Why Remediation Progress Differs Among Great Lakes Areas of Concern: Factors that Enable and Constrain Michigan Public Advisory Councils

There are 14 designated “toxic hotspots,” or “Areas of Concern” (AOCs), around Michigan’s coasts where legacy contamination impairs water quality. The State’s Office of the Great Lakes manages the Remedial Action Planning (RAP) process and engages stakeholders through local Public Advisory Councils (PACs). Michigan began Remedial Action Planning in 1985, but to date, only two AOCs have completed cleanup. The overarching objective of this study is to determine: why does RAP implementation progress differ among AOCs? This study asks the research question: what factors enable and constrain a PAC’s ability to influence RAP implementation progress? The existing literature solicits responses from state and federal agency participants, and the dominant explanatory narrative is that maximum public representation on PACs facilitates RAP implementation progress. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 29 past and current PAC participants in a representative set of five Michigan AOCs (Kalamazoo River, Lower Menominee River, Saginaw River and Bay, St. Clair River, and White Lake). Among the factors that enable progress, PACs benefit from: motivated, engaged individuals from the community; consistent and flexible funding; strong leadership; and perceptions of independence and influence. Constraints to a PAC’s influence on RAP implementation progress include: poorly managed meetings; inconsistent commitment from community members and organizations; and inconsistent state and federal commitment and engagement. Factors that help explain why AOCs differ in their progress include: clearly delineated state agency roles; a balanced membership with network connections to resources and support; state and federal agency commitment and engagement; and effective PAC leadership. Recommendations for agencies to cultivate the process of community-based collaborative ecosystem management include collaborating with PACs on agendas, criteria, and roles, and supporting the PAC’s membership transitions and strategic outreach.Master of ScienceSchool for Environment and SustainabilityUniversity of Michiganhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/148807/4/Voglesong_Allison_Thesis.pd

Higher Education Pathways: South African Undergraduate Education and the Public Good

RLOsThe capability approach offers a normative framework for thinking how higher education can support human well-being and fulfilment. This chapter explores how higher education research using the capability approach illuminates possibilities for the transformation of individuals and society in South Africa.ESRC-DFI

Kant on Rational Faith and Hope

This study concerns Kant's account of the nature and norms of Belief (or faith - Glaube) and hope (Hoffnung). It aims to better understand the non-moral aspects of this account by drawing on his account of propositional attitudes. I argue that Kantian Belief is constitutive of, and thus necessary for, pursuing ideal moral and non-moral ends, while hope is psychologically necessary for maintaining our resolve in these pursuits, for most of us, most of the time. My interpretation extracts a plausible non-metaphysical example of doctrinal (or theoretical) Belief from Kant's writings, explains the general principles that underwrite the necessity of Belief and hope for pursuing certain ends, and explains the relationship between Belief and hope. Appreciating the non-moral aspects of Kantian Belief and hope involves embracing a theory of Kant's practical attitudes larger in scope than commentators have traditionally allowed. The result, however, is a rational account of our propositional attitudes, which more accurately captures the full range of our experience as ambitious, end-directed agents

Higher Education Pathways

"In what ways does access to undergraduate education have a transformative impact on people and societies? What conditions are required for this impact to occur? What are the pathways from an undergraduate education to the public good, including inclusive economic development? These questions have particular resonance in the South African higher education context, which is attempting to tackle the challenges of widening access and improving completion rates in in a system in which the segregations of the apartheid years are still apparent. Higher education is recognised in core legislation as having a distinctive and crucial role in building post-apartheid society. Undergraduate education is seen as central to addressing skills shortages in South Africa and is also seen to yield significant social returns, including a consistent positive impact on societal institutions and the development of a range of capabilities that have public, as well as private, benefits. However, the precise extent and nature of these impacts remain unclear, particularly in light of contemporary global, social and economic challenges. This book offers comprehensive contemporary evidence that allows for a fresh engagement with these pressing issues.

The conduct of war and the notion of victory: a theory and definition of victory

Clausewitz described military victory as a condition where the enemy‘s ability to enter battle, resist or resume hostilities is destroyed. The concept summarises the paradigm of success that preceded Clausewitz and survived through much of the 20th century. Despite increasingly paradoxical outcomes in the last century and the current one, military planners, strategists and statesmen sought answers for failures in different places, only a few questioned the validity of the notion of victory that Clausewitz had so veritably summarised. The fundamental question that begs an answer is ‗what is victory?‘ The rapid transformation in society and international culture has brought with it changes in geo-political and geo-economic relationships as well as warfare. While the traditional linkages between war and politics remain, the mechanisms driving these have altered. In less than absolute wars, it is the wider bargain and the stakes in that bargain that make the ‗enemy do our will‘ and not purely an inability to enter battle, resist or resume hostilities. The new complexities surrounding war and diplomacy necessitate an organising theory to make better sense of policy and action. This research provides one such theory. War is ultimately a violent clash of societies and its character a reflection of opposing cultures, history and experiences. An external dimension to strategy is thus always at work even if not fully recognised; as is often the case. Such un-factored influences create a sort of volatility in victory and defeat adding new challenges while offering opportunities at the same time. Similarly, diplomacy, which invariably precedes and succeeds coercive or compelling use of violence, too is fettered by such external influences. A bivariate approach that triangulates desired ends with the opposing notions of success and perception of defeat is argued. The theory presented encapsulates traditional precepts, adds new ones and simplifies the complexities that have come to surround victory in contemporary times. Offered here are some valuable ingredient to flavour any strategic recipe, not just war and conflict. The eternal challenge of calibrating means and ends needed more systematic awareness of functional and dominant domains of victory which is arguably possible through application of simple principles. The theory potentially allows for a more focused, proportionate, efficient and productive use of power. It is hoped that strategists and analysts alike, would find here new concepts and tools for use in praxis, perspective planning and retrospective analyses

