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Charitable Choice Policy, the heart of President Bush’s Faith‐Based Initiative, is the direct government funding of religious organizations for the purpose of carrying out government programs. The Bush presidential administration has called for the application of Charitable Choice Policy to all kinds of social services. Advocates for child‐abuse victims contend that the Bush Charitable Choice Policy would further dismantle essential social services provided to abused children. Others have argued Charitable Choice Policy is unconstitutional because it crosses the boundary separating church and state. Rather than drastically altering the US social‐policy landscape, this paper demonstrates that the Bush Charitable Choice Policy already is in place for childabuse services across many of the fifty states. One reason this phenomenon is ignored is due to the reliance on the public‐private dichotomy for studying social policies and services. This paper contends that relying on the public‐private dichotomy leads researchers to overlook important configurations of actors and institutions that provide services to abused children. It offers an alternate framework to the public‐private dichotomy useful for the analysis of social policy in general and, in particular, Charitable Choice Policy affecting services to abused children. Employing a new methodological approach, fuzzy‐sets analysis, demonstrates the degree to which social services for abused children match ideal types. It suggests relationships between religious organizations and governments are essential to the provision of services to abused children in the United States. Given the direction in which the Bush Charitable Choice Policy will push social‐policy programs, scholars should ask whether abused children will be placed in circumstances that other social groups will not and why.

The difficulties of enacting a constitution for the European Union (EU) reflect the basic problem: What kind of federation is it? The Union has gone through a number of extensions and at the same time has been capable of deepening the integration between member states. The huge 2004 enlargement of the EU to 25 member states poses the question whether this combination of extension and deepening really will go on any longer in the coming years. The risks connected with the entire endeavour have increased with the huge enlargement in 2004, as reflected in the still unresolved issue of the decision-making rules of the key body, the Council.

After the many years of public‐sector reforms in advanced capitalist democracies, a concept of strategic management for the delivery of public services would be highly relevant for the conduct of operations by public organisations, or bureaux, as well as in schemes of outsourcing. However, it must take into account the specific features of the public sector (such as the occurrence of bounded rationality and the risk of garbage‐can decision processes) as well as the implications of the rule of law. Outcome measures constitute the starting point in the derivation of public‐sector strategic management. As the ‘new public organisation’ replaces bureaucracy, then the flat and boundary‐less organisation will need more of a strategic management focus, especially when combined with outsourcing.

The idea of spontaneous orders dating back to Mandeville and elaborated at length by the Austrian School of Economics (Menger, Hayek) is no doubt a major contribution to the understanding of society (Hamowy, 1987). It offers great insights into how human beings solve coordination problems by unintentionally creating mechanisms for social interaction such as the market, money, language, science and law (Hamowy, 1987; Petsoulas, 2000). Such a successful concept must have its limits somewhere, as a concept which explains everything covers nothing. I wish to explore this question by relating the evolution of European integration after the Second World War to the Hayek theory of a spontaneous order. Perhaps Hayek contributed most to the elaboration of Adam Smith's vision of a self-correcting social order that needs little direction and control (Boettke, 1998). Hayek underlined time and again the importance of spontaneous processes with the entailed claim that government must adopt an attitude of humility towards conventions that are not the result of intelligent design, the justification of which in the particular instant may not be recognizable, and that may appear unintelligible and irrational (Hayek, 1960, 1982).

The purpose of this paper is to emphasize that East Asia and South East Asia, despite enormous economic advances, have a deficit on rule of law, analysed as either judicial autonomy and legal integrity (rule of law I) or as voice and accountability (rule of law II).

First, a distinction is made between two key aspects of rule of law; second, these two aspects are measured by data from the World Bank Governance project, relating them to various measures on socio‐economic development and economic growth.

It is not generally true that development leads to or entails freedom, as several countries in the ASEAN +3 region display low scores on either one of the dimensions of rule of law or both.

In both research and in practice, one needs to devote more effort into understanding how rapid economic development may be possible without strong rule of law, either as legal integrity and judicial autonomy, or as voice and political accountability. In the process of globalisation, demands for more of rule of law in this region appear justifiable.

This paper provides useful information on economic development and political development, which is highly relevant for understanding the implication of economic growth in the countries in ASEAN +3.

The purpose of this paper is to employ a unified data base to map the basics of the global environmental predicament today, namely the Living Planer Report.

The paper provides review and critique of the measurement rod in the Ecological Footprint Framework consisting of the hectares, or area of land, air or sea, used by mankind in production and consumption (demand) as well as the hectares that a country has inherited from its past (supply). Biocapacity tends to be country specific.

When total ecological imprint is estimated, taking population size into account, then it is not tenable to argue that pollution goes with affluence. On the contrary, poor or medium income countries with a large population may have more ecological impact than super affluent countries, especially after biocapacity has been taken into account.

To be effective, a policy aiming at reducing the ecological footprint of social systems must take population numbers into account. The per capita figures present only half of the truth, as population size has a huge impact upon pollution and emissions.

Global ecological pressure is the largest in the Asia‐Pacific region. A future global environmental policy – Kyoto II or Copenhagen I – must include the huge Asian countries – China and India – on an equal footing with other countries.

The distinction between per capita emissions and total emissions. Any global ecology policy that confuses these two measures will be flawed.