VICTORY IS NOT POSSIBLE: A REJOINDER TO THE STRATEGIC MYTHMAKERS

The current strategic planning for nuclear war is based on the assumptions that it is an effective way to deter the Soviet Union and that we can actually survive such a war. These are erroneous, for the Soviets are not likely to be any more deterred by our plans for nuclear war than they are by our current strategy. The illusion that "victory" is possible in a nuclear war overlooks the medical and other evidence about the extent of death, injury and disease that a nuclear war would bring. War should be conducted with a view of post-war benefit in mind, but a nuclear war would yield no benefits, regardless of the futile and even delirious efforts to make evacuation plans for major cities in the event of nuclear war.     

THE MPA CAPSTONE EXPERIENCE: FHE ESSENCE OF ANALYSIS IS SURPRISE

A final course, or project is a standard requirement in Master of Public Administration (MPA) programs. This requirement is intended to permit the student to demonstrate advanced ability in the discipline. This article examines one such course at Florida State University. The course included readings, exercises, oral presentations, and a written report. This author assesses the merits and drawbacks of the course as well as notes the unintended consequences that resulted. In concluding the article, the author makes several recommendations for future courses based on the experiences gained in the Florida state model.     

SPECIALIZATION OF NURSING HOME CARE AND OUTCOMES1

Implications of nursing home specialization for health outcomes were examined. The formal hypothesis tested in this study was that facilities specializing in the treatment of certain kinds of residents, as reflected in a critical mass of such residents, are more likely to experience better health outcomes over time compared to facilities that do not specialize in the treatment of such residents. Activities of Daily Living (ADLs), survival, and several diagnosis‐specific outcomes were analyzed for residents. Multivariate state‐dependence and logistic regression models were estimated for residents of six diagnostic sub‐groups. Specialization was empirically defined in terms of concentration of residents with certain diagnoses within nursing facilities. Empirical results indicate that specialization has some positive effects on some outcomes. For instance, facilities specializing in the care of Alzheimer's disease patients appear to produce comparatively better outcomes with respect to restraint use and accidents. Residents with diagnoses of hypertension or ischemic heart disease in specialized facilities also fare better in terms of survival. Residents with a diagnosis of cerebrovascular disease in specialized facilities were found to experience worse outcomes with respect to most of the outcomes modeled in this study, however. Overall, specialization only appears to make a difference in the outcomes of residents with certain medical conditions for some health outcomes. Regression results also indicate that basic measures of frailty such as functional deficiencies, incontinence, and behavioral problems largely contribute to detrimental effects irrespective of the diagnostic group or the outcome considered.     

EDUCATING BUSINESS AND INDUSTRY ABOUT DISASTERS: LEGISLATIVE PROBLEMS IN THE ADOPTION OF MODIFIED LENDING TERMS BY HOME MORTGAGE LENDERS

The regulation of home mortgage-lending is another strategy for mitigating the danger of natural disaster through such regulation. Property owners could be made aware of the dangers posed to their property and required to share the risk of damage by purchasing subsidized insurance. This strategy, however, has not been utilized to an optimal degree in mitigating site specific geologic hazards due to legal barriers. Nevertheless, such barriers are not insurmountable and are amenable to legal remedies.     

FEDERALISM IS ALIVE AND SURPRISINGLY HEALTHY

Reading the comparative analysis of federations as different, constitutionally and culturally, as Canada, the USA, Australia, India and Nigeria, to mention only a few, is to agree with the title of this review. The words are taken from the Introduction to Bakvis and Chandler and this review argues that use of the word "surprisingly" is misplaced. Much of the writing critical of federalism has been labouring under a misunderstanding of its dynamic nature and its underlying strengths.     

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.     

RECONCILING PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY AND ABORIGINAL SELF-DETERMINATION/SELF-MANAGEMENT: IS ATSIC SUCCEEDING?

Abstract: Since the early 1970s commonwealth governments have been pursuing policies of self-determination/self-management in relation to Aborigines. In 1987, the Hawke government announced its intention to establish an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) to further this policy goal. During the debates over ATSIC's formation, the issue of public accountability in the existing administration of Aboriginal affairs came to public prominence. The result was some extensive reworking of the ATSIC proposal, which in 1989 reemerged with a strengthened emphasis on public accountability. This article traces the events and arguments surrounding ATSIC's formation and then goes on to examine ATSIC in practice. It asks whether ATSIC is succeeding in reconciling the two imperatives of Aboriginal self-determination/self-management and public accountability.     

An evaluation of the outsourcing IS/ICT activities in Turkish ministerial computer departments

Outsourcing an IS/ICT function has become fashionable in public administration reform. Through this modality, many organisations are cutting staff costs and increasing efficiency. Financial benefits can be great, public organisations can in fact expand IT usage and hence avoid obsolescence. Despite the benefits of outsourcing IT, there are risks involved. Public organisations need to weigh the benefits, risks and costs involved before making decisions to outsource. Recently, Turkish public organisations have been increasingly outsourcing functions such as facilities maintenance, catering, security and IS/ICT activities. This article, based on a field study, undertakes an evaluation of the experience of Chief Information Officers (CIO's) in outsourcing of IS/ICT activities in ministerial computer departments. The findings provide important lessons for outsourcing in Turkey and elsewhere. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

OVERSIGHT AND COMPETITION IN PROFIT VS NONPROFIT CONTRACTS FOR HOME CARE

The paper reports the experience of the State of Illinois using proprietary and nonproprietary vendors to provide in-home services to the elderly. The analysis suggests proprietary vendors were associated with a significant increase in service costs when vendors were allowed to determine service needs of clients. However, such differences disappeared as the state implemented effortso increase political oversight and competition.     

