Vote Of Confidence Research Articles

A Conceptual Framework for Specialized Senior Secondary Education in Mongolia

This report is intended to assist the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science of Mongolia by making recommendations for elaborating a conceptual framework for new specialized senior secondary school models. The broader context for this report is the ongoing, vibrant reform of the entire Mongolian education sector, from preschool through university. The report targets the high-level skills, which will be required in the coming global economy, to enable the greatest contributions to the Mongolian economy. The goal of the report is to contribute to policy and planning for the eventual establishment of approximately 30 specialized senior secondary schools in Mongolia.A number of recommendations are made with regard to the establishment of specialized senior secondary education in Mongolia. Many of them relate directly to specialized senior secondary education. But, since primary and junior secondary education provide the background preparation for the students who will enter specialized senior secondary education, there are also recommendations about those educational levels, so as better to prepare students for admission into and success in specialized senior secondary education. While the subject of this report is a conceptual framework, it also provides some guidance on implementation of specialized senior secondary education. In particular, the following elements of implementation are covered: required legislation, curriculum development, pilot programs, teacher capacity, development of the national entrance examination and application, and provision for specialized infrastructure. Mongolia is at an exciting moment, both in the improvement of its educational system and in the development of the country as a whole. The former is inextricably linked to the latter, a point well recognized by the Ministry of Education, Culture and Science and one to which it is wholeheartedly devoted. This report is a contribution and vote of confidence to its success.

Women and Political Leadership in an Authoritarian Context: A Case Study of the Sixth Parliament in the Islamic Republic of Iran

When Iran's new president, Hassan Rouhani, presented his proposed Cabinet to the Majles (parliament) in August 2013, one issue brought up in social media was the strange silence of the women members throughout the intensive four-day sessions to assess the ministerial nominees' programs before the vote of confidence. None of the nine women parliamentary members (MPs) used the podium to object that the president had not nominated any woman as minister. Only on social media and Persian language television was there criticism for the absence of women ministers. Eventually, Rouhani promised to include a woman in his Cabinet and to promote women in middle managerial positions. Not only was this tokenism evidence of gender-blindness, but it also evinced historical amnesia, as it overlooked the intense campaigning for women's greater participation and rights on the part of the 13 women members of Iran's Sixth Majles during the reform era coinciding with President Mohammad Khatami's two terms (1997–2005). That parliament is notable for its commitment to political and cultural reform and for the caucus that agitated for women's greater presence. Among its accomplishments were passage of the UN's Convention on the Elimination of All Forms of Discrimination against Women (CEDAW); raising the minimum age of marriage for girls from puberty to 13; and removing the ban on single young women traveling abroad on state scholarships.

ACS Award For Research At An Undergraduate Institution: Thomas E. Goodwin

AWARDS ACS Award For Research At An Undergraduate Institution: Thomas E. Goodwin ShareShare onFacebookTwitterWechatLinked InRedditEmail C&EN, 2016, 94 (1), pp 36–43January 4, 2016Cite this:C&EN 94, 1, 36-43Figure1of1Sponsor: Research Corporation for Science Advancement Citation: For blending green organic synthesis and mammalian chemical communication into a superb research experience for undergraduates at the interface of biology and chemistry. Current position: Elbert L. Fausett Distinguished Professor of Chemistry, Hendrix College Education: B.S., chemistry, Ouachita Baptist University; Ph.D., organic chemistry, University of Arkansas Goodwin on overcoming obstacles: “It was rather hard to get my research program ramped up in the early days with no startup funding, no reassigned time for research, no technical support staff, and no sabbaticals. It was a time when doing synthetic organic chemistry with undergraduates was not common. I was fortunate to get research grants in that first year from ACS Petroleum Research Fund and Research Corporation, and I am grateful for that early vote of confidence.” What his colleagues say: “Tom is most proud of the accomplishments of his students, is grateful for his good fortune to guide them in the classroom and the research lab, and is enthusiastically committed to the concept and practice of research as chemical education.”—John Gupton, University of Richmond

The Debate on the Constructive Vote of No Confidence in India – Trading in Accountability for Stability?

The Debate on the Constructive Vote of No Confidence in India – Trading in Accountability for Stability?

