Seeing Red: U.S. Air Force Assessments of the Soviet Union, 1945-1949

In the immediate postwar period Army Air Force A-2 cultivated a unique intelligence culture that focussed on the air-atomic threat posed by the Soviet Union and the use of the most advanced technologies to monitor countries behind the 'Iron Curtain'. Although most intelligence reports presented a detailed analysis of Russian air power capabilities, consideration was also given to an assessment of intentions. Based on a literal interpretation of Marxist texts and an unambiguous reading of Soviet expansion in Eastern Europe and the Middle East, A-2 more than any other agency was convinced of the Soviet willingness to wage war. As for a reading of capabilities, the fact that the Soviets were developing a long-range air force was in itself evidence of intentions. A-2 was, however, left out of the national security decision-making loop until after the successful test of the Soviet A-bomb, which was accurately predicted by the Air Force in the summer of 1949. Until that time most officials in the Truman administration believed in the likelihood of the slow incremental expansion of Soviet power rather than the launching of an 'atomic Pearl harbor' against the Western bloc.     

A Case Study in U.S. Government Financial Management in Cross-Disciplinary Teams

Following the example of the private sector, the public sector in the United States has been undergoing process-reengineering, most notable in the Federal Government with the National Performance Review (NPR). The United States Agency for International Development (USAID) asked its overseas missions for volunteer participation as Country Experimental Laboratories (CELs) during USAID's NPR efforts. USAID/ Senegal, in French West Africa, became a CEL in the spring of 1994. The reengineering, occurring over a two-year period, created multi-disciplinary teams centered around Strategic Objectives (SOs). This article describes the experience and lessons learned from developing and implementing financial management policies and procedures to support the SO Teams, while concurrently ensuring that accountability requirements were met. The article uses the case study format, delineating the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats faced by the Mission Controller, the trade-offs between the decentralization of program management and accountability, and the organizational relationships established to reengineer the financial management processes at USAID/Senegal.     

The Legitimacy of U.S. Government Agency Power

A synthesis of the work of two political and legal scholars, John Rohr and Lon Fuller, properly balances constitutional and managerial values, supplementing other theories that offer useful but insufficient support for American government agency legitimacy. Agencies reflecting that balance would strengthen their legitimacy—a particularly valuable goal in an era of low confidence in American government. Rohr's focus on the constitutional oath of office and American regime values, and Fuller's insistence that law must serve human needs, leave a great deal indeterminate and discretionary but nevertheless set boundaries. Bureaucrats who risked or sacrificed their jobs to avoid transgressing those boundaries offer models of loyalty to the Rohr‐Fuller balance of values. The behavior of officials in the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency in thwarting measures that could have averted the financial crisis of 2007 offers a model of bureaucrats who violated those boundaries.     

Metropolitan Planning Organizations and the New Regionalism: The Case of Louisville

This article outlines the new regionalism movement and its metropolitanagenda, reviews federal efforts to promote new regionalism underISTEA and TEA–21, considers how the new federal policieschanged the role of metropolitan planning organizations (MPOs)in transportation planning by examining the MPO for the Louisvillemetropolis, and assesses the MPO process in Louisville. Thelocal decision of whether to build a new bridge across the OhioRiver was a major test of the enhanced MPO process. Federaltransportation policies enhanced regional coordination and cooperationin transportation planning in the Louisville metropolis resultingin a consensus plan to build two bridges across the Ohio River.However, the MPO process did not lead to the development ofa metropolitan-wide interest or perspective. Moreover, the newregionalist agenda was not advanced because sprawl was not afactor in the decision on whether and where to build the bridges.     

Strategic Voting in a U.S. Senate Election

Due to the strength of its two-party system, the opportunity for voters to strategically defect in favor of third party or independent candidates is rare in high profile American elections. Indeed, it has been almost a century since a third party candidate finished better than one of the major party presidential nominees—in 1912 Bull Moose Progressive Teddy Roosevelt finished ahead of Republican William H. Taft. In this study we examine strategic voting in a U.S. Senate election where the independent candidate also finished above one of the major party nominees. In the 2010 Florida Senate contest the sitting Governor Charlie Crist shed his Republican label in order to compete in the general election since he was certain to lose in the GOP primary to Marco Rubio, the eventual winner. Crist finished second by taking a substantial share of votes away from the third place candidate, Democrat Kendrick Meek. Because this type of contest seldom occurs, in American politics there is scant empirical research on strategic voting under these conditions. We employ an unobtrusive survey of a large sample of registered Floridians in order to assess the likelihood of strategic voting among respondents who preferred the Democrat Kendrick Meek. For voters who sincerely preferred the Democrat, a significant portion defected in favor of the Independent Charlie Crist if they expected him to finish ahead of Meek. Additionally, we find that after a major news story broke, in which former President Bill Clinton allegedly advised Meek to drop out of the race so that Crist might win, respondents surveyed after this event were more likely to vote strategically in favor of Crist. Our study clearly demonstrates the importance of political context. Under the appropriate conditions, we find a high likelihood of strategic voting.     

