Search

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.

Bureaucratic discretion continues to be one of a public administrator's primary powers while at the same time being one of their most controversial. Used in a positive way, bureaucratic discretion can enhance social equity; however, this practice can create administrative legitimacy dilemmas. As such, this paper conceptually discusses the theoretical position of public administrators that contributes to their engagement in legitimacy dilemmas, which is further complicated by the tenets of New Public Service. We argue that if public administrators are engaged in authentic interactions with the public and use their discretion to reflect the interests of the public, then they are engaged in truly democratic governance. We place this argument in the context of achieving social equity and highlight an avoided question in public administration. Finally, recommendations for future research are offered as a means progressing the social equity agenda in public administration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What do citizens want? How do citizens think public servants should behave? Although such questions seem straightforward, little is known about the values citizens expect public servants to uphold. This paper therefore identifies such values through extensive coding of qualitative data from representative samples of United States (n = 395), Dutch (n = 369), and South Korean (n = 379) citizens. Surprisingly, and contrasting to assumptions in the literature on citizen satisfaction, citizens hardly value effectiveness, efficiency, and accountability. In contrast, we found that the top three universal values that citizens desire from public servants are serviceability, responsiveness, and dedication. These values are generic across countries, age, gender, and education level. However, some values are more important in some countries than in others. These differences show the influence of a country's longstanding public administrative tradition and its current situation. Our findings challenge scholars and government officials to rethink what citizens want from their civil servants. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Federalist No. 72 is an oft-neglected defense of the president's reeligibility for election. However, the paper goes well beyond this issue to basic models of human nature and motivation. James L. Perry's essay confronts this broad issue as a guide to 'a public service ethic.' Like other authors in this special issue, Perry reads broadly through the Federalist Papers in search of a deeper definition of public service motivation as a balance between the potency of passion and the limits of reason. Controlling passion was no doubt important to the founders, but it may have drowned out the greater good envisioned in public service commitments to acting on behalf of the people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Federalist No. 67 generally is read as a vigorous defense of the chief executive and contains intense language to alleviate fears of a dictatorial president. However, it also can be read as a much deeper explication of the blend of republican and energetic government. The author examines this defense within the larger stream of Federalist Papers and compares the Anti-Federalist attacks against a strong executive and Alexander Hamilton's aggressive justifications. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Federalist No. 51 is another of the most recognizable and important of the Federalist Papers, famously arguing that one first must enable government to control the governed, and then oblige it to control itself. The authors suggest that part of this obligation involves effective collaboration within a system of separate powers. They then ask how this 'collaboration imperative' can be exercised in today's contentious political environment. [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]

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]

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]

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 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 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 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]

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]

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.

Federalist Nos. 67-77 offer a strong defense of the 'energetic executive' embedded in the new constitution, which is perhaps best captured in Alexander Hamilton's famous conclusion that 'the true test of a good government is its aptitude and tendency to produce a good administration.' This essay places this basic definition into historical context by reviewing the erosion of the national government's emphasis on public duty as a prerequisite for effectiveness. Reading widely across the Federalist Papers, the author argues that the founders would be taken aback by the national government's sheer scale and complexity and would strongly restate their basic principles of a government well executed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

One of the great themes of The Federalist Papers is that good government is dependent on good administration. In Federalist No. 27, Publius underscores two important themes. First, he argues that in order to preserve citizen confidence in government, there must be competent administration, and second, he maintains the need for a strong national government to safeguard the republican principles embedded within the Constitution. Publius's contribution to democratic theory and American republicanism proves as enlightening today as it was when he first published this essay in 1787, and it continues to provide important lessons for public administration and the democratic governance process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

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]

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]

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 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]

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]

