FORMATION OF NEW ORGANIZATIONS TO MANAGE RISK1

Differences in statutory mandates, traditions, and attitudes toward risk cause agencies to develop different standards for the same substances. As a response to this fragmentation and uncertainty, common to environment decisions, new organizations emerge to try to coordinate the agencies but usually are created to perform a specific task rather than to coordinate agencies. For these new organizational forms to succeed, they must be in place before the crisis occurs and they must be able to facilitate, not impede, normal adaptive mechanisms of organizations.     

CREATING THE OPPORTUNITY: VOTING AND THE CRISIS OF DEMOCRACY

The Committee for the Study of the American Electorate, an organiza- tion concerned with the involvement of citizens in politics, with a grant from the Ford Foundation, has collected the largest inventory of registra- tion laws and electoral provisions from the fifty states. It has incorporated these into an analysis designed to compare the relative impact of individual requirements, and sets of provisions, on turnout intended to determine the projected increase in voter participation if different strategies were adopted. The electoral changes addressed include door-to-door registration, driver's license registration, the elimination of purging from the rolls for non-voting, election day registration and mail registration. The data pool and analysis may be the most thorough of its kind ever attempted and ones that can serve as the basis for the future comparative research. The analysis finds that election day registration and a liberalized deputy registration program in combination with restrictions on dropping non-voters from the rolls would have the most immediate impact on turnout. States with the most open, least restrictive registration requirements had the highest levels of political participation.     

BUREAUCRATISATION OF PUBLIC HOSPITALS: A MODEL*

Abstract: This paper advances the conjecture that external budgetary pressure on a bureaucratic hierarchical organisation, such as a hospital, can cause an imbalance in that organisation, whereby administrative practices may proliferate, an “inert” segment of the organisation may successfully resist change, and the clinical work, the raison d‘être of the organisation, may decrease markedly. First, a mathematical model for the behaviour of a single level in the organisational hierarchy is developed; secondly, the aggregate model formed by applying the single-level model simultaneously to all levels in an organisation is examined. The approach presented may enable administrators to view and understand the behaviour of their organisations from a new and potentially useful angle.     

A NEW PARLIAMENT HOUSE — A NEW PARLIAMENTARY ORDER*

Abstract: The physical design and location of the existing Parliament House has influenced the evolution of Australia's parliamentary system. The new Parliament House will exert a new set of influences. The Executive will assume an entrenched position within its own enclave and Ministers will be physically more remote from backbenchers. The physical arrangements of the Executive entrance and the Prime Minister's suite will encourage a presidential-style status in the office. But the architecture also emphasises the public's access to Parliament in the spirit of Burley Griffin's original conception. There is likely to be a strong “congressional” impetus arising from the prominence given to committee room space and backbencher facilities. Tensions between the Executive and Parliament will be exacerbated. Changes to procedures and to parliamentary administration are also likely to flow from the new layout and facilities. The new building will provide an impetus for widespread parliamentary reform.