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May 1, 1995·ThinkTech (Texas Tech University)
0 cites
Decremental budgeting in an incremental era: A study of the central-provincial budgetary relationship in the People's Republic of China after 1978

Bai Yan

The Caiden and Wildavsky work of 1974 postulates a model of poverty-uncertainty: the governments of poor countries face disappearing and decremental budgets in financing public programs because of a lack of economic growth or poverty. The core argument is that economic development, as a critical variable, determines increments in budgeting practices. In other words, budgeting is incremental, and incremental budgeting results from the growth of GNP. This model has since become a set of principles with identifiable attributes to explain the budgetary processes in poor nations.
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\nThis study is about application of that model in China's budgeting. China has a unitary budget system. The central government used to draw most of its revenues from provinces and its budget includes those of 31 provinces. Provinces thus play a dual role of collecting revenues from within and remitting them to the center in the name of revenue sharing. In 1978 China decided to open to the world, reform its economy, and decentralize budget to provinces. But the original intent of decentralization was to give incentives so that provinces accumulate more resources for further central extraction. The decentralization, however, has led to fiscal decline not anticipated by the reformers.

Open access
Local Government Finance and Decentralization
Original source
May 1, 1995·Organization Studies
365 cites
The Unmanaged Organization: Stories, Fantasies and Subjectivity

Yiannis Gabriel

This paper argues that within every organization there is a terrain which is not and cannot be managed, in which people, both individually and in groups, can engage in unsupervised, spontaneous activity. This is referred to as the unmanaged organization, a kind of organizational dreamworld in which desires, anxieties and emotions find expressions in highly irrational construc tions. The chief force in this terrain is fantasy and its landmarks include stories, myths, jokes, gossip, nicknames, graffiti and cartoons. In the organizational dreamworld, emotions prevail over rationality and pleasure over reality. The paper argues that fantasy offers a third possibility to organizational members, which amounts to neither conformity nor rebellion, but to a grudging material acceptance accompanied by a symbolic refashioning of events and official stor ies. Far from being a marginal terrain, it is suggested that the unmanaged organisation is rich, multidimensional and the natural habitat of subjectivity. Four different modes of subjectivity are identified and discussed in connection with different types of organizational narratives: (1) the subject as hero; (2) the subject as heroic survivor; (3) the subject as victim; (4) the subject as object of love.

May 1, 1995·Organization
342 cites
The McUniversity: Organization, Management and Academic Subjectivity

Martin Parker, David Jary

This paper uses elements of Weberian and Foucauldian social theory to speculate on the consequences of recent higher education change in the UK. We argue that changes in the political, institutional and funding environment have produced forms of HE organization that increase the power of management and diminish the autonomy of professional academics. These new forms of organization, which are increasingly bureaucratic and utilize sophisticated systems of surveillance, will make academics increasingly instrumental in their attitudes and behaviour. We conclude that the rationalization of HE should be resisted, but that nostalgia for a previous order should not be part of that resistance. `Mass' higher education organizations are not simply good or bad, but their rationale and consequences need to be clearly thought through if their negative aspects are to be addressed.

May 1, 1995·Journal of International Development
178 cites
The political economy of user fees with targeting: Developing equitable health financing policy

Lucy Gilson, Steven J. Russell, Kent Buse

Abstract Since the 1980s user fees for government services have become an accepted financing option for the health and social sectors in developing countries. Even countries which had a tradition of providing health services free of charge have now introduced fees and the focus of debate has shifted from whether or not to introduce them, to when and how they should be introduced. Proponents of user fees stress that equity and efficiency gains can be achieved through the implementation of a cost‐recovery policy package. Within this package user fees are complemented by decentralization and combined with two targeting mechanisms favouring low income groups: exemptions, and the use of fee revenue to improve the services offered to them. The extension and improvement of primary health care, for example, will disproportionately benefit low income groups by addressing their health needs in a cost‐effective way. However, targeting mechanisms, and exemptions in particular, have received little attention in theoretical debates within the health sector and current practices have rarely been reviewed. Relatively little is known about their effectiveness or about the conditions required to ensure and enhance it. This paper seeks to contribute to health financing policy debates by reviewing targeting options and assessing the available evidence concerning these issues. Success in protecting the poor appears to be limited and there are considerable informational, administrative, resource and socio‐political constraints undermining the development of effective targeting mechanisms. The paper, therefore, urges‐caution in developing health care financing policy and identifies a relevant research agenda.