Structural Change in U.S. Presidents' Use of Force

Has there been a structural change in the way U.S. presidents use force abroad since the nineteenth century? In this article, I investigate historical changes in the use of force by U.S. presidents using Bayesian changepoint analysis. In doing so, I present an integrated Bayesian approach for analyzing changepoint problems in a Poisson regression model. To find the nature of the breaks, I estimate parameters of the Poisson regression changepoint model using Chib's (1998) hidden Markov model algorithm and Frühwirth‐Schnatter and Wagner's (2006) data augmentation method. Then, I utilize transdimensional Markov chain Monte Carlo methods to detect the number of breaks. Analyzing yearly use of force data from 1890 to 1995, I find that, controlling for the effects of the Great Depression and the two world wars, the relationship between domestic conditions and the frequency of the use of force abroad fundamentally shifted in the 1940s.     

Strategic Defiance and Compliance in the U.S. Courts of Appeals

Why do lower courts treat Supreme Court precedents favorably or unfavorably? To address this question, we formulate a theoretical framework based on current principal‐agent models of the judiciary. We use the framework to structure an empirical analysis of a random sample of 500 Supreme Court cases, yielding over 10,000 subsequent treatments in the U.S. Courts of Appeals. When the contemporary Supreme Court is ideologically estranged from the enacting Supreme Court, lower courts treat precedent much more harshly. Controlling for the ideological distance between the enacting and contemporary Supreme Courts, the preferences of the contemporary lower court itself are unrelated to its behavior. Hence, hierarchical control appears strong and effective. At the same time, however, a lower court's previous treatments of precedent strongly influence its later treatments. The results have important implications for understanding legal change and suggest new directions for judicial principal‐agency theory.     

U.S.‐Style Leadership for English Local Government?

Significant changes in the political management of local authorities in the United Kingdom are now taking place as a result of legislation passed by the Labour government since 1997. The new political management models aim to modernize local governance by strengthening local leadership, streamlining decision making, and enhancing local accountability. These changes owe much to U.S. experience: They involve the introduction of a separation of powers between an executive and an assembly, and they allow local authorities to introduce directly elected mayors for the first time ever. Is U.K. local government beginning to adopt what might be described as U.S.‐style approaches to local governance? The evidence suggests the new institutional designs for U.K. local authorities represent a radical shift toward U.S.‐style local leadership and decision making. However, the U.K. central state remains heavily involved in the details of local decision making, to an extent that would be unthinkable in the United States.     

Implementation of Digital-Era Governance: The Case of Open Data in U.S. Cities

This article examines the institutional factors that influence the implementation of open data platforms in U.S. cities. Public management scholarship has argued that governance can be transformed by new information technologies that improve transparency and engagement, reduce administrative costs, and support performance management systems. However, this argument ignores key risks for administrators, as well as institutional and political obstacles that can thwart implementation. This article uses hierarchical negative binomial regression to analyze the organizational and institutional features influencing implementation in more than 1,500 departments across 60 cities. Department type and administrative capacity are strongly associated with the number of open data files available, while city-level institutional characteristics and administrative capacity are not significant factors. Municipal demographics are also identified as a factor, suggesting a potential demand-side influence from wealthy and technologically proficient residents. Evidence for Practice

• The implementation of open data policies benefits from targeted approaches at the department level rather than uniform, citywide objectives or requirements.
• City executive-level positions such as chief data or information officers are not necessarily associated with successful implementation, measured by the number of open data files made available.
• Open data implementation involves additional administrative responsibilities and labor at the department level, so city administrators looking to expand the number and variety of data sets available through their open data platforms should devote time and resources to working directly with departments to facilitate and encourage data sharing.
• Administrators looking to expand the number and variety of data sets available through their open data platforms should consider the costs associated with investing in increasing individual departments’ abilities to balance the additional administrative responsibilities and labor involved.

