Cal Clark

"Carol Mason, Director of Nursing, and her intrepid group of Black Angels are back in this sequel to Cal Clark's eponymously titled debut novel. Shortly after they had defeated the forces of evil in the scandal plagued Elm Hill Psychiatric Hospital for Women, a new crisis arises and they are called back into action. Shady businessmen and the city's underworld, aided and abetted by scheming nurses, a dirty cop and corrupt doctor, have hatched a conspiracy of mayhem and murder to take over the hospital. Both the setting and the period are important in this suspenseful and engaging mystery, and Cal Clark captures both." James Buford, Author of The Best of Times

Neoliberalism, which advocates free markets without government interference, has become increasingly utilized and controversial over the last three and a half decades. This book presents case studies of Chile and Taiwan, two countries that seemingly prospered from adopting neoliberal strategies, and finds that their developmental histories challenge neoliberalism in fundamental ways.From one perspective, the political economies of Chile and Taiwan might appear to be poster children for neoliberalism. Both took aggressive policy actions (Taiwan in the 1960s and Chile in the 1970s) to create market-driven economies that were well integrated into the capitalist global economy. Subsequently, these two countries were cited as 'economic miracles' that opened their markets, resulting in rapid economic growth and development. A closer examination of the two nations, however, turns up very significant differences between them. In particular, Taiwan, with its much more statist approach to development, outperformed Chile by a considerable margin; and some of the experiences of Chile departed markedly from neoliberal predictions. The authors argue that Taiwan s strategy was the more successful of the two, primarily because it discarded the ideology of neoliberalism and unfettered laissez-faire.Scholars, educators, and students studying globalization, political economy, and/or economic development will find this book an irreplaceable addition to the discussion of neoliberalism.

Using the developmental history of Taiwan as a starting point, Flexibility, Foresight and Fortuna critically examines several prevalent formulations of domestic development and international economy.The authors examine Taiwan's policy performance from, in turn, the developmental, the dependency, the statist, and the trade-off perspectives on political economy. They reject these approaches in favour of the key ideas of flexibility, foresight and fortuna as an explanation of Taiwan's relatively unusual success in achieving domestic development and upward mobility in the international system.

The principal goal of this textbook is to provide clear and elementary descriptions of the major statistical techniques used in political and social science research. The book is built on two basic assumptions. First, that it is possible to explain social science statistics in a simple and straightforward manner so that students with a minimal background in math can understand even fairly advanced techniques, such as multiple and logistic regression. Second, that undergraduate and even graduate students have less trouble in understanding specific techniques than in interpreting what statistical results mean substantively. Consequently, the book stresses the interpretation of research findings.In essence, the book argues that political science research is like piecing a jigsaw puzzle together. Pieces of information — statistical and non-statistical — must be assembled and interpreted both logically and creatively.The text is organized in a unique manner, using the various techniques being discussed to analyze the current state of the United States as it seemingly stands at a crossroads in both its political orientations and socioeconomic nature. To make the statistical interpretation more meaningful and easier to understand, the results throughout the book are integrated by their focus upon two central questions related to the theme of America at a Crossroads: Are Americans conservative or liberal in their political beliefs? How do economic and social outcomes in America compare to those in other developed democracies?

This is a thorough and comprehensive study - both in terms of country coverage and in-depth analysis - covering the economic development of all the major economies in the Asian continent, namely China, India, Japan, South Korea, Taiwan, Malaysia and Singapore.Before embarking on analyses of different aspects of economic growth and development of these countries, the authors present a thought-provoking analysis of how institutional factors such as geography, history of religion, culture and political governance have been deeply interwoven with development dynamics to shape the growth and development trajectory that each country has subsequently followed. Each country’s development path consequently appeared almost be pre-determined. Japan’s role as the lead-country in technology transfer under the flying-geese pattern of development is discussed, however the emphasis has shifted of late to China, India, Korea, Malaysia and Singapore. The authors also propose that instead of discussing the failure of India to catch up with China in growth and development outcomes, economists should be commenting on whether China, bestowed with India’s highly decentralized democratic governance structure and institutional rigidities, would have been able to achieve the same results as that of India. Only then will a true understanding and appreciation of India’s achievements in economic growth and development emerge.Economic Development in China, India and East Asia will be warmly welcomed and appreciated by academics and researchers of international and development economics as well as Asian development and economics. Policy makers and those involved in NGOs in the development and aid arenas will also find this of great interest.

