Size and growth in federal executive agencies

Concepts of size and growth have presented a number of problems to organization theorists in a variety of disciplines. Of primary concern is the method by which such concepts are operationalized. Utilizing personnel and budgetary data from a sample of seventy-three federal executive agencies, the effect of size on administrative hierarchy is examined. It is hypothesized that -- as agencies increase in size -- a larger proportion of this increase will be middle-grade and upper-grade Personnel. Coversely, the amount of personnel in lower-level positions will exhibit a decreasing rate of growth.

As a means of specifying the phenomenon of growth, the pattern of agency growth over a twenty-nine year span of time (1948-1976) is examined. The effect of appropriations growth on personnel growth is posited to operate in a positive manner.

Methods of analysis utilized include scatterplot analysis to provide a profile of federal executive agencies. Correlation and simple regression analysis serve as tests of the primary hypotheses.     

印度人民党沉浮的警示

2004年5月13日是印度近代政党政治生活中的一个转折点.普遍被人看好的印度人民党(简称印人党)在印度第十四届人民院大选中意外出局,连续执政六年之久的瓦杰帕伊政府黯然下台.这一变故使印度国内无数观察家大跌眼镜,也引起了国际社会的普遍关注.印人党为什么会在如日中天的时候失去政权?这在过去的500天里一直是一个热门话题.     

Disarmament,demobilisation and reintegration of former combatants in Afghanistan: Lessons learned from a cross-cultural perspective

Experience shows that there is a close interrelationship between the successful disarmament, demobilisation and reintegration (DDR) of former combatants and the sustainability of peace-building processes. While drawing on lessons learned from recent DDR experiences elsewhere, this paper takes into account the contextual differences of Afghanistan. It explores the context of a future Afghan DDR process under three main subheadings: the need for reviewing the sequencing of the DDR process, the dilemma of whether former combatants should be given preferential treatment, and planning and co-ordination challenges for linking DDR with the overall peace-building process.     

Reportlng of performance measures for federal agencies: the initial impact of the chief financial officer act of 1990

The Chief Financial Officer Act of 1990 requires the preparation and audit of financial statements for many federal government programs and agencies. The first comprehensive set of financial statements prepared to meet the provisions of the CFO Act were for the fiscal year ended September 30, 1991 and were published in CFO Annual Reports due in August of 1992. This paper presents the results of a study of performance measurement in the fiscal year 1991 financial statements of the sixty-three reporting entities filed as part of the 1992 CFO Annual Reports. The purpose of the analysis of performance measures included in the fiscal year 1991 financial statements was to determine to what extent the financial statements of each of the reporting entities included the various types of performance measures identified in the framework developed for this project. The paper also includes an in-depth analysis of the performance measures reprted by the Social Security Administration and the Department of Labor.     

Computer simulation of humanitarian scenarios: tools for training and field management in relief agencies

Computer simulation, a technology well advanced in military strategies and tactics, has been used for response to natural disasters. The authors argue that it should also be applied to the field of humanitarian action in armed conflict. Projected uses are: the management and planning of relief actions, public resource mobilization for humanitarian actions, and training personnel for violent work environments. How that can happen is shown with the example of a real relief management problem in the Sudan.

Simulation can be introduced in ways that are compatible with agencies’ needs, communication styles, and staff abilities. Several factors speak for it: many agencies routinely use computer applications that are flexible enough for simulation to be added seamlessly. Simulation will help agencies to add the power of analysis to the images that prompt humanitarian actions. And with violence and chaos continuing, simulation offers a technique around which to share expertise and training in new, networked partnerships.     

Lessons for the West from Asian Capitalism

As the global financial crisis emanating from the United States shuts down world markets, can globalization survive? Will the resurgent intrusion of the state—and thus politics—into the market lead to protectionism and collapse, as was the case in the early 20th century? Or will the new interconnectivity of climate change and mutual economic dependence—especially between China and the US—deepen global links? The former mayor of Shanghai, legendary Nobel economist Paul Samuelson and Third Way guru Anthony Giddens ponder those questions in this section.     