Say Pays! Shareholder Voice and Firm Performance*

This paper estimates the effects of Say-on-Pay (SoP); a policy that increases shareholder voice by providing shareholders with a regular vote on executive pay. We apply a regression discontinuity design to the votes on shareholder-sponsored SoP proposals. Adopting SoP leads to large increases in market value (4.6%) and to improvements in long-term performance: profitability and labor productivity increase, while overheads and investment fall. In contrast, we find limited effects on pay levels and structure. This suggests that SoP operates as a regular vote of confidence, increasing efficiency and market value.

Inferring Price Information from Mortgage Payment Behavior: a Latent Index Approach

Existing price indices are based on real estate sales. This approach encounters problems when (1) sales are infrequent or (2) when these differ systematically from the overall market (selection bias). Relative to the number of properties sold on the market, a much greater number of properties have borrowers who need to make monthly mortgage payment decisions. Therefore, each month borrowers cast a vote of confidence or no confidence in their price relative to the loan balance. Based on this behavior, we invert the relation between mortgage performance and prices to derive a latent price index. Using a large sample of individual mortgages across the 10 cities investigated, the latent index in each city has a high correlation with the respective Case-Shiller index. In addition, the latent index is partially explained by the housing expectations (derived from futures on the respective Case-Shiller index) which indicates that it is not a purely reactive measure. Overall the results show that the latent index has potential to boost information resources for tracking the important real estate sector.

Confessions of a Square Peg

Confessions of a Square Peg

Gorham, Michael S. After Newspeak: Language Culture and Politics in Russia from Gorbachev to Putin (review)

SEER, 93, 3, JULY 2015 590 findings in particular stand out: 1) Slovak (and Czech) nationalism did not emerge immediately after the revolution but grew only out of local patriotism and then regionalism. Using the heretofore unexplored case of Civic Forum branches in Slovakia, Krapfl shows how Bratislava ultimately ‘conquered’ Slovakia by stoking nationalism and how OF and VPN might have forged a different relationship between the two entities, and 2) local actors throughout the country played a central role in the revolution by conducting no confidence votes and recall elections that allowed them to oust workplace directors, democratize unions, reconstruct local administration and change political representatives. Without these actions, which often had to overcome significant resistance from entrenched powerholders, much of the Communist apparatus or at least its personnel would have remained in place. These new findings, as well as several others, are important and persuasive. Where the book falls short is in showing the roots of these phenomena and their consequences. Are the interpretations and actions of the public in Czechoslovakia specific to this country (if so, why?) or are they applicable to all revolutions? Both claims find some support in the text. What impact did this sort of public involvement have on future developments in the Czech and Slovak Republics? Krapfl claims that the symbolic system created by the revolution remains and generates legitimacy today but offers little evidence for this proposition. Social scientifically inclined scholars may thus ask their traditional questions of ‘Why?’ and ‘So what?’ about this impressive work of historical reconstruction. Nevertheless, the book does take a considerable step forward in the study of the fall of Communism. It is persuasive and ground-breaking in showing the involvement of the public in the Gentle or Velvet Revolution and the importance of this involvement for breaking the grip of the Communists on power and setting the country on a path to dissolution. It may also provide inspiration to contemporary actors in the Czech and Slovak Republics as well as elsewhere that ordinary people can and do have an influence on even the grandest political changes. Department of Political Science Andrew Roberts Northwestern University Gorham, Michael S. After Newspeak: Language Culture and Politics in Russia from Gorbachev to Putin. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 2014. xvii + 234 pp. Notes. Bibliography. Index. $24.95 (paperback). For much of the twentieth century, the Russian language was a trusty resource of Soviet patriotism. From the early 1930s, Marxist arguments were discarded REVIEWS 591 and language policy became a matter of setting and policing norms. Notions of correctness were drawn partly from a selective appropriation of the national literary heritage and partly from Soviet construals of ‘high’ style. Bolstered by telling interventions from Gor´kii and Stalin, Soviet people became convinced that talking proper was a crucial component of culturedness. In the post-Stalin era, as access to education expanded and the norms of the intelligentsia spread to a mass public, the publishing industry saw a boom in advice literature on kul´tura rechi, while the broadcast media also played their part in dispensing linguistic counsel. The promotion of the ‘great, mighty’ (velikii, moguchii) language of Turgenev and Tolstoi was not obviously compatible with the leaden rhetoric of the Brezhnev generation of the political elite. But in both of these discursive realms the sense of a timeless norm prevailed. As Michael S. Gorham demonstrates astutely in his new book, Russia’s normsetters had a much tougher time from 1986 onwards. The first culprit was the slippery term glasnost´. For the whole of the modern era, from Faddei Bulgarin in 1826 to the Soviet Constitution of 1977, this concept had been carefully circumscribed by the establishment: glasnost´ was about giving the people enough information to agree in a more enthusiastic way with the decisions of their rulers. Gorbachev himself operated in this tradition until 1986, when he gave legitimacy to a more contentious interpretation of the word: glasnost´ was now to be understood as debate and discussion. When he later tried to step back from the implications of his own rhetoric, it was already too late. At the 19th Party Conference in 1988 the apparat could launch a determined rearguard action...