Mapping, Modeling, and the Fragmentation of Environmental Law

In the past forty years, environmental researchers have achieved major advances in electronic mapping and spatially explicit, computer-based simulation modeling. Those advances have turned quantitative spatial analysis — that is, quantitative analysis of data coded to specific geographic locations — into one of the primary modes of environmental research. Researchers now routinely use spatial analysis to explore environmental trends, diagnose problems, discover causal relationships, predict possible futures, and test policy options. At a more fundamental level, these technologies and an associated field of theory are transforming how researchers conceptualize environmental systems. Advances in spatial analysis have had modest impacts upon the practice of environmental law, little impact on environmental law’s structure or theory, and minimal impact on environmental law research. However, the potential legal implications of these advances are profound. By focusing on several of environmental law’s traditional core debates, and by using urban development as a central example, this Article explores those implications. It shows that spatial analysis can change the problems environmental law addresses, the regulatory instruments environmental law uses, the entities law empowers to address those problems, and the methodologies of environmental law research

Mapping, Modeling, and the Fragmentation of Environmental Law.

In the past forty years, environmental researchers have achieved major advances in electronic mapping and spatially explicit, computer-based simulation modeling. Those advances have turned quantitative spatial analysis — that is, quantitative analysis of data coded to specific geographic locations — into one of the primary modes of environmental research. Researchers now routinely use spatial analysis to explore environmental trends, diagnose problems, discover causal relationships, predict possible futures, and test policy options. At a more fundamental level, these technologies and an associated field of theory are transforming how researchers conceptualize environmental systems. Advances in spatial analysis have had modest impacts upon the practice of environmental law, little impact on environmental law’s structure or theory, and minimal impact on environmental law research. However, the potential legal implications of these advances are profound. By focusing on several of environmental law’s traditional core debates, and by using urban development as a central example, this Article explores those implications. It shows that spatial analysis can change the problems environmental law addresses, the regulatory instruments environmental law uses, the entities law empowers to address those problems, and the methodologies of environmental law research

PMERS, Environmental Uncertainty, and Managerial Behaviour: An Empirical Investigation of the E-V Theory of Motivation in the Organisational Setting

The contribution of Management Control Systems (MCS) in general, and of the Performance Measurement Evaluation and Reward System (PMERS) in particular, to the motivation of the managers who operate at the middle level of the organisation's hierarchy has received relatively little examination up to date. Most of the available empirical evidence in the area of measurement, evaluation and reward of managerial performance tends to focus almost exclusively on executive managers operating at the top level. Using an Expectancy-Valence (E-V) model of job behaviour as a theoretical framework, this study primarily sets out to investigate the impact of the PMERS on middle-level managers' motivation and subsequent performance. At a second level, it aims to examine the relative success of the PMERS to positively influence managerial motivation and performance under all environmental conditions, both certain and uncertain. By means of an analytic questionnaire - which was purposively developed on the basis of instruments previously tested and extensively used in practice by other researchers in the field - a sample of 225 middle-level managers from a large UK-based financial institution provided data for the study. All in all, the analysis of the managerial perceptions gathered regarding the company's PMERS indicate that the managers' motivation is primarily affected by the extrinsic and intrinsic rewards that they perceive to enjoy in the context of their job environment. Motivation is specifically related both to the perceived value and to the performance-dependency of these rewards. The latter seems to suggest that a key issue affecting the motivational effectiveness of the PMERS - and therefore a central design consideration - is the choice of rewards to be included in the company's reward package, as well as the manner through which these rewards are eventually allocated to the company's managerial staff. As to the intervening effect of perceived environmental uncertainty, this research provides evidence to show that the managers' perceptions about how uncertain their (internal and external) job environment is have a significant adverse impact on their perceptions about the accuracy of the performance measures and the attainability of the performance standards that are employed within the PMERS. This result implies that the design of the company's PMERS is better seen as situationally specific, i.e., as contingent on the relevant (actual and perceived) conditions of the organisational environment for which it is intended

Dispute Resolution in China after Deng Xiaoping: Mao and Mediation Revisited

This Article presents portions of a book tentatively entitled Bird in a Cage: Legal Reform in China After Mao. The book explores the Western vantage point from which I have viewed institutions for dispute resolution, the imprint on them of the traditional and more recent Maoist past, the disorderly context of rapid economic and social change in which they must operate today, and the larger law reforms of which they are part. Against that background it examines the operation of extrajudicial mediation and the courts. The scope of this Article is more limited. I have not speculated here about appropriate foreign perspectives on Chinese law or about methodology at all, despite my own concern about the difficulties of cross-cultural legal study. I have chosen here to invoke the Western ideal of the rule of law here as a broad general standard by which to gauge both the operation of Chinese legal institutions and Chinese aspirations, which are after all expressed by Chinese leaders and legal scholars in terms of that standard. I am fully aware that it is itself a contested and complex principle and that it is often transformed into a moralistic slogan. This study is intended as thick description of institutions that are in the process of development, and the approach seems validated by Chinese sources