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The US State Department increasingly relies on efforts of public diplomacy to improve America's image abroad. We test the theoretical efficacy of these efforts through an experiment. Participants were recruited in Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan. All but those participants randomly assigned to a control group read a quote about religious tolerance and pluralism in the United States. We varied the attribution of this quote to President Bush, to an unnamed US Ambassador, to an ordinary American, or to no one. We then asked respondents a battery of questions about their opinions of the United States before and after a long discussion with other participants about the United States. We find that the identity of the messenger matters, as those who read the quote attributed to Bush tended to have lower opinions of the United States. After the discussion, these views partially dissipated. Post-discussion views were more heavily influenced by how other participants viewed the United States. After controlling for the source and location of the discussion, when the discussion took place among people with more positive initial views of the United States, views of the United States improved. However, when there was a large range of views in the discussion, post-discussion views of the United States were relatively worse. Based on this study, we suggest new directions for the conduct of public diplomacy. Adapted from the source document.

Abstract Florence is known all over the word for its historical and monumental buildings; however, most part of residential buildings have been made in the XX century, and they present all the critical issues proper of recent housing. Florence is one of the first Italian cities to have experienced the public housing. Its public housing population consists mostly of masonry buildings, and it does not comply the requirements provided by the current seismic legislation. This work is aimed at evaluating the seismic performance of a masonry building-type belonging to the public housing population of Florence. A typical public housing intervention, consisting of 18 masonry buildings, has been assumed as case-study. The seismic input has been described according to the Italian Code prescriptions, by considering the effective soil stratigraphy, and considering the effective mechanical properties of each layer. The seismic performance of the case-studies has been checked by performing a nonlinear static analysis. The results are expressed in terms of seismic performance, defined as the ratio between the seismic capacity and the corresponding demand. The obtained results evidenced the role of the building features on the seismic assessment of the buildings.

Over the past five years, advocacy and public policy grantmaking has moved away from supporting individual grantees to achieve their particular policy goals toward a more targeted, proactive approach designed to achieve the funder's policy goals. More recently, some funders have begun to explore new ways of designing advocacy and public policy grantmaking to achieve longer-term and more substantial changes in the policy landscape at large. As foundations consider how to approach their advocacy and public policy grantmaking in the future, a better understanding of this variety of approaches, and pros and cons of each among foundations with a long history of policy work, may provide options for framing and focusing such efforts.Building on research conducted in 2007 by Coffman and Campbell, this brief summarizes advocacy and public policy grantmaking approaches and their implications for grant portfolio composition and management, auxiliary supports and evaluation. "Advocacy and public policy grantmaking" refers to grantmaking in support of a wide range of advocacy activities that are intend to trigger, block, maintain, support and/or monitor changes in public policy at any level of government. The findings below emerged from an extensive literature review, as well as interviews with staff at 14 foundations and three independent consultants with in-depth policy experience. Interviewees were selected to represent an array of foundation sizes, content areas and structures, all with mature policy portfolios. Foundation staff were asked to describe their foundation's approach to advocacy and public policy grantmaking, including:The foundation's goals for its advocacy and policy grantsWhat the foundation has learned about how best to structure grantmaking and construct a portfolio to achieve its goalsWhat auxiliary supports (e.g., convenings, technical assistance, etc.) the foundation provides that have proven indispensable to its workHow the foundation defines the role of its policy staff, and how these staff interact with other staffHow the foundation designs reporting and conducts (or would like to conduct) evaluationHow the foundation thinks about its role in the larger field of "actors" in the advocacy field and in relation to other funders.The assessment revealed two approaches to advocacy and public policy grantmaking for which foundation practices and processes are fairly well established: a policy target approach to achieve the passage, successful implementation and maintenance of a funder's specific policy goal; and an advocacy niche approach to strengthen the presence or influence of a particular strategic function (i.e., policy analysis and research or grassroots mobilization) within the policymaking process. In addition, the assessment identified an emerging approach to advocacy and public policy grantmaking that has yet to be well defined: a field-building approach to develop the stability and long-term adaptive capacity of a group -- or field -- of advocacy organizations. Many funders choose a combination of these approaches, and some prefer to be more strongly positioned within a single approach. Approaches are not mutually exclusive, and may even be mutually supportive; but each approach has unique implications for grantee selection, organizational processes, program officer roles and evaluation.This report frames a series of options for advocacy and public policy grantmaking and explores implications for foundation practices by drawing on the best experiences from the field. It presents a particular focus on what it means for foundations to design their grantmaking to build the capacity and influence of a field of advocates to tackle a wide range of policy challenges over time. As such, this brief can help foundation staff and leadership establish a common language and understand trade-offs among the different advocacy strategy paths.

