Results are needed,not ideology

He has been a Fulbright-Hays Senior Lecturer with the Institute of Geography and Regional Development in Caracas, Venezuela, where he taught field methods in agricultural geography. His books include Geopolitics of the Caribbean: Ministates in a Wider Worldand, with Jim Norwine, Geography as Human Ecology?     

政务信息不对称的成因、后果及治理措施

政务信息在行政管理的过程中常以不对称的状态分布,这种现象的产生既有主观方面的原困,也有客观方面的原因。政务信息的不对称导致了腐败的产生,增加了行政成本,降低了行政效率,不利于行政决策的科学化和社会主义民主政治建设。因此本文运用信息不对称理论对政务信息传播和政务信息公开问题进行了研究,提出了治理政务信息不对称问题的措施。     

Red Tape,Rule Burden,and Legitimate Performance Trade-Offs: Results from a Vignette Experiment

Abstract

Goals in the public sector are complex and managers can face situations in which pursuing one legitimate goal necessitates performance trade-offs in other areas. This study tests how knowledge of legitimate performance trade-offs shapes the perception of red tape. Using a vignette experimental design and a sample of university students, between group t-tests and regression analyses suggest that, when evaluating increased rule burden, individuals that are provided with information about how objectively burdensome rules serve alternative values such as equity and effectiveness associate them with lower levels of red tape. A series of Monte Carlo simulations suggest that this effect is substantial.     

Good Governance Means Performance and Results

If the object of developing and developed world leaders is to uplift their peoples continually, then it is essential to measure approximations of actual service deliveries (what we ought to mean by “governance”), not to rate nations impressionistically according to the perceived quality of their operations, their perceived impartiality (as per Rothstein), the extent of their bureaucratic autonomy (as per Fukuyama and others), or their capacity to coax or coerce citizens. Only in that positive manner can we distinguish the governments that are producing abundant political goods (i.e., good governance) from those that no longer are, or never did.     

From Policy to Practice: From Ideas to Results,From Results to Trust

Few areas of public administration have been more discouraging, over a longer period of time, than the struggle to build public trust in government's work. However, new research suggests that public administrators can build trust by improving the results they produce for citizens. Practical, practicable steps can produce big improvements: improving government's focus on citizens' needs; engaging employees; focusing on fairness; and, especially, concentrating on the delivery of public services at the “retail” level. Citizens, research shows, can discriminate among levels of government, the administration of different programs in different functional areas, and the work of individual administrators. That provides strong hope for improving trust, in an era when too often government appears too untrustworthy.     

Results of the Corporate Affairs Survey 2004

The Corporate Affairs Survey 2004 confirms that companies with representation in Brussels continue to increase their communications expenditure. This confirms a trend already identified by the European Centre for Public Affairs in various publications¹ during the 1990s. Realising the importance of public opinion in policy making, the majority of companies are increasing the size of their Brussels staff, with a deliberate emphasis on communication and further resources in public affairs. As most companies recognise the special skill sets of consultants, many plan to continue relying on the latter, particularly in the area of public relations. Copyright © 2004 Henry Stewart Publications     

Measuring Accountability for Results in Interagency Collaboratives

This article examines the intersection of two types of innovations that are increasingly common in public administration—accountability for results and interagency collaboration. Recent scholarship suggests four approaches that collaborators can use to increase their accountability for results. The article proposes measures of these four approaches to assess a collaborative's capacity for accountability, and uses them to compare the accountability of human services collaboratives in 10 states. The findings indicate that collaboratives tend to use the four approaches together with one another. In combination, the various approaches may help collaborators manage their stake holders' expectations about their actions and accomplishments. Further research is needed to determine whether a collaborative's capacity for accountability for results actually correlates with improvements in outcomes.     

