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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 [...]

Despite the normative, political, and instrumental importance of privatizing state-owned enterprises worldwide, practitioners and researchers know little empirically about how different types of citizens feel about these efforts, how they arrive at these judgments, and how enduring these attitudes are likely to be. Using citizen attitudes toward privatization culled from the 1995 French National Election Study, this article offers practitioners and researchers an analytical framework for assessing these attitudes, for anticipating and dealing strategically with the perceived consequences of denationalization efforts, and for refining their understanding of the calculus of consent for market reforms in future survey research., With perceptions of government overload, fiscal stress, and maladministration pandemic worldwide, proponents of administrative reform have embraced the privatization of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) as a major component of the New [...]

This study utilizes mean and covariance structure (MACS) analysis to investigate support for democracy in post-war Germany. Unlike standard covariance structure analysis (CVA), MACS makes possible the testing of differences in means of latent variables across multiple groups. I compare support for democracy between males who served in the military in World War II versus those who did not serve. The 1953 random sample is the West German public. Results indicate that while both veterans and non-veterans conceptualize democracy similarly, some differences emerge in the predictor variables which explain the construct. Moreover, the study reveals that support for democracy is higher for those who served in the military. Implications of these findings are discussed both for contemporary Germany and for nations seeking to build democratic regimes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As societies worldwide struggle to address what policy analysts call “wicked problems” such as world hunger, malnutrition, and ecological sustainability, analysts from a variety of perspectives have questioned the administrative state's abilities to deal with them. Ascendant since the early 1990s as a prescription for remedying these shortcomings is a market, technocratic, and non- deliberative theory of administration that some have called “neo-managerialism” and others the “managerialist ideology.” This study uses European attitudes toward promoting the use of genetically modified (GM) foods as a “policy window” for exploring how well or ill-suited the neo-managerialist philosophy informing the U.S. government's promotional campaign was with the factors driving European opposition to GM foods. Causal modeling of the “calculus of dissent” that led to a the European Union (EU) moratorium on GM foods suggests that deliberative (rather than neo-managerialist) theories of administration are better suited for the “collective puzzlement of society” that wicked problems require. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Privatization has been a major issue around the world, but research on public opinion about it has been scarce. The German Social Survey provides an opportunity to compare citizen opinions from a formerly socialist-authoritarian regime with those from a democratic regime, in their opinions about privatizing banks, electrical power, and hospitals. As do citizens in surveys in other nations, Germans support privatization of the services in the order just given. Citizens from the east, where privatization led to sharp increases in unemployment, oppose privatization much more than do westerners. A LISREL analysis indicates that their opposition is not due to their concerns about its economic effects on themselves or the nation (''economic pessimism''), but more due to perception of the proper role of government (''opposition to government spending''), and sense of political efficacy. The analysis also reflects on the roles of other variables such as ideology, partisanship, gender, being unemployed, education, and preference for taxes versus public services. We discuss implications for theory and research on public opinion about government policies and services, such as the role of direct economic self-interest versus more symbolic and ideological orientations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Discriminant analysis is a statistical technique which is being increasingly employed in social science research. This paper illustrates discriminant analysis with an application to a study of citizen participation in social service planning councils. The major substantive finding is that attitude variables are more important than socio-economic characteristics in distinguishing between types of participants (service providers, consumers, and community representatives) serving on the councils. More broadly, it is hoped that the reader will gain insight into the potential advantages which discriminant analysis offers in its predictive and classificatory powers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the economic theory of antisemitism traced back from contemporary Germany and its implications for the new German State given its current economic difficulties and the influx of refugees. Economic stereotypes of the Jews; Use of Linear Structural Relations (LISREL) model for its confirmatory capacity; Hostility and prejudice as reason for contemporary antisemitism.

Studies social regulatory policy tools by assessing their potential as a vehicle for developing midrange theories of policy design. Analysis of Michigan traffic safety data; Varying enforcement effects; Different impact of various types of social regulatory tools; Success as conditioned by implementation styles, contexts and target populations.

Focuses on a study which investigated the effects of the economy on voting behavior in three national elections in Germany. Explanations on the economic effects; Details of the sociotropic thesis; Methodology of the study; Results and discussion.

Focuses on the use of demographic, political and religious variables to predict attitudes toward abortion in Germany. Overview of the difference in examining attitudes of women toward abortion in the United States and Germany; Attitudinal differences depending on each variable; Measures and method used.

Explores the role of publicity in three social interventions, the Romanian abortion restriction of 1966, the British breathalyzer crackdown, and the 1978 Georgia Status Offender Act. Suggestion that publicity is most likely to be a problem in internal validity when intervention is not truly abrupt and a broad policy is evaluated as opposed to a program; Problem of publicity in time series quasi-experiments.

The article explores the socioeconomic, religious and the communal living hypotheses of Jewish liberalism. Compared to the endogenous variables, the effects of the socioeconomic variables are weak and are dwarfed by the religious practice and communal living variables in fostering an understanding of Jewish liberalism. While the relationships found with regard to income and education are similar to those of members of other religious groups, the impact of the other socioeconomic variables on liberalism are complex and suggest that background factors can encourage the development of both liberal and conservative values simultaneously. The fact that various components of Judaism can foster both conservative and liberal values can he seen with the more powerful predictors as well, especially the communal living latent variable. The findings for the latent communal living variable have relevance for the modern dilemma of American Jewry--assimilation or group coherence in modern society. The variable has important implications for understanding the development of a Jewish political ideology. On the one hand, a strong sense of Jewishness in a communal sense definitely has a conservatizing influence.

