Topping Off and Bottoming Out: Setting Budget Priorities Through Executive Power

This article examines the role of the institutional power of executives in public budgeting; specifically, how executives change spending on particular budget items. Leveraging extant theories of the policy process concerning preference expression, attention, and institutions, we argue that executives deepen large cuts and boost large increases in budgetary change. The strictures of the budgetary process force trade-offs for executives in preference expression such that increases to preferred categories typically require decreases in other categories. Literatures in public policy and political representation suggest that all executives would like to express fiscal preferences, thereby contributing to categorical budget oscillations; however, not all executives are created equal. We employ quantile regression to examine whether the institutional strength of governors determine cuts, stasis, and expansion in spending across all budget functions in the American states between 1985 and 2009. Our model includes a host of political and economic variables found in the literature of fiscal policymaking, such as partisanship and divided government. The desire to change policy may be widely shared across executives, but we find that the ability to “top off” categorical increases and bottom out categorical decreases is a function of an executive's capacity to call attention to preferred categories via agenda-setting power and to secure those changes via veto power. The findings show strong governors are well positioned to influence public policy through the budgetary process.     

The Yarm Helmet

THE YARM HELMET, unearthed in the 1950s by workmen at Yarm (North Yorkshire, England), is a composite construction ‘crested’ helmet of riveted, undecorated, thin iron plates. Without close parallel at the time it was found, it could not be confidently attributed to a specific date or culture. This paper records, analyses and reassesses the helmet, demonstrating that it is not a later copy, but an original 9th–11th-century helmet, comparable with the helmet at Gjermundbu (Norway). Its materials and construction speak to the growing pragmatism of arms and armour production, which was necessary to supply the increasing numbers of armed warriors present in this period.     

Understanding the Spatial Patterning of English Archaeology: Modelling Mass Data, 1500 BC to AD 1086

Variation in the density of archaeological evidence is caused by a multitude of interacting factors, some of which reinforce each other and some of which act to disguise genuine patterns of past practice. This paper initially presents a set of density models for England constructed by the members of the English Landscape and Identities (EngLaId) project and then goes on to discuss three possible explanations for the variation seen: modern affordance, variability in past usage of material culture, and past population density. The various members of the project team (with the aid of Andrew Lowerre) then provide their thoughts on the models and ideas presented from their own specific period specialist perspectives. The article is presented in this discursive format to reflect the differing opinions and approaches across an unusual multi-period project, in the spirit of multi-vocality and healthy debate.     

Local Forms of Spatial Analysis

Local forms of spatial analysis focus on exceptions to the general trends represented by more traditional global forms of spatial analysis. There is currently a rapid expansion in the development of such techniques but their history almost exactly parallels that of Geographical Analysis, with the first examples of local analysis appearing in the late 1960s. Indeed, Geographical Analysis has published many of the significant contributions in this field. This paper reviews the development of local forms of spatial analysis and assesses the current situation. Following a discussion on the nature and importance of local analysis, examples are given of local forms of point pattern analysis; local graphical approaches; local measures of spatial dependency; the spatial expansion method; adaptive filtering; multilevel modeling; geographically weighted regression; random coefficients models; autoregressive models; and local forms of spatial interaction models.     

基于旅游产品差异化的欠发达地区旅游合作研究

区域旅游合作可打破地域壁垒,合理配置和利用旅游资源,以丰富合理的旅游产品供给满足旅游市场多样化需求,获得合作区域旅游发展的双赢。欠发达地区在生产要素如资金、设施、信息、人才、市场、营销和交通区位条件等方面具有前天不足,在旅游产品差异化视角下进行区域旅游合作,建立基于价值网的区域旅游合作竞争关系,建构旅游合作系统,实施旅游合作并进行合作绩效评价,提高欠发达地区旅游产业竞争优势。