     

International Cooperation to Manage High‐Skill Migration: The Case of India–U.S. Relations

Highly skilled people are among the most valuable factors of production in the contemporary world economy. Some have characterized the competition among nations for these people as a “brain drain” or “war for talent,” which imposes significant costs on the countries of emigration. However, the distribution of costs and benefits that results from high‐skill migration is not necessarily zero‐sum or fixed. It may be altered through international cooperation, producing a self‐reinforcing “win–win” scenario for sending and receiving countries. Bilateral cooperation, focused on specific sectors affected by migration, is the most promising approach for realizing such a scenario. This paper explores the prospects and potential for such cooperation between India and the United States, which comprise what is probably the world's largest high‐skill mobility relationship. After sketching the broad contours of the relationship, we explore the prospects for mutually beneficial cooperation in three specific fields of high‐skill migration: information technology services, medicine and nursing, and graduate education.     

论美国政府绩效评估中的公众意志表达--以三项调查为基础

本文以王小虎1996年进行的有关地方官员对绩效指标的认识倾向性的调查、美国会计标准委员会2000～2001年进行的有关公民对州与地方政府绩效报告的看法的调查和2002年进行的有关州和地方政府绩效评估实践的调查为基础,考察了美国政府绩效评估中的公众意志表达问题,认为在实践中,公众意志不过是赋予政府行为合法性的一种点缀,或者说是行政机构采取的一种政治应对策略.     

Predicting Organizational Actual Turnover Rates in the U.S. Federal Government

ABSTRACT

This study expands the level of analysis on turnover in public administration, especially in the U.S. federal government, from the individual level to the organizational level by using organizational actual turnover rates. Some scholars argue that public employees' turnover intention generally reflects actual turnover. However, very little empirical evidence supporting this argument has been provided in public administration, especially in a broad array of public agencies. This study has rejected this argument by showing insignificant or weakly significant correlations between organizational actual turnover and weighted turnover intention rates. In addition, overall, the two regression results for organizational actual turnover and turnover intention also show different results from those in the existing literature on individual-level turnover intention. The significant predictors of organizational actual turnover rates are goal ambiguity, pay satisfaction, and diversity policy satisfaction. The correlation and regression results imply that research on predictors of turnover may need to consider the differences that may result from using different units of analysis and to make a distinction between turnover intention and actual turnover.     

Party Government in Presidential Democracies: Extending Cartel Theory Beyond the U.S. Congress

Cartel Theory (and partisan theory more generally) expertly explains the functioning of the U.S. Congress. However, as a theory originally developed to study a single legislature where the institutional context differs greatly from that found in other presidential democracies, its applicability to these democracies has been questioned. Between one extreme represented by the United States (where legislators control their own political future) and the other represented by centralized party systems (where the national party leadership controls legislators' future) exists an intermediate group of democracies where subparty bosses are the key actors, controlling the future of subsets of a party's legislative delegation. We analyze one of these intermediate democracies, Argentina, and demonstrate the general applicability of Cartel Theory to an institutional context that differs notably from that found in the United States. We highlight how the theory can be adapted to a political system where subparty bosses, not individual legislators, are the most relevant political actors .     

U.S. Government solar policy: Appropriate roles for nonfinancial incentives

During 1975–1980, U.S. solar policy emphasized financial incentives to potential purchasers as the primary means of stimulating the introduction and spread of residential solar heating systems. This article examines the importance of nonfinancial factors in decisions to purchase residential solar heating systems during these early stages of market penetration and discusses the implications these factors have for policy design. Drawing upon research on the diffusion of innovations, on the effectiveness of income tax credits for solar heating systems, and on solar energy system purchasing decisions themselves, the argument is developed that nonfinancial factors such as system reliability, warranty protection, environmental concerns, adequate information about system costs and performance, and confidence in system suppliers and installers are at least as important as initial system cost to early purchasers. These considerations were not reflected in U.S. solar policy to the extent warranted. As a result, that policy failed to promote the balanced development of all elements essential to a viable residential solar heating industry and probably failed to alter the intentions of many prospective solar system purchasers. The reasons U.S. policymakers were relatively insensitive to nonfinancial factors are discussed and an alternative strategy for increasing the rate of market penetration of residential solar heating systems is offered.A previous paper addressing this subject was prepared for the International Conference on Energy Use Management, Berlin, Federal Republic of Germany, 26–30 October 1981. That paper served as the basis for the present article. The author wishes to thank several reviewers for their helpful and constructive criticisms of earlier versions of this article.     

