The "Third-Worldization" of a "Second-World" Nation: De-development in Post-Communist Bulgaria

Post-Communist Bulgaria has fared rather poorly in the transition to a capitalist economy. By nearly every macroeconomic standard, it is in worse shape now than in the Communist past. Macroeconomic statistics show that the per capita GNP is sharply down, the social-safety net has all but disappeared, and even the physical survival of many impoverished Bulgarians is in serious peril. This article uses the political-economy approach to analyze the symptoms of sharp socioeconomic de-development, including the weakening of state capacity to perform even the most basic functions and responsibilities. The main conclusion is that in the global center-periphery structure, formerly "Second-World" Bulgaria is increasingly "Third-Worldized," that is, marginalized out of the international division of labor--a finding that raises doubts about the purported "success" of the transitions to capitalist economy in the former state-socialist countries.     

Sharpening a Knife Cleverly: Organizational Change, Policy Paradox, and the "Weaponizing" of Administrative Reforms

Prior research has leavened substantially our understanding of how, why, and with what consequences public organizations respond to pressures for administrative reforms. Left underdeveloped theoretically, however, is the hypothesis that agency actors may also assess the ability of administrative reforms both to advance their policy goals and to become "weapons" in battles within agencies for advancing them. To illustrate this possibility, this article analyzes how the Clinton administration's National Performance Review and related Defense Reform Initiative interacted with its efforts to "green" the U.S. military in the post–Cold War era. Analysis of this clash between defense and environmental values indicates that (1) agency actors did evaluate the potential impacts of administrative reforms on their policy goals before supporting or opposing them; (2) they tried to hijack those reforms as weapons for advancing their policy goals in intraorganizational battles; and (3) the "weaponizing" of these reforms produced policy complications and consequences that proponents neither anticipated nor welcomed. Thus, reform in the administrative domain created unanticipated consequences by spilling over into the policy domain and being hijacked, weaponized, or otherwise miscarried or used opportunistically in intraorganizational policy battles. The study concludes by arguing that these dynamics merit more attention than they have received from either administrative reform proponents or researchers seeking to develop theories of administrative reform.     

Capacity Building as an Instrument of Institutional Reform: Improving the Quality of Higher Education through Academic Audits in the UK, New Zealand, Sweden, and Hong Kong

As countries convert from state to market-centered public policies, there is increasing interest in new forms of public accountability. Capacity building initiatives that reform institutional frameworks are useful policy instruments during this period of transition. What are the impacts and implementation problems characteristic of this approach? This article reviews the experience with "Academic Audit," a capacity building accountability instrument for universities adopted in the UK, Sweden, New Zealand, and Hong Kong. Academic audits altered the incentives for cooperative behavior among faculty members to improve student learning. Identified implementation problems included: training for the new process, the uncertainty of capacity building benefits, and the central role of information.     

Incremental Thinking: "Toward a Theory of Budgeting"

Editor's Note: V.O. Key's article bemoaning "The Lack of a Budgetary Theory" was reprinted in the previous issue of Public Budgeting & Finance. The problems identified by Key are normative; they go to the basic values arid purposes of society and, hence, cannot be resolved by budgetary solutions alone. But a dozen years after Key wrote, Verne Lewis sought to anchor a theory of budgeting in marginal analysis, His article, printed here by permission of the American Society for Public Administration, first appeared in the Public Administration Review in 1952, Rather than seeking a full-blown political philosophy. Lewis thought that budgetary choice could be rationalized at the margins, by comparing the marginal costs and benefits of competing claims on public resources, While his hopes for a theory of budgeting have not been fulfilled, Lewis laid the groundwork for forms of marginal analysis introduced by PPB and ZBB in later decades. Indeed, there is a remarkable affinity between the budgetary structure proposed by Lewis and the one used by zero-base budgeting in the 1970s.     

