Tribes and States: A New Era in Intergovernmental Affairs

The history of tribal-state conflict and the role of the federalgovernment is nearly two centuries old. In recent years, themost contentious source of conflict between American Indiantribes and states has been Indian gaming. The Congress attemptedto compromise and resolve the issue by passing the Indian GamingRegulatory Act (IGRA) in 1988, but the law has only exacerbatedand opened up new avenues of conflict. The scope and stakesof Indian gaming can be seen in the history of Indian gamingin New Mexico where the defects in IGRA have been readily apparent.As Indian gaming has grown, so have efforts to curtail it andother aspects of tribal sovereignty, including tribal sovereignimmunity. These efforts are currently underway in the Congress.     

Information Resources Management Expenditures in the States: A Case for Integrating Accounting and Budgeting Systems

A recent national study has found that states may be spending $20 billion on information resources management (IRM) in FY1989. The significant findings of the study regarding financial management are highlighted to show the dimensions of the IRM expenditures in the states. The second part of the paper examines how well the states' accounting systems are able to provide data on IRM expenditures for budgetary decisions. The article expands upon an important issue raised in the study's findings: the need for better integration of accounting and budgeting systems to improve management of information resources. An Information Object Classification Scheme, first suggested by the Commission on Federal Paperwork, is proposed as an important step in helping states improve their information resources management.     

Financial Management Grades for the States: A Prospective Use

This research examines whether financial management grades awarded to the states by the Government Performance Project (GPP) can provide some prospective gauge of fiscal performance in proximate years, particularly on the downside of the business cycle. Our findings confirm the weaker fiscal condition in both 2002 and 2003 of states that received lower financial management grades from the GPP in 2001, suggesting that these grades have the potential to be prospective as well as retrospective. These results, however, are tempered by several concerns that inform our suggestions for additional research to further assess the prospective potential of financial management performance grades.     

Law of Space Resources and Operations on Celestial Bodies: Implications for Legislation in the United States

The U.S. assertion of a right to own resources harvested from space is consistent with the distinction in international law governing analogous res communis areas between resources harvested from a common area and the common area itself. Under the Outer Space Treaty regime, private entities do not have any more right to appropriate celestial bodies than governments do. However, U.S. law does not give private entities such a right. The U.S. Commercial Space Launch Competitiveness Act’s chapter on Space Resource Commercial Exploration and Utilization generally avoids taking a position on exactly how to deal with disputes in the event the activities of entities from the United States and other states interfere with each other. The U.S. law does not assert a right to declare safety zones or otherwise exercise jurisdiction outside space objects, but doing so can, under some circumstances, be consistent with international law. Many of the specifics of what rules will govern the gathering of space resources remain undetermined, yet the act’s basic premise is correct: international law and the treaty obligations of the United States allow for the U.S. government to authorize its citizens to own resources obtained from space.     

Among the Energy Tribes: A cultural framework for the analysis and design of energy policy

My four years at the International Institute for Applied Systems Analysis (IIASA) have provided the opportunity for some participant observation among the Energy Tribes. The uncertainties that envelop trends in energy supply and demand are so wide that the exploratory mode (asking “What would you like the facts to be?”) turns out to be more rewarding than the adversary mode (asking “What are the facts?”). The three Energy Tribes are distinguished by their three contradictory scenarios: “Business as Usual,” “Middle of the Road” and “Radical Change Now.” Each scenario sets very different bounds on what is credible and incredible, possible and impossible, sensible and foolish, rational and irrational. More often than not, the name of any particular tribe turns out to mean simply “the people” in the language of that tribe. Each tribe, seeing itself as the repository of everything that is human, consigns all the others to a sort of unmenschionable limbo. That, in essence, is what has happened in energy policy analysis.     

Federal Intervention in the Management of Groundwater Resources: Past Efforts and Future Prospects

The role of the federal government in groundwater regulationis likely to increase over the next few decades. A combinationof events—including recent federal court decisions, pastfederal intervention in state groundwater utilization, the publicpronouncements by a variety of federal actors, and increasingconcern over the inability of states to control overdrafting—allsuggest that the federal role in groundwater management maybe increasing. These events are examined here, and it is arguedthat, without change in state groundwater management practicesto mitigate the negative effects of state competition for groundwater,federal intervention in groundwater management seems likely.     

The Quality of Management and Government Performance: An Empirical Analysis of the American States

Government performance is an enduring concern for students of public management, public administration, and political science. Government's administrative arrangements and managerial behavior can profoundly influence programmatic content, activities, and outcomes; therefore, considering public management's effects is necessary for a true understanding of public policy and government performance. This article uses data from the Maxwell School's Government Performance Project to examine the relationship between state governments' managerial capacity and a measure of government performance (specifically, state policy priorities). We find that state management capacity has direct effects on state policy commitments: States possessing higher levels of management capacity tend to favor programmatic areas that distribute societal benefits widely (that is, collective benefits) as opposed to narrowly (that is, particularized benefits). Our analysis demonstrates that public interest group activity, government ideology, and citizen ideology each have significant, predictable effects on state policy commitments. Thus, our findings place managerial capacity alongside other more commonly studied state characteristics as an important influence on government activities.     

