FEDERALISM, POLICY, AND INNOVATION IN CORRECTIONS

State governments have historically dominated corrections policy, with little federal intervention. But over the past two decades, the trend has been toward "nationalizing" corrections policy, with less interstate variation and more federal standards, through the Safe Streets Act and other legislation. As federal funding declines, it may be expected that there will be a hiatus in state corrections reform, though national standards may survive if the federal courts continue to require state correctional systems to comply with federal laws previously implemented.     

POLICY COMMUNITY,POLICY NETWORKS AND SCIENCE POLICY IN AUSTRALIA

Abstract: The policy community approach to policy analysis has been developed from ideas expressed by Richardson and Jordan in 1979. The approach is increasingly used to identify the key actors and groups of actors who make policy decisions, to analyse the interactions between the groups and to hypothesise about the types of outcomes achieved. The approach aids analysis in policy contexts which cut across the boundaries of individual organisations in the policy process, across the public and private sectors, and beyond national boundaries. This paper evaluates several expositions of the approach with reference to an analysis of science policy in Australia and suggests typological refinements which enhance its explanatory capacity.     

THE PROMISE AND PERFORMANCE OF PRIVATIZATION: THE KNOXVILLE EXPERIENCE

The promoters of privatization promise a lot, most especially cost savings. Upon what are these promises based and t o what degree is actual perfor mance consonant with them? This article investigates this question by first reviewing the privatization literature and specifying what is promised and the basis for these promises. We then proceed to examine the pri vatization of asingle service in Knoxville, Tennessee with regard to what basis promises were made and the innovation pursued. Finally we offer a preliminary analysis of the extent to which the privatization initiative lived up to its promises.     

INTERNATIONAL FUTURES AND POLICY

Donna Meadows with John Richardson and Gerhart Bruckman . Groping in the Dark: The First Decade of Global Modelling .
Brita Schwarz with Uno Svedin and Björn Wittrock . Methods in Future Studies: Problems and Applications .
U.S. Congress, Office of Technology Assessment . Global Models, World Futures, and Public Policy: A Critique .
Council on Environmental Quality and Department of State . The Global 2000 Report to the President: Entering the Twenty-First Century
Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development , Interfutures: Facing the Future: Mastering the Probable and Managing the Unpredictable
Richard Barnet . The Lean Years: Politics in the Age of Scarcity
Lester Brown . Building a Sustainable Society
Orio Giarini . Dialogue on Wealth and Welfare: An Alternative View of World Capital Formation
Julian Simon . The Ultimate Resource
Michael Marien and Lane Jennings (Eds.) . Future Survey Annual     

NEW FEDERALISM, OLD REMEDIES, AND CORRECTIONS POLICYMAKING

Corrections litigation is changing, but new case law does not authorize a wholesale cutback of prisoner constitutional rights. Supreme Court cases urge a return to traditional compensatory damages as the remedy for unconstitutional acts and conditions. Monitoring of state correctional performance by federal courts is disfavored. The author believes that basic rights of prisoners will remain protected, but that systematic planning and exemplary programs will erode. Under the money damages model, legal reform should thus urge waiver of the state sovereign immunity provided by the Eleventh Amendment.     

ANTICIPATORY POLICY AND MARINE RESOURCES

Anticipatory policy is premised on the need to respond to warnings about future threats and opportunities by positive political action. This paper discusses the notion of anticipatory policy by using three cases from ocean policy, deepwater ports, ocean thermal energy conversion, and deep seabed mining. Such policies tend to be extremely vulnerable to changes in the economic and political environments within which they operate. In order to understand how such policies succeed or fail requires that studies of policy implementation decades, not just several years. Although there has been a move in this direction in assessing social welfare policies, this approach has been far less evident in the natural resources area.