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The artricle examines a study on how to reduce the paper and costs associated with the implementation of the Federal Managers' Financial Integrity Act of 1982 in the United States. The Act deals with the federal government's internal control process and has been adopted by several states and some local governments. The Act requires an evaluation of internal controls and corrective action for identified weaknesses. The article discusses management control and proceeds to review key aspects of the Act and the subsequent Office of Management and Budget (OMB) Guidelines and GAO Standards, and discusses the results of the study of the implementation process. While a number of improvements in internal controls were made, by 1985 a general feeling prevailed that something went awry in the implementation of the Act and that the improvements in controls had been made at a tremendous cost in terms of staff time and paper generated. As a result, during mid-1985 the Organization and Structure Committee of the President's Council on Management Improvement (PCMI) requested the U.S. Department of the Interior to lead a review of the internal control improvement process. That review is the subject of this article.

This article focuses on the interaction between planning-programming-budgeting (PPB) and public policy-making system. PPB is closely related to politics, being strictly constrained by politics, trying a little to change politics, and serving as one of the symptoms of the state of politics. But, after all, not every symptom is a useful starting point for analyzing a complex series of developments and the author, for one, doubt whether PPB is a necessary or useful jumping board into the faster-moving streams of politics. As public policy is a product of complex interactions between a large number of components, similar changes in the output can be achieved through many alternative variations in the components. This means that different combinations of a variety of improvements may be equally useful in achieving equivalent changes in the quality of policy making. This is a very helpful conclusion, because it permits us to pick out of a large repertoire of potentially effective improvements those which are more feasible under changing political and social conditions.

The Global Forum on Reinventing Government has made government reform and new forms of comparative public administration and politics global issues. Since the forum was initiated in the United States in 1999, it has been held in locations around the world with broad representation. Yet the proceedings of these forums have not been fully reported to the international public administration community. This paper reports on the ideas on reinventing governance that emerged from the Sixth Global Forum. Many of the participants in the forum came from developing countries, so the paper also provides ideas and points of view on governance that are beyond the mainstream literature in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The U.S. financial crisis and recession that began in 2007 poses profound challenges for public policy and administration. It also provides useful information about the effects of economic policies. This paper considers the implications of current developments for the use of implied guarantees as an instrument of public policy. It draws on experience with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to argue that implied federal guarantees have a severe disadvantage. Their costs are largely unmeasured, unrecognized in the budget, and unmanaged. Yet their use appears to be increasing in the current crisis. To minimize the costs of the expanded financial safety net, government should measure and manage those costs more effectively. To that end, this paper proposes new budgetary treatments of federal implied guarantees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the Waldo Symposium held at the Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs of Syracuse University in June 1996 in honor of professor Dwight Waldo. The symposium was attended by more than 100 students, colleagues and friends of Waldo. They enjoyed receptions in the Founders Room of Maxwell Hall, listened to papers and speeches in old Maxwell Auditorium, and ate together in the Commons of Eggers Hall. Participants came from many countries in Europe, from Japan and Korea, and from every corner of the United States. Some had not seen Professor Waldo for 30 years or more. The Waldo Symposium was sponsored by the Maxwell School and organized by an informal committee of three -- H. George Frederickson, Frank Marini, and Astrid Merget. The purpose was to honor Dwight Waldo and to discuss his contributions to the field of public administration. The symposium setting gave the event a special meaning. Old Maxwell Hall has been remodeled, but its traditional features have been retained, such as the Maxwell Foyer with the Athenian Oath, the Founders Room which has been the site of many of the most important events in the field, and Maxwell Auditorium, where many of the field's intellectual leaders have lectured, such as Paul H. Appleby, Frederick C. Mosher, Roscoe Martin, John Gaus, Jesse Burkhead, Guthrie Birkhead, Harlan Cleveland, Mary Parker Follett, Emmette S. Redford, Stephen K. Bailey, Bertram M. Gross and Arthur W. McMahon.

