“Civic discovery” as a rhetorical strategy

Much research in the field of public management is distinguished by its rejection of the politics-administration dichotomy and its emphasis on the public manager's responsibility for political management. By rejecting the dichotomy, however, scholars in public management have reopened debate over an old question: Why is it right for public managers to exercise political power in the policymaking process? It is argued that the dichotomy served as a rhetorical strategy for allaying public concern about bureaucratic power, and that public management scholars must now invent a new strategy to take its place. This article evaluates one strategy, proposed by Moore and Reich, which is premised on the idea that managers may legitimize the exercise of discretion by showing it to be consistent with a mandate that is produced through a fair process of deliberation. It is argued that the new strategy may overestimate the ability to build mandates, the ability to build deliberative processes that are manifestly fair, and the willingness of dissentient citizens to defer to such mandates. The new strategy will also bind public managers to a demonstration of neutrality not unlike that imposed by the politics-administration dichotomy.     

“The Information Gap?”

While the “achievement gap” generally and appropriately focuses upon gaps in test scores and other outcome measures, there may also be an “information gap” between higher and lower income parents that creates a disadvantage for lower income families in choosing good schools. In this article, we examine the extent to which there is such a gap, with a focus on data from a new survey of low‐ and moderate‐income parents who have made school choices. We find that, at least in relatively mature school choice environments like Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and Washington, DC, most low‐ and moderate‐income parents report being quite well informed and they engage in a variety of different activities to become informed. Thus, the information gap between lower and higher income parents may not be as large as scholars and policymakers had assumed. We do find that parents at the very lowest end of the income spectrum, especially those earning less than $10,000 per year, do feel less well‐informed and gather less information, but even here the differences are not enormous, relative to higher income parents.     

The class as case: “Reinventing” the classroom

New approaches to public management provide principles by which to organize the classroom as a case. In teaching public management one can enhance learning for practice by modeling, experimenting with, and reflecting upon the principles that one is teaching the students. The principles from the new ideas about public management that can be used to organize the classroom as well are strength through diversity, continuous improvement, teamwork, and empowerment. They represent changes in governing relations across the country and globe within which the new approaches to public management rest; each of these principles has a role in the “reinvented” classroom. Such practices require institutional support of various kinds as well. © 1999 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

“Conservation” as a Catalyst for Conflict: Considering Stakeholder Understanding in Policy Making

Stakeholder negotiation processes are increasingly used in environmental management, but are often difficult due to values differences among stakeholders. These values can be reflected in the language used by stakeholders, which may lead to conflict in negotiation processes. This study investigated whether there are widespread differences among Colorado water stakeholders in how they define the term “conservation,” a key value and policy term, and whether this leads to conflict in negotiations. Using multiple methods in a cross‐sectional case study, use of the term and possible policy implications were analyzed. Stakeholder respondents in this study who had experienced difficulty in water negotiations also perceived a higher degree of miscommunication in their negotiations. The most important finding presented here suggests that clarity of language and transparent discussion of key value‐representative terms may aid in stakeholder negotiations, and that minority stakeholders may be more aware of values and language differences than their majority counterparts.     

“WOMEN'S PRISONS” AND “MEN'S PRISONS”: SHOULD PRISONERS BE CLASSIFIED BY SEX?

What are the differences between “women's prisons” and “men's prisons”? That question is answered in this article, which documents that many institutions “for” women do not provide services designed specially for women, or anyone else. Moreover, some women's prisons provide fewer vocational, recreational, and educational programs than do institutions “for” men. Given the growing literature on the disparity of services and on the relative deprivations faced by many women prisoners, the author questions whether segregation by sex should continue to be used as a major premise of prison classification systems.     

From “New Institutionalism” to “Institutional Processualism”: Advancing Knowledge about Public Management Policy Change

Research on public management reform has taken a decidedly disciplinary turn. Since the late 1990s, analytical issues are less often framed in terms of the New Public Management. As part of the disciplinary turn, much recent research on public management reform is highly influenced by the three new institutionalisms. However, these studies have implicitly been challenged by a competing research program on public management reform that is emphatically processual in its theoretical foundations. This article develops the challenge in a more explicit fashion. It provides a theoretical restatement of the competing “institutional processualist” research program and compares its substantive findings with those drawn from the neoinstitutionalisms. The implications of this debate about public management reform for comparative historical analysis and neoinstitutional theories are discussed.     

Learning from the “Milwaukee challenge”

The consequences of administering welfare-to-work programs through county-level agencies may be the most important issue omitted from current discussions of welfare reform. An administrative geography of county welfare agencies fragments metropolitan labor markets, consigning central county residents to job-poor areas and isolating them from job-rich suburban counties. This paper illustrates this effect by mapping employment/population shifts and administrative boundaries in metropolitan Milwaukee. The paper ends with the suggestion that county agencies be allowed to play variable rather than fixed functional roles in a labor exchange process that must now accommodate a metropolitan scale.     

“Grabbing Hand” or “Helping Hand”?: Corruption and the Economic Role of the State

This article seeks to disentangle which features of government intervention are linked to corruption and which are not, by distinguishing between the government roles of regulator, entrepreneur, and consumer. It finds that the degree of regulation of private business activity is the strongest predictor of corruption, and that high levels of public spending are related to low levels of corruption. There is no evidence of direct government involvement in production having any bearing on corruption. It is concluded that advanced welfare capitalist systems, which leave business relatively free from interference while intervening strongly in the distribution of wealth and the provision of key services, combine the most “virtuous” features of “big” and “small” government. This suggests that anti‐corruption campaigners should be relaxed about state intervention in the economy in general, but should specifically target corruption‐inducing regulatory systems.     

Concentrated deviance and the “underdass” hypothesis

The “underclass” is perhaps the defining feature of current research in urban distress and of current debates regarding urban policy. The leading measurement strategy (proposed in this journal) is somewhat divorced from the careful specifications of the leading theoretical work (notably that of W. J. Wilson). Several alternative measurement strategies demonstrate that the findings are extremely sensitive to the measurement used. Theory is the only reliable basis for choosing a measurement strategy and for avoiding the empiricist approach taken by other studies. If we cannot identify the best measurement strategy, then there is no basis for further research or for recommending policies.