Krapfl, James. Revolution with a Human Face: Politics, Culture, and Community in Czechoslovakia, 1989–1992 (review)

REVIEWS 589 Krapfl, James. Revolution with a Human Face: Politics, Culture, and Community in Czechoslovakia, 1989–1992. Cornell University Press, Ithaca, NY, 2014. xxi + 260 pp. Maps. Illustrations. Figures. Tables. Notes. Chronology. Bibliography. Index. $45.00. The conventional wisdom about Czechoslovakia’s Velvet Revolution or, to use the term preferred in Slovakia, Gentle Revolution, is that it was initiated by students and artists who managed to oust the old regime but that the driving force for the subsequent changes was elites gathered mostly in Civic Forum (OF) and Public Against Violence (VPN). The central argument of James Krapfl’s book is that ordinary citizens, local actors and ‘the square’ played a far more consequential role in the revolution and for a longer period of time than is conventionally acknowledged. To use the unfortunate phrasing common in social science, he is ‘bringing the public back in’ to the study of the fall of Communism in Czechoslovakia. These findings are based on the author’s attempt to sift through the enormous documentary record left behind by the revolution — the ‘tens of thousands of declarations, flysheets, bulletins, posters, and open letters’ (p. 4). To his credit, Krapfl focuses not just or even mainly on Prague and Bratislava, but also on small towns like Louny or Komárno. Even as major decisions were being made in the capitals, much of what was going on during the revolution took place in small and medium-sized towns across the country. Krapfl’s main findings concern two aspects of the public’s role. The first is an analysis of what might be called the phenomenology of revolution — how the revolution felt and what ordinary people experienced. His major point here is that the revolution created a new sense of community that participants experienced as sacred. This experience he argues was crucial for establishing the legitimacy of the new regime and goes beyond standard theories of contentious politics. Krapfl further traces changing interpretations of the revolution from this initial heroic romanticism to a comedic interpretation that emphasized reconciliation and then on to a tragic view which asked why the revolution had not fulfilled its promise and even a satiric interpretation that saw change as impossible. In response to claims by Furet and Habermas that there was nothing new in these revolutions, Krapfl tries to extract the main ideas from the mass of documents. He finds the originality of the revolution in the concept of humanness or human dignity that contrasts with the ideological orientation which characterizes the European revolutionary tradition. These sections of the book draw heavily on classics in literary theory (Frye, Girard) and sociological theory (Durkheim), perhaps a bit too heavily. The second pillar of the book concerns not how ordinary people and local actors felt and talked, but what they actually did and accomplished. He finds that their actions are far more consequential than commonly described. Two SEER, 93, 3, JULY 2015 590 findings in particular stand out: 1) Slovak (and Czech) nationalism did not emerge immediately after the revolution but grew only out of local patriotism and then regionalism. Using the heretofore unexplored case of Civic Forum branches in Slovakia, Krapfl shows how Bratislava ultimately ‘conquered’ Slovakia by stoking nationalism and how OF and VPN might have forged a different relationship between the two entities, and 2) local actors throughout the country played a central role in the revolution by conducting no confidence votes and recall elections that allowed them to oust workplace directors, democratize unions, reconstruct local administration and change political representatives. Without these actions, which often had to overcome significant resistance from entrenched powerholders, much of the Communist apparatus or at least its personnel would have remained in place. These new findings, as well as several others, are important and persuasive. Where the book falls short is in showing the roots of these phenomena and their consequences. Are the interpretations and actions of the public in Czechoslovakia specific to this country (if so, why?) or are they applicable to all revolutions? Both claims find some support in the text. What impact did this sort of public involvement have on future developments in the Czech and Slovak Republics? Krapfl claims that the symbolic...

