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Editors' biography -- Contributors biography -- Foreword: a philosophical invitation -- Introduction / by Claire Jankelson and Steven Segal -- Towards phronesis : the hermeneutic circle as a lived experience of research by / Claire Jankelson -- Stuck between management theory and a hard place : the lived experience of managing in the space between senior management and the real world / by Darcy Duggan -- Moments of resolve : existential challenges of everyday working life / by Amanda Mead and Steven Segal -- Escaping the iron triangle : existential hermeneutics and the practice of project management / by Brad Rolfe -- Finding my researcher voice : from disorientation to embodied practice / by Rachelle Arkles -- Being-in-practice: making the leap from the instrumental technocratic to an existential hermeneutic practice in family business succession consulting / by Bill Hovey -- Midrash methodology / by Devorah Wainer

In recent years, scholars of applied public policy have published a growing number of studies regarding state tobacco policymaking. This article analyzes the research findings, data sources, and methodological approaches of this applied and theoretical policy research, including numerous comprehensive state tobacco policymaking studies analyzing issues such as youth access enforcement, tobacco taxes, anti-tobacco education efforts, and clean indoor air programs. Other studies have focused on individual policymaking instruments designed to address state tobacco control issues, including tort reform, tobacco listed as a cause of death on death certificates, tobacco sampling, promotion and advertising restrictions, and fire-safe cigarettes. This wealth of research into tobacco policymaking has contributed significantly to our understanding of federalism, policy diffusion, and iron triangles and issue networks.

AbstractIn recent years, scholars of applied public policy have published a growing number of studies regarding state tobacco policymaking. This article analyzes the research findings, data sources, and methodological approaches of this applied and theoretical policy research, including numerous comprehensive state tobacco policymaking studies analyzing issues such as youth access enforcement, tobacco taxes, anti-tobacco education efforts, and clean indoor air programs. Other studies have focused on individual policymaking instruments designed to address state tobacco control issues, including tort reform, tobacco listed as a cause of death on death certificates, tobacco sampling, promotion and advertising restrictions, and fire-safe cigarettes. This wealth of research into tobacco policymaking has contributed significantly to our understanding of federalism, policy diffusion, and iron triangles and issue networks.

The Vaal Triangle is richly endowed with a prehistory that commenced c. 1.5 million years ago, when a succession of Stone Age cultures flourished in the fertile Vaal-Klip valley in the environs of the modern industrial city of Vereeniging. The numerous stone artefacts scattered throughout the area, attest to these ancient settlements. During the Iron Age, the sandstone outcrops in the valley provided a durable surface for engraving – a manifestation of the burgeoning ability of humankind to give pictorial form to experiences and ideas. Due to the efforts of a few concerned individuals, the prehistoric sites in the Vaal-Klip valley received international acclaim and recognition. In 1943 and 1944, the two most important Stone Age archaeological reserves were officially declared national monuments, followed by the Redan rockengraving site in 1971. Over an extended period of time the two bodies responsible for their maintenance, the local government and the official heritage body of the day, conducted extensive negotiations, but failed to save these sites. With the exception of Redan, all the previously listed rock engraving sites, and the two Stone Agearchaeological reserves, have been completely obliterated. Redan has become progressively neglected and abandoned. This paper examines the impasse presently surrounding Redan, and the failure of the relevant bodies, to conserve and sustain the non-renewable prehistoric culture remains of the Vaal Triangle.

What is the government's proper role in the economy? Do free or managed markets best promote economic development? Who can best pick industrial winners and losers, the government or private sector? This book attempts to answer those and related questions by exploring the evolution and results of federal policies towards half a dozen economic sectors. Those policies are largely determined by the representatives of the targeted industry, bureaucrats from agencies and departments that administer that industry, and politicians with firms from that industry in their districts. These 'iron triangles' capture a 'virtuous' political economic cycle in which they use their united power to grant themselves favourable policies which in turn enhances their power. As will be seen, the results of such a politicized industrial policy process varies considerably from one industry to the next

In 2021 a large number of publications appeared intent on analyzing the scope of the so-called Military Industrial Complex, none of which offered a critical analysis. We go further in this article, explaining the configurations of the Iron Triangle: The first step is to express militarism in its contemporary form. The three configurations are: 1. military keynesianism, 2. global-neoliberal militarism, 3 . the completely instrumentalist always present configuration—Corporate Militarism. We explore a variety of related themes, above all those current policies designed to restructure U.S. seapower as the U.S. spearhead in its rivalry with China. We examine the recent and past steps that have given form to an industrial policy to create and drive-forward to the technological frontiers those corporations that comprise what is known as the Defense Industrial Base, as used to maintain U.S. industrial power.

AbstractExisting scholarship of China's legal institutions has primarily focused
on individual institutions, such as the court, the police, or the legal
profession. This article proposes a relational approach to the study of
political-legal institutions in China. To understand the order and exercise of
power by various political-legal institutions, the relational approach
emphasizes the spatial positions of actors or institutions (the police, courts,
lawyers, etc.) within the broader political-legal system and their mutual
interactions. We suggest that the changing ideas of the Chinese leadership about
the role of law as an instrument of governance have shaped the relations between
various legal and political institutions. The interactions of these
political-legal institutions (e.g. the "iron triangle" of the
police, the court and the procuracy) further reveal the dynamics of power
relations at work.

