Data Mining Practical Machine Learning Tools and Techniques

The present historical moment may seem a particularly inopportune time to review Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam's latest exploration of civic decline in America. After all, the outpouring of volunteerism, solidarity, patriotism, and self-sacrifice displayed by Americans in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks appears to fly in the face of Putnam's central argument: that \"social capital\" -defined as \"social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them\" (p. 19)'has declined to dangerously low levels in America over the last three decades. However, Putnam is not fazed in the least by the recent effusion of solidarity. Quite the contrary, he sees in it the potential to \"reverse what has been a 30to 40-year steady decline in most measures of connectedness or community.\"' As an example of how the current \"war on terrorism\" could generate a durable civic renewal, Putnam points to the burst in civic practices that occurred during and after World War II, which he says \"permanently marked\" the generation that lived through it and had a \"terrific effect on American public life over the last half-century.\" 3 If Americans can follow this example and channel their current civic

Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community

Series Editor's Preface. Introduction by John Breuilly. Acknowledgements. 1. Definitions. State and nation. The nation. 2. Culture in Agrarian Society. Power and culture in the agro-literature society. The varieties of agrarian rulers. 3. Industrial Society. The society of perpetual growth. Social genetics. The age of universal high culture. 4. The Transition to an Age of Nationalism. A note on the weakness of nationalism. Wild and garden culture. 5. What is a Nation. The course of true nationalism never did run smooth. 6. Social Entropy and Equality in Industrial Society. Obstacles to entropy. Fissures and barriers. A diversity of focus. 7. A Typology of Nationalisms. The varieties of nationalist experience. Diaspora nationalism. 8. The Future of Nationalism. Industrial culture - one or many?. 9. Nationalism and Ideology. Who is for Nuremberg?. One nation, one state. 10. Conclusion. What is not being said. Summary. Select bibliography. Bilbliography of Ernest Gellner's writing: Ian Jarvie. Index

Nations and Nationalism

Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers

Public Management Reform. A Comparative Analysis

This book surveys the development of service industries in Britain from a geographical perspective, assessing their contribution to other sectors of the economy. The location of new service industries is described and explained, with an analysis of the effect of locational changes on employment opportunities and patterns. The contributors consider the economic role of private sector producer services and provide a British view of issues to complement parallel work already published on the situation in the USA. A final chapter gives the international perspective with contributions from the USA, Canada, and the European Community. This book is the outcome of the Producer Services Working Party, a limited-life working party established in 1984 by the Institute of British Geographers (IBG) and funded by the IBG and the Economic and Social Research Council.

Services and Uneven Development

The first part (Leonardi; Mairate) provides overviews from different perspectives on the rationale for EU Cohesion policy and its effects, including 'added value'. The second part (Batterbury; Bradley; Martin and Tyler) provides a critical assessment of Cohesion policy evaluation, focusing on the current regulatory framework. It examines contrasting macro-based approaches for determining the effect of policy, comprising a model-based approach to ex-ante evaluate the Structural Funds and a shift-share, residual-based method to evaluate interventions in Objective 1 regions. This part offers a new estimate of the employment effect of Cohesion policy. The third part (Florio; Baslae#169;; Blazek and Vozab; Eser and Nussmueller; Armstrong and Wells) examines the evaluation experience in a variety of circumstances, including different policy measures (Structural Funds, Community Initiatives and Cohesion Fund) and different kinds of evaluation (ex-ante, mid-term and ex-post).3 It explores other issues such as the use of cost-benefit analysis, the evaluation of community economic development (CED) initiatives and the preparation of programming documents in a new Member State. Finally, the fourth part has shorter contributions (Barca; Huber; Jakoby; Raines) that take a policy-maker perspective on evaluation culture in a variety of EU regions and countries.

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Evaluation of European Union Cohesion policy: Research questions and policy challenges

This article re-assesses the multi-level governance debate and specifically the ‘renationalization thesis’, with respect to EU cohesion policy. It focuses on two of the principles of decision-making under the structural funds: concentration (decisions on where the money is spent) and programming (decisions on how it is spent). The analysis takes a longitudinal approach, examining each of the policy phases from 1988 until the recent debate on the 2007‐13 period.The article concludes that the role of national governments (relative to the European Commission) in key decisions on the implementation of cohesion policy has been exaggerated in the literature and that important arguments underpinning the ‘renationalization thesis’ are flawed.

Who Governs EU Cohesion Policy? Deconstructing the Reforms of the Structural Funds

This paper undertakes a critical assessment of the influence of the EU Cohesion policy on regionalisation and the role of regional institutions in Central and Eastern Europe. It addresses questions that are central to ongoing theoretical debates about the role of the region in the new member states. Have the powers and resources of the regions been strengthened by their involvement in EU support programmes? Are regions increasingly involved in integrated 'bottom-up' responses to regional development challenges? The paper offers a fresh perspective on these issues, with a cross-national analysis of practical experience in the postenlargement period and a detailed assessment of the technical, variable, and complex reality of working with EU Structural Funds. A distinctive approach of the analysis is to disaggregate the stages of Structural Funds programme management and delivery, thereby highlighting the varied nature of regional involvement in Structural Funds. Ultimately, the paper questions the notion that Structural Funds build regional structures and competence, and lead to 'stronger regions'. Instead, it is argued that there is no guarantee that the Structural Funds will necessarily promote regionalisation in Central and Eastern Europe, at least in the short to medium terms.

/pdf/eu-cohesion-policy-and-the-role-of-the-regions-investigating-pv7x0mxlqj.pdf

EU Cohesion Policy and the Role of the Regions: Investigating the Influence of Structural Funds in the New Member States

The aim of this article is to reassess the effectiveness of Cohesion policy. It examines the evidence for the performance of the policy since 1988, with a view to testing four main assumptions: that convergence is taking place at national and regional levels; that Cohesion policy has made a durable contribution to convergence and regional restructuring, in terms of GDP and employment; that Cohesion policy funds have been spent in the most effective way; and that there is a wider added value from Cohesion policy spending. The article goes on to consider issues for the budget review and how the effectiveness of Cohesion policy at the European level might be improved.

John Bachtler

Papers

Services and Uneven Development

Evaluation of European Union Cohesion policy: Research questions and policy challenges

Who Governs EU Cohesion Policy? Deconstructing the Reforms of the Structural Funds

EU Cohesion Policy and the Role of the Regions: Investigating the Influence of Structural Funds in the New Member States

REFORMING EU COHESION POLICY: A reappraisal of the performance of the Structural Funds