Global Health Care Issues
Global Maternal and Child Health
Healthcare Systems and Reforms
Original source
Apr 28, 1995·Cambridge University Press eBooks
0 cites
The attractor dimension for the Navier-Stokes equations

Charles R. Doering, John Gibbon

Introduction In this chapter we show how the dimension of the global attractor ℕ can be estimated for the Navier-Stokes equations. The approach is an extension of that developed in Chapter 4 for ordinary differential equations where it was shown that if N -dimensional volume elements in the system phase space contract to zero, then the attractor dimension d L (ℕ) must be bounded by N . For partial differential equations the technical chore remains the same; namely, to derive estimates on the spectrum of the linearized evolution operator, linearized around solutions on the attractor, and to perform this operation in some function space instead of an a priori finite dimensional phase space. As we saw in Chapter 4 in the context of the Lorenz equations, this requires some knowledge of the location of the attractor, i.e., a priori estimates on the solutions. This approach is pursued in section 9.2 which deals with the 2 d Navier-Stokes equations. It was shown in Chapter 7 that a global attractor si exists in this case, and we have good control of the solutions on the attractor. It turns out that the result for periodic boundary conditions is quite sharp, within logarithms of both the conventional heuristic estimate for the number of degrees of freedom in a 2 d turbulent flow and rigorous lower bounds. The 3 d Navier-Stokes equations on a periodic domain are the concern of section 9.3. The lack of a regularity proof for this case results in some uncertainty concerning the very existence of a compact attractor. To achieve any formal estimate of the attractor dimension it is necessary to assume that H 1 remains bounded for all t .

Stability and Controllability of Differential Equations
Quantum chaos and dynamical systems
Model Reduction and Neural Networks
Original source
Apr 14, 1995·Regional Studies
121 cites
Undermining the Financial Basis of Regions: The Spatial Structure and Implications of the UK Pension Fund System

Ron Martin, Richard Minns

MARTIN R. and MINNS R. (1995) Undermining the financial basis of regions: the spatial structure and implications of the UK pension fund system, Reg. Studies 29, 125–144. Regional growth theory and regional policy traditionally focus on the process of industrial development. Relatively little is known about the flows of money and financial capital that shape that development. This paper examines the spatial organization and implications of the UK pension fund system, one of the principal circuits of financial capital in the national economy. It is shown how the great bulk of pension fund contributions that originate right across the various regions of the UK are channelled into and controlled by financial institutions in the South East of the country. Moreover, those funds are then invested primarily back into companies and organizations located or headquartered in the South East. This spatially centralized system pursues liquidity rather than productive investment, and little of the money trickles down to the regions in the form of finance for capital investment or business expansion. The UK pension fund system thus undermines regions by extracting savings from all over the country and centralizing their management, administration and investment in one region. A key task for regional policy, therefore, should be to promote the decentralization of financial power and financial market structures to the regions so that a greater proportion of money funds remain in and benefit the areas where they originate. MARTIN R. et MINNS R. (1995) L'ébranlement de la base financière des régions: la structure gèographique et les retombées du système de fonds d'assurance-vieillesse du Royaume-Uni, Reg. Studies 29, 125–144. La théorie de croissance régionale et la politique d'aménagement du territoire portent sur le processus de développement industriel. Rares sont les preuves sur les flux d'argent et de capital qui influencent ce développement. Cet article cherche à examiner l'organisation géographique et les retombées du système de fonds d'assurance-vieillesse, l'un des principaux circuits de capital dans l'économie nationale. On démontre comment la masse des cotisations auprès des fonds d'assurance-vieillesse, qui proviennent de toutes les régions du Royaume-Uni, sont affectées aux organismes financiers qui sont situés dans le Sud-Est du pays et qui les gèrent. De surcroît, ces fonds-là sont réinvestis dans une large mesure dans des sociétés et des organismes dont les locaux ou les sièges se trouvent dans le Sud-Est. Ce système centralise du point de vue géographique, porte plutôt sur la liquidité que sur l'investissement productif, et peu d'argent s'infiltre alors dans les régions sous forme de finance désignée pour les dépenses d'investissement ou le développement des entreprises. De cette façon le système de fonds d'assurance-vieillesse du Royaume-Uni ébranle des régions en soutirant des économies dans tout le pays et en centralisant la gestion, l'administration et l'investissement dans une seule région. Par la suite, une tâche primordiale de la politique régionale devrait être alors la promotion de la décentralisation aux régions du pouvoir financier et des structures du des fonds en numeraire reste au sein et au profit des régions d'o[ugrave] ils proviennent. MARTIN R. und MINNS R. (1994) Die Untergrabung der finanziellen Basis der Regionen: die räumliche Struktur des und Implikationen für das britische Rentengeldersystem, Reg. Studies 29, 125–144. Regionalpolitik wie Theorie regionalen Wachstums haben sich immer schon auf den Prozeß industrieller Entwicklung konzentriert. Vergleichsweise wenig weiß man über die Finanzkapital- und Geld-ströme, die diese Entwicklung bestimmen. Der Aufsatz untersucht die räumliche Organisation und Implikationen des britischen Rentengeldersystems, eine der wichtigsten Runden des Finanzkapitals in der Wirtschaft des Landes. Es wird aufgezeigt, wie der Großteil der Rentengelder-beiträge, die aus verschiedenen Regionen des UK zusam-menkommen, Finanzinstituten im Südosten des Landes zugeführt und von ihnen kontrolliert werden. Diese Gelder werden überdies dann vorzugsweise wieder in Gesellschaften und Organisationen investiert, die ihren Standort oder Hauptgeschäftsstelle im Südosten haben. Dieses räumlich zentralisierte System verfolgt statt produktiver Investierung vorzugsweise Liquidität, und den Provinzen fließt nur wenig in Form von Finanzierung von Kapital-investierung oder Geschäftserweiterung zu. Das britische Rentengeldersystem untergräbt somit die Regionen, indem es aus dem ganzen Lande Esparnisse herausholt, und dann Management, Verwaltung und Investierung in einer Region zusammenfaßt. Es sollte deshalb eine Hauptaufgabe der Regionalpolitik sein, die Dezentralisation der Finanzmacht und der Finanzmarkstrukuren auf die Regionen zu betreiben, so daß ein gröberer Anteil der Gelder in den Herkunftsgebieten bleibt und ihnen nützt.

