Elements of Successful Interlocal Agreements: An Iowa Case Study

This paper explores the factors that contribute to successful interlocal agreements. Success is defined in terms of achieving agreement objectives, increasing the effectiveness of the public service, and increasing the efficiency of the public service. Influential factors of interest include the reason the interlocal agreement was created, the estimated costs and benefits of participation in the agreement, and the types and levels of communication between the parties to the agreement. The paper reports results from a survey of local governments (including cities, counties, school districts) in Iowa that have filed an agreement with the state. The sample of about 1250 respondents includes most of the major cities and counties in Iowa and many smaller governments as well. Results suggest that the most important reasons for creating agreements are to improve effectiveness and efficiency of services, and that most local governments are very satisfied with the success of the agreements

“A Disturbing Lack of Musical and Stylistic Continuity”? Elliott Carter, Charles Ives, and Musical Borrowing

Elliott Carter and Charles Ives shared a complex personal and professional relationship. Ives supported Carter’s musical pursuits as a young man and remained a guiding influence throughout his career. As Jan Swafford writes, however, “Carter, whose mature music would owe a great deal to Ives . . . would pay back his mentor with a baffling mixture of admiration, advocacy, and cold repudiation” (Swafford 1998: 334). Although he eventually softened his early criticism of Ives and acknowledged his musical debts, Carter was consistently puzzled by the stress in Ives’s music on musical borrowing—i.e., the procedures by which a composer includes material from or refers to pre–existing musical pieces in the context of an original work. As Carter put it, Ives’s reliance on quotations accounted for “a disturbing lack of musical and stylistic continuity” (Perlis 1974: 145). On another occasion, Carter described Ives’s inclusion of popular songs and hymns as “constantly perplexing” (Edwards 1971: 63). In view of these and numerous other statements, it is equally perplexing that Carter borrows from Ives’s music on several occasions, most overtly in his 2001 Figment No. 2 (Remembering Mr. Ives) for solo cello. This composition contains literal snippets and gestures from, as well as stylistic allusions to, two Ives pieces: the Concord Sonata and Hallowe’en. In what follows, I explore the ways in which Carter borrows from Ives both literally and figuratively; how he incorporates those quotations into his music; and how he evokes Ives’s memory and musical style in several works

Dancing a Minuet with Haydn via Koch: A New Approach to a Familiar Project

Our essay develops a historically-informed approach to the undergraduate minuet composition project, based on the second volume of Heinrich Christoph Koch’s Introductory Essay on composition (1787). In that text, Koch details how an aspiring composer might first compose a basic, unembellished minuet (what we call model form) and then, through techniques of phrase expansion, develop a more stylistically sophisticated composition (what we call elaborated form). Crucially, while Koch composes some of the text’s musical examples himself, many examples are drawn from works by Joseph Haydn. Thus, Koch teaches students to compose through analysis and imitation of works by a major living composer from his own time—one whose music is performed regularly by many small and large ensembles at colleges and universities today

Together forever? Explaining exclusivity in party-firm relations

Parties and firms are the key actors of representative democracy and capitalism respectively and the dynamic of attachment between them is a central feature of any political economy. This is the first article to systematically analyse the exclusivity of party-firm relations. We consider exclusivity at a point in time and exclusivity over time. Does a firm have a relationship with only one party at a given point in time, or is it close to more than one party? Does a firm maintain a relationship with only one party over time, or does it switch between parties? Most important, how do patterns of exclusivity impact on a firm’s ability to lobby successfully? We propose a general theory, which explains patterns of party-firm relations by reference to the division of institutions and the type of party competition in a political system. A preliminary test of our theory with Polish survey data confirms our predictions, establishing a promising hypothesis for future research

Patients with colorectal cancer and brain metastasis: The relevance of extracranial metastatic patterns predicting time intervals to first occurrence of intracranial metastasis and survival

