Evolving countystate relations: From servant to partner?

The relationship between counties and states is central to county wellbeing. This article examines contemporary countystate relations within a framework of institutions and processes where the most critical interactions occur: state associations of counties, state legislatures, governors, state agencies and state high courts. Countystate relations are further described through perceptual data gathered in interviews with county association directors during the Summer of 1991.

County officials favorably view their relations with state legislatures but perceive their treatment to be more like that of special interest group rather than valued partner. Even so, the vast majority of state legislatures is granting new powers to counties, expanding old ones, or extending some kind of relief in fiscal matters. Gubernatorial relations are also viewed favorably, but perceptions of state agency relations vary according to type of agency and personnel. A majority of counties also indicates that state high courts have handed down rulings with significant impact on counties, mostly in funding matters. Courts seem to have broadened their traditionally restrictive view of local powers, partly because county officials have been more willing to challenge burdensome rulings aggressively.

Though states retain ultimate authority over county governments, counties have been whittling away at state supremacy and asserting themselves through a variety of strategies and institutional arrangements. The old subserviency model of countystate relations appears outdated. Actual legislative outcomes indicate that the relationship is moving toward that of valued partner, and both the fiscal crises of states and the growing trend of counties to deliver services regionally have created an opportunity for counties to propel such a shift. However, this positive development is tempered by the trend in states to mandate without funds, making illusory any real gains in powers.     

From Accountability to Decision-Making? Budgeting with Mandated Performance Measures

Government agencies in many nations, including local school districts in the United States, are under pressure to shift to an outcome-based approach to accountability. While the implications of such systems are widely debated, the use of performance measures within local school districts for budgetary decision-making has received relatively little attention. This study of school business officials finds that mandated performance measures, specifically standardized test scores, are important factors in budgetary decision-making but less influential than other factors. Variables that help explain the influence of mandated performance measures include district performance, socio-economic status, and the importance of community involvement in decision-making.     

The persistence of Neopopulism in Peru? From Fujimori to Toledo

This paper argues that Peru's Alejandro Toledo can be considered a neopopulist leader. Neopopulists seek to develop personalistic ties with the dispossessed, unorganised masses, while also appealing to international economic interests. By analysing Toledo's administration according to four categories—anti-political rhetoric and symbols, promises and policies, personalism, and mass support—I conclude that his strategy is largely, but not perfectly, consistent with neopopulism. Importantly, however, his strategy has failed to generate the all-important element of broad mass support. I further argue that Toledo faces three important contextual constraints: the absence of crisis, public weariness with neoliberalism and the reaction to Fujimori. These factors limit the prospects for successful neopopulist leadership in contemporary Peru. They also suggest that today's neopopulists in Latin America may require ever more nuance and creativity to mobilise support.     

From public action to public administration: where does it lead?

Minnowbrook I and Minnowbrook II differ in one important way. Minnowbrook I involved mostly scholars who came to the field primarily through formal academic training. Several of those who participated in Minnowbrook II are products of comrnunity-based applied revisions of so-called new public administration in the 1960s. Radin served as a union employee and then a staff member of the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights. Cooper worked as a minister at several inner-city churches. Both Radin and Cooper took their doctorates later in their careers, after extensive street level experience. From this perspective they focus on the unique political setting of public administration, on the field's publicness, on the salience of theories of change, on a process perspective, and on “soft” research methodologies.

Through much of its history, the field of public administration in the United States has been punctuated by figures who moved from the arena of action to opportunities for reflection, either through writing or teaching or both. A review of the literature of the field up to the 1960s provides strong evidence of this pattern and is particularly illustrated by two important eras of public administration—the municipal reform period and the post-New Deal period.⁽¹⁾ The decade of he 1960s was one of the few periods of the twentieth century in which action was not the predominant pathway to concern about administrative issues. In contrast to this earlier pattern, the generation of public administration academics in the 1960s focused on writing and teaching as a goal unto itself, rather than as a way of searching for the meaning of action in which one was previously engaged.

Indeed, the original group of participants in the Minnowbrook conference came to the field of public administration through formal academic training; their quest for values, relevancy, and meaning developed as they looked out of the windows of the academy to the turbulent society of which they were a part.⁽²⁾

While some were on the inside looking out during the 1960s, others were attempting to define meaning and relevancy within the world of action rather than the world of the academy. This paper is an attempt to explore the influence of that action experience on the public administration field. The authors of this paper spent the 1960s engaged in a part of the social action that spawned the “new” public administration movement.

We believe that our involvements in the 1960s led to the development of perspectives on public administration which are somewhat different from those of individuals who were primarily involved in academe during those turbulent times. This paper begins with a short autobiographical account which provides the personal context for our perspectives. It then contrasts our views with those of the Minnowbrook group and focuses on those elements that make up our perspective on the field.     

