Managerial Responsibility

The concept of managerial responsibility is a shining thread in the literature of public administration, but its definition within our constitutional scheme remains elusive. How will we know responsible public management when we see it? We propose one answer: Public administration should be conducted according to what we term a “precept of managerial responsibility,” which involves four interrelated elements derived from the classical literature of public administration: judgment, accountability, balance, and rationality. We apply this precept to one of the most vexing problems of public administration theory and practice, institutional reform litigation. This application illustrates how the precept solves a major theoretical problem of American public administration by defining a role for administrative officers that fully comports with the Madisonian scheme of separated institutions—legislative, executive, and judicial—sharing power.     

Ethnicity and Politics: Cohesion, Division and British Jews

Structural, cultural, psychological and materialist theories support the proposition that political cohesion and division in ethnic groups are a function of ethnic cohesion and division generally. The proposition is applied to British Jews, and data from the first nationally representative survey of British Jews are employed to test an empirical hypothesis linking strong manifestations of ethnicity to Conservative partisanship. Results from multinomial logistic regression analysis support the hypothesis, and transformations to probabilities demonstrate the strong effect of ethnic divisions on party divisions. Comparisons are drawn between British Jews and other British ethnic minorities, and between British and American Jews.     

Rejoinder to mead

As I understand him, Mead makes two arguments. First, he argues that relying on reasoning from general principles to answer practical questions of public management can be misguided if the policy analyst deliberately or inadvertently ignores available evidence. Of course he is right. As the purpose of the symposium was to invite public management scholars to use general principles to decide on the relative merits of mandatory and voluntary workfare, however, the authors, who are not experts in welfare reform, cannot be faulted for being unfamiliar with the evidence. It was their intellectual approaches to the problem that I sought to broach.     

Maturity of judgment in adolescence: Psychosocial factors in adolescent decision making

To date, analyses of differences between adolescents' and adults' judgment have emphasized age differences in cognitive factors presumed to affect decision making. In contrast, this article examines research and theory on threepsychosocial aspects of maturity of judgment: responsibility, temperance, and perspective. For several psychosocial dimensions of maturity that are likely to affect judgment, the existing pvidence, while indirect and imperfect, indicates that the greatest differences are found in comparisons between early adolescents versus middle and late adolescents. Developmental research on maturity that focuses specifically on mid-and late adolescence, that simultaneously examines both cognitive and noncognitive factors, and that investigates the relation between these factors and the ability to make good decisions is greatly needed.     

Justifying Public Provision of Social Security

The enormous expansion of the Social Security system over the last four decades has left the government very heavily involved in determining the savings and insurance of American households. While the growth of Social Security has been very substantial, it has also been gradual; this may explain the lack of focused debate on the pros and cons of government intervention in private saving and insurance decisions. This paper discusses the rationale for government intervention in this area as well as the evidence supporting the need for such intervention. While arguing the case for government provision of Social Security, the paper also points out significant shortcomings in the current system and suggests several needed reforms.     

Human rights is not enough: The need for demonstrating efficacy of an ethical approach to interviewing in India

Purpose. The present study compared attitudes about Human Rights (HR) and the advocation of coercive interviewing practices amongst Indian Police Officers, Offenders and a sample from the General Public. Method. 100 Police Officers, 50 Offenders and 50 members of the General Public completed a questionnaire that assessed their attitudes about the Human Rights of suspects and the use of coercion in suspect interviews. Results. Police Officers and the Public accepted both custodial violence and the use of intimidating interrogation strategies more readily than Offenders. They were also more prepared to suspend Suspects' Human Rights. Further, individuals who scored high on a coercive belief scale (CBS) were particularly inclined to favour custodial violence and suspend Human Rights. In addition, the self‐reported frequency with which Police Officers used intimidating and non‐intimidating interviewing techniques was related to their beliefs about Suspects' Human Rights and the extent to which they perceived intimidating interviewing methods to be useful. Conclusion. Attitudes about effective interviewing strategies may well be embedded within a broad social context. The effectiveness of a Human Rights Agenda requires that officers in India are informed of the effectiveness of ethical interviewing standards and the practical and legal dangers of using inappropriate methods.