To investigate the predictive impact of extracranial metastatic patterns on course of disease and survival in patients with colorectal cancer (CRC) and brain metastasis (BM). A total of 228 patients (134 male [59%], 94 female [41%]) with histologically proven CRC and BM were classified into different groups according to extracranial metastatic patterns. Time intervals to metastatic events and survival times from initial CRC diagnosis, extracranial and intracranial metastasis were analyzed. Extracranial organs mostly affected were liver (102 of 228 [44.7%]) and lung (96 of 228 [42.1%]). Liver and lung metastasis were detected in 31 patients (13.6%). Calculated over the entire course of disease, patients with lung metastasis showed longer OS than patients with liver metastasis or patients without lung metastasis (43.9 vs. 34.6 [p=0.002] vs. 35.0 months [p=0.002]). From the date of initial CRC diagnosis, lung metastasis occurred later in CRC history than liver metastasis (24.3 vs. 7.5 months). Once lung metastasis was diagnosed BM occurred faster than in patients with liver metastasis (15.8 vs. 26.0 months; Δ 10.2 months). Accordingly, OS from the diagnosis of liver metastasis was longer than from lung metastasis (27.1 vs. 19.6 months [p=0.08]). Once BM was present patients with lung metastasis lived longer than patients with liver metastasis (3.8 vs. 1.1 months [p=0.028]). Shortest survival times in all survival categories analyzed revealed patients with concurrent liver and lung metastasis. Patients with CRC and BM form a heterogenous cohort where EM to liver or lung predict survival

Spatial Dynamics Of Vertical And Horizontal Intergovernmental Collaboration

Although researchers have made progress in understanding motivations behind local government collaboration, there is little research that explores the spatial dynamics of such interactions. Does the idea of collaboration travel horizontally, passed from neighbor to neighbor, or is vertical leadership from state, county, or regional actors more important in influencing local governments’ decisions to share resources and functions? What factors influence local governments’ choices to collaborate with their neighbors versus a regional entity, county, or state government? In this article, we investigate the importance of vertical and horizontal influences when local governments decide to collaborate around land use planning. Using data from a survey of Michigan local government officials, we take a spatial statistical approach to answering this question. We find widespread evidence of collaboration at multiple scales, and observe patterns of both horizontal and vertical influence. We also find that contextual factors help to explain these patterns of collaboration.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/112248/1/juaf12139.pd

The motivations for the adoption of management innovation by local governments and its performance effects

This article analyses the economic, political and institutional antecedents and performance effects of the adoption of shared Senior Management Teams (SMTs) – a management innovation (MI) that occurs when a team of senior managers oversees two or more public organizations. Findings from statistical analysis of 201 English local governments and interviews with organizational leaders reveal that shared SMTs are adopted to develop organisational capacity in resource‐challenged, politically risk‐averse governments, and in response to coercive and mimetic institutional pressures. Importantly, sharing SMTs may reduce rather than enhance efficiency and effectiveness due to redundancy costs and the political transaction costs associated with diverting resources away from a high‐performing partner to support their lower‐performing counterpart

‘When Paul got an idea or an arrangement in his head…’<subtitle>Inspiration, imagination, experimentation and transitions in ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’</subtitle>

For a song that is so mercilessly maligned, Paul McCartney’s ‘Maxwell’s Silver Hammer’ contains attractive musical features that demonstrate his effortless flow of ideas. The rehearsals captured on tape reveal genuine compositional collaboration and experimentation between the Beatles that belies the harsh criticism of McCartney in particular. Cast as an absurd story about an assassin with a silver hammer, the song displays some of McCartney’s best attributes such as total command of pop musical language, whimsy, avant-garde inspiration and memorable melodies. In addition, this article examines documented and potential sources of inspiration for the song, which can be viewed more richly in context as a type of murder ballad. Analysis of extant rehearsal recordings focuses attention on McCartney’s search for the most effective transition between the verse and chorus of the song, reinforcing his attention to detail through experimentation in the studio. The article closes by suggesting that McCartney’s musical imagination was so fertile during this period that it was inevitable that his often uninterested and uninspired bandmates would clash over the numerous sessions devoted to this song. This article was published open access under a CC BY licence: https://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0