From Crisis to Opportunity:the Rise of a Global Middle Class?

<正>In a live webcast before this month’s National People’s Congress, Premier Wen predicted that while last year was the most difficult year for China’s economic development…this year will be the most complicated.     

From Vietnam to Kosovo: Is The Diet-Coke Generation Ready for the Real Thing?

If Vietnam was a proxy war with Soviet communism , Kosovo is a proxy war with the Holocaust . Kosovo tests all the hallowed rhetoric of the West about self -determination, multiethnic pluralism, the Universal Declaration of Human Rights and the rule of law . Failure in Kosovo would therefore be a failure of the very idea of the West . More than any other single event, the battle over Kosovo will thus define the West, and particularly Europe, at the turn of the century . That this is a war in Europe for Europe sets it apart from all the other tragedies globally, from Rwanda to Kashmir .     

Human Rights and Antiterrorism: A Positive Legal Duty to Infringe Freedom From Torture?

In law freedom from torture and ill-treatment is “absolute,” meaning that a state cannot infringe the right for purposes that would seem legitimate such as the protection of national security. However, with the growth in international terrorism, particularly suicide violence, should the freedom remain without limitation? This article considers legitimizing torture by reference to the “positive” legal obligation the right imposes on states to prevent harm to individuals by third parties such as terrorists. Assuming such a legal argument could be made out, it is questioned whether adopting such measures of interrogation would in fact outweigh the negative consequences that would inevitably follow from reversing accepted international standards for the protection of, say, detainees from ill-treatment in state custody.     

From internationalism to the European Union: An ideological change in the Polish post-communist party?

The Polish post-communist party Social Democracy of the Republic of Poland (Socjaldemokracja Rzeczypospolitej Polskiej, SDRP) which survived almost unchanged in the dynamic Polish political scene of the 1990s was one of the leading political parties after 1989. This paper will attempt to explain the ideological journey, which has been taken by the former high-ranking Polish United Workers' Party members after 1989. Their journey seems to start at the point of internationalism and socialism and ends in the victorious battle to join the European Union. Was this a simple modernized adjustment of the internationalist ideology or an opportunistic choice made in order to survive in the new political and social circumstances? Was choosing a pro-EU policy a choice or a necessity? This analysis will attempt to answer the above questions and describe this phenomenon of change or may be just an ideological continuity.     

What Is the Hidden Figure of Delinquency in Girls? Scaling Up From Police Charges to Self-Reports

Research on males shows discrepancies between official records and self-reports of delinquency, thus creating a scaling-up factor. Comparable information for girls is still needed. We investigated discrepancies (scaling up factors) from official records to self-reports in a large sample of girls between ages 12 and 17 (N = 2,450). On average there were three self-reported juvenile female offenders for every individual charged by the police, and for every police charge there were four offenses that were committed. The scaling-up factor was highest in early adolescence, indicating that female offenders at a young age were more likely to stay undetected by the police. The scaling-up factor was significantly lower for African American than white girls: a higher proportion of African American delinquent girls were charged by the police. Racial differences in scaling up were significant only for prevalence, not for frequency of offending. Knowledge about scaling-up factors is important for the design and implementation of intervention programs. We discuss racial differences, implications for justice administration, and practical implications for intervention science.     

Have We Gone From a Post‐War to a Pre‐War World?

In 1990, right after the Berlin Wall fell, NPQ published our Spring edition, titled “The New World Disorder,” about the nationalistic chaos and up‐in‐theair sensibility of that fraught new historical moment. Nearly a quarter of a century later, the regime of globalization that had supplanted the Cold War world of blocs is itself coming apart at the seams. Even Henry Kissinger these days says “the world order is crumbling.” Will this New World Disorder 2.0 revert to a system of conflicting blocs, as during the Cold War, or will we be mature enough to save the interdependence of plural identities that is the foundation of a new global civilization? In this section our contributors offer their perspectives on what the future holds.     

From nuclear imperialism to petro-democracy? Resource assemblages and the emergence of a new political configuration in Niger

The rentier state and resource curse concepts understand oil and uranium as fixed resources generating economic rents. In doing so, these theories largely ignore the social, economic, political and technological arrangements essential for a material substance like oil or uranium to become a resource. By comparing the diachronic and synchronic entanglements of the different socio-technical arrangements of oil and uranium in Niger, the assumption of the resource curse and rentier state theories, that resource revenues foster authoritarian tendencies, is revisited. Exploring the concept of resource assemblages, this article analyzes how political configurations are related to the process of resource exploitation. This perspective reveals that a new resource-political configuration in Niger has emerged since the beginning of oil production. Whereas Niger’s uranium-political configuration has long been characterized by a neocolonial discursive formation, the emerging petro-political configuration has produced a new resource nationalism in public opinion and governance which is transforming politics in Niger.