The training and development of top executives in developing countries: A tanzanian approach

The training and development of public service employees is now accepted to be a major contributor to organizational performance. In the Third World, however, much of the training effort has been directed at junior, supervisory and middle-level personnel. Top personnel were, for a long time, presumed to be ‘above training’. There is now, however, an awakening to the need for training all categories of personnel. The major constraint in most countries remains the lack of facilities and trainers able to handle senior personnel. Tanzania has recently embarked on a concerted effort to train its top public service personnel through the mobilization of all management/administrative training capabilities in a joint, concerted endeavour, under the aegis of the Ministry of Manpower Development and a body known as the National Standing Training Team on Top Executive Development (NSTT). More than 20 6-week courses have been run and a recent evaluation of the programme suggests that they are popular and have reactivated an interest in training among top executives. There is, however, no evidence to suggest that the training has resulted in improved performance in public organizations although some executives have introduced some innovations in their organizations which they derived from the training programme.     

Managing research institutions in developing countries: Test of a model

This article proposes a model for the analysis, management and development of research institutes in developing countries which incorporates four interdependent dimensions: (i) a strategic management dimension concerned with the management of the organisation's internal and external environments and their interrelationships; (ii) a dimension concerned with ‘collaborative institutional arrangements’; (iii) an internal management and supervision dimension; and (iv) a ‘research operations’ dimension. A preliminary corroboration of the model's validity is derived from a review of relevant published literature and summaries of evaluation studies of research institutions in developing countries.     

Comments on ‘Enhancing organizational effectiveness in developing countries: The training and visit system revisited’

This article comments on the above-titled article which appeared in Public Administration and Development (PAD), Vol. 12. It argues that Hulme's article: (i) does not, as it professes to, bring out the organizational impact of the training and visit (T&V) system of extension and, more seriously, does not suggest what improvements are needed to the system, and whether any such improvements have been tried anywhere and with what results; (ii) dismisses the rigorous statistical analysis of the impact of the system by Feder and Slade, and approvingly cites Antholt's methodologically unsustainable comparison between states in India, without giving convincing reasons for this choice; and (iii) ignores the important developments regarding T&V extension in the recent past, and relies on earlier papers on the subject. Some of the recent developments regarding the implementation of T&V in Africa are given in this article, including a summary of recent evaluations done in Kenya and Burkina Faso. The article concludes with an account of the managerial issues posed by T&V.     

Making a difference: On the constraints of consensus building and the relevance of deliberation in stakeholder dialogues

This article illuminates the contribution of stakeholder dialogues to environmental policy making. It makes a distinction between stakeholder dialogues as consensus building and stakeholder dialogues as deliberation. Although consensus building seems to be the dominant approach in participatory environmental policy making, this article questions the merits of consensus building and it uses the experience of the Dutch stakeholder dialogue project Climate OptiOns for the Long term (COOL) to explore, in a deliberative design, the shortcomings of a consensus-building approach and how they are possibly dealt with. The article presents the results of two deliberative methods that have been used in the COOL project – the repertory grid analysis and the dialectical approach – to demonstrate how a deliberative design can help policy makers to critically assess arguments in favor of and against a broad range of policy options, and deal with stakeholder conflict in an early phase of the policy process.     

发展中国家转型中的政治合法性危机探析

对合法性本质、来源、基础的分析提供了认识合法性问题的理论工具.发展中国家转型中的合法性危机表现出敏感性、普遍性、爆发性及层面深的特征,其原因可以从现代性的挑战、转型带来的政府"超载"、阶级和阶层冲突以及公共权力失控中找到.合法性的维护应致力于创建现代性的合法性结构.     