"PUBLICITY" AS A PROBLEM IN THE INTERNAL VALIDITY OF TIME SERIES QUASI-EXPERIMENTS

Scholars who work with time series quasi-experiments have identified "publicity" as a problem in the interpretation of such research designs. The present study utilizes three examples of the role of publicity in three social interventions: the Romanian abortion restriction of 1966; the British breathalyzer crackdown; and, the 1978 Georgia Status Offender Act. The authors conclude that publicity is most likely to be a problem in internal validity when (1) the intervention is not truly abrupt and (2) a broad "policy" is evaluated as opposed to a "program."     

Building Network Implementation Capacity: Evidence from China

ABSTRACT

Network research increasingly draws attention to capacity affecting outcomes. This study examines network implementation capacity and develops a framework that focuses on three dimensions: financial, managerial, and technical capacity. It also contributes by focusing on the Network Administrator Organization (NAO)-type network. Based on a case study of two large eco-financing networks in China, this study finds positive impacts of network implementation capacity on policy outcomes. It also draws attention to network strategies and their impact on capacity. It identifies the positive effect of efforts to maintain network stability as well as negotiation and participation strategies on network implementation capacity. This study draws attention to implementation capacity as a determinant of network outcomes and suggests that studies in public administration give greater attention to NAO-type networks.     

Judicial Capacity Building in Bosnia and Herzegovina: Understanding Legal Reform Beyond the Completion Strategy of the ICTY

This article examines how international institutions serve to diffuse human rights norms and create judicial capacity building in post-conflict societies. Specifically, we examine how the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY) and the Office of the High Representative have influenced the reform of domestic courts in Bosnia and Herzegovina (BiH). We place these reforms within the broader debate over restructuring the complex system of government in BiH. Since 2005, domestic courts in BiH have had jurisdiction over the following: (1) Cases which were initially under the jurisdiction of the domestic courts but remanded to the ICTY and recently returned to BiH. (2) Cases which originated at the ICTY and have been transferred to the State Court, and (3) new cases which originated and remained in the domestic court system. We find that while human rights norms have been incorporated into the new legal code, the diffusion of these human rights norms has been inadequate because of the lack of judicial capacity building. While some courts in the capital enjoy significant resources, the vast majority of cases will be tried at provincial courts which are under-funded and unable to prosecute the significant number of cases. Moreover, the government structure of BiH has had a decidedly negative impact on the prosecution of these cases. Ultimately, the rule of law requires consistency of approach and funding to protect human rights throughout the state.

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Development and Prospects of Deliberative Democracy in China: The Dimensions of Deliberative Capacity Building

Since the landmark volume The Search for Deliberative Democracy in China (Leib and He eds. 2006), a growing number of theoretical and empirical studies in the context of China have advanced our knowledge of deliberative democracy in comparative settings. This paper aims to discuss the recent development and prospects of deliberative democracy in China, with particular focus on the approach of a deliberative system that has not been adequately addressed in the context of China. This paper proposes an analytical framework for the concept of deliberative capacity building in the context of contemporary China. The paper analyses three dimensions of deliberative capacity building: social capacity, institutional capacity; and participatory capacity of a deliberative system. The three dimensions lay particular emphasis on the public sphere, empowered space, and deliberative actors respectively. The multi-dimensional framework considers deliberative capacity building as a process by which the three dimensions synergize and evolve with each other to produce a functional deliberative system incorporating isolated deliberative practices. The multi-dimensional analyses suggest that deliberative capacity building is critical to democratization in China, as it produces a stronger public sphere, more effective government responsiveness and improved participatory competence.     

A Response to "Building Administrative Capacity for the Age of Rapid Globalization: A Modest Prescription for the Twenty-First Century"

Professor Ali Farazmand's thought-provoking article advances the argument that the "administrative capacity to manage" governance and economic systems in the new age of "rapid change, hyper-complexity, and globalization" needs to be designed at both the macro and the micro levels. There is no doubt that traditional models of governance and public administration are no match for the challenges of the new chaotic environment, particularly in the aftermath of the outbreak of the global financial crisis that has largely discredited a world economic order founded on Anglo-American financial capitalism. Building administrative capacity worldwide is an imperative of our time.     

