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Results of an innovative survey tool to track the flow of public resources to intended destinations is described and analyzed. A large public educational program in Uganda, a capitation grant to cover schools' nonwage expenditures that was financed and run by the central government is highlighted using district offices as distribution channels.

Public administration scholars often have focused on the relationship between elected and appointed officials. This study assesses the extent to which public administrators' relationships with elected officials conform to the three models that scholars have used to characterize that relationship: the orthodox politics-administration dichotomy, the modified dichotomy, and a partnership model In addition, the study seeks to determine whether demographic, structural, and experiential variables relate to respondents 'preference for each oft he three models. The data come from a mail survey of a random sample of U.S. local government managers. Using factor analysis, the study finds that managers identify with all three models, with the modified dichotomy model explaining the most variance among the managers and the orthodox dichotomy model the least. Salary, governing board size, private-sector experience, and gender relate positively and at significant levels to identification with the orthodox dichotomy model; public administration education and population relate negatively to this model Several experiential variables relate positively to the partnership model Public administration education relates negatively to identification with the partnership model The identification of local government managers with both the orthodox and the modified dichotomy models indicates a continuing emphasis on insulating administration from politics. That most managers posit a strong role for themselves in policy making by identifying with either the modified dichotomy or the partnership model indicates that these public administrators see themselves very differently from the image of the passive handwringer sometimes depicted by those who criticize or caricature bureaucracy. The dominant model espoused by contemporary public administration scholars, that of the partnership model, does have a strong empirical referent among practicing public administrators, indicating support for the potential strengths of blending politics and administration in policy development and administration., The relationship between elected and appointed officials constitutes an enduring and important issue both in democratic theory and in the practice and behavior of public administrators. Practitioners and scholars continue [...]

The Republican capture of the U.S. Congress following the 1994 midterm elections provides a unique opportunity to examine congressional control of the bureaucracy. Under the leadership of House Majority Whip Tom Delay (R-TX), Republicans waged an all-out assault on regulation reminiscent of the Reagan years. Toward that end, House leaders relied on a mix of control mechanisms including budget cuts and a variety of deck stacking strategies. While the bulk of the Republican regulatory agenda failed to pass, evidence from four federal agencies that were targeted by those efforts suggests that the congressional challenge had an immediate, if short-lived, effect. In each instance, there was an immediate decline in regulatory vigor that lasted in most cases just one or two years., There is now a considerable body of evidence, much of it guided by a principal-agent model, that suggests that public bureaucracies are much more responsive to political principals than previously [...]