seemed to us that one could revamp Lewis's view by proposing that which property âall possibilitiesâ expresses in a context of use depends on what the attributor is properly ignoring but the property expressed isn't itself about the attributor and his ignorings. So, perhaps SSI is committed to the peculiar sounding embeddings in a way that contextualism isn't. Nonetheless, there are ways to soften the blow. As Hawthorne (177n.40) remarks, anyone who thinks barn façade cases are Gettier cases must say that in many cases in which you look at a barn it is true to say, âI know that's a barn, but if unbeknownst to me there were a lot of barn facades around then even if this one was a barn I wouldn't know it was.â The defeasibility of knowledge, too, generates odd-sounding predictions like this: âI don't know that Mary is sick, now that her boyfriend told me she was faking it, but if he is misleading me, then if he hadn't told me anything, I would know (having seen her coughing earlier today).â If we can live with these embeddings, perhaps we can live with SSI's temporal and modal embeddings as well. SSIists, however, must further part company with contextualists on third person knowledge attributions. When Mary and John, whose evidence is the same as Smith's, utter not only âWe don't knowâ but also âAnd neither does Smith,â the intellectualist contextualist will say that Mary and John speak the truth about Smith if they speak the truth about themselves. The SSIist will of course have to insist that this move is in general illicit, because, e.g., less might be at stake for Smith than for Mary and John or fewer counterpossibilities of error salient to him. Yet we seem to make this move on a regular basis. It would be very odd for Mary and John to wonder, âWe don't know whether the plane stops in Chicago, but if it does, then Smith knows it does.â The SSIist has to explain away mistakes about third-person knowledge attributions and denials. Keith DeRose (2004) has called this the problem with SSI. Hawthorne and Stanley are well aware of it, and propose their own solutions. The core idea behind both proposals, spelled out most clearly in Stanley (who is trying to improve upon Hawthorne's account (see pp. 162â66)), is that we treat others as if they were in our situation, having our stakes (or finding salient possibilities we find salient). Stanley puts it this way: our real aim is to deny that if they were in our situation they'd know. Indeed, they wouldn't. But what is strictly said, that they don't know, is false. (101â4) This proposal is committed to an error theory about some of our knowledge attributions. But, as Hawthorne and Stanley would be quick to point out, contextualism has a similar problem because as we noted above, contextualists place heavy weight on the use/mention distinction. Mary and John are happy to assert not only âSmith doesn't knowâ but âWhat Smith said is false. He doesn't know any more than we do.â Equally worrisome, Stanley notes that contextualists have to strain, more than SSIists, to accommodate intuitions about other third person casesâcases in which the attributor has lower stakes than the subject. Stanley calls such cases Low Attributor-High Stakes and claims that contextualism delivers the wrong result about them. Intuitively, Stanley claims, the speaker's attribution of knowledge to the subject is false, whereas contextualism predicts its truth. Contextualism in his view also than SSI in certain person cases, such as Stakes which a subject thinks her stakes are but they are He that the weight of the versions of the stakes-shifting SSI over contextualism. does not that contextualism is false. Therefore, there is a way to accommodate without Stanley's intuitions about all the versions of the stakes cases, by for a contextualist of it is part of the for knowledge attributions that that pâ only when the subject is to as if p in of the So, when a attributor says of a subject knows that p,â the attributor that intellectualist contextualism, it will have to to This takes of all but the subject has stakes, but we have the the attributor when she says, doesn't know that handle this case, we the contextualist when one's stakes that one a certain standard to know, in one's speech context associated with having an epistemic that at least that so that if a subject doesn't it with to p, the subject doesn't with to p in one's speech possibility for all the stakes-shifting cases is to with a view which would also have the over contextualism that it doesn't different intuitions depending on whether the say or he said is rather than doesn't The possibility of these of up the to the epistemological question of whether intellectualism is true from both the semantic question of whether knowledge-ascribing sentences in content across contexts of use and the question of whether knowledge-ascribing can only be true relative to an (e.g., a or an epistemic Stanley is right that intellectualism is a for contextualism for in the of stakes-shifting cases. As Stewart in contextualist from his case of Smith and Mary and John, what is in the is a good enough reason for Smith to know, then it is a good enough reason for John and Mary to But there is no reason an anti-intellectualist to semantic or are to accommodate intuitions such as those in the cases. the are as as we know no one is on as they do the cases. these we are with intellectualist contextualism and each of which is committed to error about our to some of the cases at has to to accommodate those It will seem to some that all this and in the is an Consider what Hawthorne calls This is intellectualist invariantism with the claim that the standards for knowledge are enough so that a many of our knowledge claims are in fact true. it is that contextualism and SSI are committed to error of their own about the versions of the bank cases, there is now no from consideration of those cases, to invariantism just because it requires its own error theory to handle we to the invariantism, is a reason to that