Respondent Understanding of the 1999 Referendum Question on a Reform of the New Zealand Justice System

A referendum question at the 1999 New Zealand general election resulted in a 92% 'Yes' vote in favour of reform of the New Zealand justice system. However, even supporters of the referendum conceded the question was poorly designed and open to different interpretations. To examine these interpretations, we deconstructed the referendum question into five constituent questions and tested these on a sample of potential voters. Support for the constituent questions ranged from 70% to 95%, and subsequent probing revealed that respondents' understanding and interpretation of the key concepts varied considerably. These findings emphasise that survey professionals need to be involved in designing referendum questions and that proposed questions need cognitive pre-testing to ensure they convey their intended meaning and can be understood by voters. A poorly designed question reduces the credibility of the referendum process and threatens the outcome of specific policy initiatives.     

Punctuated Equilibrium and Bureaucratic Autonomy in American City Governments

Several recent applications of Punctuated Equilibrium Theory (PET) have yielded compelling findings linking institutional design and change distributions, yet, much more work needs to be done to understand institutional arrangements that make punctuated processes more or less likely. In responding to the recent call for more research on unraveling particular mechanisms through which bureaucracy moderates the odds of policy punctuations, this research explores the potential of bureaucratic expertise and professionalism in fostering rational decision making, and thus the stability in change dynamics. One important feature of urban government receives close attention: the position by professionalized, trained bureaucrats in municipalities (city manager and chief administrative officer) and the effects of their discretion on altering municipal budgetary change distributions. Analysis of a novel dataset of fiscal policy changes, charter and census information of city governments in the State of Michigan, 2005–11, suggests city governments, on average, produce change patterns that conform to the expectations of PET; more importantly, it reveals that heightened levels of managerial discretion can have a significant implication for helping cities experience less abrupt, punctuated budget changes. The paper concludes with a discussion of the implications of these results for PET, policy change dynamics, and the design of city-governing institutions.     

Learning to think the past: Heritage,identity and state education in Wales

Abstract

Despite its problematic nature, the term Celtic is often linked with Wales and its history. Commonly regarded as a Celtic nation, the concept has been used to engender a sense of identity and also a sense of difference between Wales and other parts of the British Isles, particularly with England. As the national curriculum has been adapted to the needs of schools in Wales, some of these aims and objectives have been made explicit in many parts of the syllabus. Heritage sites in Wales also relate their history and present archaeology to a Celtic past and a case study of a specific site in Pembrokeshire is used to exemplify this approach. There is evidence that children find these portrayals of their past, as contained in the teaching in schools and site visits, interesting and informative. The dangers lie in the over‐simplification of the contested concept of Celticity and in the shortage of good evaluative assessments of these learning to think approaches.     

An integrated approach to reconstruct the role of the heat treatment within the reduction sequence of chert artefacts: The case of the early Neolithic site of Lugo di Grezzana (north-eastern Italy)

The lithic assemblage from the well-known site of Lugo di Grezzana (Italy) attributable to the Fiorano group (5,300–4,900 BC cal) is analysed to shed new insights on the early Neolithic lithic technology in North-Eastern Italy. Techno-typological data are discussed allowing detailed reconstruction of the reduction sequence, thanks also to several refittings. A complex laminar production with several technical objectives has been identified. Whereas clues for the heat treatment of lithic materials have been identified, we verified it by a combined experimental approach. In the first place, we used density measurements, which already proved to be useful for prescreening analysis, to detect potentially heated artefacts. Afterward, we performed Fourier Transform Infrared (FT-IR) spectroscopy tests to assess the actual (de)hydration condition of the siliceous materials. Reflectance spectra have been acquired, analysing any item and avoiding any constraint related to both morphology and thickness of the sample. The archaeometric results, combined with the reduction sequence reconstruction, provide new indications on the technical capabilities and knowledge of the human groups that inhabited the region during the early Neolithic.     

Examining Indigenous perspectives on the health implications of large‐scale agriculture in Jalisco,Mexico

In Mexico, as in many other parts of the world, industrial agriculture is dramatically changing rural landscapes and altering relationships with the land. This paper draws on community‐based research from a collaborative international research project that examined the perceived health implications of the agricultural industry for Indigenous peoples in the state of Jalisco, Mexico. Thirty interviews were conducted in a Nahuas community experiencing expanding agribusiness industries. The results of this study show that the implications of export‐oriented agricultural industry for this Nahuas community are complex and, at times, contradictory: employment in the agricultural industry provides community members with much‐needed sources of income, but it is precarious work. At the same time, community members are concerned about the long‐term health and environmental implications, such as increased exposure to chemicals, depletion of the soil and water, and loss of traditional food and lifeways. These results suggest that to better understand the costs and benefits of large‐scale agriculture for Indigenous health, a broad lens of health that is situated in the context of colonial legacies and the particularities of relationships with the land is required.     

Does EU cohesion policy work? Theory and evidence

This paper evaluates the effectiveness of European Cohesion Policy in the regions of 12 EU countries in the period 1991–2008, on the basis of a spatial growth model, which allows for the identification of both direct and indirect effects of EU funds on GDP per worker growth. We find that “Objective 1” funds are characterized by strong spatial externalities and a positive and concave effect on the growth of GDP per worker, which reaches a peak at the ratio funds/GDP of approximately 3 percent and becomes non‐significant after 4 percent. “Objective 2” and “Cohesion” funds have nonsignificant effects, while all the other funds exert a positive and significant effect, but their size is very limited. EU Cohesion Policy, moreover, appears to have increased its effectiveness over time. In the period 2000–2006 Objective 1 funds are estimated to have a median multiplier equal to 1.52, and to have added 0.37 percent to the GDP per worker growth. Overall, in the period 1991–2008, funds are estimated to have added 1.4 percent to the median annual growth, and to have reduced regional disparities of 8 basis points in terms of the Gini index.     

Re-imagining the kitchen as a site of memory

Extending the focus of previous geographical research on public spaces of remembering, this paper demonstrates the ways in which memory work also takes place in private domestic spaces. The paper draws on a combination of life history and ethnographic research undertaken in Northern England, examining kitchens as a specific lieu de mémoire, showing how they serve as places where valued items are displayed and material artefacts are curated as part of the construction and reproduction of personal memories and familial identities. Using ethnographic and visual evidence from two case study households, the paper demonstrates the role of material artefacts in curating the past and materialising memory. Additionally, life history interviews with older women reveal narratives of everyday cooking practices which seemingly contradict popular discourses of the past, questioning conventional ideas about the distorted nature of nostalgia. In combination, our data represent complex narratives in which the past can be seen as infusing the present, and where present-day concerns are revealed as actively shaping public discourses which favour a return to an idealised past, which may have little bearing on people’s actual lived experience.