Addressing the Issues: The Choice of Environmental Conflict‐Resolution Venues in the United States

Environmental conflicts are the catalyst for policy and institutional changes, and they are expected to increase due to rising populations, economic growth, and climate change impacts. Yet, environmental conflicts and the venues used to address them have not been thoroughly examined. A common‐pool resource dilemmas typology is used to categorize environmental conflict issues and to develop hypotheses relating conflict issues to resolution venues. The hypotheses are tested on western water‐resource conflicts. The capacity of venues to address the underlying conflict issues as well as how some venues tend to work in tandem are important for explaining the matching of conflict type to venue.     

Harvesting experience: A reappraisal of the U.S. Climate Change Action Plan

For mitigating climate change and adapting to whatever impacts we cannot avoid, there are no politically feasible alternatives to improvements in the U.S. Climate Change Action Plan at this time or for the foreseeable future. Yet improvements in the Action Plan have been obstructed by the diversion of attention and other resources to negotiating a binding international agreement, to developing a predictive understanding of global change, and to documenting the failure of the Action Plan to meet its short-term goal for the reduction of aggregate greenhouse gas emissions. Continuous improvements depend upon reallocating attention and other resources to the Action Plan, and more specifically, to the many small-scale policies that have already succeeded by climate change and no regrets criteria under the Action Plan. Sustaining the effort over the long term depends on harvesting experience from these small-scale successes for diffusion and adaptation elsewhere on a voluntary basis.     

The "Big Questions" of Katrina and the 2005 Great Flood of New Orleans

The "big questions" associated with Hurricane Katrina and the great flood of New Orleans lie at the intersection of the natural and human-shaped environments. The interactions dominating the intersection of the two environments are found in the social-political-economic system, culture and history, intergovernmental relations, and law. The big questions are not whether specific individuals were to blame for the destruction of lives and property, and they do not begin with the slow and inadequate intergovernmental response to the disaster. Instead, the big questions involve the roles of individuals, governments, and private markets in creating so-called natural disasters; whether government, through its lead role in the emergency management system, is incompetent, or whether capability and performance in protecting life and property have been eroded through a long-term "hollowing out" process; and whether Katrina's lessons will be learned or merely noted.     

沿海十省(市)药品监管机构能力之比较研究

在构建社会主义和谐社会的当代中国,药品的安全性和有效性正日益引起人们的关注,而药品监管机构能力的建设与评估也开始成为社会监管领域的重要问题.通过回顾国内外已有的对政府能力概念和要素的研究,借用Nelissen的潜在能力和现实能力理论,结合世界银行2003年《世界发展报告》中对机构现实能力的要素分析和"行政储备"理论对机构潜在能力的要素分析,构建起药品监管机构能力的结构模型,并提出一套评估的指标体系.对数据进行标准化处理后,通过统计排序对沿海十省(市)药品监管机构能力进行评估和比较,进而利用最小二乘法(OLS)建立回归模型,分析潜在能力中的财力和人力因素对现实能力的贡献率.研究发现:地区财力对监管机构现实能力的影响较之人力因素要大,这在理论和实践中都可以得到证实;各地药品监管机构的潜在能力与现实能力之间存在较大差异,就那些现实机构能力较低的地区而言,现阶段有必要把工作重点放在医药企业生产经营行为的监管和农村地区医药监管基础设施的建设上;而对于潜在机构能力较低的地区来说,从"专业化、程序化和独立性"等方面提升机构整体的人力资源是当务之急.     

The Dynamics of Abstract and Manifest Institutional Change: MITI and the Japanese "Economic Miracle" Reconsidered

Modern institutional theory specifies two different aspects of institutions. The first aspect—and by far the predominant perspective—sees institutions as recurrent patterns of behavior, values, norms and practices which guide social and political behavior. The second aspect refers to the manifest institutional systems of the state. These two sides of institutions are supposed to be mutually reinforcing. Thus, institutions are "embedded" in overarching systems of values at the same time as they "constrain" behavior. This article takes exactly the opposite approach and seeks to separate the two different meanings of institutions in order to explain changes in the effective capabilities of manifest institutions. Using the Japanese Ministry of International Trade and Industry (MITI) as an empirical case, the argument advanced in the article is that variations in the institutional leverage and capacity of MITI can to a significant extent be explained by changes in the relationship between "abstract" and "manifest" institutions, i.e. the extent to which the institutional arrangement of the state reflects predominant systems of values, norms and beliefs in society. In addition to the vast literature on institutional theory, the article draws on a series of interviews with MITI senior officials between 1988 and 1996 as well as on the literature on Japanese political economy.     

