Initial Appeal Research Articles

Russian housing finance policy: state-led institutional evolution

A public policy scholar sets out to investigate the reasons behind the exceptionally high interest rates for mortgage loans in Russia. The article argues that this situation can be explained by examining Russian government policy making in the area of housing finance during the post-Soviet period. Following comparative literature, the process of policy development over time is argued to be determined by the interaction of such factors as policy legacies, policy ideas, institutional environment and actors' interests. The article demonstrates how the agency model of housing finance was institutionalised in policy during the 1990s. The initial appeal of this model to the interest of diverse actors at different levels of government is explained. The subsequent evolution of this model towards the formation of a ‘state-led model of housing finance’ over the recent decade is traced and its limitations in producing sufficient volumes of mortgage funding are highlighted. The analysis, in addition, demonstrates that alternative policy ideas with the potential to generate extra volumes of mortgage finance are also available in Russia within the relevant policy community. Their adoption in policy is, however, presently blocked by the interests of the top policy officials seeking to increase and maintain the central role of the Russian state in directing the country's economy.

Contemporary Indian Art and the ‘Semiotic Eye’: Issues and Perspectives

This article has a focus on the semiotic value of contemporary Indian art practice. It takes a fundamental position that in India, the conceptual response to contemporary art (painting and visual art) needs to be understood for its potential to create ongoing interpretations, and not just for what it aims its potential meaningful destination to be. The article further emphasizes the need to understand these new expressions in terms of Peirce’s notion of the ‘Interpretant’, against the established fact that they are fundamentally distinct from the traditional art practices in their intent and purpose. The impetus for this position comes from the significant shifts, continuities and discontinuities that art in India has seen since ‘modernism’. Traditional Indian theories had highly developed treatises elaborating upon the formal processes that led to an experiential ‘object’ of transformation and ananda (joy). The attempt is to call for analytical frameworks that semiotic theory can provide to the works of Indian artists who have, ‘ontologically progressed beyond the initial appeal of Modernism and the attendant desire to use acknowledged Western idioms. More than anything else, they respond to politics, and work to impact social justice. This is where tradition appears-via narrative’ ( Seid, 2007 , p. 13).

VAGUE ENTAILMENT

On the dominant view of vagueness, if it is vague whether Harry is bald, then all the specific facts about the distribution of hair on Harry's head, together with all the facts about Harry's comparison class, together with all the facts about our community-wide use of the word ‘bald’, fail to settle whether Harry is bald. On the dominant view, if it is vague whether Harry is bald, then nothing settles whether Harry is bald—it is unsettled, not merely epistemically, but metaphysically, whether Harry is bald. Call this view vagueness-as-indeterminacy. Vagueness-as-indeterminacy entails the following proposition: that clear vagueness as to whether Harry is bald clearly does not entail that Harry is bald. I argue against this proposition, and thus against vagueness-as-indeterminacy. My argument consists of a defence of the following rival proposition: that it is vague whether clear vagueness as to whether Harry is bald entails that Harry is bald. The argument itself is short. Most of the paper is devoted to responding to various objections to the argument, as well as attempting to explain away the initial appeal of the proposition that clear vagueness as to whether Harry is bald clearly does not entail that Harry is bald.