knowledge, or even is to salience or practical in the such factors are not truth-related or the used in standard Gettier misleading into the at we little in salience of possible error as a subject seems to us to be no other than the to the cases, to a between knowledge and salience of possible The situation is more for knowledge and This is the of our Hawthorne us to the are a for a lottery ticket that cost a in a ticket lottery with a and reason as I will the If I the ticket I will If I the I will a I to the This he claims, is The is that you don't know the is true. this lottery case to Hawthorne's A or so you bought a lottery ticket in a ticket the in a at I won't have enough money to go on Safari next the less as to the This is In Hawthorne's because you know the is true. like these are used to support Hawthorne's one is to use p as a in practical if and only if one knows that Hawthorne that it is to give the the difference between the and the other the lottery is that in the case the for the subject that he will is enough so as to be to the practical issues at he can the epistemic that is This knowledge out in favor of a about you can use p in practical just in case the that p is false is just in case it can be in your practical this the If this is so we give in and accept Hawthorne's is to appeal to the according to which that p is and for having epistemic or for being or for there being no epistemic for the subject that the epistemic of is the same in both cases or If it is the then by the you don't know that you will in the you don't know, in the lottery case, that you will the But if you don't that, then by you don't know that you won't have enough money to go on But the seems to be a of knowledge. Thus, Hawthorne that if the epistemic of is the same in the two cases, then skepticism So, skepticism the for you of winning between the cases, and so by the the two cases differ with to your knowledge that your ticket will lose. It follows that practical can affect knowledge in the way We can think of two ways to to Hawthorne's argument. one might argue that you know in the case isn't to in the case you do have a lottery and might be have a reason to think you might have enough money to go on Safari next In response Hawthorne (pp. argues that lottery cases can be at will for just about any of our claims to knowledge. If so, then there is about the case, because there is about the of that is a lottery one might question the We with this are the relevant to between If your epistemic for p is then, it should follow that you would be to accept a on p at any But you wouldn't be to do this for very many doesn't think he would on the of at any Thus, the seems to One can to this as Hawthorne does, by intellectualism about epistemic and so that how a proposition is for a person can with practical This seems to us If you me a on the proposition this will come up that doesn't seem to lower its and not to the that it will come up us the Is there any other reason to knowledge into the of certain of practical are and others not just on the If you an when a for his lottery he isn't to it, he will you that he doesn't know that the ticket will lose. If you the same in the he the rather than the given that he of on he will answer that he knows he won't have enough money to go on seem to knowledge its to their As Stanley A standard use of knowledge attributions is to When I I to the on the rather than the on the right, I will by that I knew that the on the had the I but I not know whether the on the right When my wife me I rather than I that I knew that it was the to go to the If we could have a view that knowledge relevant but doesn't us to the this might seem to just the right And it such a view is We can claim that knowledge is with a epistemic of error but only an This view at least the of Hawthorne's will of course to the Stanley as having rather than semantic The idea would be that there are cases in which one knows but isn't to on it, that one knows often or at least in some way that one is to on it Stanley is well aware of this and a to come up with a We that it is not easy to give such a (see our but we that he shifts the of As we above, many in our view will insist that intellectualism is a cost than positing or intellectualism us to the claim that you can or knowledge, not by or by but by or up a large check. And that seems Is there a more argument available for a When it to would deny that when can be to other It does not follow from the fact that your is even from the fact that you that you have a reason to that your won't But you know that your is you have an reason to that your won't that your is So, when it to we do to say that, when you know that p, p can be your your for course, when you know that p, p can to be your for some for the very reason that p has to do with if you know that your is that it is is not a reason you have for that is from the than But its to be a reason you in this case, is not the result of the for you that your is not the result of any other epistemic you have with to the proposition that your is When you know that p, in the for you that doesn't in the way of p being a reason you have for We can say very similar about the very there are facts such that, when you know to be true, they can be you have to do The fact that your will be by a which is the you and in the next seems to be such a that the of this fact would not that you have any reason to your (having no idea of the situation, you would be it in on the with your would your in it if be enough if that itself were not But if you know this then you do have a reason to your This is a of the situation. As with the situation, when you know that p, p might to be a reason you have for but not because of any epistemic of with to because for example, the for you that might know that your is But this is not a reason you have to your out of the way of an its to be a reason you have is not due to any epistemic with to the proposition that your is seems little to the practical and