新兴大国崛起的经验教训

迄今为止,中国学术界围绕大国崛起这一主题分别在20世纪80年代末90年代初、20世纪90年代初中期和2006年后进行过三次较为集中的讨论.实际上,当今时代中国的复兴和快速发展已经成为举世瞩目的事实,如何看待历史上主要大国的兴衰历程,如何吸取新兴大国崛起的经验和教训并从中得到有益的借鉴,已成为中国当前十分重大的战略问题.     

Strategic Change in Terrorist Movements: Lessons from Hamas

Existing literature is weak in explaining strategic change among terrorist movements, especially regarding the question of why these organizations often switch between contesting the external enemy, usually the government or the occupying power, and the internal arena in which they compete against fellow rebel groups. A rebel force facing diminishing returns from a formerly successful tactic with no equally effective tactical substitute in sight is likely to switch from conflict against a government to achieve dominance in the rebel camp. The terrorist movement will switch from the external to the internal arena even if such substitution compromises the overall goals of the rebel camp. The following article explores these dynamics in Hamas's strategy in the latest round of conflict between the movement and Israel.     

西班牙房地产"泡沫"的启示

2005年西班牙经济增长率达到3.4%,是低迷的欧盟平均水平的2倍,且连续10年保持稳定增长势头,使西在欧元区一枝独秀,其国内生产总值已达欧盟平均水平的92%,从一个西欧末流国家跃居世界排名第8位.     

Behavioural Development Economics: Lessons from Field Labs in the Developing World

Explanations of poverty, growth and development depend on the assumptions made about individual preferences and the willingness to engage in strategic behaviour. Economic experiments, especially those conducted in the field, have begun to paint a picture of economic agents in developing communities that is at variance with the traditional portrait. We review this growing literature with an eye towards preference-related experiments conducted in the field. We also offer lessons on what development economists might learn from experiments. We conclude by sharing our thoughts on how to conduct experiments in the field and then offer a few ideas for future research.     

Organization structure and the effectiveness of public agencies

There is little consensus about the impact of various organization structures on organization effectiveness. The most notable characteristic of empirical research on the purposes of this assessment is to develop some under-standing of the reasons structure/effectiveness research continues to disappoint. The more important barriers to research progress include: (1) a continued reliance on “blackbox empiricism;” (2) underspecified models ; (3) measurement discontinuities ; (4) sampling complexities; (5) conceptual problems pertaining to aggregation; and (6) basic methodological and statistical errors. In addition to reviewing these problems, this study presents a propositional inventory of structure/effectiveness research and assesses the evidence that has accumulated. Special attention is given to problems involved in the application of findings in a public sector setting. Finally, it is argued that a current primitive state-of-the-art is such that the best approach to applied structure/effectiveness research is to temporarily suspend concern about external validity and concentrate on rigorous logitudinal analyses of single organizations.     

Naturalizing Racism in the Center of Athens in May 2011: Lessons from Greece

In Greece, the neo-Nazi party Golden Dawn entered parliament in 2012 after receiving 7% of the national vote; at the same time, anti-migrant rhetoric and racist violence was transformed into an everyday phenomenon, tolerated by the authorities, and mainstreamed in official political and media discourse. Departing from a series of racist attacks in the center of Athens (May 2011), this article examines how far-right ideology became normalized in terms of public discourse. Speaking on behalf of the “average citizen” and against the political establishment, the actors interviewed feel free to castigate immigration and naturalize racism.     

坚持社会主义:苏联的教训和中国的经验

过去十年来社会主义经济改革的记录,并不能令社会主义者感到鼓舞.苏联为革新社会主义而宣布的改革计划,反而导致废除社会主义的各项制度,以资本主义取而代之.中国领导人为改革社会主义而采取的十分不同的战略使经济快速增长,但过去十年来中国的发展方式越来越像是向资本主义的过渡.承诺的中国特色社会主义日益显现出资本主义倾向.     