GLOP, The Moral Aim of Law and Trusting Judges

Having to answer a series of moral questions is precisely the disease that the law aims to cure. Dworkinian legal interpretation thus ends up reinfecting the patient after the contagion has been neutralized. Shapiro, Legality (310) Shapiro's account of law as primarily a complex and multi-layered mass plan has initial appeal. It will, I hope, help move a major focus of debate about the nature of law, from descriptive-phenomenological accounts of law as norms or rules to a focus on their practical rationale. It makes sense to think that the vast array of norms and rules that constitute the standard civilized modern legal system has coherence through its having a plan, however complex it is. There is some hint of this in Hart, for example, who thought that legal systems constituted organized state coercive power, allowing progress and efficiency consistent with a citizen's right to be given reasonable notice of what the state required of him (Hart 1961: Chs V, IX). Shapiro's account goes a step further than Hart by being unambiguous in its recognition that theories of law make almost no sense if offered merely as exercises in descriptive phenomenology; instead, Shapiro thinks that we must interpret law at a more abstract level and suppose that there is some fundamental value or set of values that law should embody. His theory is that we should view law as a plan – a mass, complex plan – that maps out what people in a legal system will be required to do in accordance with what the plan's creators have intended. Further, seeing law this way emphasizes a particular value which is that, operating as a plan, the law can, in his words, ‘settle moral disputes’. Since it is difficult not to accept that states and communities should be governed in accordance with plans, and that an obvious way of carrying out our plans is to have decision-making machinery that can bring about resolutions necessary for carrying these plans out, one can see some sense in what Shapiro says.

Rekombinante Proteine als Therapeutika in derklinischen Onkologie

The in vitro production of recombinant protein molecules has fostered a tremendous interest in their clinical application for treatment and support of cancer patients. Therapeutic proteins include monoclonal antibodies, interferons, and haematopoietic growth factors. Clinically established monoclonal antibodies include rituximab (targeting CD20-positive B-cell lymphomas), trastuzumab (active in HER-2 breast and gastric cancer), and bevacizumab (blocking tumor-induced angiogenesis through blockade of vascular-endothelial growth factor and its receptor). Interferons have lost much of their initial appeal, since equally or more effective treatments with more pleasant side effects have become available, for example in chronic myelogenous leukaemia or hairy cell leukaemia. The value of recombinant growth factors, notably granulocyte colony stimulating factor (G-CSF) and erythropoietin is rather in the field of supportive care than in targeted anti-cancer therapy. Adequately powered clinical phase III trials are essential to estimate the true therapeutic impact of these expensive compounds, with appropriate selection of clinically relevant endpoints and sufficient follow-up. Monoclonal antibodies, interferons, and growth factors must also, and increasingly so, be subjected to close scrutiny by appropriate cost-effectiveness analyses to ensure that their use results in good value for money. With these caveats and under the condition of their judicious clinical use, recombinant proteins have greatly enriched the therapeutic armamentarium in clinical oncology, and their importance is likely to grow even further.

Adopt, adapt, abandon: Understanding why some young adults start, and then stop, using instant messaging

Instant messaging (IM) has become a popular and important mode of staying in touch for teens and young adults. It allows for easy, frequent and lightweight interaction that contributes to building and sustaining friendships, as well as coordinating social activities. Despite the initial appeal of IM, however, some have found it too distracting and have changed their usage or abandoned it. I interviewed 21 former users of IM about their adoption, usage and eventual abandonment of the technology. Results show that participants were initially attracted to features of IM that enabled them to maximize their use of leisure time via easy and frequent interaction with their friends, but that, in a different usage context, these same features became distracting and annoying. Participants adapted their behavior to avoid these drawbacks, but IM did not support these adaptations effectively. In particular, IM did not allow for control over interruptions, which became more important as their contact lists grew and social time became scarce; and they ultimately abandoned the technology. These results point to a need for understanding use beyond adoption, and a theoretical and practical focus on understanding the adaptation and changing utility that accompany long-term usage of technologies.

Increasing Dominance - The Role of Advertising, Pricing and Product Design

Despite the empirical relevance of advertising strategies in concentrated markets, the economics literature is largely silent on the effect of persuasive advertising strategies on pricing, market structure and increasing (or decreasing) dominance. In a simple model of persuasive advertising and pricing with differentiated goods, we analyze the interdependencies between ex-ante asymmetries in consumer appeal, advertising and prices. Products with larger initial appeal to consumers will be advertised more heavily but priced at a higher level - that is, advertising and price discounts are strategic substitutes for products with asymmetric initial appeal. We find that the escalating effect of advertising dominates the moderating effect of pricing so that post-competition market shares are more asymmetric than pre-competition differences in consumer appeal. We further find that collusive advertising (but competitive pricing) generates the same market outcomes, and that network effects lead to even more extreme market outcomes, both directly and via the effect on advertising.

