Putting Conflict Where It Belongs: A Response to “Creating Shared Responsibility through Respect for Military Culture: The Russian and American Cases”

Professor Dale R. Herspring argues that civil‐military relations should move beyond a preoccupation with civilian control; instead, he says, the focus should be on the degree and nature of conflict within civil‐military interactions. This alternative theoretical view adds much to the extant literature and allows future work to concentrate both on a more nuanced account of the effects of civil‐military relations and, as Professor Herspring does, on the determinants of a “healthy” degree of civil‐military conflict. This piece responds to Professor Herspring’s alternative view, arguing that future work building on his framework could incorporate much from within public administration.     

“Promoter” as an agency in decline of “market orientation” across small scale enterprises in Andhra Pradesh: Study on three selected districts

The study emphasizes the exploration of the influences that “promoter” of the small‐scale unit exerts in shaping the loss of market orientation in regional perspective. The small‐scale firm‐based “inefficiencies” have been measured with aid of the factors “promoter's entrepreneurial orientation,” “faulty resource based planning,” “inefficient managerial control,” and “improper capacity utilization.” The factors were shortlisted after extensive review of the existing literature, theoretical frameworks, and the conceptual notes with regard to the phenomenon of the market orientation decline or industrial sickness across the small‐scale units. The study across promoters of 300 sick industrial units observed the incidence of the sizable and quantifiable impact of the promoter in shaping the prospects for small‐scale unit‐based survival.     

Right-Libertarian Parties and the “New Values”: A Re-examination*

Among the most noted and studied societal tendencies of recent decades have been those associated with structural change in industrial societies becoming postindustrial. Within political science, much attention has been focused on the behavioural and institutional effects of value change accompanying that transition, and especially on the diminishing impact of class and ideology on politics. Among the institutional effects have been (at times and in some places) decline in support for “established” parties and the rise of alternative political organizations, including new parties on both the left and right. Many of the new parties of the left, and especially those labelled “left-libertarian”, are generally viewed as harbingers of things-to-come in the “new” politics - progressive vehicles, driven along by the tides of change. In contrast, the new parties of the right are generally viewed as conservative, authoritarian, materialist reactions to change - representing transitional efforts to stop change and its effects. The latter parties presumably tell more about the past, the present, and efforts to preserve them, than about the “new” in politics. The purpose of this article is to explore the possibility that some of the new right-wing parties - especially those in social democracies - might themselves be viewed more accurately (or at least as justifiably, based on reinterpretation of the available evidence) as reflections of new values and as vehicles of forward-looking change. If so, then those parties, like their left-libertarian counterparts, may tell us something about the future of postindustrial politics.     

The Problem of Political Science: Political Relevance and Scientific Rigor in Aristotle's “Philosophy of Human Affairs”

Treatments of Aristotle's moral‐political science have largely disregarded the methodological statements that he delivers as he embarks on his “philosophy of human affairs” in book I of the Nicomachean Ethics. A consideration of these statements, however, lends critical support to the view that Aristotle sought to give the sharpest possible expression to ordinary moral‐political opinion. Moreover, apart from revealing the by‐no‐means ordinary reasons that induced Aristotle to do so (and to do so in contrast to Plato), such a consideration sheds light on the source of the vagueness or ambiguity that defines moral‐political opinion as such. Indeed, the methodological statements are perhaps the first entries in the old quarrel of “relevance versus rigor.” And, through them, Aristotle suggests how political scientists today might walk a fine line between “politics,” on one hand, and “science,” on the other, without losing sight of the ultimate tension between them.     

THE “INVASION” OF MANUFACTURED CIVIL SOCIETY: GOVERNMENT–NONPROFIT PARTNERSHIPS IN A BRAZILIAN STATE

The growth of the nonprofit sector in Brazil has been conceptually similar to that of the Anglo‐Saxon Third Way, where the government promotes the creation of partnerships with civil society. This process has been criticized for creating a “manufactured civil society”. This study will investigate whether the same pattern can be observed in the Brazilian context, particularly within the Management Shock Reform implemented by Minas Gerais, one of the principal Brazilian states. Management Shock is guided by a governmental partnership discourse that promotes contractual partnerships with both businesses and nonprofits. We opted for a bottom‐up oriented research approach, aiming to comprehend the rationale for initiating and sustaining the partnerships revealed in the narratives that emerged from both government and nonprofit partners. Data were collected through semistructured interviews and content analysis of documents and the media. Results show the predominance of agency‐type partnerships, highlighting the centrality of the government and its techno‐bureaucratic role in fostering and maintaining Organização da Sociedade Civil de Interesse Público or Civil Society Organization of Public Interest designs. Differing from the Anglo‐Saxon context, we observed the “invasion” of market‐driven values in nonprofits and, to some extent, in government narratives. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