Housing, Finance, and Neoliberalism
Regional Development and Policy
Economic Theory and Policy
Original source
Apr 1, 1995
0 cites
Who Is Allowed To Speak? An Introductory Commentary on Ugandan and English Experiences of Community Involvement in the Control of Schools.

James L. Nkata, Angela Thody

This paper investigates the challenges that Uganda and England have faced in beginning to reestablish community participation in the governance of education. It investigates starting points for the possible development of school-governance systems in both countries. Outlined first are the formats for community involvement that have been adopted ip each country. The traditions and current philosophies that support active community involvement in each country are then examined. The paper concludes with a discussion of possible developments in both countries in light of their similarities and differences. Uganda's education system is officially centralized under a Ministry of Education; de facto, however, the system is decentralized because of the Ministry's lack of finance and poor communications infrastructure to link it with district or local staff. England's education system is officially both centralized and decentralized. Patterns of community involvement, their structures and representative mechanisms, powers, and teacher training and duties are remarkably similar for countries with such apparently different cultures. (Contains 80 references.)

Diverse Education Studies and Reforms
Original source
Apr 1, 1995·American Mathematical Monthly
0 cites
Intervals Contained in Arithmetic Combinations of Sets

Stephen Silverman

1. The proof consists of the observation that Tr(AB)= Tr(BA), where A = [aij] and B = [bji]. Note that if the field had nonzero characteristic then the argument would merely establish that the sizes of the two bases differed by a multiple of the characteristic. 2. The same argument can be used in an obvious way to define the degree of a finite extension of a field of characteristic zero. This leads directly to a proof of the double extension theorem: if E is a field of characteristic zero, F is a finite extension of E and G is a finite extension of F, then G is a finite extension of E and [G: E] = [G: F][F: E]. This approach can be used to demonstrate the impossibility of the duplication of the cube and the trisection of the angle using straightedge and compass to students who have no knowledge of linear algebra.

Mathematics and Applications
Polynomial and algebraic computation
History and Theory of Mathematics
Original source
Apr 1, 1995
9 cites
School-Based Budgeting: Organizing for High Performance.

