AN EVALUATION OF FURTHER REFORMS IN THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY'S PRESIDENTIAL NOMINATION PROCESS

By 1992, the party of the majority, the Democratic Party, will have been out of power for twenty years of a twenty-four year span. Since 1968, numerous reforms in the presidential nominating process have been considered and adopted by the Democrats. These reforms have had the effect of opening the nominating process to rank-and-file Democrats through state primaries and participatory caucuses. While the reforms achieve this purpose, the end result is a mixed system that has been described as a disjointed hodgepodge of rules.
This article presents ten criteria of a sound nomination system. Then a panel of researchers and practitioners weighs seven options for further reform against the ten criteria. Several policy options are considered by the panel as improvements over the current presidential nomination system.     

THE USE OF BARGAINING GAMES IN LOCAL DEVELOPMENT POLICY

Granting location incentives is a common city policy to attract new businesses, despite the frequent belief that the benefits are too generous. Can cities do a better job determining when to agree to these concessions and when to refuse? I argue that analyzing the concession decision with a simple bargaining game illustrates: (1) that the negotiation strategy a city uses should be based on the characteristics of the firm in each case and (2) that even poor cities with few attractive location features can avoid making large concessions. Development experiences in Miami‐Dade are used to illustrate the model.     

IMPROVING THE QUALITY OF RESEARCH SYNTHESIS IN PROGRAM EVALUATION

Because research synthesis enables one to determine either the overall effectiveness of different types of treatments, it is becoming increasingly popular as a tool in program evaluation. Numerous methodological problems arise, however, when research synthesis is applied to studies conducted in field settings. The present paper categorlzes and discusses these problems as being threats to either the (1) internal validity (whether one can draw conclusions about cause and effect), (2) statistical conclusion validity (whether one's inferential statistics are capable of detecting cause-and effect relationships, (3) construct validity (whether one's treatments and outcome measures are valid operationalizations of the independent and dependent variables of interest), or (4) external validity (whether one can generalize results to particular populations, settings, or time periods) of research synthesis (see Cook & Campbell, 1979). Specific recommendations are made for minimizing these threats to validity, In order to improve the quality of research synthesis in program evaluation. Finally, the validit framework is applied to an actual synthesis to identify strengths, weaknesses, and potential means of enhancing research quality.     

论网络思想政治教育

全球网络信息化深刻地改变着思想政治工作的环境,并以其独有的特点和优势改变着传统意义上思想政治工作的机制和体系。伴随着信息时代的到来,互联网给思想政治工作上水平提供了一个现代化的重要手段。在新的条件下,我们必须努力掌握互联网这个新的认识工具、新的交流工具,特别重视互联网里的思想政治教育,抓住互联网给当前思想政治教育带来的种种机遇,在互联网中融入思想政治教育,提高受众的思想政治素质。     

EFFECTIVENESS BUDGETING: THE LIMITS OF BUDGET REFORM

This paper is concerned with the potential for improving public sector financial management by means of efforts to budget in terms of effectiveness. A series of statements are derived from the assumptions of Effectiveness Budgeting to consider what the preconditions for its success and failure might be, in an effort to begin to fill what i s argued to be a void in the literature in the field. Comments are offered as to the likelihood of Effectiveness Budgeting realizing i t s own stated ideal and its utility under less than ideal conditions.     

SAFETY-RELATED DEFECTS IN MOTOR VEHICLES AND THE EVALUATION OF SELF-REGULATION*

Tobin reviews the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration's (NHTSA) self-regulating program including recall of vehicles, the ever-changing definition of defects, frequency of defect reports, and the notification of vehicle owners. He concludes that self-regulation–while minimizing government's cost and involvement in the private sector–has serious defects of its own. It gives manufacturers too much latitude in determining the existence of a defect and makes government overly dependent on the manufacturers for information. Under self-regulation the definition of what constitutes a defect changes from year-to-year; and under it manufacturer's recalcitrance in acknowledging a defect has kept the NHTSA from ordering recalls.     

THE STATES' ROLE IN LAND USE POLICY

Historically, land use had been an exclusively local function. By the early 1960s, a "quiet revolution" broke the local government monopoly over zoning and land use, with a larger state role. Those states which passed land use legislation soon were faced with substantial political opposition, especially from rural dwellers and developers. When Congress considered national land use legislation in the early 1970s. these same interests united in effective opposition.