Mereology without Weak Supplementation

According to the Weak Supplementation Principle (WSP)—a widely received principle of mereology—an object with a proper part, p, has another distinct proper part that doesn't overlap p. In a recent article in this journal, Nikk Effingham and Jon Robson employ WSP in an objection to endurantism. I defend endurantism in a way that bears on mereology in general. First, I argue that denying WSP can be motivated apart from the truth of endurantism. I then go on to offer an explanation of WSP's initial appeal, argue that denying WSP fails to have untoward consequences for the rest of mereology, and show that the falsity of WSP is consistent with a primary guiding thought behind it.

How Predictive Appeals Affect Policy Opinions

When political actors debate the merits of a public policy, they often focus on the consequences of a bill or legislative proposal, with supporters and opponents making stark but contradictory predictions about the future. Building upon the framing literature, I examine how rhetoric about a policy's consequences influences public opinion. I show that predictive appeals work largely by altering people's beliefs about the impact of a policy. Following in the tradition of recent framing research, this article also examines how opinions are influenced when people are exposed to opposing predictions. The analysis focuses on two strategies that are common in real‐world debates—the direct rebuttal (in which an initial appeal is challenged by a statement making the opposite prediction) and the alternate frame (which counters an initial appeal by shifting the focus to some other consequence). There are important differences in the effectiveness of these two strategies—a finding that has implications for the study of competitive framing and the policymaking process more generally.

Formal—informal financial linkages: lessons from developing countries

Despite significant innovations in rural microfinance over the years, millions of people around the world do not have access to financial services. Can strategic linkages and alliances between financial institutions help resolve this problem? Research funded by the Ford Foundation, drawing on 12 case studies conducted in 11 countries in Africa, Asia and Latin America indicated that financial linkages are increasingly used by formal financial institutions (public or private) to target rural clients. A wide variety of less formal, often rural financial institutions are the linkage partners. Initial evidence indicates that the partnerships seem to afford both partners the opportunity to overcome a weakness in what they can achieve on their own. But does this initial appeal translate into anything sustainable or replicable? Although it is certainly too early to tell, financial linkages, while promising, are difficult to set up and manage, require strong NGO-MFIs as well as formal institutions and seldom resul...

‘No More Unexplored Countries’: The Early Promise and Disappointing Career of Time-Lapse Photography

Time-lapse photography—the extremely accelerated recording and projection of an event taking place over an extended duration of time—is almost as old as the movies themselves. (The first known use of time-lapse dates from 1898.) In the early decades of the twentieth century, cineastes, not to mention scientists, artists, and poets, waxed eloquently on the promise of time-lapse photography as a means for revealing “things we cannot see,” and expanding human perception. This essay examines time-lapses tremendous initial imaginative appeal for such figures as Ernst Mach, Germaine Dulac, Jean Epstein, Rudolf Arnheim, Laszlo Moholy-Nagy, and Collette, and speculates about the possible reasons for its diminution over the course of the century.

On the alleged failure of free will theodicies: A reply to Tierno

In a recent issue ofSophia Joel Tierno contends that free will theodicies are fundamentally flawed insofar as they claim to provide an adequate explanation for God’s permission of moral evil. Free will, according to Tierno, only accounts for our ability to make certain choices that issue in evil, but fails to account for the fact that we often do make such choices. However, the argument developed by Tierno, despite its initial appeal, embodies an important misunderstanding of the nature of free will theodicies and in particular the libertarian conception of human freedom customarily employed by these theodicies.

