How to grow a public executive: The federal executive institute experience

The symbol of excellence for executive development and managerial education throughout the world is The Federal Executive Institute (FEI) in the United States. In fact, the FEI became the model laboratory for growing public executives in the 1970s, as hundreds upon hundreds of visitors from around the world came to see the ”mecca of applied executive development.“ The FEI became a distinct culture and a genuine learning community that others attempted to model throughout the world. And yet, the failure of the ”FEI imitations“ was due mainly to academics who failed to understand the need for a ”PRAXIS, pracademic model of development,“ rather than a ”theory, academic framework of education.“ Hence, an analysis of this noted executive development success may help others to avoid the pitfalls that academics too often encounter when they attempt to train, develop, and/or educate the public administrators who do the work.     

The freedom of information act and its costs: A brief overview

Adopted by Congress in 1966, the Freedom of Information Act was implemented by the Executlve Branch with little interest or commitment. In the aftermath or the declsive amendment of the statute in 1974, the departments and agencies set about reforming their administration of the Act and complying with its new requirements. Of late, however, this sltuatlon has eroded, partlcularly among law enforcement and intelligence entitles, and an attack is being made upon tne FOIA in terms of its administrative costs. This article examlnes these allegacions and the cost problems attendant to this law.     

Boko Haram: understanding the context

Boko Haram insurgency has caused the death and displacement of thousands of Nigerians. Its means of terror has evolved from the use of crude weapons to bombs, kidnappings and the use of children as suicide bombers. Its reach has expanded beyond Nigeria into neighbouring West African countries and it has pledged allegiance to Al-Qaida and Islamic State. To address this security concern, its cause should first be ascertained. This paper argues that to do this, Boko Haram should be located in northern Nigerian historical context/environment. This paper reviews economic greed and grievance, extreme religious ideology and political opportunity in historic insurgencies in northern Nigeria. It finds that while the interplay of different factors shaped these insurgencies; it was political opportunity that ignited their onsets. Finally, the article submits that as long as these factors remain the same, military quelling of Boko Haram will not prevent a re-emergence of its likes.     

Local government in post-communist poland: A study of federalism and executive authority in plock

This article examines the establishment of local government in post-communist Poland. Its purpose is to examine the realignment of central state and local government authority established through the Polish National Assembly's (Sejm) 1990 reforms and to provide an assessment of developing local government autonomy and executive authority in the new city government structure.

The conceptual framework is comparative, using an American perspective to examine issues of local government autonomy and executive authority.     

Congress and executive branch budget reform: the house appropriations committee and zero-base pudgeting

Local police agencies are in a fiscal crisis prompted by inflation on one hand and citizen tax revolt on the other. However, there is opportunity inherent in the budget crunch. It provides local government and police administrators with unprecedent political leverage to cut budgets in a manner where highly productive programs are retained while the unproductive ones are deleted. To this end the essay discusses avenues, drawn from recent police scholarships, for using budgetary retrenchment as means for substantive police reform.     

A community under siege: exclusionary education policies and indigenous Santals* in the Bangladeshi context

Abstract

This article presents and analyses the voices and responses of the research participants about the impact of exclusionary formal and informal education policies imposed on the Santal community in Palashpur, Bangladesh (Palashpur is a pseudonym for the site of my research; it is also a metaphor for contested space where the colonial power and politics of the nation state exert domination and subordination). These policies are implemented through a state-led, centralised, monolingual and exclusionary curriculum in local primary and secondary schools, schools run by the churches, and schools supported by nongovernmental organisations. The education policies in Bangladesh bear the legacy of the combined forces of cultural homogenisation and social exclusion rooted in the colonial learning structure and its objectives. Embedded in these policies are elements of the civilising mission, an ultra-religious assimilative but exclusionary nationalistic agenda, and Western values of modernity and development. In this rural context, these alien ideologies and practices in education are actively engaged in eliminating local institutions, the knowledge system of indigenous peoples, the texture of their lives, their joy of living, their spirituality and their sense of being. This article reveals how, imposed from above, education policy and practices have dispersed an indigenous community to negotiate a life that goes against the interests of the community itself and its members.     

The functions of the executive and the republic: Exploring the platonic roots of chester barnard

This essay examines the similarities between Plato's Republic and Barnard's Functions of the Executive.The essay argues that comparisons between Barnard and Plato are not overstated in form or substance. Three major areas of each work are compared: the ethical foundations, the political foundations, and the role of education in achieving those political means. Implications arising from the comparison are discussed and the essay concludes by linking the Barnard-Plato dialogue with current issues in management theory and practice.     

Duopoly,court politics and the Danish core executive

This article applies the ideas of the core executive and court politics to Danish coalition and minority governments. It asks two questions. Do these ideas travel beyond their Westminster origins? What are the dilemmas confronting the Danish executive and its court politics? The analysis is based on documentary sources and 22 elite interviews with cabinet ministers and permanent secretaries. It identifies a duopoly of Prime Minister and Minister of Finance as a distinctive variety of court politics. It identifies the key dilemmas confronted by the Danish executive; namely trust, political support and politicization. It concludes that court politics provides unique insights into the workings of Danish government. The article is a contribution to the comparative analysis of the court politics of governing elites. It shows that the focus on court politics is not only useful for majoritarian Westminster systems but also for the analysis of consensual parliamentary democracies.     