Chapter 1. Brief Overview of Sustainable Public Procurement -- Chapter 2. Emergence of Sustainable Public Procurement as Strategic Instrument -- Chapter 3. Status of Sustainable Procurement Implementation -- Chapter 4. National Context for Sustainable Public Procurement Policy in India -- Chapter 5. State of Play of Drives for Implementing Sustainable Procurement in India -- Chapter 6. Strategy for Implementing Sustainable Public Procurement Policy in India -- Chapter 7. Evolving Role of Sustainable Procurement in Coming Decades.

The purpose of this article was to put forward staff appraisal process in the Public Service of advanced countries. Even if British and French Civil Services have different characteristics coming from their specific cultures, even if staff appraisal development has followed different rhythms, they meet together to consider that appraisal is a key instrument to improve public performance and Human Resource Management.Pay related to performance (PRP) triggers international debates because some consider it as ineffective and a source of discord inside a working team. But the two countries have to address the problem to find how to motivate their staff. The British civil servants seem less reluctant to PRP than their French homologues who feel more comfortable with a collective approach of appraisal, even if this system is criticized because some poor contributors may hide themselves behind good performers. The solution that could be prescribed would consist in using a collective approach of appraisal in combination of a system rewarding individual performers, in order to motivate staff individually and collectively as well.

BACKGROUND: Nowadays, various strategies are applied by governments to control costs and finance hospitals and the health sector. Public-private partnership (PPP) option is one of these strategies. Considering the growing importance of hospitals in different communities and their problems, this study aimed to identify PPP challenges, opportunities and solutions in hospitals. This study aimed to identify the challenges and opportunities of PPP in the country's hospitals and then offered an appropriate solution to overcome these challenges. MATERIALS AND METHODS: This is a qualitative study and content analysis approach is undertaken. The participants were selected through purposive sampling and data were collected using a semi-structured interview with experts in the public and private health sector until the saturation point achieved. Data analysis was performed through the thematic analysis of expert's statements using MAXQDA. 10 software in this sector. RESULTS: According to the study results, 3 main themes (challenges, opportunities, and solutions), 10 sub-themes, and 32 codes were identified in relation to the public and private partnership. 4 sub-themes on challenges of PPP, 3 sub-themes on partnership opportunities and 3 sub-themes on challenges solutions were identified. CONCLUSION: The results of this study revealed that given the discussed challenges the most important challenge seems to be not evaluated outsourcings, incorrect usage of participatory models, and inadequate and inappropriate postoutsourcing supervision, however, it appears evaluated outsourcing backed with adequate supervision could solve many current hospitals' problems.

Governments are investing considerable time and resources in the field of collaborative governance as it proliferates throughout many sectors, and how public officers choose to respond to these developments therefore becomes an important question. The increased public involvement that collaborative governance brings is often more costly than traditional forms of governance, while the outcomes are highly uncertain. For these reasons, it is important that collaborative governance is only used when really warranted, and the various forms that it can take should be carefully designed. In this study, we apply a typology of collaboration strategies to examine firstly, the circumstances under which leading officers at four county administrative boards in the Swedish mountain region decide to lead collaboration, and secondly what collaboration strategies they then apply. This study is based on 20 interviews with key officers, and 39 interviews with project leaders of public-private collaborations in the area of natural resource management in the region. We find that officers should take trust levels into account when designing collaboration strategies, not least the lack of official trust. Strategies are found to be not mutually exclusive but complementary, and officers employ several at the same time. Interestingly, the results of this study show that – somewhat counter-intuitively – distrust is a driver for officers to initiate collaboration, a conclusion which questions the common view that more trust unequivocally translates into more participation.

