From analyst to negotiator: The OMB's new role

Dramatic changes in the executive and legislative budget processes over the last ten years have elevated the Office of Management and Budget (OMB) to a new position of power and importance. Within the executive branch the budget process has become more highly centralized in the president's office; and within the Congress a similar centralization has occurred. In both branches the OMB has become the key institution for coordinating the actions of the budget-making powers. At the same time, the much-discussed “iron triangles” explored by analysts of the budgetary system have lost much of their power to control the process. Although the OMB's active involvement in the congressional budget process diminished in 1983, the institutional relationships necessary for a more centralized budget process remain and can be reactivated to deal with the predicted enormous deficits.     

A new deal for France's regions and linguistic minorities

Since the Second World War France has experienced an upsurge of regionalistic and ethnic nationalist movements. There has been mutual interaction between these movements and the French left, particularly the Socialist Party. As a result, the policies of the Socialist government since May 1981 have included a wide programme of decentralisation which went some way to meeting the demands of the movements. But the continuing Jacobinism of the Socialists has imposed limitations and has led to a strengthening of the movements' moderate forces as well as to a splitting off and further hardening of the ‘purs et durs’ elements.     

Some reflections on teaching demography in Mexico in the beginning of the twenty-first century: a new focus

The evolution and achievements of population studies programs at El Colegio de Mexico since the 1964 founding of the first master's program in demography in Latin America are described, and topics of interest for future research are identified. In 1995 the master's program and the doctoral program in social sciences with specialization in population studies were combined into a single program. Students are trained in demographic analysis, the methods of demographic research, the processes of development, and demographic theory. The program seeks to develop multidisciplinary orientations regarding links between population processes and social and economic factors. 67 students have obtained master's degrees and 8 the doctorate. The aging of the Mexican population resulting from its relatively rapid fertility decline suggests crucial topics for future research. The survival of 3 or even 4 generations, the reduced number of siblings, and other changes in family structure and relationships may generate research. Topics related to old age security for women, the effects of AIDS, internal and international migration patterns, and the demographic processes of the indigenous population are other significant topics. New employment opportunities in addition to the two traditional areas, academia and the public sector, should be sought for demography graduates in business and industry and in regional educational and planning centers.     

马克思对资本主义理性化的分析和批判

马克思作为影响后现代理论家对资本主义批判的无法绕过的重要人物,虽然他没有使用过“理性化”或“工具理性”等词语,但他的著作中也蕴涵着对资本主义理性化批判的丰富思想。本文拟从工具理性张扬及其导致的非理性后果,资本主义价值理性的发展和局限,理性化与对内奴役和对外侵略扩张在逻辑上的互补、一致,理性化导致非理性的根源及其解决等方面进行挖掘和梳理,从而与韦伯的理性化思想进行比较,以回应西方学者对马克思的批评．对当前的全球化形势有更清醒的理解。     

From Policy to Practice: From Ideas to Results,From Results to Trust

Few areas of public administration have been more discouraging, over a longer period of time, than the struggle to build public trust in government's work. However, new research suggests that public administrators can build trust by improving the results they produce for citizens. Practical, practicable steps can produce big improvements: improving government's focus on citizens' needs; engaging employees; focusing on fairness; and, especially, concentrating on the delivery of public services at the “retail” level. Citizens, research shows, can discriminate among levels of government, the administration of different programs in different functional areas, and the work of individual administrators. That provides strong hope for improving trust, in an era when too often government appears too untrustworthy.     

社会主义市场经济中的政府行为合理化

在社会主义市场经济中，实现政府管理和干预经济的行为合理化，必须遵循市场基础作用原则、干预能力限度原则和法制化、程序化原则，同时要进行政府行为合理化的决策机制创新、实施机制创新和约束机制创新，科学地进行政府行为的绩效评估。     

当前政府建立应对突发事件应急管理系统的思考

随着世界政治经济格局的变换、社会结构的转型、利益主体多元化格局的形成以及科学技术的进步等多种动因的影响 ,突发事件的发生变得日益频繁和复杂 ,社会公共危害性越来越大 ,并逐渐呈现出一种全球化的趋势。为了维续政府的基本职能 ,维护政府的合法性和公信力 ,当前政府建立应对突发事件的应急管理系统十分紧迫和现实可行。本文分别就应急管理系统的缓解、准备、反应及恢复机制的建立和完善进行系统思考 ,并在公共治理变革的视野维度下对政府应急管理的发展提出展望。     

Putting the Cart before the Horse : Statebuilding,Early Warning and the Irrationality of Bureaucratic Rationalization

Abstract

Despite the transition of a government from authoritarian to democratic rule, the root causes of civil war persist and require monitoring in a post-conflict phase. The collapse of the Arusha peace accord in Rwanda is a prime example of both the importance of early warning in statebuilding and the severe consequences of its failure. This article demonstrates that such a crucial interaction between the detection of warning signals and peacebuilding has been obstructed by intervening mechanisms in international organization. These are, principally, those of bureaucratic rationalization – drawing on Max Weber's views of bureaucratic universalism and institutional rationality (Zweckrationalität) – and Western normalization – which moralises intervention scenarios to fit self-images of the pursuit of ‘noble causes’, often detaching policy from the complex realities on the ground.     

From slime mould to rhizome: an introduction to the groupuscular right

Conventional academic research into the legacy of inter-war fascism has generally neglected the myriad minuscule and often ephemeral formations of the extreme right that have sprung up since 1945, and has concentrated instead on abortive attempts to emulate the success of the Nazi and Fascist party-based mass movements, and more recently on non-revolutionary ‘neo-populist parties’. However, when examined closely, many of these formations can be observed to behave as fully developed, highly specialized and largely autonomous grouplets that simultaneously form the constituents of an amorphous, leaderless and centreless cellular network of political ideology, organization and activism that is termed here ‘the groupuscular right’. As such, these ‘groupuscules’ are to be seen as the product of a sophisticated process of evolutionary adaptation to post-1945 realities that allows extreme variants of revolutionary nationalism to survive in the ‘post-fascist’ age in a form that is largely resistant to attempts to suppress them, and may represent a number of permanent, if mostly inconspicuous, threats to liberal democracy.     

我从学院走向西部做志愿者

2007年9月我进入上海工会管理职业学院开始了我的大学生活。记得刚来的头几个星期,我们新生就被安排了一系列的劳模讲座。讲座的主讲是上海市的老劳模们,他们都是全市从普普通通的岗位上涌现出来的先进人物。虽然他们经历各异,但都有一个共同点,为社会作出了突出贡献,有一个精     

American Federalism: From Johnson to Bush

Intergovernmental developments for more than twenty-five yearshave produced a nation-centered federalism—strongly sofrom 1964 to 1978, somewhat less so from 1969–1988, anda little more so during the past two years. The reasons forthis fundamental systemic transformation include: (1) the demiseof the earlier, 150-year old, confederative party system andthe rise of a new political system with weak federative parties,but other more powerful political actors; (2) an operationaland local representational renaissance of the states, but alsoa concomitant decline of state and local political influencein Washington; (3) a steadily centralizing Supreme Court, withonly a few pro-state decisions until 1989; and (4) a rapid risein national preemptions and of a "new social regulation" thatwas aimed at state and local governments as much as at the privatesector, even as the states were used to implement them. Theonly real constraint on national activism since 1982 has beenbudget-driven federalism, not planned reform efforts. The currentsystem then requires political, representational, judicial,and constitutional reforms if the centralizing, cooptive, andpermissive features of contemporary federalism are to be corrected.