A host of problems has limited the effectiveness of computers in public organizations. Some of these problems could be at least partially overcome through the appropriate use of technology. In particular, this paper examines the benefits of designing for an automated environment, adopting a real-time system, employing a database management system (DBMS), developing extended applications software that is DBMS-based, obtaining an operating system that is hardware-independent, configuring a distributed network, and considering a dedicated system. Additionally, the paper suggests that current data systems should be upgraded to become information systems, and, in time, to become knowledge systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a new type of data that needs to be collected and placed in organizational data base management systems. Special event data describe structural changes and interruptions in the time series patterns of an organization's performance measures. These data serve as an institutional memory for certain kinds of knowledge that are essential for explanation, evaluation, and forecasting f activities associated with tactical and strategic decision making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the nature of research in doctoral programs in public administration. It argues that research problems in the field should be determined by the analytic form of public sector activity rather than by the substantive content of specific events. Recognizing that firsthand experience in the world of practice results only in an ‘acquaintance with’ type of knowledge is prerequisite to achieving a more constructive relationship between theory, research, and practice. The methods of research rather than the techniques of management provide the analytical skills necessary for theoretically significant inquiry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes the rule making events and decision processes associated with the implementation of the recently enacted Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977, with particular attention centered on the implementation experience in West Virginia. And, more broadly speaking, the paper is concerned with the design of national policies that rely heavily on the states for their effective implementation and administration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The influence of legal training and experience upon the behavior of policy decision makers has been a source of both academic and popular concern. This paper is a preliminary investigation of factors that might contribute to an undue influence of legal training on governmental policy making. The specific focus of this paper is higher-level federal executives in the career service. The distribution and number of high level executives with legal backgrounds are determined, and comparisons between legally-trained executives and executives from other backgrounds are made with respect to career patterns and attitudinal orientations. Executives with legal backgrounds are found to vary marginally on some specific characteristics, but there do not appear to be any systematic differences between groups which would lead to a variation in policy-making behavior. These findings do not support the assertion that lawyers dominate executive institutions of government. Lawyers do not appear to dominate the federal bureaucracy in numbers, nor do the data suggest that they are particularly different from other executives. Legal training, therefore, does not appear to have a direct, unmediated impact on the formation of public policy, at least to the extent that administrative agencies are involved in such policy making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

