Partnership Networks for Urban Development: How Structure is Shaped by Risk

In delivering public policy, governments worldwide increasingly partner with diverse sets of stakeholders. This spreads commercial risk, but particularly where agendas diverge, introduces new risks related to trust in relationships. The “risk hypothesis” distinguishes between networks for “cooperation” problems, where partners have high individual payoffs for uncooperative behaviors, and “coordination” problems, where partners subscribe to a common goal and uncooperative behaviors are less rewarding. We used mixed‐methods to study networks of local and state government, developers, and consultants that center on joint‐venture partnerships for developing new urban, residential projects. Statistical network methods showed that within the mix of partners involved in development projects, only state governments displayed structural patterns associated with solving “cooperation” problems (rather than coordination). In other words, the patterns of state government interactions showed they are most exposed to risky relationships. In contrast to the state governments’ apparent exposure to risk, qualitative data showed they are not only well trusted but also overall the partnership networks reported very low levels of conflict. By exploring the distribution of “cooperation” and “coordination,” we identified which stakeholders perceived most risk. In our case, how the state governments’ structure interactions in response to risky relationships leads to an overall network characterized by trust.     

The Arab Peace Initiative: Now or Never

It has been almost a year now since President Obama set out for Cairo to deliver what has been seen as one of the largest overtures by the United States to publicly engage the Middle East. Unfortunately, despite the high hopes that this new administration garnered and the continuous efforts of high‐level American officials to put an end to the Arab–Israeli conflict, there is little fruit to bear on the ground. More often than not, the diplomatic breaches and hurdles to even get to the negotiating table have consumed the headlines, and 1 year later the multilateral relations in the region seem tepid at best. The repeated failures of the bilateral negotiations between Israel and the Palestinians and Israel and Syria may be attributed to a number of factors, including a deep‐seated mistrust that has not been addressed, concerns over the long‐term security, and domestic political constraints to make the required concessions to reach an agreement. Yet while all of these elements contributed to the despondent current state of affairs, the one critical missing ingredient has been the absence of a comprehensive framework for peace representing the collective will of the Arab states. Now more than ever, the Arab Peace Initiative (API) offers the best possible chance of achieving an inclusive peace, provided that all parties to the conflict understand its significance and historic implications that have eluded all parties for more than six decades. The likelihood that the current lull in violence will continue if no progress is made on the political front is slim. If the Arab states want to show a united front, especially as the Iranian nuclear advances threaten the regional balance of power, they must finally and publically resolve to promote the API in earnest.     

Origins of the Creutzfeldt and Jakob concept

A review of the publications of Hans Creutzfeldt and Alfons Jakob pertaining to the concept which bears their name (CJD) reveals that they described a neuropathological syndrome and were opposed to its classification as a neurological disease. The evidence on which Creutzfeldt and Jakob based their view is reevaluated, and studies by other workers are cited in which a range of environmental and genetic factors generated the CJ syndrome, challenging the proposition that CJD is a disease with a single cause.     

The Formation of a Composite Urban Image

Since image formation depends on the cognitive organization of perceptions, a change in the individual's available cognitive structure may affect his or her perceptual selectivity. This, in turn, might lead to a reconstruction of the image through selected fields of attention. Although this process is widely accepted, little is known of its neurophysiology, and the formation of an image, therefore, is drawn inferentially from introspective reports. This paper presents, accordingly, a conception of image formation and tests it with a model presenting paths among locational and nonlocational environmental stimuli and an introspective measure of a composite urban image. Changes in the paths due to information and personal attributes that reflect different realms (for example, fields of attention) are further examined with an expanded version of the model. Across the realms, the perceived residential appeal and the perceived level of activities are the main determinants of the composite urban image. Information and personal attributes not only affect the mix of image determinants, but also rearrange their relative effects on the emerging image.     

Eisenhower and Kennedy: A Comparison of Confrontations at Little Rock and Ole Miss

The purpose of this study is to assess the ways in which President Dwight D. Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy reacted to the civil rights crises in Little Rock in 1957 and at Ole Miss in 1962. A side theme is to assess presidential learning by seeing whet Kennedy learned from the lessons taught by Eisenhower. Each president was reluctant to commit federal troops to enforcing civil rights, was concerned about the problems associated with federalism, and ended up feeling forced to commit troops nonetheless. The message is that despite the presidents' best intentions, troops ultimately had to be committed. Kennedy was unable to avoid the traps that Eisenhower had encountered, and the imposition of the national government on the enforcement of civil rights was firmly established.