Why Are Some Policy Agendas Larger than Others?

Most research on policy agendas is based on the assumption that space on the agenda is fixed and, hence, focuses on how problems compete for this limited agenda space. This article holds that policy agendas may be limited but not fixed, meaning that problems may not always be traded off but confronted through a larger policy agenda. Based on an extensive collection of local council agendas from 98 Danish municipalities over time, this article investigates variations in agenda size across local governments and examines the extent to which this reflects the local problem environment. The analysis reveals that a large council agenda arises in response to an unfriendly problem environment, particularly if there are many committees to channel problems onto the agenda and, to a lesser extent, if center‐left parties hold office.     

The rôle of transport in firms' spatial organization: evidence from the Spanish food processing industry

This paper explores the role of transport in the spatial organization of food processing firms in Spain. A framework is developed through the analysis of the various mechanisms by which transport affects firms, and the identification of key elements and recent trends in spatial firm organization. Empirical evidence from interviews suggests that with modern logistic strategies transport is becoming more important. In a time‐based competitive environment, transport plays an important role in efforts to reduce delivery times, and increase reliability and flexibility in deliveries, as well as customer responsiveness. Not only does transport influence firms' location decisions, but also by adjusting to transport improvements firms are found to reconfigure their spatial organization.     

Why Do People Become Involved With Archaeology? Some Answers from Alabama��s Black Belt Region

This paper considers a question posed by the organizers of the Dynamics of Inclusion in Public Archaeology symposium: “Why do people become involved?” Based on my own quest for public involvement with Cahawba, a site in Alabama’s Black Belt region, I contend that people are most likely to become involved when an archaeologist communicates interpretively. Furthermore, certain categories of people are just more likely to become actively engaged with archaeology than others. Who are they? What are their characteristics? Where can they be found? The National Survey on Recreation and the Environment has the answers.     

Bumped from the shuttle fleet: Why didn't Enterprise fly in space?

Although it has hardly been noted in historical or popular literature, NASA's surprising decision not to prepare the first space shuttle Enterprise for spaceflight deserves attention as a significant event in early shuttle history. The decision came at a stressful juncture when the space shuttle program was transitioning from research and development to production and operations; it was an early signal of a looming crisis in the program and also an indication of early shuttle-era space policy. This essay examines the changing status of Enterprise in the little-noticed period 1976 through 1978. Three main factors influenced the fate of Enterprise : (1) the evolution of shuttle engineering and design, (2) funding and schedule pressures on the shuttle program, and (3) shuttle fleet size policy. Decisions in these areas came together in late 1977, with the result that, soon after its debut, Enterprise lost its place in the shuttle fleet and never flew in space.     

Does the sex of firstborn children influence subsequent fertility behavior? evidence from family reconstitution

According to recent studies in evolutionary anthropology, firstborn daughters influence both parity progression and sibling survival by acting as so-called helpers at the nest. Based on 534 sets of household data from family reconstitution, the current analysis fails to show that offspring sex had any direct impact on maternal fertility, sibling survivorship, birth spacing, or reproductive span. Instead, the results indicate that fertility decisions were heavily affected by proximate factors such as child mortality and gender preferences. Families who had experienced child death were swift to substitute the loss with another pregnancy--a phenomenon known as replacement strategy. Similarly, a surplus of daughters acted as a strong impulse for parity progression, not because of potential helping effects but in an attempt to conceive additional sons. This is particularly apparent when the odds of grandmultiparity are considered.     

Scaling alternative economic practices? Some lessons from alternative currencies

This paper engages with recent geographical debates on alternative economic practices, arguing that insufficient attention has been paid to the scale at which they operate. Through an analysis of recent attempts to 'fix' economic activity at a scale felt to be normatively desirable through alternative currencies, the paper argues that when attempting to build non-capitalist practices, scale matters. The paper discusses processes of financial structuration that limit and channel these spaces through an analysis of localized alternative networks in the UK (Local Exchange Trading Schemes – LETS) and the geographically wider barter networks in Argentina.     