Government Selection and Executive Powers: Constitutional Design in Parliamentary Democracies

Provisions for a parliamentary investiture vote have become increasingly common in parliamentary democracies. This article shows that investiture provisions were largely introduced when new constitutions were written or old ones fundamentally redesigned. It also shows that the constitutions that endowed executives with strong legislative agenda powers also endowed parliaments with strong mechanisms to select the executive. It is argued that constitution makers’ decisions can be seen in principal–agent terms: strong investiture rules constitute an ex ante mechanism of parliamentary control – that is, a mechanism to minimise adverse selection and reduce the risk of agency loss by parliament. The findings have two broad implications: from a constitutional point of view, parliamentary systems do not rely exclusively on ex post control mechanisms such as the no confidence vote to minimise agency loss; parliamentarism, at least today and as much as presidentialism, is the product of conscious constitutional design and not evolutionary adaptation.

Institutions and Vote Unity in Parliaments: Evidence from 33 National Chambers

The paper looks at the relationship between institutions and vote unity in national parliaments with the help of a large data set of votes from 33 national parliaments. The tests run are the first to confirm empirically the relationship between vote of confidence procedure and vote unity. The paper also provides a theoretical explanation for why the existence of the confidence procedure influences vote unity despite being used only rarely. The vote of confidence influences votes through the development of control mechanisms as well as the selection of party members who are more ideologically united. This study also challenges the view that electoral rules which make candidates individually accountable to voters necessarily lead to more vote defections. The findings suggest that higher personal accountability decreases vote unity only if party leaders do not control candidate nomination. Parties that rely on government finance for campaigns are also more united.

TELAAH KONSTITUSIONAL PENGATURAN IMPEACHMENT PRESIDEN DAN WAKIL PRESIDEN DALAM MEWUJUDKAN DEMOKRASI

The President as the holder of power operation of the Republic of Indonesia as mandated by the 1945 constitution, have full responsibility in the case of the head of state and head of government. In running the government, the president is assisted by a vice president. When the president and vice president elected directly by the people in a general election is considered to be incapable of running the state government for reasons that have been determined by the 1945 Constitution, the legislative body that oversees the running of the government led by the president can give a confidence vote in the name parliament is then submitted to the judiciary in this case the Constitutional Court to decide the president and / or vice president deserves to be dismissed from office or not, and then a plenary session of People's Consultative Assembly (MPR), which is a combination of DPR and DPD to determine the dismissal of the President from office. Of course, the President of Indonesia dismissal mechanism which implicitly specified in the 1945 Constitution states that when the president removed from office, the Vice President also dismissed as "a package" is selected in elections democracy. in constitutional system, dismissing the President in the middle of a term called with the power of "impeachment".The feud between the Parliament and the President in the year 2001, where the House of Representatives after the General Election in 1999 by President Abdurrahman Wahid appointed by the Assembly election results in 1999 suffered a feud that continued confidence vote Parliament on President Abdurrahman Wahid or Gus Dur commonly called. Vote of no confidence on the results of the feud then continued the dismissal or resignation of President Abrurrahman Wahid from the presidency through a Special Session in 2001 the Legislative Act No. III / MPR / 2001. The Act contained in the revocation matter of state power from the hands of President Abdurrahman Wahid who was replaced by Megawati Soearnoputri as Vice President at the time.