This is a helpful addition to the growing body of historical institutionalist literature that demonstrates the influence of macro- and sectoral-level institutions on policymaking. The central arguments, examined here with regard to agricultural policy, are two. First, institutional relationships among state and nonstate actors may facilitate one policy objective but impede other policy goals. Neither novel nor inconsistent with the literature, this proposition is advanced through elaboration of how various interrelationships between political parties and interest groups shape governments' policy capabilities. Second, Sheingate argues that the American institutional framework of dispersed authority and pluralism does not necessarily render governments incapable or subject to interest group capture. In advancing this proposition, he seeks to put paid to popular depictions of American agrarian politics as constituting iron triangles and all-powerful farm groups.

Dramatic changes in the executive & legislative budget processes over the last ten years have elevated the US Office of Management & Budget (OMB) to a new position of power & importance. Within the executive branch, the budget process has become more highly centralized in the president's office; within the Congress, a similar centralization has occurred. In both branches, the OMB has become the key institution for coordinating the actions of the budget-making powers. At the same time, the much-discussed "iron triangles" explored by analysts of the budgetary system have lost much of their power to control the process. Although the OMB's active involvement in the congressional budget process diminished in 1983, the institutional relationships necessary for a more centralized budget process remain & can be reactivated to deal with the predicted enormous deficits. HA.

An analysis of the performance of Japan's economic and political institutions from late 1970s to 2007. The authors explain how Japan's flawed response to new economic, political, and technological forces ushered in a lost decade and a half of economic development from 1990. Impressive economic performance in the 1980s masked an 'accident waiting to happen' - the collapse in equity and real estate prices in 1990–1. Japan's iron triangle of politicians, bureaucrats, and client industries, combined with a flawed financial liberalization process and policy errors by the Bank of Japan and the Ministry of Finance, brought Japan to an abyss of deflation, recession, and insolvency by the late 1990s. The turning point was the election of Koizumi as prime minister in 2001. The book explores Koizumi's economic reform, new developments in socioeconomic conditions, the politics and economy after Koizumi, and the economic and political challenges facing Japan in the new century

The term "construction state" has been used, to refer to a system of vested interests in construction activities that embraced Japan at different geographical levels of scale. A system of collusion between politicians, bureaucrats, and businessmen evolved and led to massive government spending on public works projects. Its pace and scope have resulted in fiscal crisis and environmental devastation and have aroused the opposition of local residents. This paper will analyze the construction-related networks of relationships of the central actors in the so-called "iron triangle" ofpolitics, bureaucracy and construction business, and its influence on regional development. We shall theorize that sustainability will remain an unattainable ideal in regional development as long as the stability of the "construction state" is preserved by certain formal and informal elements in Japan's politicoeconomic system. These elements, however, have until now remained comparatively stable, despite of some reform initiatives.

Since 2006, global prices and price volatility for foodgrain commodities have spiked frequently and dramatically. Such spikes have had the heaviest economic and social impact on developing nations, where agriculture accounts for a sizable portion of economic activity. We demonstrate how US public policies have contributed to these spikes. We first assess the impacts of US agricultural and macroeconomic policies on basic food commodity markets in the United States and their spillover effects on world markets prior to 2006. We then focus on new causal mechanisms that have emerged since 2006, sourced with energy and environmental policies. We assess the emergence of US biofuel policies, highlighting how these policies have interacted with each other and with biofuel policies in the rest of the world. This assessment focuses on the role of such policies in the integration of fuel and foodgrain prices. We also analyse the political economy of US biofuel policies, the changing US political landscape, and current Farm Bill politics and their linkages to biofuels. We demonstrate that the 'iron triangle' that once influenced governmental intervention in programme commodity markets has expanded into an 'iron maze' of environmental, energy, and agricultural organized interest groups that continues to evolve.

To document the behavior of tobacco manufacturers' agricultural third-party allies in South Carolina from the 1970s through 2009, we analyzed news reports, public documents and internal tobacco industry documents and conducted interviews with knowledgeable individuals. We found that agriculture-based interest groups (the Farm Bureau), elected state agency heads (Commissioners of Agriculture) and tobacco-area legislators acted as an iron triangle containing strong third-party allies of tobacco manufacturers from the 1970s through the 1990s. The Farm Bureau and Commissioners of Agriculture reacted to national-level changes in the tobacco leaf market structure by shifting towards a neutral position on tobacco control, while some tobacco-area legislators remained manufacturer allies (Sullivan et al, 2009). This shift was reinforced by public health outreach and successes, which were in turn facilitated by the lack of opposition from agricultural groups. We conclude that public health advocates in tobacco-growing states should use the pragmatic shift of agricultural groups' position to challenge remaining third-party manufacturer alliances and agriculture-based opposition to tobacco control policies.

Concepts referring to sectoral policy subsystems are abundant. However, few efforts are made to clarify the frequently used term 'policy field'. This paper is determined to move this notion into a more analytical direction. The central aim is to substantiate the dimensions of policy fields, their presumed effects on policy actors, and to provide an explanatory framework for stability or change. Therefore, concepts such as iron triangles and policy networks are reconsidered in order to specify the essential dimensions of policy fields. Policy fields emerge if a group of strategic actors who face a new problem generate a semi-autonomous sphere of interaction. The policy field is completed if a specific institutional setting and a set of policy ideas are added. This process is based on functional differentiation and politicization. Finally, a comparison of science, agricultural, and health policy is used to illustrate how stability and change of policy fields could be explained. Especially the perforation of policy boundaries, which allows external interests to gain influence, and a destabilization of previously homogeneous coalitions prove to be crucial variables. Adapted from the source document.