The impact of three types of policy interventions on traffic safety in New York State is explored. Results indicate a long-term decline in traffic fatalities following a 1981 DWI reform. This finding contradicts much previous research which indicates that stricter drunk driving laws are effective only in the short run. While raising the drinking age is unrelated to fatalities, a mandatory seat belt law demonstrates a strong impact on the dependent variable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses power theory and the symbolic theory of prejudice as means of explaining antiforeign sentiment in Germany. Background on the study; Power theory versus symbolic prejudice; LISREL model of antiforeign sentiment.

Discusses efforts to evaluate programs under Title XX of the Social Security Act, regarding the federal funding of public welfare and social services in the U.S. Nature and purposes of Title XX; Analysis of the problems which have impeded successful program evaluation; Solutions to remedy the lack of progress in the evaluation of Title XX in particular and of social services in general.

The article comments on gender role ideology. Gender role ideology can be defined as a person's view toward women's roles in society. Traditional gender role ideologies suggest that women should be caretakers and homemakers while men should be breadwinners, egalitarian gender role ideologies support men and women's equal participation in both work and family life. Gender roles vary between movements in Judaism. In this section, the authors describe larger debates about women's roles in worship, as well as women's roles in the Traditional movement. Traditional Judaism splintered from the Conservative movement due differences in attitude toward gender egalitarianism. Yet, despite arguments that egalitarianism is mostly related to the rise of women's groups, clearly the move toward gender egalitarianism cannot be attributed exclusively to women. Those respondents who were born in the U.S., who identify with Reform or Conservative Judaism, who are less opposed to assimilation, and who do not practice fewer traditional rituals, also support increasing gender egalitarianism in the synagogue. Changes in gender egalitarianism are related to a host of changes among Jews. As Jews become more secularized, gender role ideologies have become more liberal.

In the article the author analyses American Judaism in the context of social justice. The article uses the 1991 Survey of New York Area Jews to re-explore the social justice concept developed by Marshall Sklare and Joseph Greenblum. It is supportive of Sklare and Greenblum who noted the tendency of Jews to have a broad concern for humankind and secular causes but to focus their behavior concerning social justice primarily on Jews. Bivariate analysis indicates the Orthodox identify most strongly with the concept, although their view of social justice is inward and directed primarily at fellow Jews. The finding is confirmed in a multiple regression analysis. The level of charitable contributions is used as a surrogate for social justice. In contrast, denomination as of no explanatory value in explaining philanthropic contributions to secular charities. Rather, the dependent variable is predicted most strongly by income.

This article replicates the 1981 study of Morgan and colleagues and focuses on the productivity of public affairs and administration programs in the United States from 1981 to 1985. While many of the highest-ranked programs retain their 1970-1980 positions, the article notes a dramatic improvement on the part of other institutions. In addition to examining overall productivity, the number of published articles is considered as a ratio to the number of faculty in order to control for the size of faculties. While some smaller programs are helped by the ratio measure, high productivity is more characteristic of doctoral degree-granting institutions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article utilizes a multiple time series design to investigate the impact that restrictive abortion laws have had on maternal deaths in Romania. That society had an initially "liberal" law but it was reversed by a 1966 decree that greatly limited the circumstances under which a woman may have an abortion. The research design combined with data collected from the Worm Health Organization suggest that it is unlikely that a post-1966 increase in the number of abortion deaths in Romania can be attributed either to the effects of history or instrumentation. Implications of this study for the American experience with abortion are discussed briefly. It would seem that in any society a restrictive abortion policy's impact on maternal death is likely to depend on the degree of "tightening". [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the experience of the Georgia Department of Community Affairs in targeting funds for economic development in rural Georgia. During fiscal year 1980, the U.S. Farmers Home Administration (FmHA) desired that 10 percent of its Business and Industry Program loan guarantees be targeted to "highly distressed areas." Across the nation FmHA had neither a predetermined list of such areas nor did it have a set of criteria for identifying such communities. The purposes of this article are to present the experience of the Georgia Department of Community Affairs with targeting, and offer some guidance to practitioners in other states who are responsible for developing and applying measures of local economic distress. Staff of the Department of Community Affairs' Economic Development Program undertook to identify distressed areas in rural Georgia in 1979. The first step was to consider the different distress formulas of federal agencies. The criteria used by the Department of Housing and Urban Development and the Economic Development Administration were useful, but neither formula was totally adequate to measure the economic status of the rural areas of the state. Other existing federal formulas were found to contain factors not primarily relevant to economic distress, and to be so broad in application that too great a proportion of the state would quality as distressed.

Most literature dealing with the attitudes of the mass public toward abortion addresses the question in terms of the individual woman seeking termination. This study attempts to explain attitudes when abortion is framed as a public policy question. Three dependent variables are investigated. These are the issues of public funding. when human life begins, and the Human Life Amendment. This study suggests that while religion and religiosity are still sources of division on abortion, significant political divisions also are present contributing to the difficulty the government has in resolving abortion policy issues. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Examines the rise of anti-affirmative action policy proposals. Relationship between the size of a states's minority population and the expression of anti-affirmative sentiment; Occurrence of gubernatorial orders to overturn affirmative action; Implications for the effectiveness of efforts to combat discrimination.