Big Data and U.S. Public Policy

This paper examines the growing recognition of the phenomenon called “Big Data” and the policy implications it poses. It is argued that a core policy issue is personal and organizational privacy. At the same time there is a belief that analysis of “Big Data” offers potentially to provide public sector policy makers with extensive new information that would inform policy at unprecedentedly detailed levels. Despite this potential to improve the policy‐making process data often contain individual identifiable information that would negatively impact American core values such as privacy. This makes the use of these data almost impossible. The paper recognizes that there may be a way to strip individual data from Big Data sets thereby making their analysis more policy useful. This approach is not at this time technically feasible but research is ongoing.     

公共管理与公众舆论

自18世纪开始兴起的公众舆论推动了近代西方民主思想的形成,而20世纪公共管理的勃兴正是这种民主思想体制化的必然结果。对于公众舆论的理性与非理性认识分野,受制于背后复杂的权力博弈。在近代公众舆论观向现代公众舆论观转型的过程中,公众权力论逐渐让位于管理控制论。由于国家-市场-市民社会的关系失衡,当代公众舆论面临着环境危机。在目前善治的要求下,公共管理从公共利益出发,必须以保护公众舆论的自由和多元为己任,确立自身被监督者、反馈者和配给者的多重角色,做到有所为和有所不为。     

论公共空间与公共管理

公共空间与公共管理之间存在内在关联,公共空间的构建和扩展源自公共管理职能的改变,而公共空间的变化也反过来促使公共管理范式变迁.浙江近三十年来公共管理实践经验表明,公共管理职能的转变,导致原来单一的公共权力空间转变为涵盖政治、经济、文化和社会等领域的多元公共空间,而公共管理方式的转变,促使公共空间在宏观、中观、微观三个层次空间的深度得到极大延伸.因此,从公共空间的视角来看待中国公共管理的未来,其关键方向在于进一步拓展公共空间的广度和深度,通过制度创新搭建各种利益主体沟通交流的平台,平衡利益冲突和矛盾,体现公平和正义的价值.     

Homeland Security and the U.S. Public Management Policy Agenda

The U.S. has been described as an "uninteresting laggard" in comparative public management policy. The passage of the Homeland Security Act in 2002 demands a reevaluation of this label. The Act created the Department of Homeland Security, but also marked a dramatic shift toward greater public personnel flexibility, both for the new Department and the entire federal government. It is tempting to suggest that the Act is an effort to "catch up" with the New Public Management benchmark countries. However, such an argument is overly simplistic and misleading. This article argues that the Act represents a triumph of a preexisting management agenda that was successfully tied to the issue of security during a political window of opportunity. The management agenda of the Bush administration pursues many of the concerns of the Clinton era, but does so with a more top-down and centralized interpretation of flexibility, reflecting an executive-centered philosophy toward government and a willingness to tackle the dominant stakeholder in this area, public service unions.     

Leadership and Public Service Motivation in U.S. Federal Agencies

ABSTRACT

This analysis of over 6,900 federal employees’ responses to the Merit Principles Survey 2000 examines the influences of leadership and motivational variables, and especially public service motivation, on the “outcome” variables job satisfaction, perceived performance, quality of work, and turnover intentions. CFA confirms a factor structure for transformation-oriented leadership (TOL), public service-oriented motivation (PSOM), transaction-oriented leadership (TSOL), and extrinsically oriented motivation (EOM). Multivariate regression analysis shows that TOL and PSOM, as well as interaction effects of TOL-TSOL and TOL-PSOM, have strong relations to the outcome variables. SEM analysis examines direct and indirect effects of the main variables. Overall, the results indicate that TOL and PSOM have more positive relations to the outcome variables than do TSOL and EOM. The combination of high TOL and high PSOM has the strongest positive, and hence desirable, relation with organizational outcomes. Among this very large sample of federal employees, those who perceived their leader as displaying TOL (i.e., leadership that is encouraging, supportive, informative, and that emphasizes high standards) also expressed higher levels of PSOM and higher levels of job satisfaction, perceived performance and work quality, and lower turnover intentions. The SEM analysis further indicates that TOL has these effects by way of empowerment, goal clarification, and PSOM, and is distinct from TSOL (transaction-oriented) leadership, which shows no such relationships.     

公共需求管理与公共服务标准化

公共服务标准化建设是服务型政府建设的一个重要发展阶段,它是与公共需求的变化相适应的。本文把人的需要分为生存型需要、安全型需要、享受型需要和发展型需要。中国目前公共需求正从生存型向安全型、享受型、发展型转变,政府公共服务精细化、标准化是这一需要变化的必然要求。政府应通过了解需求、整合需求和引导需求,推进公共服务标准化建设,提升公共服务水平。     

Public Resource Allocation and Electoral Systems in the U.S. and Japan

This paper introduces alternative measures of net budgetallocation and legislative representation. They are neutral tothe size of total expenditure and tax collection as well as tochanges in the population and the size of the legislature,which makes them suitable for panel data exercises andinternational comparative studies. Regression analyses of 50U.S. states and 47 Japanese prefectures using these indiceshighlight similarities and differences in public resourceallocation between respective democracies that reflect theirpolitical and electoral systems.     

A Unified Theory of Value-Based Reasoning and U.S. Public Opinion

Public opinion research shows that American citizens utilize domain-specific political values to guide opinion formation in the key issue areas that comprise the American political agenda. One set of political values operates on economic welfare opinions, a different set of values applies to cultural issue positions, a third set shapes foreign policy preferences, and so on in other policy domains. Drawing on Shalom Schwartz’s theory of basic human values, this paper argues that two socially focused values—self-transcendence and conservation—guide opinion formation across all major policy domains. By contrast, the personally focused values of self-enhancement and openness-to-change should play a more limited role in preference formation. These hypotheses are tested using data from a novel 2011 national survey and the 2012 General Social Survey. The statistical results affirm expectations. We show that self-transcendence and conservation values predict scores on symbolic ideology, economic conservatism, racial conservatism, cultural conservatism, civil liberties, and foreign policy opinions. Self-enhancement and openness-to-change values play a modest role in shaping preferences.     

Penal Populism and the Public Thermostat: Crime,Public Punitiveness,and Public Policy

This article makes the case that feedback processes in democratic politics—between crime rates, public opinion, and public policy—can account for the growth of penal populism in Britain. It argues that the public recognize and respond to rising (and falling) levels of crime, and that in turn public support for being tough on crime is translated into patterns of imprisonment. This contributes to debates over the crime–opinion–policy connection, unpacking the dynamic processes by which these relationships unfold at the aggregate level. This uses the most extensive data set ever assembled on aggregate opinion on crime in Britain to construct a new over‐time measure of punitive attitudes. The analysis first tests the thermostatic responsiveness of punitive attitudes to changes in recorded crime rates as well as self‐reported victimization, and then examines the degree to which changes in mass opinion impact on criminal justice policy.