Testing times: Exploring staged responses and the impact of blame management strategies in two examination fiasco cases

This article examines the responses of ministers facing high levels of blame in the press after serious failures in the public exam system for school-leavers in Scotland in 2000 and England in 2002. It develops a method for systematic analysis and comparison of the behaviour of officeholders facing blame, tests the hypothesis that ministers will accept personal culpability only after other ways of handling blame have been exhausted and uses time series intervention models to show how one can estimate the impact of strategies on the next day's blame level. The basic sequencing hypothesis is partially upheld by the observed behaviour in these cases, though many other kinds of blame responses do not display a clear sequence. The intervention analysis also raises questions about the claimed effectiveness of presentational strategies for managing blame.     

Government‐wide Financial Statements and Credit Risk

Now that state governments issue comprehensive annual financial reports in accordance with Statement No. 34 of the Governmental Accounting Standards Board, it is possible to generate a consistent and comprehensive set of government‐wide financial information. We use the information to develop financial ratios to benchmark government financial performance from information beyond the traditional general fund, and test the hypothesis that such information is incorporated into the assessment of credit risk. We provide an empirical analysis of the incorporation of government‐wide financial information into state government credit ratings, which provides a positive empirical test of the theory of certification and demonstrates how information from the government‐wide financial statements is infused into financial markets.     

Making a Good Impression: Resource Allocation,Home Styles,and Washington Work

Members of Congress engage in a variety of representational activities, but existing research suggests that the effect of these activities on reelection margins is mixed. Reframing the question, we examined whether or not constituents notice the home styles of members and members' efforts to communicate their activities through the allocation of official resources. Combining new data on members' office expenditures with data from the American National Election Studies, we found evidence that constituents perceive the representational activities of their members in a meaningful fashion. Franking, office expenditures, and travel back home to the district provide positive benefits to incumbents, shaping how constituents view these members and their activities.     

The Century of Biology

If the 20th Century was the century of physics, the 21st Century is the century of cybernetics, biology and ecology. Technological advance has both crossed new frontiers and discovered old limits. Nobel laureate Ilya Prigogine broke new ground with his understanding that nature, including its human component, seeks to establish order out of chaos by “self‐organizing,” not only according to pre‐determined laws, but through random creative choices as well that are responsible for the endless novelty and potentiality of being. The technologically‐armed purposive role of humans in the Anthropocentric Age thus takes on a new significance: “What we do today depends on our image of the future rather than the future depending on what we do today” as Prigogine puts it. “The equations of the future are written in our actions as well as in nature. Time becomes construction.” Nowhere is this truer than in the new science of genomics, which touches the soul, and in the effort to preserve the ecological balance that has enabled humanity to flourish within the narrow band of earth's livable climate. In this section we bring together leading thinkers, scientists and technologists of our age to address these issues of mankind's fate.