Unintended consequences: Regulating the quality of subsidized day care

Advocates for the poor frequently support uniform, high federal standards for subsidized social services. While such standards may improve the quality of services for those who qualify, they can also have unintended but important side effects. Stringent regulations may actually curtail the supply of services, promote segregation, and expand the role of large subsidized for-profit firms. All these possibilities are illustrated by the history of federal regulation in subsidizing child day care. The federal government's retreat from regulation in 1980 and 1981 may have had results that—even if unintended—were in many ways salutary.     

PROGRAM EVALUATION AND ADMINISTRATIVE CONTROL

What is the role of program evaluation research in making and implementing social policy and how do program evaluators view the social programs they evaluate? This article discusses the findings of two closely related studies that examine these questions from the perspective of organization theory. These studies found that program evaluations rely on methods of research that do not correspond to the extent of uncertainty in social programs over goals and causal knowledge, and that most evaluations define organizational effectiveness solely in terms of goal achievement. In addition, of the various groups with a stake in the evaluation process, only federal and top program administrators influenced the implementation and interpretation of the studies. These findings, when taken together, suggest that program evaluation research acts more to augment administrative control than to increase our understanding of the effects of social policy.     

Clean Air Federalism: Do States Race to the Bottom?

Proponents of federal environmental standards argue that competition for industrial development creates a “race to the bottom” in which states relax their own environmental standards to avoid losing businesses to states with more “business‐friendly” regulations. This article presents results from a unique survey of state clean air programs that show—contrary to the race to the bottom—a substantial number of states exceed federal EPA standards in a broad variety of clean air programs. Multivariate analyses of these state policies indicate that states strengthen their environmental programs in response to citizen demands rather than weaken their programs in deference to economic pressures.     

Looking through a policy window with tinted glasses: Setting the agenda for U.S. AI policy

The policy agenda is currently being established for artificial intelligence (AI), a domain marked by complex and sweeping implications for economic transformation tempered by concerns about social and ethical risks. This article reviews the United States national AI policy strategy through extensive qualitative and quantitative content analysis of 63 strategic AI policy documents curated by the federal government between 2016 and 2020. Drawing on a prominent theory of agenda setting, the Multiple Streams Framework, and in light of competing paradigms of technology policy, this article reviews how the U.S. government understands the key policy problems, solutions, and issue frames associated with AI. Findings indicate minimal attention to focusing events or problem indicators emphasizing social and ethical concerns, as opposed to economic and geopolitical ones. Further, broad statements noting ethical dimensions of AI often fail to translate into specific policy solutions, which may be explained by a lack of technical feasibility or value acceptability of ethics-related policy solutions, along with institutional constraints for agencies in specific policy sectors. Finally, despite widespread calls for increased public participation, proposed solutions remain expert dominated. Overall, while the emerging U.S. AI policy agenda reflects a striking level of attention to ethics—a promising development for policy stakeholders invested in AI ethics and more socially oriented approaches to technology governance—this success is only partial and is ultimately layered into a traditional strategic approach to innovation policy.     

The Design and Practice of Integrating Evidence: Connecting Performance Management with Program Evaluation

In recent decades, governments have invested in the creation of two forms of knowledge production about government performance: program evaluations and performance management. Prior research has noted tensions between these two approaches and the potential for complementarities when they are aligned. This article offers empirical evidence on how program evaluations connect with performance management in the U.S. federal government in 2000 and 2013. In the later time period, there is an interactive effect between the two approaches, which, the authors argue, reflects deliberate efforts by the George W. Bush and Barack Obama administrations to build closer connections between program evaluation and performance management. Drawing on the 2013 data, the authors offer evidence that how evaluations are implemented matters and that evaluations facilitate performance information use by reducing the causal uncertainty that managers face as they try to make sense of what performance data mean.     