Retention: An unresolved workforce issue affecting rural occupational therapy services

Failure to retain health professionals in rural areas contributes to the poor health status of these communities through an inability to deliver reliable and consistent services. Considerable attention has been focused on factors affecting recruitment of health professionals. Far less is known about factors affecting the retention of occupational therapists. This was the focus of this study. Ethnographic interviews were used to explore the experiences of 10 occupational therapists who had left rural practice. Six themes emerged from the participants’ experiences, from when they first considered rural practice to reflections following their departure from it. These themes were initial appeal, facing the challenge, rural practice issues, the social sphere, reasons for leaving and the value of rural experience. These factors gave rise to a proposed Model of Retention Equilibrium, which suggests that retention can be improved by addressing the imbalance between incentives to leave and incentives to stay. The model provides a useful framework for occupational therapists contemplating rural practice, as well as for health services managers responsible for service delivery in rural areas.

Institutional Economics: Then and Now

This article gives a history of American institutionalism, and a brief comparison with the more recent “new” institutional economics. Institutionalism was a significant element in American economics between the Wars, but declined rapidly thereafter. The article outlines the movement's initial appeal, its contributions, and the reasons for its decline. Although the “new” institutionalism has few direct ties to the older tradition, some interesting commonalities are found and discussed. Links to the “new institutionalism” in sociology and political science, and to historical work on other “institutional” traditions are also mentioned.

Strategic Trade and Industrial Policy Towards Dynamic Oligopolies

The theory of strategic trade policy has grown from precocious urchin to mature teenager and is now part of the central canon of international trade theory. Much of its initial appeal came from the fact that it appeared to provide a stronger justiAEcation for interventionist measures such as tariffs and export subsidies than traditional competitive theory. However, as is now well known, the specific policy recommendations of the theory are highly sensitive to changes in assumptions about firm behaviour, entry, and so on. For this reason, possibly a more important contribution of the theory is that it high- lights a key aspect of public policy in oligopolistic markets: that governments and firms are likely to differ in their ability to commit to future actions. Thus the desirability of intervention, whether an export subsidy as in Brander and Spencer (1985) or an export tax as in Eaton and Grossman (1986), derives from the government's assumed ability to commit to policies which will remain in force while firms take their decisions on outputs or prices. The optimal policy moves the home firm to the point which it would attain unaided if it had a Stackelberg first-mover advantage

The National Heart Foundation of Australia: The first 21 years

The treatment of cardiovascular disease has been one of the late 20th century's great success stories. Rising death rates in Australia in the 1940s and 1950s gave impetus to the movement for the establishment of a community-based heart foundation in Australia, an organisation that could marshal resources and provide leadership to the community in its fight against what appeared to be an epidemic. The new organisation, named the National Heart Foundation, became a reality in 1959, the third such community-based heart foundation to be formed worldwide. The hard work and vision of interested, community-minded citizens and members of the medical profession, together with the support of the Federal Government and the press, resulted in a highly successful initial appeal for funds in 1961. Following further appeals in 1969 and 1975, an annual fund-raising program was adopted and financial resources allocated on the basis of merit, to scientific and medical research programs. Other major projects initiated by the Foundation in the 1960s and 1970s included: the Australian Therapeutic Trial in Mild Hypertension; the collection of data on the extent and nature of disease (including a register of heart attack for the city of Perth in 1971–1972, and a register of cardiac surgery for Australia); and education and rehabilitation programs.

On the etiology of the rebuff phenomenon: Why are persuasive messages less polite after rebuffs?

The rebuff phenomenon is a robust empirical regularity that emerges from many compliance gaining studies, using widely varying methodologies. The effect is this: when a persuader is confronted with a rebuff, his/her next message will tend to be be ruder and more aggressive than the initial appeal. This could be due to repertoire exhaustion, or to a change in the persuader's standards for acceptable messages. The second possibility is hypothesized here, and results support that explanation. Lewin's field theory accounts for this outcome. Connecting the rebuff phenomenon to appraisal theory also would advance our understanding of sequential compliance gaining.

