“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.     

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.     

“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.     

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.     

“Grabbing Hand” or “Helping Hand”?: Corruption and the Economic Role of the State

This article seeks to disentangle which features of government intervention are linked to corruption and which are not, by distinguishing between the government roles of regulator, entrepreneur, and consumer. It finds that the degree of regulation of private business activity is the strongest predictor of corruption, and that high levels of public spending are related to low levels of corruption. There is no evidence of direct government involvement in production having any bearing on corruption. It is concluded that advanced welfare capitalist systems, which leave business relatively free from interference while intervening strongly in the distribution of wealth and the provision of key services, combine the most “virtuous” features of “big” and “small” government. This suggests that anti‐corruption campaigners should be relaxed about state intervention in the economy in general, but should specifically target corruption‐inducing regulatory systems.     

“Capacity‐building” in global Internet governance: The long‐term outcomes of “multistakeholderism”

“Capacity building” is a catch phrase from the UN development discourse. In recent years, it has entered the global Internet governance (IG) arena. At World Summit of the Information Society (WSIS 2003), “capacity building” was identified as a key public policy issue. It is proposed in this study that ‘capacity building’ be defined in a different manner – as the principal outcome of the experimental multistakeholder (MSH) process in global IG. The open and inclusive process of stakeholder deliberation leads to accumulation of intellectual capital, development of relational infrastructure for the domain (epistemic community), and emergence of common global consciousness. When cast as a capacity‐building process, MSH collaboration at global Internet governance arenas exhibits long‐term and large‐scale intangible outcomes. This study contributes to the understanding of the capacity‐building potential of MSH collaboration in IG. By employing concepts from International Relations and Organizational Learning, the author develops a model of tangible and intangible outcomes of MSH collaboration. This unique model can be used for studying the effects in other stakeholder venues of governing global resources and processes.     

Presidential address: From the Great Society to continuous improvement government: Shifting from “does it work?” to “what would make it better?”

In the 1960s, various social programs were started (like Head Start) or dramatically expanded (like AFDC). Loosely, this period of expansion is called the Great Society. Too many Great Society social programs, unfortunately, have been disappointments—at least when compared to the high hopes of the '60s. Even if they “work,” most of us wish that they worked much better. Some people take such statements to mean that the Great Society's social programs should be defunded. Most Great Society programs, however, are surely here to stay, for they serve important social functions. How many of us really think there could be an America without a social safety net? It is now time to do the difficult and unglamorous work of systematic program improvement. Instead of testing program efficacy over and over again, we should engage in ongoing and evidence‐based efforts to increase program effectiveness (in both large and small ways). © 2009 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.