By the Numbers: The Fiscal Accountability of Canada's Senior Governments, 2015

Control over public money is fundamental to democratic government, and presents huge challenges to legislators and taxpayers. Getting the information needed to answer simple questions such as how planned spending in the upcoming year compares to actual results in the prior year can be hard, and ensuring that governments treat their budget targets seriously is an never-ending task. This latest edition of the C.D. Howe Institute’s annual report on the fiscal accountability of Canada’s federal, provincial and territorial governments assesses the quality of financial information these governments present, and looks at their success or failure in achieving their budgetary goals over the past decade. Its survey of the financial reports reveals some good news: more governments now prepare their budgets on the same basis as their end-of-year public accounts, making comparisons over time easier for their citizens. While these improvements mean that more governments earn high marks for their reporting, some jurisdictions still present numbers in which such key figures as total spending and total revenue are obscure. Inconsistent presentation of numbers to legislators, late reporting, and qualified audits are too common. A major aim of this report is to celebrate the relatively transparent reporting found in New Brunswick and Saskatchewan, and in Ontario and Ottawa, and encourage other jurisdictions to raise their game. When it comes to the degree to which results match intentions, the survey also finds some good news. In the second half of the past decade, the spending and revenues reported by Canada’s senior governments at the end of each fiscal year have tended to match the projections in the budget at the beginning of the year more closely than in the first half of the decade. That said, federal, provincial and territorial governments tend to overshoot their budget targets by large amounts. Over the decade, Canada’s senior governments overshot their spending targets by some $48 billion in total. They also brought in far more revenue than anticipated in budgets, and while caution in forecasting can explain some of this overshoot, the survey finds a disturbing tendency for revenue and spending surprises, up or down, to occur together – more suggestive of opportunism than good fiscal management. Improving control over public funds in Canada will require two things. Legislators and the public must demand more transparent, timely and accurate reporting of governments’ fiscal plans and results. And legislators must use their powers over appropriation more effectively. Votes on budgets are votes of confidence that determine whether governments stand or fall. Only when legislators ensure that budget plans are meaningful do they hold governments accountable for their use of public funds.

The Fixed-term Parliaments Act and Votes of Confidence

The Government in the UK rests for its continuation in office on the confidence of the House of Commons. Until 2011, it was a convention of the constitution that a Government defeated on a motion of confidence resigned or requested the dissolution of Parliament. There were different categories of confidence votes. The Fixed-term Parliaments Act 2011 puts on a statutory basis the conditions for a general election following the loss of an explicitly worded motion of no confidence. Although not intended to do so initially, the provisions of the Act limit the options available to the Prime Minister in the event of a vote of no confidence and in so doing removed a significant power to maximise parliamentary strength in key votes.

Changing of the Guard

Three years have passed since the metamorphosis and relaunch of ChemPlusChem in 2011 by ChemPubSoc Europe and Wiley-VCH. The Founding Editor, Dr. Neville Compton, and Deputy Editor, Dr. Marisa Spiniello, have put tremendous effort into establishing ChemPlusChem as a platform for multidisciplinary research conducted by chemists from all fields as well as materials researchers. With the help of the Editorial Board and the International Advisory Board, they have applied the standards that ChemPubSoc Europe has set for its journals: a rigorous peer review system assuring top-notch papers and publishing ethics, and efficient high-quality production. In addition, all of the modern amenities of online publication are in operation (Early View articles available at www.chempluschem.org) and ChemPlusChem is present on Facebook (“like” us to receive current posts). I am very pleased that this investment of time, energy, and expertise has paid off. The number of manuscripts submitted to ChemPlusChem has grown steadily to a total of over 400 in 2014. Papers originally submitted to other Wiley-VCH journals but deemed too specialized often find a more suitable venue at ChemPlusChem. This type of in-house transfer is convenient for authors, as often no further refereeing, rewriting, or reformatting is necessary. The success of the journal is also reflected in its first published Impact Factor of 3.242 based on the publications of 2012. With this vote of confidence from the chemistry community we are confident that this positive development will continue. Indeed, the editorial team will be expanding in the coming year to further increase capabilities. The role of the Editor-in-Chief has grown in dimension and Dr. Compton, who is also Editor-in-Chief of Chemistry—A European Journal and Deputy Editor of Angewandte Chemie, will be returning to his ongoing projects with these journals. I take this opportunity to thank him for his guidance and hard work during this critical time in ChemPlusChem′s development. At a recent meeting, the representatives of ChemPubSoc Europe unanimously agreed to promote Dr. Spiniello to the position of Editor-in-Chief of ChemPlusChem. Her enthusiasm and energy in organizing special issues, attending conferences, and promoting the journal, in addition to all of the day-to-day responsibilities in running the editorial office have been crucial these past three years. Finally, the staff will be augmented by Dr. Rachel Schmidt-Radde, an organic chemist who has been an Associate Editor at Angewandte Chemie for over 15 years. With her help we anticipate lowering our already swift publication times even further in the coming months. As a final note I would like to thank my co-presidents of ChemPubSoc Europe, Professor Francesco de Angelis, Professor Christian Amatore, and Professor Luis Oro for their support in the development of this journal. We are excited by what the future holds. 1 President of ChemPlusChem