General managers are expected to strive far organizational efficiency and effectiveness. Depending on their emphasis on efficiency and effectiveness, they produce four basic approaches to public sector general management: the directive approach, the reactive approach, the generative approach, and the adaptive approach. This paper explores the generative approach, in particular its use of public deliberation as an alternative way to establish public policy and set bureau direction. Two case studies help distill the basic elements of public deliberation. The first case documents the use of public deliberation in significantly reducing a school district budget. The second case illustrates how public deliberation aided in crafting state educational policy. Although it is risky and expensive, public deliberation in these two cases illustrates how opening up policy-making to stakeholder participation can be highly successful. The paper concludes with implications far public management theory and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper attempts, for the first time, to assess the relationships between budget transparency, fiscal situation, and political turnout using a comparative international approach. With this aim, the authors build a comprehensive index of budget transparency encompassing 40 budget features based on international standards for a sample of 41 countries. They find a positive relationship between national government fiscal balance and budget transparency: The more information the budget discloses, the less the politicians can use fiscal deficits to achieve opportunistic goals. The univariate analysis shows a positive relationship between political turnout and transparency. This result gives some evidence of a positive answer to the question raised by James Alt and David Dreyer Lassen: Does transparency affect political outcomes such as turnout? To some extent, that the more transparent the budget reports are, the more incentives people have to vote. With respect to three variables--transparency, government fiscal balance, and electoral turnout--three clusters of countries arise: low transparency-fiscal imbalance, low transparency--small fiscal imbalance and high transparency--fiscal surplus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Federalism in education has undergone significant changes since the Winter Commission. During the early 1990s, federal policy makers faced the challenge of organizational fragmentation and policy incoherence in public education. In the last 15 years, the intergovernmental system has evolved from one that is predominantly compliance-driven to one that is performance based, as suggested by the congressional adoption of the No Child Left Behind Act in 2001. While the former is often characterized by images of “picket fence” federalism and administrative silos, the latter remains very much a work in progress, with the promise of raising academic proficiency. This paper first examines the paradigm shift and then considers emerging politics in intergovernmental relations. The author explores the ways in which state and local policy makers are altering the rules governing education service provision in response to performance-based federal expectations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines and compares, according to the New Public Management approach, the U.S. watchdog, the Government Accountability Office, in its ability to oversee and call to account the executive branch of government, and its U.K. counterpart, the National Audit Office. Results of this examination indicate that the Government Accountability Office is more effective than its U.K. counterpart. Its greater effectiveness is attributable to the fact that it derives its powers and legitimacy from a written constitution; in contrast, in the United Kingdom there is no equivalent document defining the relationship between the state and the citizenry. As a consequence, the powers, duties, and self-perception of the National Audit Office are significantly weaker and more mutable than those of the Government Accountability Office. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Local election officials are the administrators of democracy, but we know little about their views. This paper draws from two national surveys of local election officials. The authors find that local election officials generally support the goals of the federal Help America Vote Act but are less enthusiastic about the actual impact of the legislation. Implementation theory helps explain their evaluation of federal reforms. Goal congruence with reform mandates, resource availability, and a willingness to accept federal involvement predicts support for these reforms. Federal policy changes have promoted electronic systems, and some of the authors’ findings are relevant to research on e-government. Users of electronic voting machines tend to have high confidence in them despite the significant criticism the machines have faced. Local election officials who support e-government generally are more likely to more positively evaluate federal reforms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How might we think about democratic governance? This paper distinguishes between system governance and radical democracy. System governance borrows the language of radical democracy while missing its spirit. It advocates increased participation through networks because new institutionalists suggest networks are an efficient means of service delivery. It advocates increased consultation to build consensus because communitarians suggest consensus is needed for effective political institutions. System governance is, then, a top-down discourse based on the alleged expertise of social scientists. Radical democrats concentrate instead on the self-government of citizens. Instead of the incorporation of established groups in networks, they promote a pluralism within which aspects of governance are handed over to associations in civil society. And instead of consultation prior to decision making, they promote a dialogue in which citizens play an active role in making and implementing public policy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This section presents general guidelines for authors and submission of articles to the "Public Administration Review" periodical. As of August 1, 2005, authors should submit one electronic copy and two hard copies of their manuscript to: Jos C. N. Raadschelders, Managing Editor, "Public Administration Review" Depart of Political Science, The University of Oklahoma 455 West Lindsey Street, Room 304, Norman, OK 73019-2002, E-mail: par@ou.edu. Manuscript should follow the style guidelines in the "Chicago Manual of Style," 15th edition. Submission should be manuscripts that have not been published previously and are not under consideration for publication elsewhere. Manuscripts, should be no longer than 35 pages, including the abstract, bio statement, endnotes, reference list, tables, figures, charts, and appendices. The page-size guidelines is based on the U.S. standard 8.5x11 inch paper. All material should be 12-point Times New Roman type, double-spaced on one side of the page with margins of one inch. Please do not use the autoformat feature in you word processing program and do not use the footnote feature to embed endnotes. An abstract of no more than 150 words should appear on a separate page, preceding the first page of the manuscript. The abstract should include the central question addressed by the article and the author's findings and conclusions.

This section presents submission information and guidelines for authors of the periodical Public Administration Review. Manuscripts should follow the style guidelines in the Chicago Manual of Style, 15th edition. The page-size guideline is based on the U.S. standard 8.5 x 11 inch paper. An abstract of no more than 150 words should appear on a separate page, preceding the first page of the manuscript. The abstract should include the central question addressed by the article and the author's findings and conclusions. Indications of authorship should be avoided whenever possible. This is commonly done by referring to oneself in the third person and including typical references to the work cited in the reference list. Authors will be required to assign copyright of their article to the American Society for Public Administration. Spell out only single-digit numbers and use numerals for all others. Quoted matter that runs six or more typed lines or that involves two or more paragraphs should be set off as a block quotation. Civil, military, religious, and professional titles and titles of nobility are capitalized only when they immediately precede a personal name and are thus used as part of the name.

