UNEXPECTED ADVANTAGES OF LESS ACCURATE PERFORMANCE MEASUREMENTS. HOW SIMPLE PRESCRIPTION DATA WORKS IN A COMPLEX SETTING REGARDING THE USE OF MEDICATIONS

In this paper we argue that performance measurement can be done better by general, less accurate measurements than by complex – and possible more accurate – ones. The conclusions of this study are drawn from a case study of the Dutch Foundation for Effective Use of Medication. While most studies about performance measurements focus on the management of public service organizations, this case study – informed by the literature from Science and Technology Studies – focuses on the active role of the measurements themselves. In the paper we show that indicators do not have to be as complex as the practices they represent – as long as they are part of a chain of intermediary data that allow travelling from the general or simple indicators to detailed data in day‐to‐day practices and vice versa. Furthermore, general indicators enable stakeholders to obtain distance from each other. Rather than the involvement of stakeholders, it is this reflexive distancing that explains the degree of compliance to performance measurement and thereby the prospect for effective co‐governance.     

RESPONSES TO MANAGERIALISM: HOW MANAGEMENT PRESSURES AFFECT MANAGERIAL RELATIONS AND LOYALTIES IN EDUCATION

Management pressures in fields like education force managers to control professionals. This generates friction. Professionals will not easily comply with control objectives; they feel responsible for clients and quality. Researchers have studied how professionals are affected and how they resist managerial interference. How managers themselves are affected by managerialism, whether they adopt control logics and are ‘driven away’ from work floors, is hardly studied. This paper studies how school managers relate to managerialism and whether they are primarily loyal to managerial agendas, or to professional workers and clients. On the basis of a qualitative study, we conclude that school managers are important mediators of managerialism. They feel loyal to performance pressures, but also to teachers and pupils. How they act in specific situations depends on how they deal with this friction within managerial work.     

The Relationship Between Confidence and Accuracy in Clinical Assessment of Psychiatric Patients' Potential for Violence

The authors studied the relationship between confidence and accuracy in clinical assessments of psychiatric patients' short-term risk of violence. At the time of entry to the hospital, physicians (N = 78) estimated the probability that each of 317 patients would physically attack other people during the first week of psychiatric hospitalization. The clinicians also indicated the degree of confidence they had in their estimates of violence potential. Nurses rated the occurrence of inpatient physical assaults with the Overt Aggression Scale. The results showed that when clinicians had a high degree of confidence, their evaluations of risk of violence were strongly associated with whether or not patients became violent. At moderate levels of confidence, clinicians' risk estimates had a lower, but still substantial relationship with the later occurrence of violence. However, when clinicians had low confidence, their assessments of potential for violence had little relationship to whether or not the patients became violent. The findings suggest that the level of confidence that clinicians have in their evaluations is an important moderator of the predictive validity of their assessments of patients' potential for violence.     

The Making of the (Issues of the) Vlaams Blok

In Flanders, the Dutch-speaking part of Belgium, one of the strongest extreme right parties of Europe thrives: the Vlaams Blok (the Flemish Bloc). The basic question of this article is straightforward: Do the Flemish media contribute to the success of the Vlaams Blok by emphasizing the themes of the party? The theoretical argument is twofold: agenda setting by the media and issue ownership by parties. The issues the Vlaams Blok owns are determined using two sources: its electoral manifestoes and its electorate's motivations to vote for the party. This leads to four issues: Flemish nationalism, immigrant topics, antipolitics issues, and crime-related themes. Using a vast media data set covering three newspapers and two TV stations and stretching over 10 years (1991-2000), we examine to what extent these issues were covered. The analysis shows that especially immigrant topics and crime receive extensive and growing media attention, and time series analysis shows that this rise parallels the electoral growth of the Vlaams Blok. The media could be considered co-responsible for the Vlaams Blok's upsurge.     

Measuring and Promoting Budget Transparency: The Open Budget Index as a Research and Advocacy Tool

Transparency in public budgeting has been a recognized principle of sound governance for a long time. Yet, reliable measures of budget transparency are hard to come by. This article introduces the Open Budget Index (OBI), a new tool based on surveys by independent researchers that compares key budget information published by governments across the world. Data from the latest survey, published in 2010 and covering 94 countries, reveal that on average, the state of budget transparency around the world is poor. Countries with lower incomes, weaker democratic institutions, and higher dependency on foreign aid and hydrocarbon sales tend to be less transparent. However, a number of countries have improved the quantity and coverage of the budget information that they publish, in some cases following civil society pressure based on OBI findings. More generally, OBI data help identify easy steps that governments and other actors could take to further improve budget transparency.     

Silent Racism and Intellectual Superiority in Peru

Abstract — Historically, racism as it is understood in South Africa or in parts of the Southern United States has not existed in Peru. The absence or at least the existence to a lesser degree of this type of tension grants us a superiority over our northern neighbours. In Peru, emancipation of slaves was relatively easy. This is not to say that there do not exist prejudices against Indians, cholos , and blacks, however these prejudices have not been sanctioned by the law and they have, more than a profound racial feeling, an economic, social and cultural character. Colour does not prevent an aborigine, mestizo , or Negroid from occupying high positions if they can accumulate wealth or achieve political success. Notwithstanding these fortunate cases, there is an enormous distance between the pongos [serfs] of a highland hacienda … and those highly cultured and refined Limeños, who routinely travel to Europe. This distance is neither racial, nor based on place of origin, rather it corresponds to what can be termed an historical state of things (Jorge Basadre, 1964:4686).     

From Family Feud to Organised Crime: The Cultural Economy of Cannabis in Northeast Brazil

Abstract — Traditional family feuding and banditry as well as envy-inspired violence associated with capitalised irrigation have been intensified by the introduction of cannabis farming and organised crime in the Sertão of Northeast Brazil to the point that today the cannabis producing zone is one of the most violent places in the world. These three interrelated forms of contemporary violence arose, respectively, in the pre-1940 frontier setting, in the 1940 to 1980 period of rapid Brazilian industrialisation which depressed peasant sectors and stimulated the rise of capitalised irrigation and in the post-1980 period of economic stagnation and social-political crisis in Brazil which depressed consumer markets and induced the State to liberalise foreign trade policy to the detriment of periphery regions like the Northeast.     

Models of Municipal Budget Allocation: Empirical Data from Spanish Municipalities

The present work empirically analyzes diverse budgetary theories (incrementalism, garbage can, rational) in municipal cost programs, paying special attention to the utility of financial information in decision making. The sample analyzed corresponds to a set of Spanish city councils in the period 1996–2004, and the econometric methodology used is a dynamic panel data model. The main conclusion reached is that the budgetary allocation of municipal costs does not follow a random path; incrementalism is of particular importance, together with financial information variables. The utility of budgetary indicators is reflected in the fact that municipal managers adopt rational elements, although incrementalism remains the habitual behavior.