Over the last several decades there has been a growing interest in Research & Development (R&D) policy. This is particularly so in advanced industrialized nations that have adopted science- and technology- based strategies for national economic competitiveness. The United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan -- the three nations that are the subjects of this book -- share this policy strategy. Each of these nations is committed to hamessing the innovations that stern from scientific and technological advance to promote national economic prosperity. Governments can influence their nation's...

All over the world, many people who live in urban areas find themselves in an arduous social situation. In the third world, people in overcrowded metropolitan areas have a problem in maintaining even the slightest standards of living. But also richer parts of the world, the United States, Europe and the far-East, show growing social inequalities in their cities. And social problems are not confined to the large metropolitan areas: impoverishment, long-term unemployment, social isolation, and the dependency on welfare programs pops up in medium-sized cities and even in smaller communities. At...

This book is the immediate result of the co-operation of a great number of scholars in the Netherlands Institute of Government (NIG). NIG is an interuniversity research school. As such it has a double task. In addition to offering a Ph.D program to students in Public Administration it also is a research institute in which a great number of scholars from seven Dutch universities participate and work on a common research program. The chapters in this book are all products of the research program that started in 1995. This program had the ambition to explore the frontiers of the discipline in...

Background InformationRetrieval (IR) has become, mainly as aresultofthe huge impact of the World Wide Web (WWW) and CD-ROM industry, one of the most important theoretical and practical research topics in Information and Computer Science. Since the inception ofits first theoretical roots about 40 years ago, IR has made avariety ofpractical, experimental and technological advances. It is usually defined as being concerned with the organisation, storage, retrieval and evaluation of information (stored in computer databases) that is likely to be relevant to users' informationneeds (expressed in...

It has taken a long time to make this book. Many initial drafts of the chapters published in this book were presented in November 2000 during a two-day conference on Interactive governance: towards a post-parliamentary democracy held in Enschede (The Netherlands). The Netherlands Institute of Governance (NIG) sponsored the . conference. After this conference the organisers discussed the possibility of making a book on the basis of papers presented at this event. In the end it was agreed that such a publication would indeed be worthwhile provided the initial papers were fundamentally revised....

Pulsating and eccentric binary stars play a fundamentally important role in deciphering the mass distribution within stars. The present volume reviews the fundamental concepts of both radial and nonradial oscillations in the stars, including the Sun. Helio- and astroseismological results are reviewed, from the basics to the most recent developments. A new theory is presented, which seems to explain the mechanism of the light and radial velocity variations of recently discovered Ap stars. This textbook covers almost all kinds of variable stars of widely different characteristics. It will serve...

How do small states approach their security problems? What types of strategic instruments exist for small states, and when and why are certain strategies chosen rather than others? The security of weak' states is problematic, demanding trade-offs in the decisions made. Using 19th century Swedish security policy as an example, it is argued here that small states, in their pursuit of security and autonomy, face a dilemma between abandonment and entrapment, leading to a choice between balancing between great powers or making an approach to one of them. This hard choice confronts both non-aligned...

The Three Waves of European Research European cooperation and integration has continued to progress forward over the past five decades, with an ever deepening impact on the member states. The first wave of research into these processes concerned European integration, the process of institution building and policy developments at the European Union (EU) level. The second wave, on Europeanization used integration as an explanatory factor in understanding domestic political change and continuity related to the EU. What is now necessary is to link our understanding of these 'bottom-up' and...

Over the last several decades there has been a growing interest in Research & Development (R&D) policy. This is particularly so in advanced industrialized nations that have adopted science- and technology- based strategies for national economic competitiveness. The United States, the United Kingdom, and Japan -- the three nations that are the subjects of this book -- share this policy strategy. Each of these nations is committed to hamessing the innovations that stern from scientific and technological advance to promote national economic prosperity. Governments can influence their nation's...

How do small states approach their security problems? What types of strategic instruments exist for small states, and when and why are certain strategies chosen rather than others? The security of weak' states is problematic, demanding trade-offs in the decisions made. Using 19th century Swedish security policy as an example, it is argued here that small states, in their pursuit of security and autonomy, face a dilemma between abandonment and entrapment, leading to a choice between balancing between great powers or making an approach to one of them. This hard choice confronts both non-aligned...