Walter J.M. Kickert, Erik-Hans Klijn, and Joop F. M. Koppenjan, eds.,Managing Complex Networks: Strategies for the Public Sector(London: Sage Publications, 1997). 206pp.,$41.95 paper, ISBN: 0-7619-5548-8.Myrna P. Mandell, ed.,Getting Results through Collaboration: Networks and Network Structures for Public Policy and Management(Westport, CT: Quorum Books, 2001). 275 pp.,$89.95 hard, ISBN: 1-56720-455-4.Robert Agranoff, and Michael McGuire,Collaborative Public Management: New Strategies for Local Governments(Washington, DC: Georgetown University Press, 2003). 219 pp.,$26.95 paper, ISBN: 1-58901-018-3. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a bibliography related to public administration that appeared in the 1977 issue of the journal "Public Administration Review." Some of the books are, "American Political Institutions in the 1970s," edited by Demetrios Caraley, "Democratic Promise: The Populist Movement in America," by Lawrence Goodwyn, "Energy Supply and Government Policy," edited by Robert katler and William Vogely, "Henry Kissinger: The Anguish of Power," by John Stoessinger, "The Healers: The Rise of the Medical Establishment," by John Duffy, "The Behavior of Law," by Donald Black, "Crime and Conflict: A Study of Law and Society," by Harold Pepinsky, "Ethics and Profits: The Crisis of Confidence in American Business," by Leonard Silk and David Vogel , "Improving Leadership Effectiveness: The Leader Match Concept," by Fred Fiedler, Martin Chemers, and Linda Mahar, "Operations Management: A Systems Approach Through Text and Cases," by C.J. Constable and C.C. New, "The Long Tunnel: A Coal Miner's Journal," by Meade Arble.

The article highlights the third biennial workshop in Comparative International Accounting Research held in Speyer, Germany on April 1 and 2, 1996. Discussion of governmental budgeting, accounting, financial reporting and auditing. The focus of the workshop was on contextual analysis of governmental accounting systems with some exceptions. Analyses of pronouncements of standard-setting bodies, especially international ones, seemed important and significant work was needed on the processes of innovation, standard-setting within countries and reform implementation. The papers of the workshop have been published by the Hochschule fuer Verwaltungswissenschaften in Speyer, Germany, in its research paper series. A second part deals with governmental accounting innovations in China, East Africa, Poland and Switzerland. Some of the papers are working papers, indicating that many innovations are still taking place in the countries surveyed.

The article presents information about Luther Halsey Gulick, who has become a living legend, as his name appears in nearly every treatise on public administration published in the last half century in the U.S. He is most remembered for his work in 1936-1937 as a member of U.S. President Franklin D. Roosevelt's Committee on Administrative Management and for Papers on the Science of Administration compiled under his direction for the use of the Committee members and staff. Of the two papers that he personally wrote, the "Notes on the Theory of Organization" made two contributions that became reference points for much of the later development of the theory of public administration. One was POSDCORB, the acronym for seven functions of the chief executive-planning, organization, staffing, direction, coordination, reporting and budgeting. The other was the explication of principles of hierarchical organization, with a discussion of conditions under which the various principles might be applied. The article still stands as the preeminent statement of the classic position on organization, but more than that, it revealed remarkable prescience by anticipating many trends of thinking about public administration.