Wildfire Management in the United States: The Evolution of a Policy Failure

Wildland fires constitute a major crisis in American environmental policy, a crisis created by a longstanding policy failure. This article explores the political processes that generated and reinforced this policy failure over time. The concepts of bounded rationality, punctuated equilibria, and self- reinforcing mechanisms are applied to study the evolution of American wildfire policy between 1905 and the present. This study finds that a self-defeating wildfire suppression policy was established in the period 1905 through 1911, and subsequently reinforced for more than five decades. This policy did not include a complementary program to counteract the gradual accumulation of flammable organic materials (fuels) that occurred in many ecosystems when fires were suppressed. The resulting fuel accumulations have greatly increased the risk of damaging, high-intensity wildfires in a range of American wildlands. A combination of fire suppression and fuel reduction programs will be needed to manage this risk in the future.     

The Politics of Growth Management Reform in the States: A Comparative Analysis

This article seeks to advance our understanding of the politics of growth management reform in the American states. First, it builds on prior research on agenda processes in other policy arenas to identify four "ideal" types of growth management reforms with empirical referents in the states: quantum, emergent, convergent and gradualist. Next, the political dynamics associated with each type are culled from the experiences of eight states pursuing such reforms over the past three decades. The article concludes by reviewing the implications of these findings for future research and for those pursuing growth management reforms in the future.     

小国外交环境下的危机管理——以马耳他为例

我们生活在一个"即时品"(instants)世界,从"速溶咖啡"到"即时短信".当令社会不容迟疑,指望一切都来得快一点,再快一点.在这个意义上,外交显然是无法跟上时代的步伐,难以满足公众的期望.     

Measuring Party Identification: Britain, Canada, and the United States

The article proposes an empirically based reflection on how to measure party identification cross nationally, using data from the 1997 Canadian Election Study, the 1997 British Election Study, and the 1996 American National Election Study. These studies included both traditional national questions and a new common one, which allows for an assessment of the effects of question wording on the distribution and correlates of party identification. We show that the distribution of party identification is strongly affected by question wording and that the relationship between party identification and variables such as party and leader ratings, and voting behavior does not quite conform to theoretical expectations. We point out problems in the wording of party identification questions and propose an alternative formulation.     

绩效管理改革的效果:来自美国联邦政府的证据

从1993年的《政府绩效与结果法案》(GPRA)以及布什政府的项目评估定级工具(PART)已经建立了一种新的政府管理惯例,两者的目的均在于促进美国联邦政府绩效管理实务的发展。但从绩效信息的使用方面来看,两者所做出的努力都极其有限,即一旦考虑其它因素,机构雇员不论是否参与PART评审,是否参与GPRA的实施进程,他们几乎都没有影响到绩效信息的使用。本文采用顺序Probit回归模型,通过对美国联邦审计总署基于1996、2000、2003和2007年的数据进行调研,最终得出依赖于难以观测的官僚行为来实现的政府改革是具有局限性的以及在政府绩效改善的过程中绩效信息使用的重要性。对数据的深层分析还揭示了一系列影响绩效信息使用的组织因素,这包括领导对结果的承诺、监管者引导学习惯例、工作动机的性质、将测量与行动链接起来的能力、管理的自由裁量权以及利益相关者之间的政治冲突。     

"绿色营销"管理:人力资源管理新理念

在人才争夺战日趋激烈的今天,企业人力资源部门要树立"绿色营销"理念,本着顾客至上的原则,根据本部门的客户--企业员工的内在需求的不同,进行市场细分,结合企业内外部环境,持续提供差异化的、令员工满意的人力资源产品与服务,从而提高人力资源管理绩效,来吸引、留住、激励和开发企业所需要的人才.     

企业人力资源管理的组织成效

组织存在的目的就是要解决组织绩效实现的问题,因此如何提高组织的绩效水平,是所有组织所必然关注的关键。本文从三个角度讨论了组织成效。首先是组织基本运行效能:从分工的效能、流程的效能解决组织运行标准化,实现如何降低组织对人的依赖性,并使平凡的人做出不平凡的业绩。其次讨论的是制度的效率问题:结果是行为产生的,而行为产生于动机,因此,通过有效的制度设计来引导动机是非常重要的。第三个方面强调了资源效率问题: 组织资源都是有限的,如何使有限的资源最大限度集中于组织最终成果,是组织成效中又一关键的问题。不论在理论上还是实践上,目标管理是最有效的思想体系和方法体系。