the cases in the way by the If the that doesn't in the way of p being a reason you have for for any then the that doesn't in the way of p being a reason you have for A, for any This other of the fact that, when we that p in the course of about what to we don't then p off from our about what to When we p, we can use p. But, noted that, when you know that p, then the that doesn't in the way of p being a reason you have for in with the a general not those by and more in a by Hawthorne and Stanley If you know that p, then the that doesn't in the way of p being a reason you have for or a problem for intellectualism if there are of for the that is the but are such that the that in the way of p being a reason one has but not the Consider again the airport Smith and Mary and John are with to the that the plane stops in According to the Smith and Mary and John all know that the plane stops in the that the plane doesn't stop in doesn't in the way of it being a reason they have say, In case, at For Mary and John, there is. and the assumption that Mary and John have knowledge, Mary and John have an reason not to checking with the a of the case is so that they should check with the given all that is at So, the had better not Mary and reason to just go and to Mary and John in just and How might the that the plane stops in is a reason that Mary and John have to the that, even if they have a very good reason to in their reason is by some other reason they The A proposition about the of error with the of the relevant or to use the a proposition to the that checking further A general intellectualist then, for is to make a first, having to do with of error can with about what is in fact the case and second, when the stakes are about of error can out about what is in fact the This is For this would seem to the sort of the one the plane stops the other it might And if it doesn't it the are I'd better check further to it stops in it This is not what we do when we we we do when we is the at and which is more the one the other Which is more the good or the that both that we don't facts the that those facts don't if we were facts would the one the plane is to the other it might not Which is more the fact that it is, or the that it In the intellectualist what seems to be a about having When you have a reason to or about when you have a reason to to that reason for in whether to This is not to say that, you have a reason to you should But it is to say that, when you have that you to it into with other you have without the relative of those In this you have are might not have as that it will that you will have to for the If you do then when whether to your you might have to the that it will how long you think have to for the if you have both as then you can use both in your without their to and have to So, to if I don't the Because this off the intellectualist there is us from on the of that if knowledge is with a of error, then knowledge can come and go with in the practical If Hawthorne's is false, so is
The study reported here found that producers were familiar with the biofuel industry through mass media channels and were willing to convert cropland to energy crops. Producers were motivated by patriotic reasons, but overall profitability was the greater motive for converting cropland to dedicated biofuel crops such as switchgrass. Barriers to energy crop production were a lack of markets (biorefineries) and information about biofuel crop production. It is recommended that an educational campaign regarding biofuel crop production best practices, especially cellulosic crops (switchgrass) and marketing, be implemented. A statewide leadership campaign to attract biorefineries to the state is also recommended.
New offshore oil recourses that are developed are more difficult to drill and increase the requirements to the technology in the offshore industry. A relatively new technology is Managed Pressure Drilling where a choke topside is used to control the bottom hole pressure. The bottom hole pressure measurement is unreliable, which motivates the need for an observer. Different methods for estimation will be presented and compared in this thesis. Proofs of convergence are outlined for the Stamnes observer, derived for the Grip observer and some stepping stones for further work are presented for the Optimal Polynomial Filter. Each observer is simulated with a simple step in the mud pump to verify the estimation laws. The results show that all observes estimated the bottom hole pressure correctly for this simple case. A more realistic case, a pipe connection, is also simulated for each observer. The case includes zero flow from the mud pump, which reveals that all observers miss the estimation convergence in this case, but that the estimate converges when there is flow from the mud pump. One of the states that affects the bottom hole pressure is the pressure loss due to friction in drill string and annulus. Earlier work modeled these losses as quadratic with respect to the flow through the bit, which are simplifications. To improve the estimate of the bottom hole pressure, new and better friction models are needed. Measurement data from Gullfaks C are analyzed to get new knowledge of friction loss in the drilling string and annulus. For the drill string the quadratic friction model is found to be good enough, catching the main behavior. On the other hand, the friction loss in the annulus is a more complicated function of flow. The annulus friction is approximated with sets of basis functions and the weighted sum of these functions gives an approximation to the friction curve. Each weight is estimated to get the friction loss estimate. The use of the weighted sum of four 1st-order b-spline functions give a good approximation to the real friction curve, and the weight for each basis function is estimated. This is tested in simulations both with a simple case and the pipe connection case. The simulations show that the annulus friction loss and the bit pressure are estimated correctly.