This paper examines the Shakman decrees, a series of federal court rulings over nearly two decades which prohibited the firing or hiring of government employees for political reasons. The paper focuses on the impact of the decrees on personnel administration in the City of Chicago. The effect of this "public law litigation" suit on the Cook County Democratic Organization and. hence, on the politics of Chicago, is also explored. It is concluded that the Court-imposed reforms have greatly improved and modernized personnel administration in Chicago and that, together with other factors, they have fatally weakened the patronage army which allowed the machine to maintain its grip on the city. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a new conceptual framework for integrating cost-benefit analysis (CBA) and cash-flow analysis (CFA) into a two-tiered methodology for evaluating local government activities. The evaluation procedure may be entered from either a CBA or a CFA perspective. The revolution in financing of American stale and local governments engendered by fiscal austerity is steadily breaching the traditional separation of revenue and expenditure in CBA. This paper demonstrates that breaching and its implications explain the major issues encountered in developing an integrated, two-tiered methodology for project evaluation, and it applies the methodology to illustrative case studies of a parking garage and an emergency ambulance service. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An instrumental rewards become more scarce under general government retrenchment, public employers need to rely more heavily on intrinsic rewards as a basis for employee performance. This paper examines the impact of job-security, recognition for the public service and changes in agency staffing on one an important intrinsic reward, organizational involvement. Analysis of variance and multiple regression are used to explore these relationships, the data are based on a 1982 survey of 484 federal state and local government employees in Kansas and Missouri. The results suggest a generally overlooked resource for enhancing organizational involvement, public service recognition. The research indicates that the sense of recognition accorded to the public service has a strong influence on the employee's job involvement, with higher level employees exhibiting more sensitivity to recognition that lower level employees. In contrast, job security and changes in staffing levels demonstrate only modest impacts on employee's involvement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the voluntary actions of citizens, either through time or money donations, in the provision and production of publicly provided goods and services. As a starting point, the first section defines coprovision. The conceptualization developed in this paper goes beyond coproduction to encompass the voluntary role of citizens in the provision of goods either by public sector agencies or nonprofit institutions. The conceptualization of coprovision is better suited to a discussion of how to finance publicly provided goods and services, it involves eliminating some of the coproduction types found in the literature as well as incorporating other types of citizen behavior. The hallmark of the coproduction concept, as defined in previous studies, is the involvement of citizens in their roles as consumers in the production of collective goods and services. In sum, coprovision is defined as: the voluntary involvement of citizens in the provision of publicly provided goods and services or close substitutes. Besides the need to disentangle provision and production, it is useful to highlight the citizen's role as opposed to the consumer concept.

This article draws attention to the need to learn more about why and how significant changes are made in the implementation of a law. Implementation change, or as suggested by the title of this article, redirecting the implementation of a law, has been largely ignored in the implementation literature. This paper attempts to fill this gap in our knowledge by focusing on the ongoing effort by the Reagan administration to redirect the implementation of the federal coal surface mining act (P.L. 95–87). Finally, the article outlines several management implications that, in light of the coal surface mining case experience, might provide guidance to public managers who find it necessary or desirable to redirect the implementation of a program. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently California developed mandatory building standards designed to conserve energy. The standards, which foreshadowed similar emerging federal standards, were to be implemented by the state Energy Commission and enforced by local building departments. This study found that such hard-path, regulatory policies, which were opposed by designers, builders, and building officials, could not be properly enforced because of the Energy Commission's apparent inability to overcome concerted resistance from those affected. In the face of such demands, the state gradually substituted soft-path training and education for designers, builders and building officials on how to understand and comply with the standards, in place of hard-path enforcement. The result appears to be relatively low levels of compliance. The paper shows how the application of policy implementation theory could have helped stale authorities predict such outcomes, and would perhaps have led to other, more effective strategies for implementing building standards. The paper discusses a range of alternative implementation strategies that would rest on indirect, hard-path policies, which could be expected to win sufficient public support to help government agencies charged with enforcement withstand opposition from those affected, and avoid conflicts between state and local jurisdictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a bibliography related to public administration that appeared in the 1977 issue of the journal "Public Administration Review." Some of the books are, "The American Class System: An Introduction to Social Stratification," by Daniel W. Rossides, "The Coming Breakpoint," by Barry Goldwater, "The Democrats: The Years After FDR," by Herbert S. Parmet, "The Innovation Decision in Soviet Industry," by Joseph Berliner, "Making Federalism Work," edited by Russell Mathews, "The Supreme Court Review, 1975," edited by Philip B. Kurland, "The Children's Cause," by Gilbert Steiner and Pauline Milius, "Adlai Stevenson of Illinois," by John Bartlow Martin, "The Man Who Pardoned Nixon," by Clark R. Mollenhoff, "Growth in America," edited by Chester L. Cooper, "Poliscide," by Theodore J. Lowi, Benjamin Ginsberg, et al, "Annual Review of Sociology," vol. 1, edited by Alex Inkeles, Sociology of America: A Guide to Information Sources," edited by Charles Mark, "The County Year Book, 1976," "Purchasing for Local Governments," "Revenue Sharing: Methodological Approaches and Problems," by David Caputo and Richard Cole.

