State university boards of trustees: A principal-agent perspective

This paper extends the economic theory of organizations by examining the structure of boards of trustees in public university settings. A major implication of the analysis is that the structure of the board of trustees reflects the costs to politicians of allowing internal agent shirking. Empirical evidence supports this hypothesis and indicates that a system method of governing versus individual board governance of universities is linked to the influence of educators in the political process.     

大学生就业心理问题及对策探析

大学生就业心理问题的提出是和社会经济、教育、用人制度等社会变革紧密相关联的。大学生就业心理问题主要表现有就业恐惧、畏难自卑、攀比嫉妒、盲从和宿命等心理。大学生顺利就业必须摆正就业观,树立正确就业认知,提高自己的职业技能、人际交往和挫折能力。     

新形势下高校校园文化的内涵、问题及对策

十七届六中全会以"文化"作为会议的主题,提出"文化兴国"战略,坚持中国特色社会主义文化发展道路,主张弘扬发展社会主义先进文化,促进文化的大发展大繁荣,努力建设社会主义文化强国。高等院校校园文化是社会主义先进文化的重要组成部分,加强校园文化建设对于推动高等教育改革发展、加强和改进大学生思想政治教育、全面提高大学生综合素质以及增强国家软实力和建设社会主义文化强国具有十分重要的现实意义。以党的十七届六中全会精神为指导,来分析高校校园文化的内涵、问题以及对策,以其寻求校园文化建设的新思路与新方法,开创校园文化建设工作的新局面具有十分重要的意义。     

The university and approaches to problems of state and local governments

There is a growing interest within universities in the operation of state and local governments, and in the services they provide. An example of this interest is the Program for Urban and Policy Sciences (UPS) at the State University of New York at Stony Brook.Since its inception two years ago, it has been the operating policy of the Program to direct its principal research activities to real and immediate problems facing state and local governments in the New York area. In each of the collaborative efforts undertaken with an outside agency, we have seen our role as that of both problem analysts and catalytic agents for bringing about change. This means our faculty and students actively participate in the policy formulation and policy implementation processes. A case study of a cooperative effort undertaken with the Environmental Protection Administration of New York City illustrates these ideas.We believe that a successful university program should combine research with real world experience; the university should encourage the faculty to broaden the scope of their activities; and students, particularly those from minorities, should be trained for professional careers as planning and program analysts.Work reported in this paper has been supported by the National Science Foundation under grant GI-5. A similar version of the paper was presented at the American Political Science Association Conference, September 6–11, 1971, Chicago, Illinois and at the ORSA Conference, October 28, 1971, Anaheim, California.     

Power,agency and structure: An examination of Steven Lukes

The dynamic between violence and politics in the American South during the Civil Rights Movement is analyzed, focusing on the relationship between racist terror and the state. The study explores how blacks in the rural South tried to defend themselves before civil rights, when white supremacists dominated local government and federal authorities ignored lynch murders. The article traces the development of Martin Luther King, Jr.'s nonviolent resistance strategy, and the long struggle to force the state to combat racist violence, one of the Civil Rights Movement's most significant achievements.     

Reforms, lobbies and welfare: A common agency approach

Citizens with heterogeneous tastes delegate to policy makers the authority to choose public policies. They may try to influence legislators in various ways. In this paper we assume that monetary lobbying and direct threats are the only instruments private individuals can use to influence the legislator. We model the relationship between the citizens and a single policy maker as a common agency game. Lobbies offer a policy and a payment according to a truthful contribution schedule, and the government takes the policy decision. In the truthful equilibrium, the government implements the social surplus maximizing policy. Introducing also direct threats, we find that, as far as both groups have an instrument to influence the legislator, the efficiency result is robust. We also show that when the lobby groups have asymmetric interests and political power, not all groups necessarily participate in the auction. In particular it turns out that one-lobby or non-lobby equilibria may arise, and those equilibria are also efficient.     

The agency role of the physician in Ireland,Britain, and the USA

The USA and Britain have medical care delivery and financing systems which are polar opposites. The Irish system incorporates important features of both. Using original household survey data of medical care utilization in Ireland, and published data and studies of the USA and Britain, the effect of the incentive structures in the three systems on physician behavior, especially on the so-called agency role, is examined. We conclude that the incentive structure is of the utmost importance to policy makers concerned with health costs and economic rationality of medical care systems.     

Official apologies,reconciliation, and settler colonialism: Australian indigenous alterity and political agency

The burgeoning literature on transitional justice, truth commissions, reconciliation and official apologies tends to ignore the conditions of settler states in which ‘reconciliation’ needs to take account of indigenous minorities. The settler colonialism literature is worth including in the general discussion because it is exceptionally reflective about political theory (the constitutional recognition of indigenous rights) and ethnogenesis (the origin and viability of both settler and indigenous identities), challenging mainstream liberalism, in particular, to account for difference beyond platitudes about multiculturalism. This article highlights the postcolonial critiques of the Australian governments' apology to the indigenous peoples of the country. The authors of these critiques seek to protect indigenous alterity from the Australian state, which they regard as irredeemably colonialist, especially in its liberal and progressive mode. The article suggests that Indigenous political agency transcends the resistance/co-option dichotomy presented in much of the apology's commentary.     

Administrative reorganization as a signal: Bounded rationality,agency merger,and salience of policy issues

Although administrative reorganization has been a major political instrument in many democracies, there has been limited research on its effects. Aiming to address this gap, this study examines the reorganization of Korean government ministries, specifically, the impact of reorganization in the form of a merger of ministries performing interrelated but dissimilar functions. Examining the salience of policy issues expressed in official government press releases during the 12‐year period from 2001 to 2012, we found that administrative reorganization in the form of a merger has a significant impact on the relative salience of government policy agendas. Specifically, the interrupted time series estimates indicate that the salience of science and technology policy issues (in relation to education policy issues) decreased by approximately 12% to 17% following the dissolution of the Ministry of Science and Technology. We explain this finding based on the bounded rationality view of bureaucratic information processing.     

The congressional foundations of agency performance

When Congress delegates a policy mandate to a regulatory agency, Congress acts as a principal, choosing the institutional arrangements, or the ‘rules of the game’ for agency decision making. Individuals in the agency, acting as agents, take the rules of the game as given and do the best they can within these institutional arrangements. In this paper we develop a simple model that relates the congressional choice of institutional arrangements to two underlying environmental factors — uncertainty and conflict. We suggest that uncertainty and conflict of interest lead Congress, in delegating, to prescribe a greater scope of permissable regulatory activity, a wider array of regulatory instruments, and more confining regulatory procedures. Increased scope and stronger instruments tend to broaden the overall discretionary authority of the agency, while more confining procedures tend to narrow it. We conjecture that with increased uncertainty or conflict the narrowing tendency more than offsets the broadening tendency, for a net decrease in the agency's overall discretionary authority. Lastly, we argue that the performance of a regulatory agency in fulfilling its mandate is determined in large measure by the foundations Congress constructs for the implementation of delegated authority.     

Designing policy for the long term: agency,policy feedback and policy change

Policy Sciences - Policy feedback research faces a potential pivot point owing to recent theoretical and substantive advances. Concerted attention now spans new scientific communities, such as...