Priscilla Wohlstetter, Amy Van Kirk

This paper presents findings of a study that explored effective school-based budgeting practices within effective school-based management (SBM) contexts. The sample was comprised of 18 schools across 9 school districts (7 in the United States, 1 Canadian, and 1 Australian)--that had used SBM to improve school performance. During onsite visits, data were gathered through document analysis and interviews, usually with district administrators, selected school board members, the union president, and school-level administrators and staff. Findings suggest evidence of a broadened definition of school-based budgeting; however, a tremendous gap continued to exist between ideal and actual practices. Districts had decentralized some power, but schools had little discretion after district, and sometimes state, constraints were taken into consideration. Information sharing was often restricted by the political culture of the district and a lack of technology; staff development was relatively fragmented according to availability and demand; and there was very little experimentation with reward structures in schools. There was evidence to suggest, however, that there was a scaling-up process occurring as districts were working to use school-based budgeting to help create high-performance schools. One table is included. Contains 28 references. (LMI) ****?c*******A*:***************************************************** * Reproductions supplied by EDRS are the best that 'can be made * from the original document. ******A**************************************************************** School-Based Budgeting 1 School-Based Budgeting: Organizing for High Performance U.S. DEPARTMENT OF EDUCATION Office W Educatonai Research and Imisovenenl EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER OKI liKue document has been reoteduced as received Iran the Denton or oqsamtat.on ofigtnalong A 0 Mona( Changes hays been mad. 0 .molove hKeOguCtIOn Quells Cants Ovens or OrhnlOnS datedm this clocu mini do not nOCOIanly represent ottoal OE RI isoSinOn Or pOhcs Priscilla Wohlstetter Amy Van Kirk The Center on Educational Governance University of Southern California Los Angeles, CA April 1995 PERMISSION TO REPRODUCE THIS RIAL yAS BEEN GRANTED BY TO THE EDUCATIONAL RESOURCES INFORMATION CENTER (ERICI Paper to be presented at the am al American Educational Research Association conference held in San Francisco, California. PRISCILLA WOHLSTETIER is Director of the University of Southern California's Center on Educational Governance and Associate Professor of Politics and Policy in the School of Education. AMY VAN KIRK is a doctoral student in the Policy and Organization Ph.D. Program at the University of Southern California's School of Education and a research assistant for the Center on Educational Governance. The research presented here is part of the Studies of Education Reform program, supported by the U.S. Department of Education, Office of Educational Research and Improvement (0ERI), Office of Research. This research has also received generous support from the Carnegie Corporation of New York and the Finance Center of the Consortium for Policy Research in Education (CPRE). The opinions in this document do not necessarily reflect the position or of the U.S. Department of Education, the University of Southern California, the Carnegie Corporation or CPRE., and no official endorsement should be inferred. Author's Note: In preparing this chapter, the authors benefited in significant ways from Allan Odden's wisdom and policy sense. 2 BEST COPY AVAILABLE

Teacher Education and Leadership Studies
Pasture and Agricultural Systems
School Choice and Performance
Original source
Apr 1, 1995·Philosophy and literature
0 cites
Heuretics: The Logic of Invention (review)