The article focuses on mobility in temporary society. In the search for the temporary organization, capable of and eager to innovate and adapt, high rates of personnel mobility may work against organizational change. The article discusses a case analysis which is based upon a paper which the author initially prepared for a reunion of current and past faculty members of the Federal Executive Institute (FEI), held in Charlottesville, Virginia, in February 1973. The main theme of the paper on the relationship between personnel and leadership mobility on the one hand and innovation and adaptiveness on the other scented to me a significant challenge to some of the assumptions in the current and predictive literature about organizations, with implications far beyond that altogether unique institution known as the FEI. Several concepts current among public administrators and organizational theorists set the organizational mold for the FEI. Each of these concepts was selected to neutralize what was perceived as dysfunctional aspects of traditional bureaucratic organizations.

The article highlights a symposium on program evaluation. For a number of reasons program evaluation has become an important subject for public administration. In the first place people have become more concerned with keeping government accountable. In varying degrees existing means for providing accountability have been found wanting. Techniques of program evaluation have been used increasingly in this area. Despite the wide interest in program evaluation there are not a great many sources one can turn to for information on the subject. Program evaluation is of concern to both executive and legislative branches, to auditing agencies and management. Both auditing agencies and managers need program evaluation, although not necessarily of the same kind or for the same purposes. The symposium has attempted to draw on practitioners rather than academicians so that the papers will largely indicate what is happening in the field. The symposium has included papers from both the U.S. Office of Management and the U.S. General accounting Office.

This article focuses on planning in the United States. Whatever type of planning one has in mind, the context within which planning takes place is critical for its characteristics. In particular, planning under conditions of rapid social transformation is basically different from planning under conditions of stability. The one most important difference between planning under conditions of rapid social transformation and planning under conditions of stability is that when society is passing through rapid transformations, much less can be taken for granted. Planning is a multimeaning term but, at the very least, it implies efforts to shape the future with the help of structured rationality, systematic knowledge, and organized creativity. It constitutes one mode of policy making distinguished by first, a medium-to-long time perspective, and two, much attention to internal consistency between a range of subdecisions. There are many possible planning styles, and the number of available planning modes, methodologies, methods, and tools is very large.

This article presents a list of books published in the journal "Public Administrative Review." Few of these books are, "Neighborhood Distribution of Local Public Services," by Charles S. Benson and Peter B. Lund. This book includes a study of the uses neighborhoods make of publicly financed services. The book is concerned with seeing if the patterns of consumption of local public services are related systematically to the social and economic characteristics of neighborhoods. Another book is "Remaking an Organization," by Jay Schulman. This book examines the social conditions that inhibit or promote structural innovations in organizations. Kenneth Blanchard and Paul Hersey title one of the books "Management of Organizational Behavior," In this book, the authors define management as "working with and through people to accomplish organizational goals," a definition, which makes everyone a manager at certain times. The objective of this book is to help managers become more effective in their everyday interaction with other people.

This opinion piece focuses upon a research paper that evaluated performance-based budgeting at the state government level in the U.S. during both boom and bust years by fashioning an analytical framework from a survey of the U.S. states. The author of this paper urges that governmental officials should develop a decision strategy to widen the range of information and data points used during the development of budgeting decisions.

The article presents information necessary for authors wishing to get published in the journal Public Administration Review (PAR). Manuscripts submitted for consideration should generally not exceed 4,000 words. Short papers are preferred. After a manuscript is accepted for publication in PAR, authors are asked to provide a final copy on a computer word-processing disk. Research must be timely. Previously published research is not accepted. An abstract of under 150 words (on separate pages) should be submitted with the manuscript. All material, including endnotes, should be double spaced, on one side of the page only, and have margins of one-and-a-half inches. Each table or illustration should be on a separate page and attached at the end of the manuscript. Authors should communicate across the broad spectrum of interests and specializations. Clarity is prized, and brevity is necessary. Plain English is preferred over obscure jargon. Quotation marks should be used to set off a word of unusual meaning or an unfamiliar, excessively slangy, or coined word the first time it is used.