WHEN IS CIVIL DISOBEDIENCE JUSTIFIED?

" Along with such things as free and regular elections and an independent judiciary empowered to interpret the constitution (not necessarily written), civil disobedience used with due restraint and sound judgment helps to maintain and strengthen just institutions. "—John Rawls, A Theory of Justice .     

THE NORTHERN TERRITORY GOVERNMENTS CANBERRA REPRESENTATIVE

On 14 July 1980 an experiment began in Australian Federal-State relations which has been accorded little recognition. On that day the Northern Territory government opened an office in Canberra for its new "Canberra Representative". It was a step no State government had ever taken, although several had discussed such a move over the previous decade during general reconsiderations of the machinery of Federal-State relations. In particular, Sir Henry Bland's Board of Inquiry into the Victorian Public Service saw some benefits in the location in Canberra of one or more members of a proposed Commonwealth/State Relations Unit (now the Federal Affairs Division of the Premier's Department) in the State public service, although it chose finally not to recommend it     

THE STATUTORY CORPORATION—A NOTE ON THE THEORY OF AUTONOMY

Readers of this journal, especially those who watch developments affecting the machinery of government in Canberra, will no doubt have noticed the rehabilitation of the concept of statutory independence—a notion that, in some academic circles, had been virtually written off as having little or no relevance in the real world, where the general tendency has been towards an extension of government control and co-ordination of bureaucratic systems. Although it is much too early to evaluate, with suitable scholarly detachment, the significance of the administrative changes initiated since December, 1972, it seems a safe observation that for a small group of government agencies at least, the Labor Government has committed itself to the idea of independence. This much is clear from its declared aim of giving the Australian Broadcasting Commission more autonomy and the decision, recently announced, to reconstitute the Postmaster-General's Department into two separate statutory corporations.     

IS Success and Failure—The Problem of Scale

In the midst of Implementing Electronic Government (IEG), the almost knee-jerk reaction of our political elite seems to be to embrace hugely ambitious Information Systems (IS) solutions to public-sector operations. Problem after problem has been viewed as solvable by throwing some big IT at it. However hindsight and a wealth of evidence and examples shows that overly large-scale public-sector IT projects do not work and persistently end in failure and costly waste. In this article we consider IT projects 'failures' and the combination of social and technical factors that contribute. We illustrate our argument with more detailed reference to the Connecting for Health agenda, part of the NHS National Programme for IT. We suggest 'think local, think modular' to build on good practice and advocate use of the government's own 2004 eGovernment Interoperability Framework (eGIF) to learn lessons from past IT project catastrophes.     

SOCIAL ADMINISTRATION IN AUSTRALIA: THE NEED FOR A PROFESSIONAL ASSOCIATION

There appear to be two current, opposing misconceptions concerning the nature of social administration. On the one hand there is the belief that it constitutes "no special or definite study but a part of that general mass of things which every earnest young man or woman should know" and, on the other hand, it is "often assumed without question to be concerned with administrative practice"¹.
The domain of the subject of "social administration" is the social service industry in all its parts, its relationship with the industrial and commercial world, and its relationship with primary groups such as families, friends, and neighbours².
Narrowly defined, social administration is the study of the development structure and practices of the social services. Broadly defined, it is an attempt to apply the social sciences — including philosophy — to the analysis and solution of a changing range of social problems³.     

THE OBSERVER

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THE AMERICAN STATES AND THE SHIFTING LOCUS OF POSITIVE ECONOMIC INTERVENTION

While there has been a turn away from positive government intervention in the economy at the national level, we have witnessed an embrace of this strategy in may of the American states. What impact, if any, have these efforts by state governments had on their economies? The paper focuses on variations in party control, competition, and ideology, the institutional capacities of governors and legislatures, and policy measures, while controlling for a variety of alternative influences on state economies. For the period from 1968–1979 states were dominated by the national economy and other forces over which they had little or no control, and thus had little or no effect on their economies. However, for the 1980–1985 period, party, political capacity, and policy exerted a statistically significant influence on state economic performance.     

THE AMBITIONS OF POLICY DESIGN

There is no shortage of warnings concerning the hazards of excessive ambition in consciously-pursued public policy. In the light of these cautions, this paper considers the appropriate ambitions for policy design. The critics have missed the target. There is no need to fear ambition in policy design, provided that openness in communications about policy is secured.     

IS IT BETTER TO BE POWERFUL OR LUCKY? PART 2

Abstract. Part I of this article comprising sections I-III, which appeared in the issue for June 1980 (Vol. XXVIII, No. 2), offered a critique of some standard power indices. Part 2 is devoted to working out an alternative way of thinking about power. Section IV defines success as luck plus decisiveness. Section v illustrates the use of these concepts by applying them to the example of the US Constitutional Convention. Section VI offers a definition of power in terms of the conditions under which an actor can be decisive. It is then suggested that power should increase in importance to an actor the more uncertain that actor is of the likely alignment of forces in the relevant period of time.