Between Prescription and Practices in Seoul Metropolitan City: Institutional Constraints and Relational Contracting

Public choice theories suggest contracting out as a cure-all for various weaknesses of government bureaucracy and its absence of competition. The transaction cost economics theory challenges these theories, arguing that competitive contracting is appropriate only for hard services like human waste collection while relational contracting is for soft services such as welfare facility management. After examining contracting practices of 25 district governments of Seoul Metropolitan Government, however, this study found that informal institutional constraints led district governments to adopt relational contracting for human waste collection and to adopt competitive contracting for welfare facility management.     

Analytic Models and Policy Prescription: Understanding Recent Innovation in U.S. Counterterrorism

The threat of terrorism, particularly terrorism involving a weapon of mass destruction (WMD), has received enormous attention in the last decade. Since the mid1990s, the federal government has embarked on a concerted national effort to prepare the country for acts of WMD terrorism. A key component of the counterterrorism agenda is the domestic preparedness program, a series of initiatives aimed at reducing America's vulnerability to a WMD terrorist attack. However, there is a heated debate over whether or not the United States needs a domestic preparedness program at all. This article argues that much of the debate originates in disparate approaches to analyzing terrorism. Terrorism studies specialists use an internal model that analyzes the root causes, motives, and historical patterns of terrorism and concludes that the threat of WMD terrorism against the United States is not sufficient to warrant the domestic preparedness budget. Policy makers and national security experts, however, rely on an external risk assessment model that considers terrorism within the context of the many risks to American security. This assessment model evaluates WMD terrorism on the basis of risk and consequences, and reaches a logical conclusion that the potential for mass destruction not only merits, but also requires a level of domestic preparedness.     

Searching for the best structure for American local government

Citizens, practitioners and academicians involved in local government have for decades debated the best structure for local public organizations; at the polar ends of this debate are those advocating rational administration and those advocating political responsiveness. The conventional wisdom equates rational administration with reformed structures like the council-manager plan and political responsiveness with structures which have an elected chief executive officer. The debate is unresolvable within this value-driven framework, and these ideological positions do not seem to be helping in the design of governmental structures which “work” in a practical and meaningful way. The paper argues for a “functional” model of local government structure based on how much citizens and administrators can know and oversee with competence. The analysis leads to a significant rethinking of the role of governing bodies, administrators, and the general management position in American local government.     

Notes for Contributors

<正>Global Review is a bilingual (Chinese and English) bimonthly in IR category, the first of the kind in China, published by SIIS and the co-publisher Shanghai Association of International Relations. We invite contributions submitted by Chinese as well as     

Notes for Contributors

Global Review is a bilingual(Chinese and English) bimonthly in IR category,the first of the kind in China,published by SIIS and the co-publisher Shanghai Association of International Relations.We invite contributions submitted by Chinese as well as foreign scholars and practitioners that bearing on the subjects of building Chinese IR theories and policy proposals for China’s     

Notes for Contributors

Global Review is a bilingual (Chinese and English) bimonthly in IR category, the first of the kind in China, published by SIIS and the co-publisher Shanghai Association of International