Early studies of organizational red tape emphasized that worker perceptions of organizational rules and procedures are dependent on workers’ frames of reference. However, most prior studies do not account sufficiently for how and why these reference points vary across employees, even if they work within the same or similar organizational contexts. While the effects of contemporaneous employee attitudes on perceptions of red tape have been considered in prior analyses, how do perceptions of organizational rules and procedures as red tape relate to workers’ prior career trajectories and occupational contexts? Variable norms and expectations across organizations as well as across the public and private sectors may produce different attitudes toward rules and procedures. Of equal import, current occupational characteristics are relatively unexamined in studies of worker perceptions of red tape. Using a survey of state level public managers, this paper examines how employees’ perceptions of red tape are mediated by their prior career trajectories and experiences, as well as by their occupational context. Implications for theory and practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rationale for collaborative environmental management often hinges on two factors: first, specialized training creates biased analytics that require multidisciplinary approaches to solve policy problems; second, normative beliefs among competing actors must be included in policy making to give the process legitimacy and to decide trans-scientific problems. These two factors are tested as drivers of conflict in an analysis of 76 watershed partnerships. The authors find that analytical bias is a secondary factor to normative beliefs; that depicting the primary driver of conflict in collaborative environmental management as between experts and nonexperts is inaccurate; that compared to the “life” and “physical” sciences, the social sciences and liberal arts have a stronger impact on beliefs and choice of allies and opponents; and that multiple measures are needed to capture the effect of analytical biases. The essay offers lessons for public administrators and highlights the limitations and generalizations of other governing approaches. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article responds to the preceding paper by Stephanie Moulton and Charles Wise, critiquing the dimensions that those authors use as organizing guides in the delivery of public services through public–private institutional configurations, including the evaluation of the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP). In this essay, Eva M. Witesman proposes a modification to the framework and provides suggestions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Do Henry Mintzberg's writings make an enduring, invaluable contribution to our understanding of the contemporary public policy process? Mintzberg argues that organizations display eight structural configurations and corresponding coordinating mechanisms. Such structural configurations are shaped by a variety of contingency factors, especially power and environmental ones. Using Mintzberg's work, eight policy modes, corresponding to structural configurations within government organizations and political systems, are identified and placed on a matrix that comprises two dimensions: standardization and centralization. Six polarities in the policy process arise from this matrix. Mintzberg's work, the paper argues, remains of enduring value because it provides a seminal framework for a richer understanding of the current policy process, by offering a contingency theory of structures and policy modes, as well as by frank acknowledgment of the protean nature of the policy process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The politics–administration dichotomy has drawn criticism from contemporary public administration scholars largely because of its lack of descriptive accuracy and particular normative inclinations. In their search for an alternative model to the dichotomy, some scholars developed what is widely known today as complementarity. Although this emerging view received an enthusiastic welcome from many scholars and practitioners, more research has yet to be done to address its conceptual and empirical shortcomings. Using survey data collected from a nationwide sample of city managers, this study explores empirical foundations of the complementarity view of the politics–administration relationship. Specifically, the author first identifies a politics–management continuum based on a review of public administration literature on the complementarity view and then analyzes survey data to see whether the relationship between elected officials and public administrators is characterized by complementarity. The results of the analysis generally support the complementarity view, in that the responses of city managers mostly parallel the idea of a continuum in elected official–public administrator relationships, a continuum that moves from politics on one end to management on the other end, with various policy and administration activities in the middle. This paper aims to make a conceptual and empirical contribution to an important question in public administration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the federal government's success in implementing and providing high-quality service through e-government, something that has received very little attention. We define quality from the perspective of the end users of federal agency Web sites, as measured through customer survey data. Using data from the American Customer Satisfaction Index, we compare the performance of federal agency Web sites across a range of relevant variables with a private sector equivalent, e-business Web sites. Our findings suggest that federal e-government Web sites are not yet, in the aggregate, providing the same level of quality as their e-business counterparts. We also find significant variability among federal agencies. We discuss the implications of these findings for e-government performance measurement, performance benchmarking, and the market-centered theories of administrative reform that are driving e-government and similar transformations of government practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While gender has emerged as an important research subject, the development of a feminist theory has been slow. This paper calls for a commitment to the development of a feminist theory of public administration. As part of this development, the author argues that the field also must embrace research focused on the intersection of multiple identity categories such as race and class. