Who Are the Keepers of the Code? Articulating and Upholding Ethical Standards in the Field of Public Administration

Establishing a code of ethics has been a challenge in public administration. Ethics is central to the practice of administration, but the broad field of public administration has had difficulty articulating clear and meaningful standards of behavior and developing a means of upholding a code of ethics. Although a number of specialized professional associations in public service adopted codes, starting with the International City/County Management Association in 1924 and others after 1960, the full range of public administrators did not have an association to represent them until the American Society for Public Administration (ASPA) was founded in 1939. Despite early calls for a code of ethics in ASPA, the first code was adopted in 1984, with revisions in 1994, but neither code had a process for enforcement. A new code approved in 2013 builds on the earlier codes and increases the prospects for ASPA to work with other professional associations to broaden awareness of the ethical responsibilities to society of all public administrators.     

Are we witnessing a paradigm shift in the analysis of political competition?

This presidential address assesses the crisis of the Downsian model of political competition in light of the mounting evidence on policy divergence and evaluates the possibility that the new theories of politicians’ quality and political selection provide an alternative theoretical conceptualization of political competition. Based on a critical review of the literature and on the author’s works on content analysis of policy speeches, income redistribution, politicians’ quality, and political legislation cycles, this address concludes that multidimensional Downsian models of political competition are adequate to explain policy divergence and points out the serious theoretical and empirical problems that models of political selection have to solve.     

On the front lines of welfare delivery: Are workers implementing policy reforms?

The impact of policy changes on the local delivery of services has been overlooked in several decades of largely unsuccessful efforts to “reform” welfare. This article uses one case of state-level welfare reform in the early 1990s to examine the implementation of policy changes in local welfare offices. Direct observation of transactions between welfare workers and clients suggests that policy reforms were not fully implemented by street-level bureaucrats. The instrumental transactions that continued to dominate interactions with clients were consistent with processing claims and rationing scarce resources, but they were poorly aligned with new policies aimed at changing the services and message delivered to welfare clients. The failure to fully implement reforms on the frontlines has implications for the achievement of policy objectives and for equity in service provision. Implementation issues will have even greater urgency as welfare is devolved from federal to state governments.     

Diagnosising the Identity Crisis of Culture: Are We Learning Nothing from History?

Abstract

This paper argues that we should think of culture and identity as separate concepts, involving distinct objects of enquiry. Whilst identity based theories tend to tell fragmented stories about culture and become overly concerned with difference and particular subjectivities, this paper claims that cultures emerge from a process of internal negotiation which requires only coherence and not homogeneity. In other words, members of cultures need not share all their features in order to be genuine members.     

Are Party Activists the Party Extremists? The Structure of Opinion in Political Parties

In re-examining May's law of curvilinear disparity, this article analyzes the structure of opinion of political parties. May suggests that voters, party leaders and party activists have different incentives to participate in politics, and therefore voters and leaders have more moderate positions on issues than party activists. This article is based on the extensions of May's law made by Kitschelt, who argues that curvilinear disparities, although not general phenomena, are bound to occur in specific circumstances. We have focused on the level of cleavage conflict in the system, the variable that Kitschelt himself found to be critical for explaining party radicalism among sub-leaders. Using the Norwegian multiparty system as a test case, we propose that radicalism among party activists is conditioned by the relative saliency of different policy dimensions. The empirical analysis, which is based on surveys of MPs, party members and voters in connection with the general election of 1993, gives very little support to our proposition.     

Lessons from the past? Cultural memory in Dutch integration policy

This article explores the contribution that cultural memory studies can make to the debate about the role of ideas and the dynamics of ideational change in policy making. Cultural memory studies engage with the cultural dimensions of remembering, and analyse how shared images of the past are mediated and transferred across distance and time. Such research shows how the past may continue to influence the present by informing the frameworks through which groups and individuals interpret and give meaning to events and phenomena. Since policy makers operate within a cultural context, shared memories are likely also to affect the way they think about the nature and roots of policy issues and the appropriateness and feasibility of policy options. In this article, policy memory (the memory shared by policy makers about earlier policies) is identified as a subcategory of cultural memory. The role of cultural memory among policy makers is studied with reference to Dutch integration policies in two periods: the mid‐1990s and the early 2000s. On the basis of an in‐depth analysis of policy reports and parliamentary debates, references to the past and the role they play in the policy debate are identified. Different modes of dealing with the past are found in the two periods studied, reflecting the different political contexts in which the debates took place. In the 1990s, the memory of earlier policy was invoked in the mode of continuity – that is, policy change was legitimised (conceived) as part of a positive tradition. In the 2000s, memory was invoked in the mode of discontinuity. The same policies were reinterpreted in more negative terms and policy change legitimised by the perceived need to break with the past. Arguably, this reinterpretation of the past was a precondition for the shift in policy beliefs that took place around that time.     