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 performance of election systems in the United States depends heavily on complex networks of people, tasks, organizations, and relationships, as well as the voting technology that has received so much attention since the presidential election of 2000. Public administration has much to contribute to our understanding of these systems. This article provides an overview of the field, highlighting linkages to theoretical approaches in public administration and emphasizing the importance of management in a brief case study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The construction of public problems has a lasting influence on implementation in a given policy subsystem. National and sociopolitical contexts influence issue definition differently across nations. However, the degree to which nation-specific issue definition takes place has been insufficiently explored. In recent years, the growing incidence of autism has led to a quest for causal factors. One hypothesis posits that the use of mercury in vaccines may be a culprit. This paper examines the definition of the mercury and autism issue in Australia, Canada, the United Kingdom, and the United States. Insights into the comparative elements of issue definition are suggested by the case. These insights are of particular importance to administrators, as agencies are deeply involved as objects and actors in the process of issue definition and are often responsible for implementing new and redefined policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the debates over the 2003 U.S. Supreme Court decisions regarding race-based university admissions, speculation has focused on how affirmative action affects minority undergraduate enrollments. This paper uses a rational choice framework to test the conventional wisdom about the effect of race-based admissions, focusing on the landmark Hopwood judicial decision and California’s Proposition 209. This study offers more generalizable findings by incorporating all public universities bound under Hopwood and Proposition 209 using data spanning 1990–2000. Findings indicate that the effect of race-based admissions standards is not what might have been predicted: Shifts in minority enrollments that are attributable to affirmative action hinge on university-specific characteristics—namely, the level of selectivity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

University administrators have made difficult choices in response to the changing policy context for the use of affirmative action in admissions. This paper synthesizes the empirical literature on affirmative action and evaluates the efficacy of alternative strategies, including top-percent programs, class-based affirmative action, and targeted recruiting. The analyses offer several findings of interest to officials who direct such programs: (1) Affirmative action preferences given by top-tier universities have been large; (2) affirmative action leads minorities to enroll in higher-quality institutions; and (3) affirmative action has mostly positive effects on minority students later in life. The evidence shows a decline in minorities’ relative share of enrollment at flagship public universities after affirmative action was eliminated in several states, and the alternative strategies used by these universities have not offset these declines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, the authors use the Bush administration’s management grades from the Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) to evaluate performance budgeting in the federal government—in particular, the role of merit and political considerations in formulating recommendations for 234 programs in the president’s fiscal year 2004 budget. PART scores and political support were found to influence budget choices in expected ways, and the impact of management scores on budget decisions diminished as the political component was taken into account. The Bush administration’s management scores were positively correlated with proposed budgets for programs housed in traditionally Democratic departments but not in other departments. The federal government’s most ambitious effort to use performance budgeting to date shows both the promise and the problems of this endeavor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To what extent do local government Web sites support practical, meaningful public involvement? Fifteen years after the adoption and diffusion of the World Wide Web, the answer to this question remains cloudy and controversial. The promise—and peril—of Web-based public involvement, known as e-democracy , has been widely debated. Much of the debate has focused on theoretical abstractions or extrapolations of current political or technological trends. Empirical studies have been limited to reports on pilot projects, case studies, or special population surveys. This paper contributes to our empirical understanding of the question. It reports results of a recent comprehensive survey of official government Web sites in the principal cities of the 100 largest U.S. metropolitan areas. In particular, it examines whether and how U.S. city government Web sites facilitate users’ involvement in local public issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increased use of information technology promises to revolutionize both the provision of government services and the vibrancy of democracy. In the aftermath of the Florida voting controversy during the 2000 presidential election, governments have placed their faith in technology, adopting e-voting machines that offer enhanced voter convenience and eliminate the need for subjective recounts. However, the same underlying assumptions that apply to e-government theory do not apply to e-voting because of the severity of consequences if failure occurs and the loss of transparency traditionally associated with the voting process. A more useful theoretical guide is systems theory, which deals with complex, high-risk systems. This literature has been largely overlooked by adopters of e-voting technology, even though the practical criticisms of e-voting made by computer security specialists reflect an essentially systems theory perspective. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Deflation presents special challenges to central banking, as traditional monetary policy tools are highly inefficient in dealing with deflationary pressures. In this case, the Federal Reserve must use alternative monetary policy tools that are specially designed to artificially boost asset prices through “printing press” or currency manipulation. Unfortunately, these alternative monetary policy tools create unintended political, geopolitical, and social consequences that overreach into the direct responsibilities of other branches of government. Thus, the government must be able to influence Federal Open Market Committee decisions that potentially affect (or contradict) U.S. foreign policy, U.S. trade policy, U.S. dollar policy, and deliberate domestic/global wealth distribution policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on management policies of cities regarding their solid waste recycling programs. In the field of solid waste management, the 1990s are most aptly described as the decade of recycling. The remarkable growth in the national recycling rate from 9 percent in 1989 to 28 percent in 1996 indicates robust popular support and suggests that this form of civic environmentalism has entered the mainstream of behavioral norms in the U.S. That so many Americans have changed their waste disposal practices is evidence that recycling may well be the singular environmental success story of the decade. During this era, the business of recycling also evolved from the periodic paper drives by scout troops and volunteers into a challenging, complex, and expensive service that now competes with other local programs for scarce resources. Contemporary recycling managers contend with budget-busting swings in material prices, variable levels of state financial support, and growing competition for local resources engendered by federal and state devolution efforts.

