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The 'right' choice of instruments and modalities to provide aid to developing countries in support of poverty reduction and economic development is arguably the most contested issue in the current international debate on aid effectiveness. A particular controversy exists around the provision of aid in the form of budget support to avoid high transaction costs and other shortcomings of traditional project-based aid. Critics argue that this kind of 'programme aid' involves unacceptably high fiduciary risks due to the fungibility of budgetary funds. A more recently proposed form of aid is in the form of results-based aid or aid on delivery. Proponents argue that this provides donors with better control over the use of aid resources. This paper demonstrates in a simple principal-agent framework with asymmetric information that in the absence of transaction costs, for a wide range of combinations of aid dependency and recipient government commitment to reduce poverty, all three forms of aid are equivalent with regard to fungibility and fiduciary risks. The paper proceeds to demonstrate that as long as donors can rely on the recipient government to be at least minimally committed to poverty reduction, a well co-ordinated modality mix of general budget support and aid on delivery does not bear higher fiduciary risks than project aid. It concludes that if project aid does indeed involve higher transaction costs than budget support, donors should provide aid in the form of such a modality mix, albeit only if they are able (and willing) to closely co-ordinate their support.

Space is generally regarded as one of the key concepts in urban design and planning. Theoretical approaches in the field of design have, however, remained fragmentary, often concentrating on only one or two aspects of space (such as visual quality or functional requirements) and excluding others (such as social, cultural and political aspects of space). Within the fields of planning theory, geography and urban sociology, on the other hand, there is much more theorizing which, however, often remains too abstract to offer any real guidance to spatial practitioners. This article will work out a new theoretical approach to urban space informed by modal logic. In short, urban space is considered in terms of possibilities, that is, the activities that are opened up for the human agent and the possibilities of change, as well as the elements of trust and fear that will be perceived and conceived.

Nostalgia has been viewed as the conceptual opposite of progress, against which it is negatively viewed as reactionary, sentimental or melancholic. It has been seen as a defeatist retreat from the present, and evidence of loss of faith in the future. Nostalgia is certainly a response to the experience of loss endemic in modernity and late modernity, but the authors argue that it has numerous manifestations and cannot be reduced to a singular or absolute definition. Its meaning and significance are multiple, and so should be seen as accommodating progressive, even utopian impulses as well as regressive stances and melancholic attitudes. Its contrarieties are evident in both vernacular and media forms of remembering and historical reconstruction. The authors argue that these contrarieties should be viewed as mutually constitutive, for it is in their interrelations that there arises the potential for sociological critique.

Previous research has shown that prior brand exposure (e.g., through advertising) can positively influence brand consideration, brand attitudes, and brand choice. In the present studies, the authors argue that the effects of prior brand exposure depend on the communication modality (visual vs. aural) in which exposure (i.e., advertising) takes place and the modality in which evaluations and choices are made. It was hypothesized and found that congruence in communication modalities has a positive effect on brand evaluation and brand choice, compared to incongruence in modalities. Perceptual fluency is proposed to be the underlying mechanism explaining these effects. Moreover, the results demonstrated that the effects of modality congruence are moderated by individuals' processing style in such a way that the impact is stronger under conditions of data-driven as opposed to conceptually driven, processing.These results indicate that consumer responses depend on the interaction between the modality in which consumers are exposed to the brand in advertising and the modality in which consumers encounter the brand in a purchase situation.

The aim of this paper is to accentuate the distinction between the ineffable, the unrepeatable and the conceptually ungraspable. These are to be considered as three modalities of the ungraspable language that enable us to understand Derrida's attitude to negative theology. While he distanced himself from an apophasis of negative theology Comment ne pas parler. Dénégations, in Différance he stated that différance is not a concept, not a word – it is an inexpressible. Therefore, there are at least three modalities of "ungraspable" language: "inexpressible," "conceptually ungraspable," "unrepeatable" as non-iterable.
This paper is a translation of this text originally published in Slovak language: Kuchtova, A., "Prelínanie. Modality neuchopiteľného," Filosofický časopis, vol. 68, n. 2, pp. 259-270.

AbstractSeveral recent accounts of modeling have focused on the modal dimension of scientific inquiry. More precisely, it has been suggested that there are specific models and modeling practices that are best understood as being geared towards possibilities, a view recently dubbed modal modeling. But modalities encompass much more than mere possibility claims. Besides possibilities, modal modeling can also be used to investigate contingencies, necessities or impossibilities. Although these modal concepts are logically connected to the notion of possibility, not all models are equal in their affordances for these richer modal inferences. This paper investigates the modal extent of selected models and argues that analyzing singular model-target pairings by themselves is typically not enough to explain their modal aptness or to identify the kinds of modalities they can be used to reason about. Furthermore, it is argued that some important concepts that are not explicitly modal - like biological robustness - can be understood modally through their relational nature to a background space of possibilities. In conclusion, it is suggested that the strategy of modal modeling is contrastive, situating particular possibilities in larger modal spaces and studying the structural relations within them.

This paper explores the proposition that environmental field properties tend to determine both the structural and behavioral aspects of the organizations resident in the fields. In what is largely a speculative exercise then, I attempt to define four ideal-type environmental fields, from which four ideal-type organizations may be derived. To lend the analysis some prescriptive or operational significance for the social theorist, I then attempt to show why there is a unique organizational control modality appropriate for each of the ideal-types. Finally, these four organizational control modalities will be shown to be potentially useful as cornerstones for a generalized theory of organizational behavior.