Have Cities Shifted to Outcome‐Oriented Performance Reporting?—A Content Analysis of City Budgets

“Outcome” orientation has been emphasized in performance measurement and reporting in recent years. Using budgetary documents of the largest cities in the United States, this paper analyzes more than 4,800 performance measures reported by 21 cities to show that clear progress toward outcome‐oriented performance measurement has been made. It also shows that the selection of performance measures differs among types of municipal services and is driven partly by professionalism in city management and the influence of professional organizations. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of the findings and potential future improvements of performance reporting.     

Political information processing: Question order and context effects

Data from two independent field experiments indicate that changes in question order and context may well account for an apparently precipitous decline of interest in politics at the time of the CPS 1978 American National Election Study. Evidence from a question order experiment with the SRC/CPS feeling thermometers also suggests that such contextual artifacts may not be atypical. Indeed, because of the many changes in the content and organization of the election studies over the years, context effects represent plausible rival hypotheses for a number of inexplicable shifts and trends in the time-series. In testing these hypotheses the authors derive and validate an information-processing model of how respondents infer their political states of mind from observations of their own question-answering behavior in the survey interview. In addition, the authors illustrate the wide applicability of the model tosubstantive problems in the discipline and its implications for the survey-based paradigm in political behavior research.     

Reviews

Hillel Ticktin, Origins of the Crisis in the USSR. Armonk, NY and London: M. E. Sharpe, 1992. ix + 192 pp., $45.00 h/b, $19.95 p/b. Walter D. Connor, The Accidental Proletariat: Workers, Politics, and Crisis in Gorbachev's Russia. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1991, xvi + 375 pp., £25.00. $39.50.

Archie Brown, ed., New Thinking in Soviet Politics. London: Macmillan, 1992, xii + 115 pp., £30.00 h/b, £9.99 p/b.

Vadim Bakatin, Osvobozhdenie ot illyuzii. Kemerovo: Kemerovskoe knizhnoe izdatel'stvo, 1992, 183 pp.

Robert T. Huber & Donald R. Kelley, eds., Perestroika‐Era Politics: The New Legislature and Gorbachev's Political Reforms. New York and London: M. E. Sharpe, 1991, viii + 246 pp., £39.95.

Gavin Peebles. A Short History of Socialist Money. London and Sydney: Allen and Unwin, 1991, xiii + 170 pp., £30.00 h/b, £11.95 p/b.

Vitalii A. Naishul’, The Supreme and Last Stage of Socialism, Centre for Research into Communist Economies, New Series 2, 1991, 48 pp., £3.50.

Anders Aslund, ed., Market Socialism or the Restoration of Capitalism? Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, x + 215 pp., $49.50, £30.00.

Anthony Jones & William Moskoff, Ko‐ops: The Rebirth of Entrepreneurship in the Soviet Union. Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press, 1991, xvii+ 153 pp., £20.00 h/b, £9.50 p/b.

Marshall I. Goldman, What Went Wrong with Perestroika. London: W. W. Norton & Company Ltd, 1991, 258 pp., £12.95.

Leah A. Haus, Globalizing Gatt: The Soviet Union's Successor States, Eastern European and the International Trading System. Washington, DC: The Brookings Institution, 1992, x + 141 pp., $38.95 h/b, $10.95 p/b.

Frederic J. Fleron, Jr., Erik P. Hoffman, Robbin F. Laird, eds, Soviet Foreign Policy: Classic and Contemporary Issues. New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1991, xviii + 857 pp., DM 178 h/b, DM 98 p/b. Also published as Frederic J. Fleron, Jr., Erik P. Hofmann, Robbin F. Laird, eds, Classic Issues in Soviet Foreign Policy: From Lenin to Brezhnev. New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1991, xvi + 349 pp., DM 48 p/b; and Frederic J. Fleron, Jr. Erik P. Hoffmann, Robbin F. Laird, eds, Contemporary Issues in Soviet Foreign Policy: From Brezhnev to Gorbachev. New York: Aldine de Gruyter, 1991, xviii+ 521 pp., DM 54 p/b.

Steven Kull, Burying Lenin. The Revolution in Soviet Ideology & Foreign Policy. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1992. xvi + 219 pp., £10.95 p/b.

Lowell Dittmer, Sino‐Soviet Normalisation and Its International Implications, 1945–1990. Seattle, WA, and London: University of Washington Press, 1992, vii + 373 pp., $35.00.

Haim Shemesh, Soviet‐Iraqi Relations, 1986–1988: In the Shadow of the Iraq‐Iran Conflict. London: Lynne Rienner Publisher, 1992, x + 285 pp., £31.95.

Larry E. Holmes, The Kremlin and the Schoolhouse: Reforming Education in Soviet Russia, 1917–1931. Bloomington and Indianapolis, IN: Indiana University Press (Distributed in UK by Open University Press), 1991, xv + 215 pp., £18.50.

Beatrice Farnsworth & Lynne Viola, eds, Russian Peasant Women, New York: Oxford University Press, 1992, 304 pp., £13.50 p/b.

George Sanford, ed. and transl., Democratization in Poland, 1988–90. London: Macmillan, 1992, xv + 203 pp., £40.00.

Tania Konn, ed., Soviet Studies Guide. London: Bowker‐Saur, 1992, xvi + 237 pp., £39.00 h/b.     

A Quiet Revolution or a Flashy Blip? The Real ID Act and U.S. National Identification System Reform

In 2005, Congress passed the Real ID Act despite decades of stalemate in reforming the U.S. national ID system. Using John Kingdon’s policy streams framework, the authors examine the development of reform ideas, the opening of a policy window and the shift in the national mood after the 9/11 attacks, and the legislative tactics by the George W. Bush administration that led to the passage of the act. The analysis illustrates the significance of policy entrepreneurship in national crises but also raises questions about the permanency of policy reforms and the ethical responsibilities of public administrators in such times.