Empowerment and local level conflict mediation in Indonesia : a comparative analysis of concepts, measures, and project efficacy

The notion of empowerment has been more often deductively claimed than carefully defined or inductively assessed by development scholars and practitioners alike. The authors define and assess empowerment through an in-depth examination of the extent to which a large community development project in rural Indonesia empowers participants (especially members of marginalized groups) through building their capacity to manage local conflict. Although the project induces conflict through its deployment of a competitive bidding process, the authors argue that, when well implemented, it can also enable otherwise unequal groups to more peacefully, equitably, and effectively engage one another. Using a mixed methods approach, they compare cases from otherwise similar treatment and control villages to shed light on the chief components of villagers'capacity to manage local conflict. They discuss the interdependencies of two major analytical realms-routines of inter-group collaboration, and sources of countervailing power-and their relation to local conflict processes and outcomes.ICT Policy and Strategies,Education and Society,Educational Sciences,Post Conflict Reconstruction,TF054599-PHRD-KYRGYZ REPUBLIC: WATER MANAGEMENT IMPROVEMENT PROJECT

Generalized Agency Problems

Agency problems in economics virtually always entail self-interested agency exhibiting "insufficient" loyalty to principal. Social psychology also has a literature, mainly derived from work by Stanley Milgram, on issues of agency, but this emphasizes excessive loyalty -- people undergoing a so-called "agentic shift" and forsaking rationality for loyalty to a legitimate principal, as when "loyal" soldiers obey orders to commit atrocities. This literature posit that individuals experience a deep inner satisfaction from acts of loyalty -- essentially a "utility of loyalty" -- and that this both buttresses institutions organized as hierarchies and explains much human misery. Agency problems of excessive loyalty, as when boards kowtow to errant CEOs and controlling shareholders, may be as economically important in corporate finance as the more familiar problems of insufficient loyalty of corporate insiders to shareholders. Overt conflict between rival authorities is shown to reverse the "agentic shift" -- justifying institutions that formalize argumentation such as the adversary system in Common Law courts; the Official Opposition in Westminster democracies; discussants and referees in academia; and independent directors, non-executive chairs, and proxy contests in corporate governance.

Anarchism and business ethics

‘Anarcho’-capitalism has for decades occupied a small but significant position within ‘business ethics’, while the anarchism associated with the larger traditions of workers and social movements has only had a spectral presence. Social anarchisms’ forms of opposition and proposed alternatives to standard liberal business practices, identities and presuppositions have appeared only fleetingly in mainstream business ethics. In the light of these anarchist hauntings, this paper identifies and explores social anarchism’s critique of dominant forms of business ethics, and business practice. It applies anarchism’s critical insights to market-based ethics, of which Milton Friedman’s influential essay, ‘The Social Responsibility of the Businessman is to Increase Profits,’ is used as an exemplar. This paper differentiates the anarchist critique from the criticisms of corporocentric, economic-liberalism emanating from social democrats and advocates of corporate social responsibility. It demonstrates the pertinence of social anarchist approaches to re-thinking the co-ordination of the production and distribution of goods, highlighting inadequacies in state-centred managerial responses to the harms and deficiencies of Friedman’s free-market

America Is a Republic, Not a Democracy

America is a republic and not a pure democracy. The contemporary efforts to weaken our republican customs and institutions in the name of greater equality thus run against the efforts by America’s Founders to defend our country from the potential excesses of democratic majorities. American republicanism and the ordered liberty it makes possible are grounded in the Federalists’ recognition that non-majoritarian parts of the community make legitimate contributions to the community’s welfare, and that preserving these contributions is the hallmark of political justice. But, the careful balance produced by our mixed republic is threatened by an egalitarianism that undermines the social, familial, religious, and economic distinctions and inequalities that undergird our political liberty. Preserving the republican freedoms we cherish requires tempering egalitarian zeal and moderating the hope for a perfectly just democracy

Putting the Illegal into heritage practice

This article considers the concept of Illegal that is used to challenge the disciplinary constraints of authorised heritage practice. The Illegal provides a conceptual device to consider the ontological reality of the heritage world and the necessary illusion of the heritage profession. Alongside, the critical challenges to the Authorised Heritage Discourse presented by Indigenous Worlds, guerrilla restoration, People Centred Approaches, Experimental Preservation, and creative heritage practice, the tactical activism of Illegal practice is offered as an insurgent tool for transforming heritage worlds. Two recent Illegal projects, the ‘Illegal Town Plan’ and the Illegal Museum of Beyond’s ‘Objects of the Misanthropocene’ exhibition project, present speculative insouciance as a method for putting the Illegal into heritage practice

A Flexible Multi-Metric Bayesian Framework for Decision-Making in Phase II Multi-Arm Multi-Stage Studies

We propose a multi-metric flexible Bayesian framework to support efficient interim decision-making in multi-arm multi-stage phase II clinical trials. Multi-arm multi-stage phase II studies increase the efficiency of drug development, but early decisions regarding the futility or desirability of a given arm carry considerable risk since sample sizes are often low and follow-up periods may be short. Further, since intermediate outcomes based on biomarkers of treatment response are rarely perfect surrogates for the primary outcome and different trial stakeholders may have different levels of risk tolerance, a single hypothesis test is insufficient for comprehensively summarizing the state of the collected evidence. We present a Bayesian framework comprised of multiple metrics based on point estimates, uncertainty, and evidence towards desired thresholds (a Target Product Profile, TPP) for 1) ranking of arms and 2) comparison of each arm against an internal control. Using a large public-private partnership targeting novel TB arms as a motivating example, we find via simulation study that our multi-metric framework provides sufficient confidence for decision-making with sample sizes as low as 30 patients per arm, even when intermediate outcomes have only moderate correlation with the primary outcome. Our reframing of trial design and the decision-making procedure has been well-received by research partners and is a practical approach to more efficient assessment of novel therapeutics.Comment: 16 pages, 6 main text figures, 3 supplemental figure