“Not Imminent in My Domain!” County Leaders’ Attitudes toward Eminent Domain Decisions

Eminent domain is an urgent problem facing local government administrators and scholars throughout the United States. However, the literature is sparse regarding how local leaders make decisions on this hot‐button issue. A 2006 Government Accountability Office report noted a lack of data about local governments’ use of their eminent domain authority. A survey of county managers in North Carolina was conducted to redress this apparent knowledge gap. Although the findings are primarily generalizable only to other Dillon’s rule states, such data demonstrate that eminent domain applies more often for “narrow” (public use) purposes, such as water and sewer systems, than for “broad” (public good) purposes, such as economic development. Current and future property considerations also influence eminent domain decisions. [A] law that takes property from A, and gives it to B: It is against all reason and justice, for a people to entrust a legislature with such powers; and, therefore, it cannot be presumed that they have done it. —Associate Justice Samuel Chase, majority opinion, Calder v. Bull (1798)     

“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.     

Globalization and legal change: The “Americanization” of European law?

Intensified global economic competition, economic liberalization, and the rise of EU governance have led some observers to argue that there has been a trend toward the “Americanization” of the European “way of law.” This article addresses that contention, focusing on legal change in European member states. It first describes ways in which the American legal tradition has differed most sharply from the national legal systems of Western Europe (including Great Britain) and the political and economic factors that account for this “American legal distinctiveness.” Similar political and economic factors currently are at work in Europe, the article acknowledges, creating incentives for legal convergence. But it also argues that European legal culture and the political organization of European national states generate path‐dependent forces that impede European movement toward American ways of law, and it discusses six important differences between European and American law that remain entrenched and are unlikely to disappear.     

Cell phone roulette and “consumer interactive” quality

Under current policies, cell phone consumers face a lower probability of finding the best carrier for their usage patterns than winning at roulette. Corroborating survey data consistently show significant dissatisfaction among cell phone users, network performance is a major issue, and customer “churn” is high. This problem may be traced to a new form of “consumer interactive” quality characteristic of emergent high technology products such as cell phone and broadband services. This problem is unlikely to be resolved by effective search and sampling, efficient secondary markets, or voluntary carrier disclosure. Traditional one‐dimensional disclosure responses to this new variation on an old asymmetric information problem should give way to a more multi‐faceted and fine‐grained policy approach. © 2005 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management     

Untimely ripped

In this essay, through an examination of its cultural situation, narrative style, and cinematic structure, I hope to explain the controversy that surrounded Roman Polanski's 1971 film version of Macbeth. With both complex cinematic semiology and poignant sociohistorical mediation, Macbeth brings to a critical juncture the philosophies of the 1960s’ peace‐love—revolution hippies, Vietnam war protestors and civil rights activists, the reified mainstream American populace, and the ruling conservatives, as well as society's preoccupation with aestheticisation. Specifically, I argue that Macbeth manifests what Gilles Deleuze calls the “crystal‐image,”; and, by extension, realises Antonin Artaud's “Theater of Cruelty,”; and, in effect, constitutes a terrorist intervention into a discursive cultural and ideological struggle. Ultimately, I argue that Macbeth itself, in totality, is a “crystalline narration”; that is shot through with various allusions to actual and virtual circumstances particular to the cultural environments from which it initially emerged in Renaissance England and then re‐emerged in the US of 1971. In the first of what is a three‐part analysis, I compare these cultural environments. The second section explicates Deleuze's theories on cinema and discusses them in conjunction with an analysis of the film's Theater of Cruelty. Finally, I contemplate the film ‘s sociopolitical implications.     

Capitalism,nature, socialism a theoretical introduction∗

This article expounds the traditional Marxist theory of the contradiction between forces and relations of production, over‐production of capital and economic crisis, and the process of crisis‐induced restructuring of productive forces and production relations into more transparently social, hence potentially socialist, forms. This exposition provides a point of departure for an “ecological Marxist”; theory of the contradiction between capitalist production relations and forces and the conditions of production, under‐production of capital and economic crisis, and the process of crisis‐induced restructuring of production conditions and the social relations thereof also into more transparently social, hence potentially socialist, forms. In short, there may be not one but two paths to socialism in late capitalist society.