In March 1996, Vice-President Gore unveiled a plan to "dramatically change" parts of the federal bureaucracy by converting them into "performance-based organizations, " or PBO's. PBO's would be given more freedom in operations and held accountable for the achievement of specified results. While the PBO plan may improve effectiveness in some parts of the federal government, claims about its significance have been overstated, and it will encounter serious challenges in implementation. The PBO model is not likely to be applied widely. The paper also assesses the significance of the PBO proposal as a part of a larger battle to preserve the administrative capabilities of the federal government. Finally, it is argued that the proposal is evidence of the increasing internationalization of the "reinventing government" movement. The weakness of the PBO plan reflects some of the weaknesses of the larger international reform movement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the structure of bureaucratic decisions in state Medicaid programs. More specifically, the analysis tries to discern an underlying pattern in Medicaid optional service adoptions across the American states during the period from 1985 through 1994. These adoptions result from state-level administrative initiatives rather than federal or state legislative actions. The analysis shows that states differ in the extent to which they extend services into more controversial aspects of health care. And their willingness to do so follows a clear cumulative pattern: States initiate more controversial, limited services only after they have already adopted a full range of services that are widely acceptable to the public and governmental officials. This cumulative pattern in administrative decisions reveals a great deal about the nature of bureaucratic actions in state-level social welfare programs. This study also produces an empirical measure of bureaucratic policy outputs that can be used as an analytic variable in other research efforts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article focuses on the Coalition To Improve Management In State And Local Government. The coalition was organized in 1984 to address the emerging need for administrative management assistance to U.S. state and local governments which were taking on increasing responsibility for domestic programs of service delivery. The coalition helps jurisdictions develop the executive capabilities and strategies needed to cope simultaneously with rapid economic and social change, reduced national grant money, increased service demands, and resistance to higher taxes. The coalition developed a seven-point strategy based on successful efforts of the best administered governments. The strategy links public administration principles and theory with action-generating implementation methods explained by practitioners in how to do it management guides.

This paper explores the political implications of the use of public enterprises at the municipal level, using survey data from Illinois cities. The dependent variables include the number of enterprises cities have, the dependence of cities on income from enterprises, and the choice of which enterprises to provide. The paper explores why some cities have enterprises to handle parking, garbage, and economic development. Conclusions are that cities experiencing fiscal stress avoid enterprises, and more-reformed cities use enterprises more frequently. Particular enterprises have their own political and financial characteristics and are more likely to be used by cities with matching political characteristics. The paper concludes with suggestions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores ways in which policy makers think about the value of information in the policy process. Close to 200 federal, state, and local policy makers gave us their Judgments about information systems which were mandated by the federal government in elementary and secondary education. We predicted that the value they reported would be influenced by their structural location in the educational policy system and by the policy theories about education which they embraced. These predictions were confirmed. Knowledge of a policy maker's structural location and policy theories facilitates understanding of how much he or she will value federal data on education. The results point toward a clearer understanding of the political context in which federal information systems must operate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is adapted from the presidential address delivered at the 1985 national conference of ASPA. President Naomi Lynn invites ASPA members to join in a celebration that will continue through the end of this decade. This period is important because it includes anniversaries of significant events in our country's and ASPA's histories. Although public service is going through a difficult period, it has much in which to take pride. ASPA members are encouraged to support the oral history project inaugurated this year in preparation for the 50th anniversary of the Society's founding. PAR and the Committee on Three Centuries also solicit papers to stimulate debate and reflection on the constitutional bicentennial. ASPA's greatest challenge is to apply the understandings and ideals of the past to the ever-changing, practical problems of the present and future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article comments on open and closed systems of decision making. This paper analyzes how toxic waste management issues move from a position where they are decided by a small, narrowly constituted elite to one where they are now influenced by a more diverse set of actors. In the U.S., until the mid-1970s the issue of toxic waste sites was not on the systemic or institutional agendas of most local and state governments, nor on the federal government's agenda. Government leaders and the public then became aware of the issue through incidents such as Love Canal, and it was pushed onto the systemic agenda of many local, state, and federal agencies. As more people became concerned about the health and environmental dangers associated with toxic waste dumps, the scope of conflict expanded and the problem began moving from a closed to an open decision-making context, and from a systemic agenda to an institutional one. The problem that public officials now face is how to combine the core democratic values of accountability and representativeness with the tenets of administrative efficiency, e.g., increasing demands for technical expertise, economy, and efficiency.