Where do charged particles enter in and exit from the magnetosphere? Some HEOS-2 measurements

The review concentrates on HEOS-2 spacecraft results in two main areas:

• 1.(1) Solar protons penetrating the magnetosphere: The picture emerging from earlier spacecraft and groundbased measurements is summarized in the light of proton trajectory computations and the theories of direct and diffusive proton entry to the polar caps. The direct in situ measurements made available through the unique positioning of HEOS-2 in the polar magnetosphere are described.
• 2.(2) The magnetopause electron layer: The HEOS-2 spacecraft has discovered an essentially permanent layer of energetic and relativistic electrons at the polar magnetopause. The properties of this layer and its response to geomagnetic and interplanetary conditions are described.

     

Why Does Polycentric Governance Work for Some Project Sites and Not Others? Explaining the Sustainability of Tramline Projects in the Philippines

Why are some tramlines, as human-made common pool resources, sustained while others are not, even under a similar polycentric governance structure? Do the institutional design principles of the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework explain these different outcomes? The National Tramline Program is a national rural infrastructure development project started in 2009 by the research institute of the Department of Agriculture in the Philippines. Using originally collected survey data and employing mixed methods, we examine the determinants of the operational status of tramlines by comparing successful and failed cases. Building upon the IAD framework and polycentric governance for common pool resource management, we demonstrate that in addition to the farmers’ commitment to collective actions, the institutional characteristics of micro-institutions, namely, the democratic selection of a leader for the farmers’ associations, are key to sustaining tramlines. Furthermore, case studies of both success and failure illustrate that the active involvement of municipal local governments and the presence of coordination among related agencies at various levels are essential for maintaining tramlines as human-made common pool resources.     

A past and a future for diversification on farms? Some evidence from large-scale,commercial farms in South East England

Diversification has been identified as a common response to the agricultural crisis of the 1980s and to the changing ethos of agricultural policy in the closing decade of the twentieth century. In particular, farmers operating large-scale farms have been prominent in adopting this approach, just as they were innovative across a range of farming practices in the expansion and modernisation of their agricultural production in earlier decades. Can we identify serial diversifiers within this sector of the farming community, who are disposed to react in an entrepreneurial fashion to the changing fortunes of agriculture? The paper draws on results from a survey of large-scale commercial farmers in South East England and, by examining the sequence in which various forms of diversification were adopted, identifies a temporal pattern as farmers responded to the fluctuating fortunes of the agricultural industry over the past thirty years. But has the potential for diversification been exhausted? The paper also considers future prospects for diversification within the large-scale, commercially oriented sector of the agricultural industry.     

Why Do Firms Relocate? Lessons from a Regional Analysis

In recent years, the qualitative evolution of relocations (from low-cost offshoring to more technologically intensive relocations) has become a new concern in political debate. Focusing on these new trends, the aim of this paper is to better understand relocations from the firms’ point of view. The concept of relocation is reformulated by adopting a broad definition considering it as a specific dimension of firms’ mobility options. We consider three analytical dimensions: relocation as a productive problem (“relational space” for coordination), relocation in a territorial dimension (“geographical space”) and relocation as a complex decision-making process (“political space”). On this basis, we combine two strands of literature (economics of proximity and institutional approaches of the firm) for a better understanding of the decision-making process and the resulting diversity of situations. The framework is finally applied to the specific case of the Aquitaine region of southwest France in order to identify the conditions of anchoring and mobility of firms in spatial terms. Our aim is to show that the decision-making process of relocations cannot be reduced to a simple cost calculation, leaving room for local public policies.     

Evidentiary truths? The evidence of anthropology through the anthropology of medical evidence

Anthropologists have become increasingly concerned about the discipline's lack of 'public engagement' with contemporary issues of late, but a key underlying problem - anthropology's unwillingness to address the nature and evidentiary status of anthropological knowledge itself - has remained largely unacknowledged. Here I approach this problem initially through an analysis of the rise of 'evidence' as a central concept in public policy and practice. Using the exemplar of 'evidence-based' medicine, I analyse anthropological responses to these evidentiary requirements, arguing that this turn to evidence can be seen in many other arenas of research and public policy and presents a fundamental challenge for the credibility and legitimacy of anthropology as a discipline. In the second part of the article comparison with anthropological work on legal issues provides a reflexive opening through which to begin to consider the nature of anthropological 'evidence' itself.     