Are the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) justified?

Recent studies provide evidence that the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) might not be justified under a rigorous and innovative framework of cost-benefit analysis. The policy implication is that the GSEs might have finished their historical mission of building the secondary mortgage market, but now with a mature secondary mortgage market, they might not be beneficial any more – maybe it is the time for them to exit.     

What Are the Sources of Political Parties’ Issue Ownership? Testing Four Explanations at the Individual Level

Political parties’ issue ownership—their perceived competence in handling issues and problems—is a major ingredient explaining voting behavior. Yet, our understanding of the sources of issue ownership is limited. This study is the first to bring together and evaluate four different explanations of voters’ perceptions of parties’ issue ownership: partisanship, attitudes, perceived real-world developments, and constituency-based ownership. Using novel measures implemented in a national survey, we show that all four sources exert independent, if varying, influences on voters’ issue ownership perceptions. Even though voters’ partisanship tends to dominate issue ownership perceptions, attitudes and performance evaluations also matter. Moreover, the hitherto mostly neglected constituency based component of ownership has a substantial, independent influence on ownership perceptions. These findings indicate that issue ownership is more than merely an expression of partisanship and attitudes.     

Where Are the Women? An Analysis of Gender Mainstreaming in Introductory Political Science Textbooks

Textbook content is a powerful indicator of what is and is not considered important in a given discipline. Textbooks shape both curriculum and students’ thinking about a subject. The extant literature indicates that gender is not well represented in American government textbooks, thus signaling to students that women and gender are not part of the mainstream in political science. I contribute to this literature by using quantitative and qualitative content analysis to examine gender mainstreaming in 10 introductory political science textbooks. I find that the quantity of gendered content is small, and the quality of that content varies considerably from text to text.     

Death of the intelectual?

The classic image of the French intellectual that emerged from the Dreyfus Affair is in crisis as a result of the exhaustion of the revolutionary tradition and France's difficulties in coming to terms with new particularism.Judt makes a significant contribution to the history of the intellectual in France,accusing Sartre and others of betraying their proclaimed ideals by failing to denounce unequivocally Soviet show trails and labour camps.The study is flawed by the author's failure to contextualize issues and by a tendentious use of source material.     

Dictatorship of the Professoriat?

The following interview is with a retired eastern German professor whose career constitutes a case history in the comparative politics of “academic unfreedom”. Professor Erhard Naake was the only Ph.D. student in the history of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) to write his dissertation on Friedrich Nietzsche, whose work was considered “anti-socialist” throughout the history of the GDR regime. Because Herr Naake had the temerity to select Nietzsche as his thesis topic – a philosopher whose work was banned from GDR bookstores and never taught in GDR schools or even universities – he never received an appointment as a professor in a GDR university. Ironically, however, even after the collapse of the GDR in 1989–1990, Herr Naake was penalized by the new powers-that-be in reunited Germany. He once again suffered a violation of his academic freedom when the university evaluation boards, which were composed of western German scholars, refused to let him keep his recently acquired position as a professor and instead summarily fired him, thus leading to his enforced retirement. As we shall see, the dramatic life story of Herr Naake reflects not only complicated issues of academic freedom and communist versus capitalist political values, but also the rich and complex history of eastern Germany both under the Nazis and GDR Communists and within reunited Germany since 1990.

---

Policy Positions of Bureaucrats at the Front Lines: Are They Susceptible to Strategic Communication?

It is well established that bureaucrats’ implementation of policies is influenced by their own policy positions, that is, their attitudes toward the given policies. However, what affects the policy positions of bureaucrats? This article focuses on whether the policy positions of bureaucrats at the front lines of government are susceptible to frames and cues embedded in communication. Based on the notion that bureaucrats often adhere to certain professional norms when developing their attitudes toward policies, the authors hypothesize that communication frames and cues that align policies with such norms move bureaucrats’ policy positions in favor of the policy. Results of four studies in European and American settings among mid‐ and street‐level bureaucrats show support for the hypothesized effect. They also show that aligning policies with dimensions outside professional norms is ineffective, possibly even producing opposite effects.     

The Unmasking of the Metaphysicians or the Deconstructing of Metaphysics?

Abstract

This essay argues that Popper's work, seen from the vantage point of increasing historical distance, can be viewed as the first attempt to understand the grand narrative as the adjustment of metaphysics to the modern world. When viewed from such a distance enduring questions regarding holism, identity, essentialism, and truth can once again be thrown into relief, together with the pressing issues of the paradox of freedom and sovereignty.