The future of the nonprofit sector: Its entwining with private enterprise and government

The nonprofit sector—neither private enterprise nor governmental—is growing rapidly, and not only in the United States. This article explores three questions about the sector, which includes large elements of such service industries as universities, hospitals, nursing homes, day-care centers, museums, social services, and organizations promoting medical research, environmental protection, and the arts. These questions are: (a) Why is the nonprofit sector expanding worldwide?; (b) How is the growth of nonprofits affecting other parts of the economy?; and (c) What evidence is there that nonprofits make a difference, that they perform functions which private firms or government cannot perform? A major theme is that the sector's growth necessitates finding ways to increase revenues, and that has brought side effects, particularly as nonprofits have become more and more “commercial.” In the process, borders between the nonprofit and both the for-profit and public sectors are being crossed increasingly, and with consequences that often pose problems.     

An ethical judgment framework for corporate political actions

• Despite the popularity of businesses' involvement in politics, little discussion has been conducted on the ethics of corporate political actions (CPAs) in the business, corporate social responsibility, business ethics and ‘business and society’ literatures. The sporadic studies on ethics of CPA mainly focus on one or two aspects of the CPA in judging its ethics, such as its goal or means or consequences, very little has been done in a systematic way to analyse and articulate ethical standards for those corporations and industries who proactively seek to influence government officials. This study attempts to make up this gap. By applying three basic ethical principles including Utilitarian theory, theory of rights and theory of justice into the CPAs, I propose an ethical judgment framework for CPAs. The ethical judgment framework focuses on and judged by four issues/attributes of a CPA, including the goals/purposes of the CPA, the means taken to achieve the goals, the consequences resulted from the CPA, and the process of the CPA. The ‘means’ and ‘consequences’ are the core criteria in the framework, but ‘goals’ and ‘process’ also contribute to the ethical judgment of a CPA.

Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Professional Identity and Dishonest Behavior

This essay discusses the fraud triangle, or how factors such as opportunity to cheat, motivation to cheat or ability to rationalize or justify dishonest behavior lead to dishonesty. The fraud triangle is applied on behavior of professionals active in fields such as medicine, education, research and science or clergy. Evidence shows that even in these fields, which attract more altruistic individuals, the fraud triangle factors predicts emergence of behavior in breach of ethical standards. In the conclusion several measures for reducing dishonesty are discussed. Disciplines such as forensic economics or behavioral ethics are emphasized to provide wider variety of tools to detect and reduce dishonest behavior.     

Enforcement or Ethical Capacity: Considering the Role of State Ethics Commissions at the Millennium

Looking back on the twentieth century, the American public has witnessed numerous incidents of unethical behavior by a variety of federal, state, and local government officials. Ongoing cases of political and bureaucratic corruption raise questions about what governments are doing to prevent these "ethical lapses." Most state governments have comprehensive ethics laws and ethics commissions to enforce these laws. Very few studies have examined the role of ethics commissions in state government. This article stems from research conducted during 1997–98 involving more than 60 anonymous interviews with ethics officials and stakeholders in Connecticut, Florida, and New York. This analysis reveals that ethics commissions are instruments and symbols, policemen and consultants, politicians and neutral technicians, and interpreters of and prisoners to the ethics laws. The article concludes with 10 recommendations to improve ethics enforcement and the ethics-building capacity of state governments as society enters the next millennium.     