Politics in Contemporary Vietnam: Party, State and Authority Relations

1. Politics in Contemporary Vietnam Jonathan D. London 2. Persistence amid Decay: The Communist Party of Vietnam at 83 Tuong Vu 3. State versus State: The Principal-Agent Problem in Vietnam's Decentralizing Economic Reforms Thomas Jandl 4. Authoritarianism Reconfigured: Evolving accountability relations within Vietnam's One-Party Rule Thaveeporn Vasavakul 5. Understanding the Confidence Vote in Vietnamese National Assembly: An Update on Adverse Effects of Sunshine Edmund J. Malesky 5. Government Repression and Toleration of Dissidents in Contemporary Vietnam Benedict J. Tria Kerkvliet 7. The Apparatus of Authoritarian Rule in Vietnam Carlyle Thayer 8. The Political Influence of Civil Society in Vietnam Andrew Wells-Dang 9. Toward a New Politics? Jonathan London

Vote of Confidence

Vote of Confidence

Balancing the benefits and harms of low-dose computed tomography screening for lung cancer: Medicare's options for coverage.

Ideas and Opinions16 September 2014Balancing the Benefits and Harms of Low-Dose Computed Tomography Screening for Lung Cancer: Medicare's Options for CoverageRenda Soylemez Wiener, MD, MPHRenda Soylemez Wiener, MD, MPHFrom Boston University School of Medicine, Boston, and Edith Nourse Rogers Memorial Veterans Hospital, Bedford, Massachusetts.Search for more papers by this authorAuthor, Article, and Disclosure Informationhttps://doi.org/10.7326/M14-1352 Annals Author Insight Video - Renda Soylemez Wiener, MD, MPH In this video, Renda Soylemez Wiener, MD, MPH, offers additional insight into her Ideas and Opinions piece, "Balancing the Benefits and Harms of Low-Dose Computed Tomography Screening for Lung Cancer: Medicare’s Options for Coverage." SectionsAboutFull TextPDF ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack CitationsPermissions ShareFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail On 30 April 2014, the Medicare Evidence Development & Coverage Advisory Committee (MEDCAC) convened to weigh the evidence for low-dose computed tomography (LDCT) screening for lung cancer. Many were shocked by the outcome: a vote of low confidence about whether the benefits of LDCT screening would outweigh harms among Medicare beneficiaries in a community setting. After all, LDCT screening was shown to reduce mortality in the NLST (National Lung Screening Trial) (1), a multicenter randomized trial enrolling more than 53 000 participants at high risk for lung cancer, and multiple guidelines now recommend LDCT screening for high-risk persons. Indeed, on the ...

Trust me, I’m a Doctor: Views of Some Irish Patients towards their GP

Research Motivation: The strength of the relationship a patient holds with their general practitioner (GP) is a crucial determining factor in terms of patient recovery. In a time when uncertainty in the institutions that sustain Irish society is ubiquitous, the importance of trust cannot be underestimated. Methods : As part of a qualitative study, incorporating rural and urban settings in the Republic of Ireland, we sought to query the strength of trust relationships between patients and their general practitioners and the factors influencing these relationships. Data were collected using a focus group and semi-structured interviews, and a thematic analysis was undertaken. Main Findings: Participants in this small sample reported high, unwavering levels of trust for their GPs. This sentiment of trust extended to all aspects of the general practice experience ranging from an expressed comfort in discussing health problems with their GP, to feeling enabled to actively participate in the treatment process, to being absolutely confident as to the high level of skill and competence held by their physician. Implications: The findings indicate a vote of confidence in the local general practitioner and in the wider medical institution of general practice from this small sample of patients based in the Republic of Ireland.

What Sort of Science is ‘Economics’?

This essay is a general defense of Etzioni’s argument in The Moral Dimension. I explore three areas that others have questioned and show them (from my neo-Etzioni position) to be false. The result is a resounding vote of confidence for socioeconomics over neo-classical economics.