Collective Action and the Evolution of Intergovernmental Cooperation

Voluntary cooperation among governments holds tremendous promise for solving policy problems with regional and national scope. In this article, we apply insights from the theory of institutional collective action to understand the evolution of cooperative governmental institutions. We address the question: What makes a government decide to exit an existing cooperative arrangement and join a new one with a stronger central authority? Our empirical analyses examine state choices about whether to participate in the new Interstate Compact for Juveniles or remain in an existing compact that serves the same purpose. The findings shed light on how governments make trade‐offs between their desire to maintain their autonomy and the need to overcome the transactions costs, coordination problems, and free‐rider problems associated with cooperative governance in order to achieve policy gains.     

Some Introductory Notes

The authority of a court to declare laws and official acts unconstitutional is a practice which sheds a strong light on the interplay of law and politics. It is a judicial act which gives to judges so obvious a share in policymaking that where it prevails there is little room left for the pretense that judges only apply the law (Ehrmann, 1976, p 138)     

Structural Determinism in the Interlocking World City Network

Taylor's interlocking specification of the world city network has offered researchers a theoretically informed way to measure the world city network using readily available firm location data. However, the number and size of firms that are viewed as linking cities to one another impose a form of structural determinism on the world city network. Specifically, when a relatively small number of firms is used to define a network among a relatively large set of cities, or when only larger firms are used, this approach is unable to reveal a wide range of structures features that may actually be present in the world city network it is intended to measure. Through a series of examples, I demonstrate how specific features of firm location data predetermine the structure, number and size of cliques, and density of world city networks derived using the interlocking approach. Concluding comments discuss the implications of this structural determinism by focusing on the case of the commonly used Globalization and World Cities data set 11, offer some suggestions concerning how the interlocking approach can be employed while avoiding structural determinism, and identify some alternative approaches to mapping the world city network. El modelo interconexión cerrada (interlocking) de la red mundial de ciudades (world city network) desarrollado por Taylor (2001) ha proporcionado a los investigadores un marco teórico para medir dicha red con datos fácilmente disponibles acerca de la localización de empresas. Sin embargo, el número y tamaño de las empresas que son consideradas como ‘vinculadoras’ (de ciudades) imponen una forma de determinismo estructural sobre la red. En concreto, cuando un número relativamente pequeño de firmas es utilizado para definir la red entre un conjunto relativamente grande de ciudades, o, cuando sólo se utilizan las empresas más grandes, este enfoque (interlocking) no es capaz de identificar o medir una amplia gama de características estructurales presentes potencialmente en la red de ciudades mundiales. A través de una serie de ejemplos, el autor demuestra cómo varias características específicas de los datos de localización de las empresas predeterminan la estructura, número y tamaño de los cliques y la densidad de las redes de ciudades mundiales resultantes de la aplicación de modelos de interlocking. Luego el autor presenta las implicancias del determinismo estructural mencionado, centrándose en el caso la base de datos de uso común GaWC # 11. Finalmente el articulo ofrece algunas sugerencias sobre cómo el enfoque de interlocking puede ser empleado sin caer en un determinismo estructural, y se identifican algunos enfoques alternativos para el mapeo de la red mundial de ciudades. 泰勒（2001）采用相对容易获得的公司地理位置数据提出的世界城市网络连锁度量方法,为研究者提供了一种理论途径。然而,将公司的数量和规模视为城市之间的联接是一种强加的世界城市网络结构决定论形式。特别是当用数量相对较少的公司或仅用大公司的数量来定义相对较大的城市网络集时,该方法不能揭示目前实际情况中大范围世界城市网络需要度量的结构特征。通过一系列的案例分析,本文显示了公司区位数据的特有特征预先决定了集团的结构、数量和规模,以及由泰勒的连锁方法推导出世界城市网络的密度。最后,通过曾被广泛采用的GaWC（全球化和世界城市）数据集的11个城市公司数据讨论了结构决定方法的应用,并就应用该方法如何避免结构决定论提出一些建议,进而识别一些可选用的方法来绘制世界城市网络图。     

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.     

Holey Goats: Multiple Cases of Supratrochlear Foramina in the Humerus of Caprines from the New Kingdom Pharaonic Town of Amara West,Northern Sudan

Supratrochlear foramina (STF) were recorded in fifteen per cent of goat and sheep/goat humeri from the New Kingdom pharaonic town of Amara West, in modern northern Sudan. To the authors’ knowledge, this trait has never before been reported in the published literature for goats or sheep, whether from archaeological or modern contexts. The aim of this work is twofold: to contribute to the growing corpus of studies addressing the incidence and aetiology of STF, and to raise awareness for their possible presence in caprines, thus encouraging their identification and recording in archaeological assemblages.