Allocation formula design presents technical as well as political difficulties. This paper presents a non-technical discussion of technical issues in formula design. The issues include proxy variable, updating of indicators, small-area estimates, communication between statisticians and legislators, formula complexity, variable redundancy, siered allocation formulas, eligibility criteria, choice of data, and evaluation of allocation formulas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper suggests that the use of rulemaking as an alternative means of implementation can have policy consequences and, as a result, can have significant political implications. In the case of the Federal Trade Commission, the balance of forces in the agency's political environment has proved dominant to determining its willingness to rely on rulemaking. Similarly, the commission's emphasis on rulemaking in recent years has significantly altered its relationships with key members of its environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There have been several studies this decade of union-management relations in the U.S. federal government. Most of these studies have presented an optimistic view of federal labor relations, particularly with regard to the changes since 1962 and President John F. Kennedy's Executive Order 10988. However, to date, no empirical longitudinal studies of federal labor relations have been published. It is the purpose of this paper, drawing from data collected in a longitudinal multiple-case study, to examine the most important changes occurring in six federal union-management relationships between 1972 and 1976. The major causes of the changes and discussion of specific problem areas will be presented. It is particularly appropriate now to review this area in light of President Jimmy Carter's civil service reorganization and the changes in federal service labor relations resulting from the Civil Service Reform Act of 1978. The paper will also discuss whether either the flow form of labor relations, which is common in the private sector, or the generational form, which is common in much of the public sector, is applicable to the federal service.

This paper is concerned with omnibus legislation designed to change time-honored processes of internal government operations. Examples cited are drawn from the federal government: the 1972 Equal Employment Opportunity amendment to the Civil Rights Act of 1964, and the Privacy Act of 1974. Specifically, the paper is concerned with four generic characteristics of such legislation which work to thwart effective implementation. The author describes the functional management approach to Privacy Act implementation developed in the Public Health Service and proposes that approach, together with an innovative role for the designated oversight official, as a model for government agencies at all levels-federal, state, and local-to use in overcoming the obstacles to implementation inherent in all omnibus statutes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the U.S. President, Richard M. Nixon's proposal for executive reorganization. A panel dealing with Nixon's reorganization proposals met immediately after his re-election, November 10, 1972, at the Region I ASPA Meeting in Newport. ASPA Meeting in Newport. R.I. Douglas Fox, the editor of this symposium, presented a paper at this meeting, later published in the September/October 1973 issue of this journal as "The President's Proposals for Executive Reorganization: A Critique." It is safe to predict that whoever occupies the presidency will advocate a reorganization plan similar in broad outline to Nixon's. The President proposed to consolidate the Departments of Interior, Commerce, Labor, HUD, HEW, and Transportation, as well as some other functions of other departments, such as Agriculture, into four new departments: Community Development, Natural Resources, Human Resource, and Economic Affairs. The secretary would be given increased managerial authority and staff. Programs would be organized around functional goals of the agency rather than clientele, and decentralization granting much more authority to field offices would take place.

The social composition of government bureaucracies has important implications for social and political systems. In this paper comparisons are made between national samples of federal civilian employees and nonfederal employees on key social and occupational characteristics. Federal employees differ modestly from the general employed public in several respects, one of the most important being the bureaucracy's openness to minorities. Nevertheless, the similarities between the two work forces are perhaps more striking. Furthermore, federal workers have had extensive experience in a representative variety of nonfederal pursuits. There is little persuasive evidence that federal workers are not broadly reflective of the American social Structure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses the factors and issues related to the personnel mobility in government agencies of the U.S. The author focuses on the central policy considerations likely to be faced in any wideranging effort to manage mobility in the public service more effectively at all levels. The author refers to the National Conference on Mobility in Public Service, addressed by the American Society for Public Administration at Arden House, Harriman, New York. According to the author certain baseless assumptions were taken in the conference. As freedom of movement is a basic democratic value, it was therefore taken for granted that only a national crisis accompanied by almost total consensus would warrant the solution of mobility problems by such devices as restricted occupational choice, arbitrarily channeled education, forced labor, and so on. Talking about the geographical mobility in the U.S., the author says that the rural-urban migration is continuing to result in drastic reduction of the farm population.