Introduction to Jesse Burkhead Symposium

Government budgeting is one of the major processes by which the use of public resources is planned and controlled. To the extent that this is done well, governmental programs are brought increasingly to the service of its citizens, enhancing their material and cultural status.
The study of government budgeting is a study in applied economics—in the allocation of scarce resources. This study must look at operations and begin with organization and procedure, the routines which have been established for decision–making in government. It should extend to an examination of the influences, governmental and nongovernmental, that come to bear on the decision-making process.
Ours is both an organized society and a society of organizations. The significance of organization is nowhere more evident than in the public sector. Here organizational arrangements bring together the learning of all social scientists. The patterns for decision-making do not provide separate compartments for economic knowledge, for political knowledge, for social knowledge. These are merged in the organizational arrangements which have been established for the conduct of governmental affairs.1     

Introduction to the Symposium: Socialism and Ecology

Okay if you are worried about the greenhouse effect, if you want us to be responsible corporate citizens of the world, you must also understand we are a Third World nation and need the money. Give us 200 million PGK a year for our budget and you can be in charge of our forests.     

Assessing Integrity Systems: Introduction to the Symposium

The following Symposium on Australia's national integrity systems, drawn from an Australian Research Council‐funded project conducted in 2002‐2004 by researchers from Griffith University, Charles Sturt University, University of Sydney, RMIT University, Monash University and the Australian National University, together with Transparency International Australia. The first three papers examine the public integrity regimes at federal, state (NSW) and local levels. The remaining four papers develop three themes as a framework for assessing strengths and weaknesses in Australia's major integrity regimes: consequences, capacity and coherence. The papers were originally presented in sessions of the Australasian Political Studies Association (University of Adelaide, September 2004) and the 5th National Investigation Symposium (NSW Ombudsman, Independent Commission Against Corruption and Institute of Public Administration Australia NSW, Sydney, November 2004).     

Introduction to the Special Issue on Comparative Chinese/American Public Administration

In the field of public administration practice, China has a history of several thousand years, whereas the United States has a much shorter history of hundreds of years of governance. In terms of the scholarly development of public administration in China, the roots of those intellectual resources can be traced far back, to Confucius's ideology of governance and the ancient development of a civil service system some 2,000 years ago. In terms of the systematic development of public administration as an independent subject of learning, however, the United States has been a leader worldwide. Public administration as a discipline in the United States dates back to the late nineteenth century, with extensive scholarly research and publications in the early twentieth century ( Follett 1926 ; Goodnow 1900 ; Taylor 1912 ; Weber 1922 ; White 1926 ). In the Chinese context, although there were occasional studies of public administration in the first half of the twentieth century, systematic study was deferred until the middle of the 1980s. They were only truly continued following the official launch of master of public administration degree programs at the beginning of the twenty-first century. In this respect, China was a latecomer, and Chinese scholars almost always date the study and scholarship in this field to about 1980. Over the past eighty years or so, the United States has established more than 200 MPA and related programs, while China has founded 100 MPA programs in just the past eight years. Recognizing the urgent need for MPA training, China is trying to catch up to the demand for social development and societal transition. Considering that China has a population of 1.3 billion, compared to a population of 300 million in the United States, it looks as if there is great potential for China to expand its MPA programs .     

New Perspectives on Public Service Motivation: Symposium Introduction

ABSTRACT

A possible “dark side” of goal setting, namely perfectionism and its relationship with employee performance, was investigated. A study of police officers (n = 235) revealed that perfectionists' predisposition to (1) set goals that they perceive to be extremely high, and (2) base evaluations of self-worth on the attainment of those goals were positively related to maximum performance, namely promotional exam scores. The mediating variable was perceived effort. In the second study involving police officers (n = 242), however, perfectionism displayed a complex relationship with typical performance. The two dimensions of perfectionism, perceived high goals and contingent self-worth, were negative predictors of this criterion through their relationship with emotional exhaustion. Nevertheless, the goal difficulty dimension was a positive predictor of typical performance.     

Introduction to the Symposium on Public Sector Management in Asia: What's New from the North?

What lessons can we draw from a symposium on public administration in Asia? Does Australia share common problems with our Asian neighbours? Are Asian countries adopting similar patterns of public sector reform, or diverging in their responses to contemporary problems? In this commentary David Corbett reviews the contributions to this symposium and finds Asian nations grappling with local issues and problems. And yet he considers there are many continuities which run across cultural and historical differences. Asia provides a patchwork of different public sector cultures and experiences on which, he suggests, there is much to reflect.     

Serving Two Masters: Professionalization versus Corruption in Ukraine's Election Administration

The development of a neutral, professional bureaucracy has been a profound concern for emerging democracies. International and domestic actors have expended significant resources to encourage the development of the rule of law, yet many postcommunist societies remain mired in corruption. When corrupt behaviors are integrated with a core function of democratic states, such as the implementation of free and fair elections, the implications of failures to professionalize bureaucrats are enhanced. This article empirically evaluates how professionalization and corruption interact in election administration, using unique survey data from Ukraine. We assess the results of pre‐ and postelection surveys of administrators conducted across Ukraine during the 2014 parliamentary elections. Our results suggest that aspects of a professionalized bureaucracy coexist with corruption and that mitigating incentives for state capture is a major challenge for democratization.