The uncertain (re)politicisation of fiscal relations in Europe: a shift in EMU's modes of governance

Europe's numerous fiscal crises – 2003 Stability and Growth Pact (SGP) crisis, its subsequent 2005 reforms, and the recent sovereign debt woes – draw attention to a shift in the management of EMU; namely the inclusion of more uncertainty-based governance. Understood as modalities of government, risk, and uncertainty make the production of this fiscal-monetary space intelligible as a recognised form of knowledge and object of government. Whereas the Pact was devised as the anchor for EMU, it has come to symbolise its weakness. This article argues that the result is an antagonistic relationship between the programmatic and operational dimensions of fiscal governance; otherwise seen as a dialectic between the two competing domains of expertise/law and politics. Starting with the 2005 SGP reforms, and exacerbated by the credit crisis, uncertainty has been mobilised to justify alternative forms of managing fiscal conduct linked to new strategies of calculation and issues of responsibility. Bound to variegated notions of ‘fiscal normality’, I contend that the 2005 reforms signal the (re)politicisation of the budgetary framework and the reconfiguration of the politics of limits. Rather than marginalising informal judgment, the government through uncertainty places a greater emphasis on creative entrepreneurialism in fostering compliance in ways risk does not

Subject- and injury-related factors influencing the course of manual wheelchair skill performance during initial inpatient rehabilitation of persons with spinal cord injury

Objectives: To study changes in wheelchair skills in subjects with spinal cord injury (SCI) during rehabilitation; to determine whether changes in wheelchair skill performance are related to the subject, lesion characteristics, secondary complications, and upper extremity pain; and to investigate if wheelchair skill performance at discharge can be predicted from these features. Design: Longitudinal. Subjects performed the Wheelchair Circuit 3 times during rehabilitation: at admission (t1), 3 months later (t2), and at discharge (t3). Setting: Eight rehabilitation centers in the Netherlands. Participants: One hundred twenty-one subjects with SCI. Interventions: Not applicable. Main Outcome Measures: The Wheelchair Circuit consists of 8 wheelchair skills and results in 3 test scores: ability, performance time, and physical strain. Results: All the scores of the Wheelchair Circuit improved significantly between t1 and t2, and between t2 and t3. The scores were related to age and lesion level, whereas changes in scores were related to age, sex, lesion level, and secondary complications. The variables age, body mass index, sex, lesion level, motor completeness, and secondary complications contributed significantly to the prediction of the scores at t3. Conclusions: Wheelchair skill performance improved during rehabilitation. Personal and lesion characteristics are most important for improving wheelchair skill performance and predicting wheelchair skill performance. © 2005 by the American Congress of Rehabilitation Medicine and the American Academy of Physical Medicine and Rehabilitation

Escalating Terror: Communicative Strategies in a Preschool Classroom Dispute

This paper describes the pragmatic and stategic communicative work of some young boys in a preschool classroom as they made themselves observable and hearable as owners of block area and members of specific activities. Using a transcript of a video-recorded episode of the boys engaged in a dispute about who could play in block area, analysis shows how the boys generated and escalated images of terror until the targeted child left the area or was evicted from the group by the other boys. In the course of escalating the terror, the boys used a range of commumicative resources to construct group membership affiliation and, at the same time, to assert their individual identities. The work of the boys established and displayed credentials as to who was able to play in the block area, and who was able to determine and justify why others could or could not play. This detailed analysis ofhow the boys formed collaborations and strategic partnerships in the course of their dispute gives us a way of appreciating the communicative competencies that underpin membership in a local social order that is in a state of flux

KANSAS LOCAL GOVERNMENT: A REPORT TO THE GOVERNOR

In August, 1986 Kansas Governor John Carlin asked the Department of Public Administration and the Institute for Public Policy and Business Research of the University of Kansas to examine local government organization. Local governments provide the basic services that effect the daily lives of Kansans. In this period of limited state resources and increased demands for services, especially to encourage economic development, efficiency in service delivery is a central concern in government. This report examines how the structure of local government diminishes efficiency and explores several reforms that promise to increase efficiency

"Rapper on a Rampage": Theorising the Political Significance of Aboriginal Australian Hip Hop and Reggae

Hip hop is a powerful vehicle for the expression of identity and resistance in contemporary Aboriginal popular music. This paper examines the origins of Aboriginal hip hop and explains the reasons for its cultural and political significance. By looking at the influence of reggae in Aboriginal hip hop, especially in the work of CuzCo (Wire MC and Choo Choo), it locates hip hop’s history in terms of the reggae tradition in Aboriginal popular music, represented here by the work of No Fixed Address in the early 1980s. In this way hip hop is understood as part of a longer history of Aboriginal transnationalism. The paper seeks to understand how and why transnationalism is such an important element of Aboriginal political expression. It concludes by arguing that transnationalism represents a speaking position from which Aboriginal Australians can negotiate the cultural hegemony of the state