North America

Since its publication in 2000, Public Management Reform has established itself as the standard text in the field, presenting a comparative analysis of recent changes in Public Management and Public Administration in a range of countries in Europe, North America, and Australasia. This completely rewritten second edition radically expands, develops, and updates the original. Two countries have been added to

While the phenomenon of leadership is widely considered to be universal across cultures, the way in which it is operationalized is usually viewed as culturally specific. Conflicting viewpoints exist in the leadership literature concerning the transferability of specific leader behaviors and processes across cultures. This study explored these conflicting views for managers and professional workers by empirically testing specific hypotheses which addressed the generalizability of leadership behaviors and processes across five nations in North America and Asia. Confirmatory factor analyses provided evidence for conceptual and measurement equivalence for all six leader behaviors employed in the study. The findings showed cultural universality for three leader behaviors (supportive, contingent reward, and charismatic), and cultural specificity for the remaining three leader behaviors (directive, participative, and contingent punishment).

An analysis of North American national defense policies and their implications on transnational and border security. Issues of migration and organized crime are also touched upon in the literature, providing readers with an greater, in-depth understanding of security problems faced by the region as a whole.

We discuss the question whether the late Mesoproterozoic and early Neoproterozoic rocks of eastern, central and southern Africa, Madagascar, southern India, Sri Lanka and South America have played any role in the formation and dispersal of the supercontinent Rodinia, believed to have existed between about 1000 and 750 Ma ago. First, there is little evidence for the production of significant volumes of ~1.4–1.0 Ga (Kibaran or Grenvillian age) continental crust in the Mozambique belt (MB) of East Africa, except, perhaps, in parts of northern Mozambique. This is also valid for most terranes related to West Gondwana, which are made up of basement rocks older than Mesoproterozoic, reworked in the Brasiliano/Pan-African orogenic cycle. This crust cannot be conclusively related to either magmatic accretion processes on the active margin of Rodinia or continental collision leading to amalgamation of the supercontinent. So far, no 1.4–1.0 Ga rocks have been identified in Madagascar. Secondly, there is no conclusive evidence for a ~1.0 Ga high-grade metamorphic event in the MB, although such metamorphism has been recorded in the presumed continuation of the MB in East Antarctica. In South America, even the Sunsas mobile belt, which is correlated with the Grenville belt of North America, does not include high-grade metamorphic rocks. All terranes with Mesoproterozoic ages seem to have evolved within extensional, aulacogen-type structures, and their compressional deformation, where observed, is normally much younger and is related to amalgamation of Gondwana. This is also valid for the Trans-Saharan and West Congo belts of West Africa.Third, there is also no evidence for post-1000 Ma sedimentary sequences that were deposited on the passive margin(s) of Rodinia. In contrast, the MB of East Africa and Madagascar is characterized by extensive structural reworking and metamorphic overprinting of Archaean rocks, particularly in Tanzania and Madagascar, and these rocks either constitute marginal parts of cratonic domains or represent crustal blocks (terranes or microcontinents?) of unknown derivation. This is also the case for most terranes included in the Borborema/Trans-Saharan belt of northeastern Brazil and west-central Africa, as well as those of the Central Goı́ás Massif in central Brazil and the Mantiqueira province of eastern and southeastern Brazil.Furthermore, there is evidence for extensive granitoid magmatism in the period ~840 to <600 Ma whose predominant calc-alkaline chemistry suggests subduction-related active margin processes during the assembly of the supercontinent Gondwana. The location of the main Neoproterozoic magmatic arcs suggests that a large oceanic domain separated the core of Rodinia, namely Laurentia plus Amazonia, Baltica and West Africa, from several continental masses and fragments now in the southern hemisphere, such as the São Francisco/Congo, Kalahari and Rio de La Plata cratons, as well as the Borborema/Trans-Saharan, Central Goiás Massif and Paraná blocks. Moreover, many extensional tectonic events detected in the southern hemisphere continental masses, but also many radiometric ages of granitois that are already associated with the process of amalgamation of Gondwana, are comprised within the 800–1000 age interval. This seems incompatible with current views on the time of disintegration of Rodinia, assumed to have occurred at around 750 Ma.

High-P/T metamorphic belts were classified into types A and B according to their protoliths. The A-type (collision-type) blueschists possess passive-margin protoliths characterized by platform-type carbonates, bimodal volcanics, and peraluminous sediments. B-type (Cordilleran-type) blueschists consist of active continental-margin protoliths in an accretionary complex characterized by bedded chert, MORB and ocean-island basalts, reef limestones, and graywackes.The spatiotemporal distribution of blueschists and eclogites of the world was compiled; among 250 recognized high-P/T belts, about 20% belong to the A type and the rest to the B type. Most A-type zones lie in Europe and the Tethyan domain, include ultrahigh-pressure metamorphic terranes, and have metamorphic pressure up to 45 kbar. B-type zones occur mainly in the circum-Pacific orogenic belts and intracontinental orogens in Asia, and were recrystallized at P <12 kbar. Associated peridotites include garnet peridotite in the A type and strongly serpentinized plagioclase- or spinel peridotite in the B type. The A type may or may not be accompanied by a poorly developed calc-alkaline magmatic arc, whereas most B-type belts are associated with well-developed arcs and related low-P/T metamorphic rocks.Both A- and B-type high-P/T belts have similar modes of occurrence and occur as a <2-km (B type) or <10-km (A type) thin slab, bounded on the top by a normal fault and on the bottom by a reverse fault. Large pressure gaps occur along the paired faults. A “wedge extrusion” model was proposed for exhumation resulting from delamination (slab breakoff) of the subducted slab for the A type and shallowing angle of subduction upon approach to a mid-oceanic ridge for the B type. Modern analogues of A-type blueschists occur at the Timor-Tanimbar-Seram forearc north of Australia, and of the B-type blueschists on the Olympic Peninsula of Washington.The oldest blueschists, about 700 to 800 Ma in age, have been documented from the Pan-African orogen in Africa, in India, and along the NW margin of the Tarim craton, western China. These occurrences indicate that, by Late Proterozoic time, subduction of lithospheric plates was able to refrigerate the hanging wall of a subduction complex to create and preserve blueschist and eclogite, reflecting a cooling Earth. There may be a drastic change of P/T conditions at 700 to 800 Ma, after which abnormally high-P/T metamorphism began.The total length of blueschist belts versus geologic time shows three peaked periods of blueschist/eclogite formation, at 80 to 130 Ma, 400 to 500 Ma, and 700 Ma. The peak heights decrease exponentially with increasing age, indicating a cooling trend of the Earth. Such an age-total length relationship correlates well with the time of sea-level change, at least in the Phanerozoic—i.e., worldwide major periods of transgression correspond to extensive blueschist/eclogite facies events and those of worldwide major regression to less active periods of blueschist/eclogite formation. This relationship suggests that more rapid ocean-floor spreading—and hence higher subduction rates (or higher frequency of RTT migration)—tend to favor formation and exhumation of blueschist/eclogite belts. The periodic pattern of blueschist/ eclogite formation is similar to that of ophiolite, and is roughly analogous to that of granite formation in North America. These similar patterns support speculation concerning the control of periodic blueschist formation by the Wilson plate-tectonic cycle.