Valuing Diversity in Political Organizations: Gender and Token Minorities in the U.S. House of Representatives

Political scientists are keenly interested in how diversity influences politics, yet we know little about how diverse groups of political actors interact. We advance a unified theory of colleague valuation to address this puzzle. The theory explains how minority group size affects how members of a political organization differentially value majority and minority group colleagues, predicting that the effect of preference divergence on individual‐level colleague valuation is greatest when the minority group is smallest. We test this prediction using member‐to‐member leadership political action committee (PAC) contributions in the U.S. House of Representatives. The results obtain strong, albeit not uniform, support for the theory, demonstrating that the gender gap in colleague valuations declines as preference divergence increases in all but one instance. In contrast to conventional wisdom, the theory and evidence indicate that women serving in the U.S. House of Representatives receive less support from men colleagues as their ranks increase.     

Frames of Influence: U.S. Environmental Rulemaking Case Studies

The purpose of this article was to question whether interest group actions during the pre‐proposal stage of U.S. federal rulemaking influences the language proposed in natural resource agency rules. The influence of interest groups during this stage was examined across three case studies: (1) the United States Fish and Wildlife Service (USFWS) critical habitat designation for Nebraska's Salt Creek tiger beetle, (2) the USFWS critical habitat designation for the Utah/Arizona Shivwits and Holmgren milk vetch, and (3) the USFWS delisting of the Northern Rocky Mountain gray wolf population from the endangered species list. To analyze these three cases, a frame analysis approach is used and offers evidence to support the proposition that the instructive, expertise, and fiscal feasibility frames that stakeholders used during the pre‐proposal stage can shape the language of a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking. These cases suggest the rich potential for careful study of the earliest stages in the regulatory and administrative rulemaking process in the United States and beyond.     

Enron/Andersen: Crisis in U.S. Accounting and Lessons for Government

Accounting and auditing play a key role in the belief of ordinary taxpayers and investors in their institutions. This is equally true of the private and governmental sectors. The Enron/Andersen scandal, regrettably, is not an isolated case, but rather merely indicative of underlying, structural flaws in our financial systems. Moreover, there is evidence that some of these flaws may be present in governmental accounting and auditing. The Sarbanes‐Oxley Act of 2002 is an attempt to address these problems in the private sector, but does not address concerns in the public sector. Public sector accounting issues that need to be addressed and monitored include substandard audit work and related liability issues, the appropriate funding of GASB so as to ensure its independence, auditor fees, and auditor independence questions including protection of elected and appointed state auditors.     

Strategic Interaction and Candidate Competition in U.S. House Elections: Empirical Applications of Probit and Strategic Probit Models

In recent work, Signorino (American Political Science Review93:279–297, 1999; International Interactions 28:93–115,2002) has sought to test statistical models derived from extensive-formgames in the context of international relations research focusingon conflict and interstate bargaining. When two or more actorsinteract with one another under conditions of uncertainty, Signorinodemonstrates that it is necessary to incorporate such strategicinteraction into the underlying model to avoid potential threatsto statistical inference. Outside the realm of internationalrelations research, however, there have been limited applicationsof Signorino's strategic probit model in understanding strategicinteraction. In this article, I present an empirical comparisonof probit and strategic probit models in the context of candidatecompetition in House elections during the 1990s. I show thatincumbent spending deters challenger entry and factors suchas minority party affiliation and redistricting significantlyaffect incumbent career decisions, findings that run counterto those reported in the nonstrategic model. Overall, the resultsillustrate that failing to account for strategic interactioncan lead to biased and inaccurate estimates related to challengerand incumbent entry decisions.     

Leveraging Technologies in Public Agencies: The Case of the U.S. Census Bureau and the 2010 Census

Emerging technologies are transforming government agencies and the nature of governance and pose new challenges for public managers. Under the leadership of Steven J. Jost, associate director for communications, the U.S. Census Bureau leveraged emerging technologies during the 2010 Census to complete the project under budget while also engaging citizens through the design of viable participatory platforms. The 2010 Census campaign focused on increasing response rates and encouraging citizen participation through innovations in the communication process with citizens and through the infusion of technology. The Census Bureau also effectively managed risks associated with the use of emerging technologies. The authors examine the innovations, the risks, and the effort to manage those risks under Jost’s leadership.