Energy demand‐side management: New perspectives for a new era

Over the past decade and a half, state governments have assumed greater responsibility over demand‐side management (DSM) operations. Whereas DSM programs formerly were initiated primarily by utilities or state public utility commissions, they are now becoming increasingly state‐initiated and incentivized through funding mechanisms or efficiency‐level mandates. The supporting literature, however, has yet to respond to these changes and to verify that DSM funding or mandates are effective policy mechanisms. Furthermore, the supporting literature has yet to resolve some of the research design and methodological challenges that traditionally plague DSM evaluations. As states continue to expand their energy and climate policy efforts, and the federal government considers the possibility of national decarbonization policies, of which DSM is a key strategy, the need for empirical research on the effectiveness of DSM programs will grow. This essay describes the current status of DSM efforts in the U.S. and explores how these programs affect electricity operations. The relationship between DSM policy and program efforts and the amount of saved electricity is tested with a methodological approach aimed at minimizing the selection bias that is inherent in the nonexperimental research design. Results confirm that state‐run DSM efforts contribute to electricity savings across the country. Public benefit funds coupled with performance incentives are found to encourage utility participation in DSM programs. Energy efficiency portfolio standards and performance incentives effectively promote electricity savings, but public benefit funds without the support of other DSM policies are not significant drivers of either DSM program participation or total DSM electricity savings. © 2011 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Extending the Theory of Goal Ambiguity to Programs: Examining the Relationship between Goal Ambiguity and Performance

One of the main assumptions of empirical studies conducted on the influence of goal ambiguity in public management is that goal ambiguity relates negatively to performance. However, this relationship has rarely been tested at the program level because common goal ambiguity and performance measures for disparate government programs have been scant. The availability of Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) results for a number of federal programs provides the opportunity for an analysis testing the foregoing assumption. Measures of program goal ambiguity—target, timeline, and program evaluation—are shown to have negative relationships with different program performance scores, taking into account alternative influences or biases on performance. This analysis extends the theory of goal ambiguity by providing the first analysis of large‐sample federal programs. The theoretical and practical implications are presented in the discussion and conclusion.     

A Nolan Committee for the German ethics infrastructure?

Abstract. An international trend towards establishing and conforming standards of ethical behaviour in the public sector has repeatedly been stated. Germany, however, remains surprisingly reluctant to adopt such recommendations. This article argues that the likelihood of German decision makers implementing new, and especially soft, ethics measures depends on the demand for such measures, on the one hand, and their supply, on the other. The analysis shows that contradictory forces have an impact on Germany. The demand for new ethics measures is relatively low as a high level of hard ethics measures incorporated in the longstanding formal legal system of rules and regulations make the implementation of new measures seem unnecessary. Also, the demand for soft ethics measures is less marked in Germany than in the United Kingdom. This comparatively weak pressure meets the natural inertia caused by cognitive and institutional path–dependency in institutional choices of political decision makers. On the other hand, external bodies (such as the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development – OECD) provide blueprints for soft ethics measures and encourage the implementation of uniform standards across countries. Which of these forces will prevail in the long run, however, cannot be deduced from the present situation.     

From Virtue to Competence: Changing the Principles of Public Service

Virtue has long been a central principle in the tradition of public service—to what extent is it still relevant today? Focusing on the role of the monitoring officer, a key official in the ethical framework of local government in the United Kingdom, this essay asks which virtues, if any, are still needed for public service and whether these virtues have been displaced by managerial notions of technical competence as the principles of public service delivery. The authors draw an initial distinction between virtue and competence that, upon further investigation, does not appear to be sustainable. Despite being drawn from two different academic perspectives—moral philosophy and management development—the concepts of virtue and competence are, in practice, very similar. This theoretical convergence is reflected in the practical concerns of monitoring officers and their perspective on public service ethics.     

Innovation Inducement Prizes: Connecting Research to Policy

Innovation inducement prizes have been used for centuries. In the United States, a recent federal policy change—the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010—clarified and simplified a path by which all federal agencies can offer innovation inducement prizes, thus intensifying interest in how government agencies can most effectively design and apply such prizes. This paper aims to review and synthesize the academic literature on innovation inducement prizes, to clarify what has been learned that is relevant to current policy discussions, and to highlight unresolved questions that would be fruitful areas for future academic research and policy experimentation. Relative to the existing literature, this paper aims to bridge two gaps. First, I synthesize the academic literature in this area with an eye toward drawing lessons for the types of innovation inducement prizes under consideration by federal agencies under the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act. Second, I discuss the problem of how to evaluate the success or failure of innovation inducement prizes, arguing that careful empirical evaluations of innovation inducement prizes are needed in order to provide guidance to federal agencies (and others) on how to most effectively apply and design innovation inducement prizes.     