The attitudes of individual citizens play a central role in a democracy. In the United States today, the two major parties are each associated with a broad set of policy positions representing the conservative and liberal political ideologies. The two major parties are becoming increasingly polarized on these ideologies between conservative Republicans and liberal Democrats. This book provides an in-depth examination of public opinion in a single American state, Alabama, to see whether the public opinion of general citizens follows this stereotype of ideological and partisan polarization. Alabama public opinion is analyzed on a fairly wide range of issues, including the quality of public officials, constitutional reform, the role of government in terms of taxes and overall spending, education, health care, religion in public life, crime, and immigration. Alabama is generally perceived as staunchly conservative politically and as a reliably 'red' Republican state in national elections. Yet, public opinion in Alabama is considerably more nuanced and complex than this stereotype in two distinct aspects. First, Alabamians are certainly conservative on many issues, but they are also liberal on a significant number of others. Second, the issue positions of the state's citizens are shaped by three different dynamics in terms of what factors influence specific attitudes. Furthermore a brief analysis of public opinion in the entire United States finds similar patterns. Thus, the current polarization in party politics does not necessarily reflect public opinion in its entirety, suggesting a need to transcend the competing conservative and liberal orthodoxies.

Globalization's Impact on State-Local Economic Development Policy

The key issues of the health care system are often conceptualised as involving three basic dimensions: the quality of health care provided; access to the health care system and the cost of health care. This book presents studies of two distinct types of reform that have been implemented to reduce the 'trade offs' arising from the 'unholy trinity'. The first focuses upon attempts to reorganise existing institutions in order to make them more effective and cost-efficient. The second considers the move toward 'evaluation research', that is, more critically evaluating health care treatments and outcomes to make sure that treatments are effective and cost-efficient.

Using the developmental history of Taiwan as a starting point, Flexibility, Foresight and Fortuna critically examines several prevalent formulations of domestic development and international economy.The authors examine Taiwan's policy performance from, in turn, the developmental, the dependency, the statist, and the trade-off perspectives on political economy. They reject these approaches in favour of the key ideas of flexibility, foresight and fortuna as an explanation of Taiwan's relatively unusual success in achieving domestic development and upward mobility in the international system.

Known as the Taiwan Miracle, the Republic of China on Taiwan (R.O.C.) has, over the past thirty-five years, experienced one of the world's highest rates of economic growth. Arguing that major theoretical frameworks for analyzing international political economy are often too simplistic in that they omit key factors or overly generalize from relationships found only in limited situations, Clark uses a detailed case history of the R.O.C. to suggest not only that development and dependency in contemporary society are extremely complex and indeterminate processes, but that development in Taiwan deviates significantly from the postulates of the two leading paradigms of international political economy. To go even further, Clark states that Taiwan's economic growth and transformation resulted from its deviation from the normal dependency syndrome. Indeed, a development strategy based on economic flexibility and periodic regime change that has made this flexibility possible are hallmarks in Taiwan's success story. The United States and other advanced industrial economies whose past successes have created economic and political barriers to future adaptation can be better understood in terms of the characteristics of R.O.C.'s development strategy.Part I of the three-part work focuses on environment, first discussing various paradigms and theories about development and then presenting an historical overview of Taiwan. The second part investigates Taiwan's international role, political development, and rapid economic growth. The volume closes with a chapter devoted to the implications of the Taiwan experience and political economy paradigms. Eight figures and thirty-five tables illustrate facets of Taiwan's development, including government structure, indicators of agricultural development, industrialization, educational progress, and export performance, among others. Because of the detailed presentations of political economy theories and their variants, especially in relation to economic and political development in Taiwan, this volume would be an excellent choice for courses in political economy, developing societies, Asian politics, and international relations theory, as well as libraries serving students in these areas.