Mitigating Global Climate Change: Why Are Some Countries More Committed Than Others?

This article analyzes factors affecting countries' commitment to mitigating global climate change within the scope of existing international institutions. The commitment level is operationalized as an ordinal variable ranging from an agreement with the international institutions (signature and ratification of the Framework Convention on Climate Change) to the actual implementation of the internationally negotiated modes of behavior (enactment of domestic environmental policies). A theoretical model of governments' decisionmaking is presented and tested for 91 countries at different levels of economic development with different domestic institutions. A given national government selects its commitment level depending on its incentives and ability to affect global emissions of greenhouse gases (GHG). An ordered logistic regression model is employed to analyze the factors affecting the levels of national commitment. Empirical analysis suggests that national commitment is significantly affected by the national government's incentives and the ability to affect the global level of GHG emissions, impacted more by the incentives than by the ability, and not affected by the aggregate levels of economic benefits.     

Middle Bronze Age Burials in the Southern Levant: Spartan Warriors or Ordinary People?

Intermediate and Middle Bronze Age tombs with weapons (mainly daggers) in the southern Levant were often interpreted as ‘warrior graves’. Taking into consideration new data from Rishon Le‐Zion (Israel), recent work on early warfare and warriors, and a study of so‐called ‘warrior graves’ in Mesopotamia (Rehm 2003), we suggest that most of these graves are not graves of elite warriors, but typical male burials. We also discuss the assumed ‘burial kit’ and the decline in numbers of weapons per burial, which is in our view related to the shift from individual burials (in the Intermediate Bronze and Middle Bronze IIA periods) to multiple shaft burials (in the Middle Bronze IIB period).     

Split phalanges from archaeological sites: evidence of nutritional stress?

Broken animal phalanges from archaeological sites have been widely used as an indicator of nutritional stress of the prehistoric people due to the low caloric return rate (caloric yield/processing time) of the phalanges. Although it sounds logical, this widely popular argument is based on Binford’s (1978) interview with the Nunamiut and lacks empirical support. In this study, we present the results of experimental studies conducted on 142 modern cow (Bos taurus) and deer (Odocoileus virginianus) first phalanges to document the processing of phalanges, such as the required force and processing time to break them open, possible methods of breaking phalanges, and the resultant breakage and surface modification patterns. This comparative dataset and ethnographic data from contemporary hunter-gatherer groups indicate that broken phalanges in and of themselves cannot be taken as evidence of resource stress. The phalanges do not require substantial amount of processing time and marrow from the phalanges could have been preferred for its taste and soft texture during the period when resources were not scarce. This may explain the bone breakage pattern from an 8800 year old archaeological assemblage from Tangzigou in southwest China, where phalanges were intensively broken without any other evidence of resource stress.     

Political animals? On animals as subjects in an enlarged political geography

This paper is positioned within on-going debates about the expansion and re-theorization of political geography's ambit. It argues that animals could and should be included as subjects within sub-disciplinary research. Whilst political ecologists regularly employ animal conservation case studies to detail the complexities of struggles over resource distributions, this work often frames animals as static components of a thoroughly human sociality. This paper draws on conceptual debates within cultural geography, in particular those pertaining to ‘animal’ and ‘hybrid’ geographies. It argues that animals be viewed as dynamic beings, inextricable to political processes, and integral to the formation and operation of the political networks that regulate, protect and exploit them. This assertion is elaborated here through discussions of recent campaigns to end bear bile farming in East Asia, in particular, the work of the Hong Kong-based charity Animals Asia Foundation. This example aims to illuminate the potential strengths and limitations of arguing through a ‘hybrid geography’ lens, and aims to stimulate further debate around the standing of animals within an enlarged and enlarging political geography.