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A number of organizations across sectors have begun efforts toward managing workforce diversity. At the federal level in the United States, almost 90 percent of agencies report that they are actively managing diversity. However, very little empirical research has tied diversity management to work group performance or other work-related outcomes. This paper uses a survey of U.S. federal employees to test the relationships between diversity management, job satisfaction, and work group performance. The findings indicate that diversity management is strongly linked to both work group performance and job satisfaction, and that people of color see benefits from diversity management above and beyond those experienced by white employees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There is high interest in economic development efforts involving cooperation or collaboration among metropolitan jurisdictions. To determine why some local governments engage in cooperative agreements while others do not, this paper investigates transaction obstacles, including bargaining, information, agency, enforcement, and division problems. The authors then advance an institutional collective action explanation for intergovernmental cooperation, focusing on the conditions under which these transactions costs are low. This work anticipates that the costs associated with interlocal cooperation are influenced by the demographic characteristics of communities, local political institutions, and the nature of regional government networks. Empirical analysis based on a national survey of local development officials provides support for several predictions from this model and identifies policy variables that, in turn, increase the prospects for cooperation, specifically through the development of informal policy networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A long-standing contention in the public and private management literatures is that women use rule abidance as a way to compensate for their relative lack of organizational power. Many of the studies making this assertion rely on anecdotal evidence rather than theory-guided empirical studies. In this paper, the authors use survey data collected from four cities in a midwestern state to empirically test gender dimensions of rule abidance. The findings support long-asserted gender differences in rule abidance. Contrary to recent scholarship, however, the findings suggest that rule abidance among women is inversely related to organizational status, with higher-level women abiding by rules more so than women lower in the hierarchy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the ethical content of legislation regulating the political activities of civil servants. The analysis is done using the “ethics triangle,” a tool that encompasses the interdependence of results-based utilitarian ethics, rule-based duty ethics, and virtue-based character ethics. The discussion begins with the importance of the problem, followed by its evolution and current status. After describing the methodology, the central section investigates the values at stake. The conclusion provides a synthesis of the findings, explores the implications of the study, and attempts to answer the question posed in the title of the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the career consequences for public managers of having had full-time private sector work experience. We find positive career outcomes for public managers with private sector experience: Individuals with such experience are more likely to have been recently promoted relative to peers and to supervise somewhat greater number of employees, especially if their most recent job was in the private sector. While experience in the private sector enhances such career outcomes, the length of such experience diminishes them. The authors conclude by identifying three career scenarios emerging from the models and discussing the managerial and theoretical implications of “sector-switching careers.” [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite a long and storied history, patronage and the functions it plays in American politics and public administration are still very much a mystery. This paper examines how patronage has been used and understood in American political science and public administration. The author calls for a reexamination of the concept based on developments found in the field of anthropology. In an effort to generate future scholarship, the author introduces a typology of patronage styles based on this reexamination. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Winter Commission Report was centrally concerned with improving the performance of state and local governments. Since the issuance of the commission’s report in 1993, the delivery of services by state and local government has been substantially changed by the growing role of nonprofit organizations in providing public services and representing citizen interests. As a result, state and local governments and nonprofit agencies are faced with complex governance challenges. The central argument of this paper is that despite the dramatic changes in the relationship between government and nonprofit organizations in recent years, the key tenets of the Winter Commission report—the need for improved training and education, greater transparency and accountability, more emphasis on performance, and improved citizen engagement—remain deeply relevant in improving the governance of the public services in an increasingly complex policy process and service delivery system at the state and local levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]