BASED PRINCIPALLY ON THE RECORDS OF PRESIDENT JOHN F. KENNEDY'S APPOINTMENT SECRETARY, KENNETH O'DONNELL, THIS ARTICLE EXAMINES THE CONCERNS AND CONSULATIONS OF PRESIDENT KENNEDY. THE RECORDS REVEAL HIS PRIMARY CONCERN WITH FOREIGN POLICY, AND INDICATE THE IMPORTANT ROLE OF HIS ASSISTANT FOR NATIONAL SECURITY AFFAIRS, MCGEORGE BUNDY, AS WELL AS SECRETARY OF STATE RUSK AND SECRETARY OF DEFENSE MCNAMARA. HIS MOST FREQUENT COMMUNICATIONS WERE WITH HIS BROTHER, ROBERT.
An attempt was made to estimate the value of group composition by computer-assisted analyses of variance, in three psychotherapy groups. The results showed that more homogeneous groups were quicker to improve in overall symptomatology than was the more heterogeneous group.
Which blind spots shape scholarship in International Political Economy (IPE)? That question animates the contributions to a double special issue—one in the Review of International Political Economy, and a companion one in New Political Economy. The global financial crisis had seemed to vindicate broad-ranging IPE perspectives at the expense of narrow economics theories. Yet the tumultuous decade since then has confronted IPE scholars with rapidly-shifting global dynamics, many of which had remained underappreciated. We use the Blind Spots moniker in an attempt to push the topics covered here higher up the scholarly agenda—issues that range from institutionalized racism and misogyny to the rise of big tech, intensifying corporate power, expertise-dynamics in global governance, assetization, and climate change. Gendered and racial inequalities as blind spots have a particular charge. There has been a self-reinforcing correspondence between topics that have counted as important, people to whom they matter personally, and the latter's ability to build careers on them. In that sense, our mission is not only to highlight collective blind spots that may dull IPE's capacity to theorize the current moment. It is also a normative one—a form of disciplinary housekeeping to help correct both intellectual and professional entrenched biases.
Contemporary political economy is predicated on widely shared ideas and assumptions, some explicit but many implicit, about the past. Our aim in this Special Issue is to draw attention to, and to assess critically, these historical assumptions. In doing so, we hope to contribute to a political economy that is more attentive to the analytic assumptions on which it is premised, more aware of the potential oversights, biases, and omissions they contain, and more reflexive about the potential costs of these blind spots. This is an Introduction to one of two Special Issues that are being published simultaneously by New Political Economy and Review of International Political Economy reflecting on blind spots in international political economy. Together, these Special Issues seek to identify the key blind spots in the field and to make sense of how many scholars missed or misconstrued important dynamics that define contemporary capitalism and the other systems and sources of social inequality that characterise our present. This particular Special Issue pursues this goal by looking backwards, to the history of political economy and at the ways in which we have come to tell that history, in order to understand how we got to the present moment.
AbstractHealth promoters need to change the ways in which they think about program outcomes as programs progress through the stages of research, development, and diffusion.
This randomized controlled trial investigated the effects of a smoking cessation workshop on physician practices and on patients' smoking behavior. Eighty-three community family physicians were randomly allocated by practice to either 1) a Usual Care condition, 2) a group in which physicians were not trained but were asked to address smoking cessation with specific patients, or 3) a condition which included physician training as well as printed resources and in which specific patients were identified as smokers. The intervention taught to the physicians through a four hour training workshop included providing advice about stopping smoking, the setting of a date for stopping, the offer of nicotine gum, take-home materials, and the offer of follow-up visits. The intervention was described, demonstrated, and the physicians practiced with simulated patients. The outcome of the intervention was assessed in terms of physician behavior and patient smoking behavior. Exit interviews with patients demonstrated that patients of trained physicians did not differ from patients of untrained physicians on how willing they were to try to stop smoking nor on their receptiveness to nicotine gum. However, there was a small but statistically significant difference favoring the patients from the trained physician group who successfully stopped smoking.