Narrating Crisis: The Discursive Construction of the `Winter of Discontent'

The winter of discontent continues to exert a powerful hold over the British political imaginary. It acts as a discursive key to a collective mythology seemingly appealed to, and conjured, in each wave of industrial unrest, in each hint of political turmoil and, until recently, whenever the election of a Labour Government looked credible. In this paper I consider the rhetorical strategies and linguistic devices deployed by the tabloid media in the narration of the events of the winter of 1978-79. I argue for an interpretation of the winter of discontent as a moment of state crisis. By crisis however I do not refer to the mere accumulation of contradictions but rather to a moment of transition, a moment of decisive intervention. Within such a framework, the winter of discontent emerges as a strategic moment in the transformation of the British state, and perhaps the key moment in the pre-history of Thatcherism. For, as I hope to demonstrate, the initial appeal of the New Right was premised upon its ability to offer a convincing construction of the winter of discontent as symptomatic of a more fundamental crisis of the state. In such a moment of crisis, a particular type of decisive intervention was called for. In this discursive construction of crisis the New Right proved itself capable of changing, if not the hearts and minds of the electorate, then certainly the predominant perceptions of the political context. It recruited subjects to its vision of the necessary response to the crisis of a monolithic state besieged by the trade unions. This was perhaps the only truly hegemonic moment of Thatcherism. It occurred well before Mrs Thatcher entered Number 10. It is thus not surprising that one of the most enduring and distinctive legacies of Thatcherism has been the new political lexicon of crisis, siege and subterfuge born of the winter of discontent.

Modernism and Revolution: Russian Literature in Transition (review)

Reviewed by: Modernism and Revolution: Russian Literature in Transition John E. Bowlt Modernism and Revolution: Russian Literature in Transition. Victor Erlich. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1994. Pp. 314. $45.00. Victor Erlich has built many intellectual monuments, although he is remembered most often for his pioneering Russian Formalism of 1955 (and subsequent editions), still one of the best commentaries on Russian Formalist criticism and its obligations to the theory and practice of modernist writers such as Andrei Bely and Boris Eikhenbaum. To a considerable extent, Modernism and Revolution can be regarded as a sequel to Russian Formalism in that Erlich now explores the genesis and evolution of an even more diaphanous concept in Russian culture, i.e., modernism. For Erlich the modernist aesthetic in Russia encompasses a complex of movements and personages, from the secret doctrines of the Symbolists represented by Bely and Alexander Blok through the raucous declarations of the Futurists such as Velimir Khlebnikov and Vladimir Maiakovsky to the stenographic prose of Isaak Babel and the controlled factographies of Ilya Ehrenburg. Although some may argue that such an extensive coverage may distort any characteristic identification of Russian modernism, Erlich demonstrates through his relentlessly lucid prose that a common stylistic, formal, and even thematic denominator joined these apparently diverse inquiries. His belief in the inner cohesion and purpose of Russian literature during the 1910s and 1920s justifies this inclusion of so many stars within a single constellation. In this respect, Erlich’s initial appeal to the Symbolist sensibility is a felicitous way to embark upon the modernist journey. As we learn in the first chapter, the Symbolist poets and philosophers such as Valerii Briusov, Bely, Blok, and Viacheslav Ivanov exposed many of the “microbes” that nurtured and transfigured Russian literature in its subsequent metamorphoses through the Cubo-Futurism, Constructivism, Ornamentalism, and what Erlich calls Neo-Futurism of the 1920s (not to be confused with the 1913 movement of Neo-Futurism in Kazan). The Symbolists argued, for example, that concentration on form would lead to a “nonobjective” art (Bely’s term), that the true artifact was both formulaic and transcendental, [End Page 162] and that it was part of a utopian reconstruction of the world. Above all, the Symbolists granted the word a special privilege, imbuing it with an enunciatory and celebratory quality that Socialist Realism would exaggerate even further in the 1930s and 1940s. That for the Russian artist and writer the word was of greater import than the deed becomes especially clear in Erlich’s debate of Blok’s stratified The Twelve and his section on “The Battle of Manifestoes.” Erlich’s modernist repertoire is both traditional and unconventional. At first glance, the particular writers selected for critical discussion (Anna Akhmatova, Babel, Ehrenburg, Konstantin Fedin, Lev Lunts, Maiakovsky, Osip Mandelstam, Yurii Olesha, Boris Pasternak, Boris Pilniak, Andrei Platonov, Viktor Shklovsky, Marina Tsvetaeva, and Mikhail Zoshchenko) seem to constitute a textbook register of customary heroes. Certainly, Erlich has his likes and dislikes (it is hard to share his enthusiasm for Fedin or his rejection of David Burliuk as a mere Futurist apparatchik), and the reader may wonder why Erlich replicates the accepted pantheon rather than offer a new configuration. After all, recent studies of the Russian avant-garde have demonstrated the boldness and originality of other, less familiar Russian writers, suggesting a possible usurpation of Khlebnikov’s status by Alexei Kruchenykh, of Maiakovsky’s by Burliuk, or of Platonov’s by Nikolai Zabolotsky (ignored here). Where are Vasilisk Gnedov, Vasilii Kamensky, Maximilian Voloshin, Igor Terentiev, and Ilia Zdanevich? Of course, such replacements can always be proposed, but as Erlich himself implies on several occasions, ultimately, the “other” modernists only supplement the initial ranks (Kruchenykh is unthinkable without Khlebnikov, but not vice versa). Obviously, Erlich’s own discussion of certain writers is dictated by the appeal and evidence precisely of their writings, and the reading list contains few surprises. We should remember, however, that the Russian modernists advanced as much by unrehearsed gesture, emotional caprice, the impromptu speech, and violent dispute as by the published novel or poem and that they used all media to express their concerns (cinema, dance, fashion design). If, by some miracle, we were able...

