Cost‐benefit appraisal of the industrial areas programme in Greece: Aims,methodologies and assumptions

The Industrial Areas Programme in Greece aims to promote and propagate industrial activity in targeted regions. The policy mainly provides for the acquisition of industrial land and the development of the public infrastructure and has been operational since 1968. The objectives of this research are to evaluate the cost‐effectiveness of this policy in terms of the stated aims. Cost‐benefit methods are used to compare the likely outcomes of the policy in the light of the resources deployed. The research illustrates the variety in performance levels that individual projects achieve but concludes overall that the programme has been more than worthwhile. This paper deals with the objectives of the study and how they are to be achieved.     

Book reviews

P. L. Thomas (tr.). Hikayat Panglima Nikosa: The story of Panglima Nikosa, with an introduction and notes by R. H. W. Reece and P. L. Thomas. v, 45, 29 pp. Sarawak: Persatuan Kesusaster‐an Sarawak, [^C1983].

Russell Jones (ed. and tr.). Hikayat Sultan Ibrahim: the short version of the Malay text. [v], 78 pp. Dordrecht: Foris Publications, 1983. (Koninklijk Instituut voor Taal‐, Land‐ en Volkenkunde. Bibliotheca Indonesica, 24.) Guilders 20.     

PUBLIC SECTOR UNIONISM AND TAX BURDENS: ARE THEY RELATED?*

One factor that has affected state and local politics since the 1960's is the growth of public sector unionism. Conventional wisdom assumes that the “fist generation” of public unionism has been a major cause of the fiscal problems faced by many state and local governments in the 1970's. State level cross-sectional analysis (1960–71) questions this widely held assumption with respect to the impact of strike activity and collective bargaining legislation on the tax burden across the states.     

The changing nature of GIS and the provision of formal GIS education in the UK: a case study

The arrival of the term Geographical Information System (GIS) in the 1960s soon created a demand for training and education in the use of this specialist hardware and software. Initially the main focus was on training people to use GIS, formal named degree programmes leading to postgraduate and undergraduate qualifications arrived later. This paper explores the changing landscape of U.K. degree level GIS education drawing on contemporary information from Higher Education Institution websites and a case study of the first single honours degree in GIS in Europe. The paper identifies a rise and fall in the number of named undergraduate “GIS” degrees since the late 1980s sandwiched between the continuation and development of postgraduate qualifications. In parallel with this trend the teaching and learning of GIS skills has emerged as a core component of undergraduate degree programmes with “Geography” in their title and in national school and degree level benchmarking statements for the discipline.     

From a Politics of Conviction to a Politics of Interest? The Changing Ontologics of Youth Politics in India and Nicaragua

There exists a longstanding association between youth and revolution, partly due to the assumption that the politics of the former are inherently “prefigurative” in nature. Youth politics can often actually be quite conservative, however, as can be observed in contemporary Nicaragua, where rather than attempting to “change the world” in the way that previous militant youth generations were famously associated with, current Sandinista youth activists engage primarily in forms of neo‐patrimonial clientelism. At the same time, the evolving experience of everyday political action by university educated youth in Uttar Pradesh, India highlights how economic endeavours can, under certain circumstances, become a form of politics, often of a more transformative variety than classic forms of collective mobilization. The comparison of Nicaragua and India thus highlights the critical importance of considering the wider environment within which youth mobilize and take action in order to understand how and why particular political “ontologics” emerge.