信息化国际关系:现实与发展中国家的抉择

本文认为在全球化时代 ,信息化国际关系的影响日渐突出。文章对现实中信息技术与国际关系的互动进行了梳理 ;对发展中国家如何面对信息化国际关系进行了思考。文章认为 ,以更新的观念、更开放的姿态进入全球化信息传播时代 ,应当是发展中国家的普遍性选择 ,也是最符合其利益的出路     

新型工业化道路初探

走新型工业化道路 ,基本实现工业化 ,是党的十六大制定的我国本世纪前 2 0年的重要任务之一。新型工业化是相对于传统工业化而言的 :是被赋予了信息化的新内容 ,与信息化相互促进的工业化 ;是以保护环境和资源为前提的可持续的工业化 ;是以人为本 ,实现充分就业的工业化 ;是既充分利用国外资源 ,又坚持独立自主、自立更生 ,不断提高国际竞争力的工业化。     

Waiting for privatization in developing countries: Towards the integration of economic and non-economic explanations

The intention of this paper is to examine the political and administrative limits on the effective implementation of privatization in developing countries and so to present a challenge to the view that slow progress is primarily attributable to economic constraints. After examining these economic aspects, the paper provides an explanatory framework which incorporates those political and administrative processes central to an understanding of what happens to state economic policies in practice. The significance of these processes is demonstrated by drawing on research material from India, Pakistan, Thailand, and Sri Lanka. The conclusion drawn is that responses to pressures for economic reform will be determined, not so much by economic criteria as by the political and bureaucratic resources available to decision makers. Since policy processes in developing countries show considerable variety it is likely that there will be substantial variations in the practical achievement of privatization objectives.     

Decentralizing water supply services in developing countries: Factors affecting the success of community management

This article examines the problem of extending access to potable water through conventionally controlled government services and describes the roles of non-governmental organizations and community management associations in improving service delivery and maintaining local water systems. Six sets of factors that are crucial to the success of community management are identified: adequate incentives, sufficient skills and resources, appropriate processes for water systems operations and maintenance, effective interorganizational relationships, appropriate technology, and effective systems of monitoring, evaluation and feedback. The components that must be taken into consideration in designing and implementing programmes for decentralizing water supply systems through community management are set out.     

Nigeria's bureaucratized ombudsman system: An insight into the problem of bureaucratization in a developing country

This paper is a case study of the bureaucratization process in Nigeria's ombudsman institution, otherwise known as the Public Complaints Commission. Proceeding from the premise that the efficacy of modern bureaucratic organizations is predicated on the ability to control bureau—pathologies, an attempt is made to determine success in keeping the bureaucracy in the Public Complaints Commission at an optimum level and thereby mitigating possible negative consequences. The paper argues that, contrary to the situation in most other places, Nigeria's ombudsman institution has developed into an enormous, wasteful and inefficient bureaucracy. The reasons for this situation are largely sociocultural. The Public Complaints Commission has a long history of close, intimate association with the civil service. This has transformed the Commission, more or less, into an arm of the civil service and virtually eliminated its unique ombudsman features. The situation of the Public Complaints Commission is, of course, not peculiar. It is true of most other non-civil service institutions, such as public enterprises and educational institutions, in Nigeria and most other developing countries. The paper concludes with a number of policy suggestions.     

The impact of sector employment on party choice: A comparative study of eight West European countries

Abstract.  In this article, the impact of sector employment on party choice in eight West European countries is examined. The empirical analysis is organised into three parts. First, the impact of sector on party choice treated as a nominal-level variable is analysed. Then the impact of sector within various social classes is focused upon, and finally sector employment is considered in relation to the division between socialist and non-socialist parties. The impact of sector employment is large in Denmark; moderate in Britain, France and Italy; small in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands; and insignificant in Ireland. The impact of sector employment is much greater within the service class than any of the other social classes. The party families of the left, and also the greens, get stronger support from the public employees, while the main party families among the non-socialist parties, apart from the Christian Democrats, get strongest support from private-sector employees. Sector employment is most strongly correlated with socialist/non-socialist party division in Denmark followed by France and Britain, with only minor or insignificant correlation in the other countries.     

The impact of the introduction of premiums into a SCHIP program.

This paper examines the introduction of premiums into the SCHIP program in Kentucky. Kentucky introduced a $20 monthly premium for SCHIP coverage for children with family incomes between 151 percent and 200 percent of the federal poverty level in December 2003. Administrative data between 2001 and 2004 is used to estimate a Cox proportional hazard model that predicts enrollment duration in this premium-paying category. The results suggest that a premium reduces the length of enrollment, with the impact concentrated in the first three months after the introduction of the premium. Similar results are not found for the non-premium-paying category.     