Tom Conley

Reviewed by: Heuretics: The Logic of Invention Tom Conley Heuretics: The Logic of Invention, by Gregory L. Ulmer; xiv & 267 pp. Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1994, $40.00 cloth, $13.95 paper. Heuretics designates areas of logic devoted to discovery and invention. This book sets out to reconfigure the metaphors that have dominated investigation since the advent of print-culture and the Columbian voyages. Adventure, quest, risk, discovery: Francis Bacon’s analogy of scientific research to oceanic travel established the stereotypes that Ulmer strives to dismantle. In 1962 Claude Lévi-Strauss noted in The Raw and the Cooked that in our time: “It is no longer a question of sailing toward other lands: only the voyage is real, not the earth, and the routes have been replaced by the rules of navigation.” With the advent of hypermedia, creation becomes an art of selection and combination. Truth gives way to discovery. Creation is likened to a programmed mélange of material ordered by negotiation, intuition, and strategy. Ulmer performs his proof—and proves his performance—by constructing a virtual staging of a multilayered commemoration he fashions from cinema, architecture, Jacques Derrida’s oeuvre, American history, and autobiography. The result is a collage of signifiers that apposes literary theory, memory-arts, Gary Cooper’s persona in Beau Geste (dir. William Wellman, 1939), Columbian voyages, Platonic dialogues, and a canon of postmodern writings. Ulmer divides the book into four parts, the first of which crafts the overall method from Cartesian reason and Surrealist practices of juxtaposition and automatism. Part two offers a dynamic definition of choreography, the study of local, inherited, and originary areas in which subjectivity is born. In part three Ulmer [End Page 147] sets forth textual rehearsals, based on Lee Strasner’s Method (via Stanislavsky), that mobilize the space and time of his chosen materials. Part four, “Yellowstone Desert,” bring together the strands of the narrative embroidery into a gag-joke (a “puncept” on Custer and custard) that explodes in the author’s face. A good deal of the work turns on Ulmer’s treatment of chora. Exploiting its signifying potential (chora, corps, choral, chorus, coral) he discovers that the myth of the world’s creation recounted in the Timaeus begins when the demiurge makes an X from two strands of plasma. The chi is folded as colures of a sphere that becomes the globe. Nonetheless the presence of the self as an unknown (x) is inferred (in I, or ich). Ulmer shows that “in subordinating mystery to memory, and arguments to paradigms,” choreography will “engage the users’ premises in the process of learning, opening a mutually transforming circuit between judgment and theory, and hence affect not only (. . .) institutional practices (. . .) but human subjectivation as well” (p. 202). Patterned constructions replace the creation and resolution of enigmas. Hypermedia becomes the technology of new creation, while choreography comprises “the institutional practice for augmenting the intuitions of inference, for writing with the logic of the unconscious” (p. 224). Heuretics extends the field of play staked out in Ulmer’s Teletheory. Here is offered a scheme for creating multileveled texts that are both creative and critical and infinitely generative, and that invite readers to connect electronic media to the unconscious. Most readers will not fail to appreciate the wit of the exposition and the clarity of the creative method. Others will pause over some of its assumptions. Certain critical paradigms, such as the antithetical ontologies of Lacan and Derrida, appear easily reconciled. The unnameable traumas of history (genocide) and psychogenesis (the birth and growth of subjectivity) are glossed with an effortless art of citation (pp. 114, 233). The unconscious is assimilated into an easily “accessed” logic, the latter effortlessly “logging in” to the former. The redesign of the Columbian quincentenary indirectly ratifies some of the modes of control that flexible capitalism seeks to impose upon the unconscious. These four points require greater space of exchange in the rich and problematic dialogue that informs Ulmer’s stunning performance of theory. Tom Conley University of Minnesota Copyright © 1995 The Johns Hopkins University Press

Historical and Literary Studies
Classical Philosophy and Thought
Historical and Literary Analyses
Original source
Mar 31, 1995·RePEc: Research Papers in Economics
5 cites
Intergovernmental fiscal relations and poverty alleviation in Viet Nam

Richard M. Bird, Jennie I. Litvack, M. Govinda Rao

A successful poverty alleviation strategy has four distinct elements: 1) identifying who the poor are, where they are located, and what they do; 2) analyzing why they are poor; 3) developing policies to improve their standards of living; and 4) supplementing income-improving policies with direct"safety net"policies to increase the poor's short-term consumption etitlements. The precise mixture of"capacity-improving"investments and"safety net"policies appropriate for any country will depend on the country's income level, the extent and nature of its poverty problem, and many other factors. The strategy chosen must be implemented effectively. Spending and revenue decisions need to be more decentralized to ensure that the poverty alleviation policies adopted reflect the preferences, needs, and fiscal abilities of different regions of the country. The nature of that decentralization depends on the country. Pro-poor services throughout Viet Nam are underfunded. This problem is particularly acute in the poorer areas. Improvements in the system of intergovernmental finances could help ensure that each level of government, even in the poorer provinces, is adequately funded - and provided with sufficient expenditure and revenue raising autonomy - to support local investments and their operation and maintenance. Since poor provinces are less able to mobilize additional local revenues to support services, well-designed intergovernmental transfers are particularly important. Provinces must play a greater role both in raising revenues and in allocating expenditures, with incentives built in to ensure that they do so responsibly and efficiently. Local governments must - if they are tobe held accountable for their actions - have some responsibility for determining local tax rates. This will allow them to vary rates to collect more revenues to finance higher levels of public services if they so choose, and at the same time allow the central government to design its transfers in such a way as to ensure that local fiscal efforts are not discouraged by the receipt of such transfers. Richer provinces will tend to collect greater revenues. When transfers are needed to finance local spending in poorer areas, they should provide incentives for local revenue mobilization and allow for some degree of equalization. Services deemed of national importance (for example, a minimum level of education, health care, and social relief) can be promoted by designing specific-purpose transfers. These services must be identified and varying matching requirements established for different provinces depending on such factors as their own revenue base and the cost of providing services in that province.

Fiscal Policy and Economic Growth
Local Government Finance and Decentralization
Income, Poverty, and Inequality
Original source