Science Use in Regulatory Impact Analysis: The Effects of Political Attention and Controversy

Scholars, policy makers, and research sponsors have long sought to understand the conditions under which scientific research is used in the policy‐making process. Recent research has identified a resource that can be used to trace the use of science across time and many policy domains. U.S. federal agencies are mandated by executive order to justify all economically significant regulations by regulatory impact analyses (RIAs), in which they present evidence of the scientific underpinnings and consequences of the proposed rule. To gain new insight into when and how regulators invoke science in their policy justifications, we ask: does the political attention and controversy surrounding a regulation affect the extent to which science is utilized in RIAs? We examine scientific citation activity in all 101 economically significant RIAs from 2008 to 2012 and evaluate the effects of attention—from the public, policy elites, and the media—on the degree of science use in RIAs. Our main finding is that regulators draw more heavily on scientific research when justifying rules subject to a high degree of attention from outside actors. These findings suggest that scientific research plays an important role in the justification of regulations, especially those that are highly salient to the public and other policy actors.     

Building Ethical Capital: Perceptions of Ethical Climate in the Public Sector

This article examines influences on public servant perceptions of ethical climate in the public sector. The array of beneficial outcomes produced by perceptions of a positive ethical climate, the existence of government programs aimed at improving ethical climate, and implications for government accountability and trustworthiness all argue for a better understanding of the sources of these perceptions. Empirical analyses of survey responses from employees of the U.S. federal executive branch show that individuals in leadership positions perceive the ethical climate more positively. Conversely, work tenure tends to worsen perceived ethical climate, although supervisory status attenuates this negative effect. Ethics training, interaction with ethics officials, and perceived knowledge about ethics topics consistently influence perceptions of ethical climate and advice‐seeking behavior in a positive way. A set of results related to advice‐seeking behavior serves to reinforce the important role of ethics officials.     

On either side of a moat? Elite and mass attitudes towards right and wrong

This article develops a cognitive institutionalist account of mass and elite evaluations of political ethics, which is tested on a new dataset from the United Kingdom. The analysis explores the extent of contemporary disagreement among British political elites and those they represent by comparing responses to questions asked in a representative survey of the public with similar questions asked of incumbent MPs and parliamentary candidates. There are systematic differences between members of the public, candidates and MPs at both aggregate and individual levels – differences which can be accounted for with reference to the framing effects of Parliament as an institution. Candidates for parliamentary office display significantly more tolerance of ethically dubious behaviour than other members of the public. Within the elite category, elected MPs exhibit more permissive ethical standards than those candidates who are unsuccessful.     

Testing APS Ethics: Where's the Integrity?

In recent years there has been a good deal of discussion in Australia about public service integrity. This article seeks to consider the Australian public service's standards of integrity by analysing the ethical framework under which the public service operates and the particular ethical issues and tensions that this involves; testing and benchmarking the ethical performance of the public service; and providing some suggestions as to the next steps in ethics considerations in the Australian public service.     

How Financial Managers Deal with Ethical Stress

This article explores the way public-sector financial managers cope with ethical challenges created by undue political pressure and demands for special treatment. A nationwide survey of financial managers revealed that fiscal stress exacerbates ethical pressure for most financial managers, including chief financial officers (CFOs) and those who report to CFOs. Financial managers do not work in an ethical vacuum; they respond to supervisors who encourage ethical action and to coworkers who demonstrate high standards of personal integrity. Supervisors of CFOs who emphasize political responsiveness in employee evaluations can threaten the ethical behavior of CFOs, while timely feedback can mitigate ethical pressure. In turn, CFOs as supervisors can temper the harsh work environment in fiscally stressed times by encouraging ethical action and by giving adequate feedback to those who report to them.