Surprises and secrets: Lessons from the 1990 Nicaraguan election

This article analyzes one of the first surveys of Nicaraguan electoral opinion prior to the 1990 election in which Daniel Ortega was defeated by Violeta Chamorro. Although this survey, like many others, predicted an Ortega victory, the analysis reveals that the impending FSLN loss was in fact evident had this survey and others been scrutinized more carefully. Moreover, the nature of both FSLN and Chamorro support departs from the traditional division of political loyalties in Nicaragua and shows surprising similarities with electoral trends in more advanced, industrial democracies. The essay suggests that in tense political situations, such as preelectoral Nicaragua, particular survey problems may arise and special tactics may be necessary, including earlier rather than later opinion polls. Leslie Anderson is assistant professor of political science at the University of Colorado. Her interests include peasant studies, subordinate protest, motives to and forms of protest, and democratization. Recent publications include essays on the moral and noneconomic motivations to protest and revolution and a study of cooptation among popular organizations. A forthcoming book proposes a new theory of peasant political action—the political ecology of the peasant—that combines and moves beyond rational actor and moral economy arguments in explaining political action. Anderson’s more recent interests are reflected in several publications on democratic development in newly democratic societies. She is researching a book on the contribution of subordinate protest to the process of democratic development.     

The Militarization of Urban Marginality: Lessons from the Brazilian Metropolis

This article examines the workings and effects of the penalization of poverty in urban Brazil at century's turn to uncover the deep logic of punitive containment as state strategy for the management of dispossessed and dishonored populations in the polarizing city in the age of triumphant neoliberalism. It shows how ramifying criminal violence (fed by extreme inequality and mass poverty), class and color discrimination in judicial processing, unchecked police brutality, and the catastrophic condition and chaotic operation of the carceral system combine to make the aggressive deployment of the penal apparatus in Brazil a surefire recipe for further disorder and disrespect for the law at the bottom of the urban hierarchy and steers the country into an institutional impasse. The policy of punitive containment pursued by political elites as a complement to the deregulation of the economy in the 1990s leads from the penalization to the militarization of urban marginality, under which residents of the declining favelas are treated as virtual enemies of the nation, tenuous trust in public institutions is undermined, and the spiral of violence accelerated. Brazil thus serves as a historical revelator of the full consequences of the penal disposal of the human detritus of a society swamped by social and physical insecurity. Drawing parallels between penal activity in the Brazilian and the U.S. metropolis further reveals that the neighborhoods of urban relegation wherein the marginal and stigmatized fractions of the postindustrial working class concentrate are the prime targets and proving ground upon which the neoliberal penal state is concretely being assembled, tried, and tested. Their study is therefore of urgent interest to analysts of international politics and state power at the dawn of the twenty-first century.     

Web-based Survey Research: Lessons from the University of Akron Study

Survey research via the World Wide Web (WWW) has sparked an enormous interest in the social sciences. Because the WWW has the ability to reach millions of users worldwide, it is no surprise that researchers are interested in using the web to conduct surveys. This paper describes one such experience, a case study that shares our experiences using the 2Way application to administer a web-based survey, and discusses the implications of using the Internet for theory, research, and practice.     

Socioeconomic impacts of the proposed federal gaming tax

We review the history of gaming and its taxation in the U.S., particularly in regard to the idea of “sin taxes” which were often presented as policy instruments intended to control problem gamblers. The review suggests that raising taxes neither encourages moderation nor replaces negative external costs. We follow the review with a socioeconomic impact analysis of a proposed four percent Federal Gaming Tax by simulating its impact on Clark County, Nevada for the period 1995-2004 using a large scale econometric multi-regional model. Clark County is of interest because it is where Las Vegas is located. The analysis reveals that the proposed tax would lead to a measurable decline in Clark County's jobs, population, disposable income, and total industrial during the forecast period. By 2004, total industrial output would be 1.3 percent lower under the proposed tax and Clark County would experience a loss of $1.39 in real disposable income for every gaming tax dollar collected by Federal Government. These reductions, coupled particularly with the loss of thousands of jobs in Las Vegas area hotels/casinos predicted by the analysis suggest that increased demands on social services in Clark County would result. These findings, together with the lack of evidence that raising taxes would promote moderation or reduce external negative costs, lead us to argue that excise taxes represent an unattractive option.