Information Technology and Public Policy

Douglas Rushkoff, Cyberia: Life in the Trenches of Hyper space
Douglas Rushkoff, Media Virus: Hidden Agendas in Popular Culture
Douglas Rushkoff, Coercion: Why We Listen to What "They" Say     

Policy options for full employment: Which way forward for Australia

This paper seeks to review the long‐term policy choices Australia faces if full employment is to be restored. Using cross‐national data for the period 1972–88, it identifies the variety of routes taken to mass unemployment and full employment It then discusses the diverse policy strategies underlying routes to full employment and examines the possibility and desirability of their adoption in Australia.     

MILL AND UNIFORM PRICING A COMPARISON*

ABSTRACT. In this paper we examine profit, price, output and welfare under mill and uniform pricing in a monopolistic spatial market with nonlinear demand, a general consumer distribution function, and a general transportation cost function. We show that if demand is convex (concave) then the optimal uniform price minus the average unit transportation cost is lower (higher) than the optimal mill price, output under uniform pricing is lower (higher) than output under mill pricing, and welfare under uniform pricing is lower (higher) than welfare under mill pricing, provided other respective conditions are satisfied.     

The use and abuse of paradigms in the history of political thought

A paradigm is a methodological device which historians of political thought borrow from the history of science. The initial part of this article examines the views of three distinguished historians of political thought—Sheldon Wolin, Alan Ryan and John Pocock—who have borrowed paradigms. Wolin and Ryan are shown to have confused paradigms with weltanschauungen in such a way as to make the former less useful as methodological devices. Pocock, on the other hand, has been successful in his use of paradigms, though he does not sufficiently recognise their methodological limits. He also raises a conceptual problem. The latter part of this article examines the recent history of science in an attempt to clarify the use of paradigms and their limits.     

“No man's happy but by comparison”

Graeme Duncan, Marx and Mill, Two Views of Social Conflict and Social Harmony, Cambridge University Press, 1973.     

Australian welfare state expenditure revisited: Some implications for change

This article seeks to explore the reasons why Australia, in the period 1965–84, manifested markedly lower levels of income maintenance expenditure than most other OECD nations. A pooled cross‐section research design is utilized to bring within the scope of a single model the wide range of institutional, demographic, economic and political factors that have been hypothesized to influence income maintenance transfers. Having developed such a model, the article examines some of its implications for proposed welfare cut‐backs and reform in Australia and the OECD nations generally.     

Both Sticks and Carrots

Books reviewed:
Alan P. Dobson.◊ U.S. Economic Statecraft for Survival , 1933 – 1991 : Of Sanctions, Embargoes, and Economic Warfare. London: Routledge, 2002. 368 pp. $129.95 (cloth).