Public administration and policymaking: The political/career executive environment

Federal government policymaking is improved by the partici-pation of career executives. As a minimum, contributions based on their professional expertise and institutional experience can serve as an early warning system for helping political executives to avoid mistakes in new policy ventures. However, a number of political, structural, and attitudinal factors cause the political/career executive relationship environment to be characteristically stressful, tense, and frequently not conducive to joint involvement in policymaking. Historic factors producing this environment include basic constitutional and democratic values regarding the exercise of unitary power, the ambiguous roles of political and career executives, the controversial executive workforce structure, and the differing orientations of career and non-career executives. More recent obstacles to developing a cooperative state of political/career relations consist of the rise of the administrative presidency accompanied by bureaucrat-bashing, an increased politicization of management, and the trend toward ideological administration. What has been termed the “quiet crisis” in public service has led to calls for change in presidential rhetoric, development of orientation and communication opportunities in the political/career relationship, and proposals of structural alternatives to the present executive workforce system established in 1978. The Bush administration has implemented several measures leading to a renewed recognition of the benefits to policymaking output of career executive involvement.     

Inside and outside executive development: Forces for and against organizational success

This article addresses the question of whether executive development makes a difference in executives and executive behavior. The conceptional approach utilized examines executive development from an internal as well as an external perspective. Central to the argument are the differences, difficulties, and realities which must be addressed by executive development experts in order for such techniques as organization development to be successfully applied and implemented.     

A game-theoretic model for protest in the context of post-communism

In recent years, large-scale protests have forced several incumbent governments in former Soviet countries from power. Scholarly examinations of these events have lacked a cohesive explanation of the reasons for the success of certain movements and the failure of others. This study uses prior research on the dynamics of protest to formulate a game-theoretic model for why protest takes place and how its eventual outcome comes about. The model is tested through logistic regression analyses of monthly protest data. The statistical analysis shows that elections, prior protests and government transgressions increase the likelihood of anti-government protests.     

Democracy,development and the executive presidency in Sri Lanka

This paper examines the developmental causes and consequences of the shift from a parliamentary to a semi-presidential system in Sri Lanka in 1978, examining its provenance, rationale and unfolding trajectory. Drawing on a wide range of sources, it sets out an argument that the executive presidency was born out of an elite impulse to create a more stable, centralised political structure to resist the welfarist electoral pressures that had taken hold in the post-independence period, and to pursue a market-driven model of economic growth. This strategy succeeded in its early years, 1978–93, when presidents retained legislative control, maintained a strong personal commitment to market reforms and cultivated alternative sources of legitimacy. In the absence of these factors, the presidency slipped into crisis from 1994–2004 as resistance to elite-led projects of state reform mounted and as the president lost control of the legislature. Between 2005–14, the presidency regained its power, but at the cost of abandoning its original rationale and function as a means to recalibrate the elite–mass power relationship to facilitate elite-led reform agendas.     

Population growth and development in the third world: The neocolonial context

Less developed countries (LDCs) that were colonies of other nations continued operating under the same social and political structures set up by the former ruling nations. The small minority of elites in the LDCs held on to the power acquired during colonial times. In order to preserve their political and financial status after independence, they maintained their close linkages to the capitalist nations and their multinational corporations (MNCs). The elites did not generally have popular support, however. These capitalist nations and their commercial interests continue to dictate most LDCs development process which supports the financial interests of the MNCs and the local elites and not those of the majority, the poor. The poor realize that they are trapped and unable to break away from the economic and political structures, therefore, to assure some form of security, they have many children which exacerbates their poverty. Yet population control policies based on Malthusian theory and those that rely on such undimensional, technical approaches as family planning alone cannot cure the multidimensional social problems of high population growth and poverty. Neither the Malthusian nor Marxist theories totally explain the situation in the LDCs or even provide workable solutions. Research on population and development in LDCs needs to address both the Malthusian concern for the problems posed by high growth rates and the Marxist critique of class struggle in development trends. To eliminate the trap of poverty and dependent economies, each country must design its own remedies based on its history, culture, and geography and alter the prevailing social, economic, and political power structures in favor of the poor. 6 propositions that must be modified to each nation's particular problems and needs are presented to guide LDCs in formulating or reformulating policies to alleviate the problems of population and poverty.     

North Korean leadership: Kim Jong Il's balancing act in the ruling circle

The unexpected durability of North Korea, the world's last unreformed Stalinist polity, is attributable to Kim Jong Il's prudent balancing act between political forces. His balancing act, which is embodied in inclusive politics, honour-power sharing arrangements, and divide-and-rule tactics, has turned out to be effective in clearing away potential cleavages built into the ruling circle and thus in concluding the prolonged succession plan. As long as the balancing act continues to work, the dynasty, albeit defective, could survive in adversity for a longer period than expected. However, once the delicate balance artificially designed by Kim Jong Il is broken down for any reason, Pyongyang's power circle will slip into a centrifugal spiral, followed by internecine power struggles and the collapse of the regime.