The portfolio allocation paradox: An investigation into the nature of a very strong but puzzling relationship

Abstract.  Perhaps the strongest empirical finding in political science is 'Gamson's Law': the near-perfect relationship that exists in parliamentary systems between a coalition party's seat contribution to the government and its quantitative allocation of cabinet portfolios. Nevertheless, doubts remain. What would happen if the salience or importance of the various portfolios was also taken into account? Should it not be the case that payoffs correspond with bargaining power rather than seat contributions? And perhaps most significantly, would addressing these issues produce evidence that the parties designated to form governments extract disproportionately large payoffs for themselves, as predicted by 'proposer' models of bargaining? Utilizing the results of a new expert survey of portfolio salience in 14 Western European countries, the authors of this article explore each of these questions. Their basic finding is that salience-weighted portfolios payoffs overwhelmingly mirror seat contributions, contra proposer models and any other models based on bargaining power. The article concludes with a discussion of the implications for formal models of bargaining.     

Exploring the relationship between performance management and program impact: A case study of the job training partnership act

Programs that involve multiple levels of government may suffer from a principal‐agent problem: Lower levels of government may wish to pursue different objectives than the higher level of government that provides funding. One strategy for dealing with this problem is to establish a performance management system where units operating the program are accountable for meeting performance standards and are rewarded or sanctioned depending on how well they perform. Title II‐A of the Job Training Partnership Act provides training for economically disadvantaged adults and has operated under a performance management system since 1983 when the program was established. The federal government's goal for the program is to maximize impact on the employment and earnings of participants, but because control groups are not available for the 640 local programs, proxy measures of performance must be used. In this paper, data from an experiment in 16 sites are used to determine how closely measured performance corresponds to program impact. It is concluded that there is only a weak correspondence between the two measures and that the Department of Labor should avoid making significant rewards or sanctions based on the current performance management system. © 2000 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Making Sense of Hell: Three Meditations on the Holocaust

This essay is an inquiry into the epistemology of the holocaust. It contests organic explanations of the event in favour of an interpretative pluralism . Different questions are seen as demanding different forms of inquiry: what made the holocaust possible requires a political analysis, the issue of its uniqueness calls for a sociological perspective, while an anthropological approach is necessary in order to illuminate its enduring symbolic significance. The essay will deal with these matters in an innovative manner. Thus, in concert with one another these three meditations will provide a new constellation for viewing the holocaust even as they confront certain prevailing prejudices and assumptions.     

当代中国政治发展目标的规范分析:一条新道路之思考

当代我国政治发展的目标定位可以通过稳定性、结构专业化、法治化和民主化等方面来考虑 ,目标主要是指维护安定团结的政治局面、加大政治结构的专业化建设、建设高度法治国家与实现政治民主化。政治发展的目标通过稳妥的推进政治体制改革而获得实现 ,其实现的社会条件是市民社会的成熟、中介组织的健全和公民精神人格的形成。民主与民主化的路径成为政治发展的路途的主要指向。重新确定政府、党团与民众的制度化关系 ,实现宪政、党内民主与基层民主三维互动是民主化道路研究可以参考的一种分析思路。开放体制的能否形成标志着宏观领域改革能否取得重大突破的关键。政治精英内部平等的态度、同情的了解、渐进政治的原则与和平地处理冲突则是民主化和政治转型的基本精神。     

Political Science Research on China: Making the Most of Diversity

This article aims at stimulating debate on the future development of political science research in and on China by bringing into clearer view the diversity of social science research in the West. It argues that far from monolithic, political science is itself engaged in a broad controversy on common goals and shared standards. Secondly, addressing international students of Chinese politics the article observes that we are currently witnessing a transformation of the field as we experience a slight shift toward more quantitative work. However, those China scholars working in a qualitative tradition should not see this as a hostile takeover of the field. Rather they should take this as a stimulating opportunity to employ more refined methodologies from within their own tradition as well as engage in multi-method research. The challenge is to make the most of diversity and to engage in fruitful cross-cultural dialogue based on respect for each other’s viewpoints. Three major divides need to be bridged: between qualitative and quantitative approaches, between political science and area studies as well as between Chinese and Western scholars.