While the two processes of capital over‐production and underproduction are by no means mutually exclusive, they may offset or compensate for one another in ways which create the appearance of relatively stable processes of capitalist development. Study of the combination of the two processes in the contemporary world may throw light on the decline of traditional labor and socialist movements and the rise of “new social movements”; as agencies of social transformation. In similar ways that traditional Marxism illuminates the practises of traditional labor movements, it may be that “ecological Marxism”; throws light on the practices of new social movements. Although ecology and nature; the politics of the body, feminism, and the family; and urban movements and related topics are usually discussed in post‐Marxist terms, the rhetoric deployed in this article is self‐consciously Marxist and designed to appeal to Marxist theorists and fellow travelers whose work remains within a “scientific”; discourse hence those who are least likely to be convinced by post‐Marxist discussions of the problem of capital's use and abuse of nature (including human nature) in the modern world. However, the emphasis in this article on a political economic “scientific”; discourse is tactical, not strategic. In reality, more or less autonomous social relationships, often non‐capitalist or anti‐capitalist, constitute “civil society,”; which needs to be addressed on its own practical and theoretical terms. In other words, social and collective action is not meant to be construed merely as derivative of systemic forces, as the last section of the article hopefully will make clear.     

Governing kidnap for ransom: Lloyd's as a “private regime”

Kidnap for ransom raises significant governance challenges. In the absence of formal regulation and enforcement, insurers have created an effective private governance regime to facilitate smooth commercial resolutions. Controlling ransoms is paramount: “supernormal” profits for kidnappers create kidnapping booms and undermine the market for insurance. Ransom control requires cooperation, but there are high transactions costs in enforcing a collusive agreement. The Coasean prediction is that a single firm will form to internalize the externalities arising from lax insurance and mismanaged ransom negotiations—or a government must order the market. There is indeed a single source of kidnap insurance: Lloyd's of London. Yet, within the Lloyd's market several insurers compete for business. Lloyd's is a club providing private governance: Its members issue standard contracts, follow the same regime for kidnap resolution, and exchange information to stabilize ransoms. Lloyd's, therefore, combines aspects of Coase's “single firm” and “government” solution to the externalities problem.     

We All Need Help: “Big Data” and the Mismeasure of Public Administration

Rapid advances in our ability to collect, analyze, and disseminate information are transforming public administration. This “big data” revolution presents opportunities for improving the management of public programs, but it also entails some risks. In addition to potentially magnifying well‐known problems with public sector performance management—particularly the problem of goal displacement—the widespread dissemination of administrative data and performance information increasingly enables external political actors to peer into and evaluate the administration of public programs. The latter trend is consequential because external actors may have little sense of the validity of performance metrics and little understanding of the policy priorities they capture. The author illustrates these potential problems using recent research on U.S. primary and secondary education and suggests that public administration scholars could help improve governance in the data‐rich future by informing the development and dissemination of organizational report cards that better capture the value that public agencies deliver.     

The Theory and Practice of “Nudging”: Changing Health Behaviors

Many of the most significant challenges in health care—such as smoking, overeating, and poor adherence to evidence‐based guidelines—will only be resolved if we can influence behavior. The traditional policy tools used when thinking about influencing behavior include legislation, regulation, and information provision. Recently, policy analysts have shown interest in policies that “nudge” people in particular directions, drawing on advances in understanding that behavior is strongly influenced in largely automatic ways by the context within which it is placed. This article considers the theoretical basis for why nudges might work and reviews the evidence in health behavior change. The evidence is structured according to the Mindspace framework for behavior change. The conclusion is that insights from behavioral economics offer powerful policy tools for influencing behavior in health care. This article provides public administration practitioners with an accessible summary of this literature, putting these insights into practical use.     