Is the laparoscopic bubble bursting?

The watchword for 1995 has been evidence-based medicine. After several years of euphoria with the laparoscope, surgeons have started to look critically at the extravagant claims of minimal-access surgery. The laparoscopic bubbles of less pain, smaller scar, quicker recovery, and saving of money led to speculation that as many as 80% of operations will be performed laparoscopically. But now the bubbles are bursting, not only with reports of serious complications such as major vascular (Am J Surg 1995; 169: 543) and bileduct injuries (Ann R Coll Surg Engl 1994; 76: 269), deep venous thromboses (Arch Surg 1993; 128: 914), and even portsite metastases (Br J Surg 1995; 82: 295), but also with the realisation that many common operations can readily be carried out through small (minimally invasive) incisions. Both laparoscopic cholecystectomy and fundoplication have been accepted, partly because the internal procedure is the same as the tried and proven open procedure. Less impressive results have emerged when the operation is modified to make the laparoscopic hardware fit. Randomised trials of hernia repair (MacIntyre) give conflicting results in terms of postoperative pain and recovery rates, but show that costs are increased. Laparoscopic appendicectomy had initial appeal (Martin), but has also failed to catch on. Laparoscopic colorectal surgery has spread slowly, owing to requirements of advanced laparoscopic skills and deficiencies in instrumentation. Major complication rates of 24% and conversion to open surgery in 41% (Dis Colon Rect 1993; 36: 28) should be a warning. In defence of laparoscopy, it has made surgeons more aware of cosmetic considerations and metabolic responses to surgery. There is a paucity of publications to support laparoscopic cholecystectomy. To date over 800 articles have addressed laparoscopic cholecystectomy, but only 15 are randomised controlled trials of laparoscopic versus open cholecystectomy. Only McGinn, McMahon, and Majeed have compared laparoscopic and small-incision (mini-laparotomy) cholecystectomy with adequate patient numbers (over 50 in each group). Of these three, only one (Majeed) has been blinded to postoperative carer bias, and preliminary results show similar times to first solid feed, hospital discharge, and return to work. The laparoscopic procedure took longer to perform. Belief in laparoscopy has lead to an increased rate of cholecystectomy (JAA4A 1995; 273: 1581), owing to increased referrals and lowered surgical thresholds, so increasing overall health expenditure. In the future, new technology such as virtual reality environments may perfect surgeons' laparoscopic skills on computer-generated models. However, we believe the coming year will direct evidence-based surgery away from