1. Save the baby girl / Girish Lad and Laxmikant Deshmukh -- 2. Communication trends among hospital personnel : a multi-site methodology / Candice D. Presseau. [and others] -- 3. Measuring service quality in health sectors using the SERVQUAL model / Chhanda Ray and Manigrib Bag -- 4. Challenges to e-governance projects in public healthcare in India / Aritra Pal, Arunabha Biswas and J. Ajith Kumar -- 5. The role of NGOs in creating participatory dialogic praxis for community-based mental healthcare : reflections from field experiences at NAMI India / Maheswar Satpathy -- 6. R : an open-source alternative for statistical research in public health / Raghu K. Mittal -- 7. mHealth4U : convergence of ICT and mobile technologies for rural healthcare delivery / Repu Daman Chand, Indra Pratap Singh and Saroj Kanta Mishra -- 8. Using self-service technology : facilitating customer empowerment in a telemedicine context / R. Lakshmi and P. Ganesan -- 9. A framework for mobile-based electronic date collection in clinical trials / Peter Wakholi, Weiqin Chen and Jørn Klungsøyr -- 10. A mobile electronic data capture solution for applications in public health / Diatha Krishna Sundar, Shashank Garg and Isha Garg.

We examine xenophobia from the perspective of the unconscious of individuals, groups and nations, emphasizing the role of fantasy, and arguing that some leaders use xenophobic discourse to exploit fantasies arising from emotions such as anxiety, fear and anger. We discuss this in the context of the public sphere as conceptualized by Habermas. We illustrate this with reference to an analysis of the psychic life of 'Brexit', the UK decision to exit the European Union (EU) in 2016, arguing that Brexit was one expression of the unconscious life of a nation. We contribute to our understanding of xenophobia and the role of psychodynamic forces within the public sphere by highlighting the key role of the unconscious and its ability to be influenced by leaders. We conclude by reflecting on how we might work to counter xenophobia and its fantasies.

AbstractIn this research, we assess whether the number of public comments filed in response to proposed agency rules has dramatically increased as a result of the automation of the submission process. Specifically, we compare the volume of comment activity across two large sets of rules issued by the Department of Transportation, one that occurred before the launch of an agency‐wide electronic docket system and another that occurred after this launch in 1998. Our analysis shows that, contrary to expectations held by many researchers and practitioners, the overall levels and patterns of stakeholder behavior showed a remarkable degree of similarity across the two periods. This finding implies that public involvement in rulemaking is not likely to become vastly more prevalent in the information age, confounding both hopes of democratization of the process and fears of costly and harmful mass participation.

Governments involved in civil wars often gain a strategic advantage from intentionally killing civilians. However, targeting civilians might also tarnish perceptions of the government's legitimacy abroad, increasing the risk of foreign actors punishing the government. How can governments attempt to navigate this dilemma? Focusing on the United States as one of the most frequent interveners in civil wars after the Cold War, we examine one particular strategy governments might employ: public diplomacy campaigns (PDCs) targeting both the public and elites in the United States. PDCs can help governments restore perceptions of their legitimacy abroad in the face of civilian targeting by mobilizing coalitions of support and undermining critics. When governments can achieve plausible deniability for civilian deaths via militias, PDCs enable governments to reduce the damage to foreign perceptions of their legitimacy. When rebels engage in civilian targeting, PDCs allow governments to publicize these actions. We compile data PDCs in the United States by governments engaged in civil wars. Our results have important implications for current understandings of civil war combatant foreign policies, foreign interventions, and international human rights laws and norms.

In some important multiplayer situations, such as efforts to supply a global public good, players can
choose the game they want to play. In this paper we conduct an experimental test of the decision by a
group with fixed membership, playing over a finite number of periods, to choose between a "tipping"
game, in which every player wants to contribute to the public good provided enough other players
contribute, and a prisoners' dilemma, the classic cooperation game. In the prisoners' dilemma, the
first best outcome is attainable, but cannot be sustained as a Nash equilibrium. In the tipping game,
only a second best outcome may be attainable, but there exists a Nash equilibrium that is strictly
preferred to the one in the prisoners' dilemma. We show that many groups persistently choose the
prisoners' dilemma despite its strategic disadvantage, and that the groups that eventually choose
the tipping game do better than the ones that stick with the prisoners' dilemma.


The work was financially supported by the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies and the ERC Starting Grant "Human Cooperation to Protect the Global Commons" (HUCO, Project number: 636746).