Jürgen Habermas's Theory of Cosmopolitanism

In this paper we explore the sustained and multifaceted attempt of Jürgen Habermas to reconstruct Kant's theory of cosmopolitan right for our own times. In a series of articles written in the post‐1989 period, Habermas has argued that the challenge posed both by the catastrophes of the twentieth century, and by social forces of globalization, has given new impetus to the idea of cosmopolitan justice that Kant first expressed. He recognizes that today we cannot simply repeat Kant's eighteenth‐century vision: that if we are to grapple with the complexities of present‐day problems, it is necessary to iron out certain inconsistencies in Kant's thinking, radicalize it where its break from the old order of nation‐states is incomplete, socialize it so as to draw out the connections between perpetual peace and social justice, and modernize it so as to comprehend the “differences both in global situation and conceptual framework that now separate us from him.” ¹ 1 Karl‐Otto Apel, “Kant's Toward Perpetual Peace as historical prognosis from the point of view of moral duty,” in James Bohman and Matthias Lutz‐Bachmann, eds., Perpetual Peace: Essays on Kant's Cosmopolitan Ideal (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press 1997), 87. Jürgen Habermas, “Kant's Idea of Perpetual Peace, with the Benefit of Two Hundred Years Hindsight,” ibid., 113–53; and in Jürgen Habermas, The Inclusion of the Other: Studies in Political Theory (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1998), 165–202. His basic intuition, however, is that Kant's idea of cosmopolitan right is as relevant to our times as it was to Kant's own. If it was Kant's achievement to formulate the idea of cosmopolitanism in a modern philosophical form, Habermas takes up the challenge posed by Karl‐Otto Apel: to “think with Kant against Kant” in reconstructing this idea. What follows is a critical assessment of Habermas's response to this challenge. We focus here on the dilemmas he faces in grounding his normative commitment to cosmopolitan politics and in reconciling his cosmopolitanism with the national framework in which he developed his ideas of constitutional patriotism and deliberative democracy.     

“A Beckon to the Makings,Workings and Doings of Human Beings”: The Critical Pragmatism of John Forester

John Forester's important research project of developing a critical pragmatist approach to planning and policy analysis now spans two decades. Common themes that give direction and coherence to his project are, first, a new view of public planning as the restructuring of communication between stakeholders with divergent and conflicting interests and large inequalities in power and influence; second, a redefinition of the role of the planner away from a handmaiden of power to a hands‐on professional who fosters inclusive, participatory forms of collective action; and, finally, a deliberate concern with the micropolitics of planning that enables participants to broaden their full potential for democratic transformation within the context of strong, enduring inequalities in agenda‐setting and decision‐making power. This review traces the roots of Forester's project in pragmatist thought and in particular themes from Emersonian moral philosophy, adding a notion of “critical” to Forester's radical pluralist stance. Forester subscribes to John Dewey's argument for democracy, which inherently requires diversity to arrive at warranted truth. For Forester, the core task of a planner is to safeguard the participation of those normally excluded from decision making by institutionalized inequalities.     

Creating Shared Responsibility through Respect for Military Culture: The Russian and American Cases

The key problem in civil‐military relations in established polities such as Russia and the United States is not civilian control of the military, but rather how to create a symbiotic relationship of “shared responsibility” between senior military officers and civilian leaders. In such a situation, civilian leaders obtain much needed expertise from the military, but ultimately remain in control. The keys to symbiotic civil‐military relations are a desire on the part of military officers to work with civilians and civilian respect for military culture. When civilians respect military culture—that is, the military’s (1) devotion to clear executive leadership, (2) commitment to corporate identity, (3) drive to increase professional expertise, and (4) dedication to political responsibility—a system of shared responsibility is likely to emerge. This thesis is elaborated by comparing recent civil‐military relations in Russia and the United States.     

“Promotion tournament 2.0”: Why local cadres expand health‐care provision in China

Previous research has attributed the delayed welfare development in China to the government's traditional obsession with GDP growth target as the principal criteria for cadre promotion. Yet why has health‐care provision significantly expanded since the 2000s? This article argues that as central policies adjusted to incorporate health care as a priority, the cadre assessment system subsequently made it a “hard target,” and thus the competition for office has compelled local cadres to implement health‐care expansion. Apart from the importance of local leaders in policy change as the literature suggests, this article elaborates on the pivotal role of technical bureaucrats by innovatively introducing the “promotion tournament 2.0” model, which emphasizes the knowledge–power coalition between these political actors. By investigating the case of health‐care expansion, this article illustrates the local politics of policy change with various forms of data collected from semi‐structured interviews, newspaper archives, political documents, and official statistics.     

From Research Evidence to “Evidence by Proxy”? Organizational Enactment of Evidence‐Based Health Care in Four High‐Income Countries

Drawing on multiple qualitative case studies of evidence‐based health care conducted in Sweden, Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom, the authors systematically explore the composition, circulation, and role of codified knowledge deployed in the organizational enactment of evidence‐based practice. The article describes the “chain of codified knowledge,” which reflects the institutionalization of evidence‐based practice as organizational business as usual, and shows that it is dominated by performance standards, policies and procedures, and locally collected (improvement and audit) data. These interconnected forms of “evidence by proxy,” which are informed by research partly or indirectly, enable simplification, selective reinforcement, and contextualization of scientific knowledge. The analysis reveals the dual effects of this codification dynamic on evidence‐based practice and highlights the influence of macro‐level ideological, historical, and technological factors on the composition and circulation of codified knowledge in the organizational enactment of evidence‐based health care in different countries.