COORDINATION IN GOVERNMENT: DECOMPOSITION AND BOUNDED RATIONALITY AS A FRAMEWORK FOR “USER FRIENDLY” STATUTE LAW*

Abstract: Many interactions between adjacent elements of public administration are “resolved” by a weak form of bi-lateral and non-hierarchical coordination. There are quite intractable obstacles to achieving a good fit between bi-lateral resolution and higher order aims of government. Formal limits to the results that can be achieved by coordination may be derived from the requirements for optimality in the “Decomposition Model” of decentralised administration. Limits to human capabilities are widely recognised in contemporary computer software that is designed to be “user friendly”, yet in the design of systems of statute and administration the limits of human rationality are commonly ignored. Proper statutory definition of functional boundaries can harness innate strengths in the “bounded rationality” of which mere mortals and their institutions are capable, and partially guard against the unwanted effects of its weaknesses. Three main classes of interactions may be defined, and can be dealt with respectively by (a) an external and superior source of statutory power, (b) the use of temporary concurrence powers, and (c) statutory plans. The trick is to be clear about which applies in the circumstances.     

“WOMEN'S PRISONS” AND “MEN'S PRISONS”: SHOULD PRISONERS BE CLASSIFIED BY SEX?

What are the differences between “women's prisons” and “men's prisons”? That question is answered in this article, which documents that many institutions “for” women do not provide services designed specially for women, or anyone else. Moreover, some women's prisons provide fewer vocational, recreational, and educational programs than do institutions “for” men. Given the growing literature on the disparity of services and on the relative deprivations faced by many women prisoners, the author questions whether segregation by sex should continue to be used as a major premise of prison classification systems.     

“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.     

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.     

From “New Institutionalism” to “Institutional Processualism”: Advancing Knowledge about Public Management Policy Change

Research on public management reform has taken a decidedly disciplinary turn. Since the late 1990s, analytical issues are less often framed in terms of the New Public Management. As part of the disciplinary turn, much recent research on public management reform is highly influenced by the three new institutionalisms. However, these studies have implicitly been challenged by a competing research program on public management reform that is emphatically processual in its theoretical foundations. This article develops the challenge in a more explicit fashion. It provides a theoretical restatement of the competing “institutional processualist” research program and compares its substantive findings with those drawn from the neoinstitutionalisms. The implications of this debate about public management reform for comparative historical analysis and neoinstitutional theories are discussed.     

Learning from the “Milwaukee challenge”

The consequences of administering welfare-to-work programs through county-level agencies may be the most important issue omitted from current discussions of welfare reform. An administrative geography of county welfare agencies fragments metropolitan labor markets, consigning central county residents to job-poor areas and isolating them from job-rich suburban counties. This paper illustrates this effect by mapping employment/population shifts and administrative boundaries in metropolitan Milwaukee. The paper ends with the suggestion that county agencies be allowed to play variable rather than fixed functional roles in a labor exchange process that must now accommodate a metropolitan scale.