Policy evaluation in a time of fiscal stress: Some reflections from British experience

The debate on the use or nonuse of policy evaluation frequently starts from the normative assumption that is a rational and rewarding activity for governments to pursue. Failure to use evaluation is assumed to indicate political and organizational inefficiencies and weaknesses that can, and should, be corrected. This article argues that this is too simplistic an assumption that abstracts evaluation from the political and social context in which it is developed and utilized. In particular, the way that governments develop and use evaluation is conditioned, first by the macroeconomic climate in which they operate and second, by the ways they choose to respond to this and by the microeconomics of the budgetary process. These issues are explored in the context of recent developments in British central government. here a tight fiscal policy and a concern with administrative costs have led to move from top-down rational systems of evaluation to more pragmatic, bottom-up concerns with performance measures and performance indicators. It is concluded that policy evaluation is unlikely to regain and enhance its credibility unless a reshaping of administrative structures and processes take place. Andrew Gray and Bill Jenkins are respectively senior lecturer in adminiistrative studies and senior lecturer in interdisciplinary studies at the University of Kent at Canterbury, England. They have worked for a number of years on the development of management reforms in the UK government and have recently been involved in a research project on the evolution of the Financial Management Initiative (FMI) in British central government departments. Their publications includeAdministrative Politics in British Govenment (Wheatsheaf Books, 1985) and articles in such journals asFinancial Accountability and Management, Public Administration, andPublic Money and Management.     

United we stand, divided we fall: the education and training needs of clinical child psychologists

Reviews efforts to delineate training needs for psychologists who are providing clinical services to children, adolescents, and families. In particular, this article (a) describes efforts of clinical child and other psychologists who work with children, adolescents, and families to develop education and training guidelines; (b) discusses the overlap among various child and adolescent providers within psychology; and (c) highlights several key competencies that have been identified as important for all psychologists in practice roles with children and adolescents. In particular, we emphasize the need for greater collaboration and integration among various psychological specialties that focus on children, adolescents, and families and for greater system-wide discussion of training needs and priorities.     

Islamophobia and the therapeutic dialogue: Some reflections

In the atmosphere of fear and controversy that surrounds Muslims at this moment in time it is hardly surprising that they feel unable to voice their fears and concerns openly. Added to this is the fact that Muslims already underutilize mental health services (Patel et al., 2000 Patel, N, Bennett, E, Dennis, M, Dosanjh, N, Matitani, A, Miller, A and Nadirshaw, Z. 2000. Clinical Psychology: ‘Race’ and ‘Culture’: A training manual, Leicester: The British Psychological Society.  [Google Scholar]). In the counselling arena four distinct aspects of the counselling relationship are affected. First, the therapeutic alliance, second, the socio-political context in which counselling occurs, third, the awareness of personal characteristics and competencies that facilitate multicultural counselling and, finally, the training requirements of multicultural counsellors. This paper seeks to consider each of these aspects of the therapeutic encounter with regard to Muslim clients.     

Some reflections on the individuation of events

Theories in physics require reference to manifolds of locations and events. Abstract versions of these manifolds, ‘space’, ‘time’ and ‘space‐time’ are frequently used as reference systems. Should they be included in the ontology of physics as well as the material manifolds from which they are abstracted? This problem can be approached through a study of the identity conditions of events. The argument is offered that neither an abstract ‘time’ of moments is viable, nor is the assumption that events are individuated by their locations necessary. Taken together these conclusions would require reinterpretation of relativity as a grammar of histories and of the Einstein—Podolski‐Rosen experiment as displaying the possibility of spatially distributed events.     

Some reflections on the notion of hypotyposis in Kant

In the Critique of Judgement, Kant, despite his strong condemnation of rhetoric, introduces the figure of hypotyposis at the very moment he sets out to tackle the philosophical problem of presentation as such. This study holds that this choice of the rhetorical term is not fortuitous. Its connotations of vivid illustration, synopsis, and moral grandeur serve Kant in arguing that, on a transcendental level, presentation secures the mind's life, unity, and self-affection. Although of rhetorical origin, hypotyposis is thus shown to link up with a specifically philosophical meaning of the term in the writings of Aristotle.     

Some critical reflections on the hiddenness argument

J.L. Schellenberg’s Argument from Divine Hiddenness maintains that if a perfectly loving God exists, then there is no non-resistant non-belief. Given that such nonbelief exists, however, it follows that there is no perfectly loving God. To support the conditional claim, Schellenberg presents conceptual and analogical considerations, which we subject to critical scrutiny. We also evaluate Schellenberg’s claim that the belief that God exists is logically necessary for entering into a relationship with the Divine. Finally, we turn to possible variants of Schellenberg’s case, and argue that the modifications necessary to accommodate our criticismas leave those variants with much less of a sting than originally suggested by his provocative formulation.     

Some reflections on the two psychologies of love

The mainstream view of love is that it is a state that arises from people mutually reinforcing each other or providing benefits to each other Yet careful quantitative analyses of imaginative thought patterns of people in love or in a state of affiliative arousal reveal themes of dialogue, commitment, and harmony rather than of mutual benefits It is suggested that asking people about love leads them to give causal explanations for the state which psychologists have elaborated into the theory that love is a response to having one's needs met Imaginative experiences characteristic of the state of being in love on the other hand may be different because they are primarily right brain mediated and do not share in the causal, instrumental type of reasoning characteristic of left brain conscious thinking Such conceivably right brain mediated experiences in TATs are more closely associated than presumably left brain mediated self-reports are with such physiological measures as evoked scalp potentials, neurohormone concentrations, and immune functions A vew of love that takes both self-report (left brain) and fantasy (right brain) measures into account does a better job of predicting affiliative behavior than does a view that relies solely on one or the other of the two types of measures