浅谈我国刑法中的“公理之情”

我国刑法中贯穿着"公理之情",这种"情"有助于我国刑法作用的充分发挥。理解"公理之情"的含义,在司法实践中运用好这种"情",有助于我国刑法任务和刑罚目的的实现,促进我国的法治建设。     

SCIENCE IMPACT ASSESSMENT AND PUBLIC POLICY

In recent years a number of important science policy issues have rentered on questions about the social utility of science. The field of knowledge systems accounting has evolved as a special form of social impact assessment to observe and measure the impact of science on society. A system of social impacts of science (SIS) indicators has been developed as an attempt to represent these complex patterns and relationships. In the final analysis, the causal relevance of science to social performance depends on our capacity to link the complex knowledge system of modern science to the achievement of social goals.     

Assessing the role of vocational rehabilitation in disability policy.

Since 1975, vocational rehabilitation has represented a small and declining component of federal disability policy. This trend is perhaps reflective of the relatively crude assessment techniques that have been applied to the program in the past. Using the Virginia Vocational Rehabilitation (VR) program as a prototype, we outline how the data and methods of assessment can be improved for purposes of directing public policy. The key issues include identifying an appropriate comparison group for VR, analysis of longitudinal earnings data, and methods for refining measures of program cost. The analysis provides "fixed-effects" estimates of net earnings impacts for each of three postprogram years stratified by disability classification and gender. These treatment impacts are compared to total and service-specific costs. In general, this analysis suggests that evaluation of VR can be substantially improved and that these improvements can be attained at relatively modest analytic cost.     

The Embedded Market and Ideology Critique

Abstract

When the Global Financial Crisis hit, major political economists were able to boast that they had long warned that "crazy times" were coming. By contrast, leading sociologists seem to have been wrong footed. Totalizing narratives of a new "risk society", "second modernity" and the like appeared to have sacrificed the grounds for weighing up the costs and damages of contemporary capitalism. Made famous by Karl Polanyi, the concept of the embedded market suggests a differentiated diagnosis of our times that should allow sociology to re-enter the discussion as a critic of an ideological attempt to block public discussions about losses and dam ages of contemporary capitalism. The following paper will explore several readings of this concept and will evaluate their capacity to revive sociology's critical powers.     

Gauging the Impact of Transparency Policies

To what extent do transparency policies generate positive impacts? This seemingly rhetorical question has become the subject of increasing contention, partly because of two research‐based biases. First, researchers have been blinded by metrics and method. Using tools that are often ill suited to gauging the gradual, diffuse, and indirect effects of most transparency policies, research has found—unsurprisingly—spotty evidence of impact. Transparency studies would benefit from greater use of complementary approaches, such as careful tracing of impact processes and indicators, combined with sensible counterfactual reasoning. Second, researchers have been looking for impact with blinkered vision. In particular, a thematic fixation on accountability and participation has monopolized attention. Key preconditions—such as compliance with and implementation of transparency policies—remain relatively neglected, as do other areas of potential impact, including capacity building, how actors are leveraging previously restricted streams of information, and transparency's role in improving policy coordination and communication.     

"第四势力"与"舆论监督"之比较

首先,本文通过比较西方学者和我国学者对其所下的定义来展开阐述并解释"第四势力"与"舆论监督"的概念。其次,探讨二者的相同之处,如:二者都体现媒体的基本职能,二者都不是绝对的自由,二者都体现公益性,二者都来源于公民权利。第三从法理的层面运用阐述二者的不同点:二者的主体性质不同、二者所包含的内容不同,法律对二者的要求不同,对二者的主要制约方式不同。最后,探求我国"舆论监督"的发展方向。