Empirical Experiments in Public Reporting: Reconstructing the Results of Survey Research, 1941–42

During the first half of the 20th century, public administration developed a normative theory of public reporting. It called on government managers to contribute to an informed citizenry through regular reports to the public, especially annual reports. However, in the only known instance when this theory was subjected to comparative empirical research, a doctoral student at the University of California, Berkeley, conducted some methodologically credible experiments during the early 1940s. Her results demonstrated the ineffectiveness of annual reports. However, rather than adjusting to accommodate this empirical information, leading organizations ignored them and continued pushing for annual reports. With the test results never published in an academic journal and the student's dissertation left incomplete, they were soon lost and forgotten. Public administration's interest in public reporting declined during the second half of the 20th century, perhaps because of the lack of an empirically based approach.     

Results and lessons from Canada's PS2000

Canada has been a world leader in administrative reform, eager to experiment during turbulent times in public administration. Public Service 2000, an attempt to instill the Canadian public service into a people- and results-oriented management culture, has been widely heralded as among the boldest of recent Canadian administrative reforms. Results from implementing PS2000 were expected within a decade of its 1990 launch. Halfway through that timeframe, the results are surprising, complex, contradictory and paradoxical. For example, in the second year of implementation, the longer term solutions of PS2000 conflicted with a financial crisis demanding fast results, and PS2000 principles, throughout implementation, contradicted certain traditional public service values. Reflecting on their experience, individuals who participated in PS2000 confirmed lessons in the extant literature, and suggested lessons specific to Canadian circumstances. PS2000 has been an unavoidable and much-needed effort to reform the Canadian public service, though perhaps inevitably it fell short of expectation. Yet, inside opinion remains mixed, seeking rationalist explanations, and expressing dissatisfaction over the progress of implementation. PS2000 has been absorbed into a much broader plan to reinvent federal government administration and the role of the state in Canadian society. Continuing difference of opinion may well call for a more fundamental change in administrative and managerial doctrine, especially with respect to launching future comprehensive administrative reform projects.     

Rail Safety: Targeting Oversight and Assessing Results

Rail safety has emerged as a significant issue in the past two years as a result of two major factors: a statistical lack of improvement in rail safety in the past decade, and a catalytic event in the form of a major derailment involving loss of life at Graniteville, South Carolina, in January 2005. The convergence of long-term leveling of rail safety indicators and the shock of a major rail accident prompted the Senate Appropriations Committee to ask the Government Accountability Office to assess the oversight role of the Federal Railroad Administration, the modal agency of the U.S. Department of Transportation charged with overseeing rail safety. The report is a reminder of the continuing importance of regulatory activities and the general movement in federal management toward greater use of data and performance measures since the Government Performance and Results Act of 1993.     

Constitutional Review and the Selective Promotion of Case Results

A significant majority of the world's constitutional courts publicize their decisions through direct contact with the national media. This interest in public information is puzzling in so far as constitutional judges are not directly accountable to voters. I argue that the promotion of case results is consistent with a theory of judicial behavior in which public support for courts can undermine incentives for insincere decision making. In this article, I develop a simple game theory model that identifies how case promotion is linked to judicial choice. Results of a simultaneous equations model estimating the Mexican Supreme Court's merits decisions and its choices to publicize those decisions by issuing press releases to national media outlets support an account of constitutional review in which judges believe they can influence their authority through case promotion.     

Super Tuesday 1988: Regional Results and National Implications

Fourteen southern and border states established a same-day presidentialprimary on 8 March 1988. This analysis shows that this SuperTuesday, in several senses, was less than super. The resultsturned out to be less satisfying than its Democratic founderspreferred but less upsetting than its critics anticipated. DespiteSuper Tuesday, Iowa and New Hampshire remained dominant in the1988 presidential primaries. Although voter turnout increasedslightly over 1984 and the results contributed mightily towardsettling the nomination in the Republican party, Super Tuesdayneither settled the Democratic nomination nor gave meaningfulmomentum to the more moderate Democratic candidates.