FEDERALISM, POLICY, AND INNOVATION IN CORRECTIONS

State governments have historically dominated corrections policy, with little federal intervention. But over the past two decades, the trend has been toward "nationalizing" corrections policy, with less interstate variation and more federal standards, through the Safe Streets Act and other legislation. As federal funding declines, it may be expected that there will be a hiatus in state corrections reform, though national standards may survive if the federal courts continue to require state correctional systems to comply with federal laws previously implemented.     

THE POLITICS OF LEGISLATIVE OVERSIGHT: MONITORING EDUCATIONAL REFORM IN SIX STATES

Legislative oversight traditionally has been viewed as a rational tool for achieving democratic accountability. Legislators conduct oversight to ensure consistency between implementation and official policy directives. The major theme of this paper is t h a t oversight is best understood as an integral part of legislative-administrative politics. By examining how six states monitored recent educational reforms, the author finds that legislators conducted oversight in ways that minimized time commitments and maximized political benefits.
The paper concludes that legislative interest in controlling implementation often was secondary to political considerations. Oversight, therefore, may not really be effective as an accountability tool.     

OAKESHOTT'S CONCEPT OF CIVIL ASSOCIATION: NOTES FOR A CRITICAL ANALYSIS

Abstract. The concept'Civil Association'in Oakeshott contains two discrepant elements, namely the quality of civility and the institution of the state. This conflation is the result of Oakeshott's idealist mode of reasoning which consists in the method of one-sided abstraction. Civil association, in its abstract presentation, appears as a purely moral association, sharply distinguished from the pursuit of substantive aims in enterprise associations. Analysis of its postulates, however, reveals civil association as being insubstantial and only a particular expression of a given world of enterprise associations. Without substantive inequality and conflict civil association could not be made intelligible, and it is these features only which, although not ostensibly present in Oakeshott's abstract concept, endow it with its distinctive character: morality by itself is not a sufficient explanation. Idealist abstraction is, on a certain level, common to opposed ideological trends; the content of Oakeshott's concept does not meaningfully distinguish it from the ideal vision of Utopian thought.     

ENVIRONMENTAL MONITORING; A CASE OF LEARNING THROUGH EVALUATION?

The aim of environmental monitoring programs is to provide information useful in enforcing existing environmental statutes and helping to detect and prevent future problems. Despite the considerable number of monitoring programs being conducted, information on the quality of the nation's environment remains poor and of little use in supporting environmental policymaking. This paper examines the role evaluation has played in developing an effective nationwide environmental monitoring system. Background information on environmental monitoring programs is provided, followed by a discussion of the evaluations of past programs and recommendations made for improvement. One program in particular, the "Status and Trends" program administered by the National Oceanic and ATmospheric Administration, is examined to explore whether environmental monitoring demonstrates a case of learning through evaluation. "Status and Trends" is based on the experience gained during several of the previous monitoring programs and incorporates many of the recommendations spawned from earlier environmental programs. Whether the program demonstrates a case of learning through evaluation will depend on the ability of the program to evolve as we learn more about environmental quality and out ability to measure it.     

AN ASSESSMENT OF GOVERNMENT INNOVATION POLICIES

The authors compare the innovation policies of industrialized countries along several dimensions: the policy tools (e.g., supply, demand, environment) they use or prefer, and their national philosophies, especially whether they have explicit policies toward the development of specific industries or technologies. They also identify the principal difficulties that existing innovation policies have suffered. Among them are the lack of market know-how among policymakers, bias toward research and development-oriented stimuli rather than other aspects of innovation such as demand, and vulnerability of policies to changes in political philosophy. They conclude with a list of questions that governments initiating policies of technological choice should consider to avoid some of these pitfalls.     

EFFICIENCY AND EFFECTIVENESS: PROBLEMS OF ASSESSMENT

Abstract: The paper focuses on the Coombs Commission's recommendations on efficiency and effectiveness in the Commonwealth Public Service. The recommendations involve the allocation of organizational responsibility for efficiency and effectiveness to the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, the Public Service Board, Treasury and the Auditor-General and individual responsibility to the departmental manager through the establishment of a "Forward Estimating Budgetary" process. However the Commission has given little guidance in the matter of the technological tools which must be developed in order to secure its implementation.
The Commonwealth Public Service Board has developed over the last two years a program of Staff Utilization Reviews (S. U. Rs) as one of its management improvement programs. The paper canvases the technological aspects of efficiency and effectiveness drawing upon the development and operational experience of the S.U.R. program. It concludes that much resource-intensive work must be done before the Commission's recommendations can be implemented but Australian and overseas experience confirms the potential fruitfulness of that work.     

COMMUNITY CORRECTIONS: IS IT JUST ANOTHER WAY OF TINKERING WITH THE CRIMINAL JUSTICE SYSTEM?*

This article discusses the theory underlying community corrections, problems involved in implementing it, and describes two recent evaluations of comprehensive community corrections, one in Minnesota and one in Oregon. Among the issues addressed are whether or not it has achieved the intended goals of reducing incarceration in state prisons at less cost, and whether or not it has widened the net of social control.     

RIPPLES AND TRICKLES: IMPACT ASSESSMENT AND POLICY ANALYSIS IN ASIA

Advocacy of impact assessment has exceeded documentation of the un- even influence of impact assessment information on policy analysis. Start- ing with a simple distinction between pluralist and hierarchical policy systems, an analysis is presented of relations between impact assessment and policy processes in Asia, with special emphasis on the Philippines. Conclusions are drawn about the political significance of impact assessment information in different policy contexts.