Bureaucracy as an issue in Third World management: An African case study

Organizational theory has been of surprisingly limited value in illuminating the problems of public sector management in the Third World. One reason for this is the ideal-typical bias of most studies of Third World management. This has led to an emphasis on assumed optimal performance criteria to the detriment of an understanding of how Third World organizations actually perform. The case of public sector administration in Liberia is used to illustrate this theme. The major role of administrative incorporation in the stabilization of the Liberian State is established, and consideration given to the ways in which the span of administrative employment and the extent of its popular impact were maximized through the elaboration of an idiosyncratic bureaucratic ideology. Central features of the Liberian bureaucracy are discussedthe over-definition of its external boundary; the weakness of its internal boundaries; the relative insignificance of specialized expert knowledge to bureaucratic roles; and the idiosyncratic nature of the bureaucratic career. While Weberian standards did not apply in the Liberian instance, it cannot be assumed that the latter was therefore a ‘failed bureaucracy’; for the Liberian administration was arguably effective in relation to certain goals, even if these were not ones which would have applied in the ideal-typical case. These goals were essentially political and must be understood in relation to political constraints, rather thanas is often suggested in studies of Third World managementas ‘cultural’ phenomena. Attempts to improve public sector managerial performance in the Third World need to give as much attention to operational issues as to conventional targets.     

The electoral consequences of issue ambiguity: An examination of the presidential candidates' issue positions from 1968 to 1980

This study investigates the consequences of ambiguity in the issue positions of presidential candidates from 1968 to 1980. Two potential consequences are examined: a direct impact and a conditional impact on the vote. The findings indicate no significant direct effect on the vote. However, significant conditional effects were found. Compared to losing candidates, winning candidates were somewhat less likely to hold clear positions when issues were salient to the public and were somewhat more likely to hold ambiguous positions when public opinion was dispersed. They were especially more likely to be ambiguous when their positions substantially differed from the median public position on the issue.     

Using laboratory experiments for policymaking: An example from the Georgia irrigation reduction auction

In recent years, interest has been growing in policy applications of different auction systems. This paper reports a series of experiments that were used to design and implement an auction in a unique policymaking environment. In April 2000, the Georgia legislature passed a law that mandated that the state hold an auction in drought years to pay some farmers to suspend irrigation. This paper reports the results of laboratory experiments state policymakers used to determine the auction institution that would be used to fulfill the requirements of this new law. Experimental results are compared with farmers' bidding behavior in the state‐run irrigation auction used to reduce water usage in Georgia. © 2004 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Adaptive management and adaptive governance in the everglades ecosystem

The Everglades is an intensively managed ecosystem where control of the water has allowed agricultural, urban and economic development, while struggling to meet biodiversity conservation goals. The over 100 year history of control began in response to a disastrous series of floods and droughts followed by environmental crises at an ecosystem scale. Each of these events precipitated technological fixes that extended control of water resources. Institutional structures have been continually reorganized over the last century to meet shifting social objectives, the latest of which is ecosystem restoration. However, the basic response, which employs engineering and technological solutions, is a type of social trap, where governmental mandates, planning-based paradigms and vested interests all interact to inhibit the resolution of chronic environmental issues. Experience from other resource systems indicates that in such an inherently complex system wrought with multiple uncertainties, restoration must be discovered through experimentation and learning embraced by adaptive management. Though minimal steps towards adaptive management have been made, we argue that adaptive forms of experimentation and governance are needed to resolve chronic resource issues and achieve restoration goals.     

New Hampshire's tax-base limits: An example of the Leviathan model

This study views the lack of an income tax on wages and salaries and a general sales tax in New Hampshire as tax-base limits. I use the Leviathan model to analyze the differences between the fiscal system in New Hampshire and the fiscal systems in Vermont, Maine, and Massachusetts. Vermont, Maine, and Massachusetts do not have the tax-base limits that New Hampshire has. From 1957 to 1989, New Hampshire had lower state and local government tax and expenditure levels than the other three states, more rapid population growth, lower welfare expenditures but comparable levels of expenditures for several of the major public services, and a more competitive structure of state and local government.     

Candidate competition and strategic coordination: evidence from four early Norwegian elections

This article investigates strategic coordination in four elections to the Norwegian Storting (1909–18). The elections were held under a majority-plurality dual-ballot system, with unrestricted participation in the second-ballot. The focus is on elections with Conservative, Liberal and Labour candidates as main contenders. Supported by historical and theoretical arguments, the authors assume universally sincere voting in the first-ballot. Given this assumption, second-ballot elections can be analyzed as regular plurality elections. Hypotheses about behavior are formed using the game theoretic framework of Myerson and Weber (American Political Science Review 87 (1993) 102–114). It is found that while voters follow the predictions of theory fairly closely, the extent of coordination present at the candidate level can be questioned.     

Grizzly Bear conservation in the Foothills Model Forest: appraisal of a collaborative ecosystem management effort

In west-central Alberta, Canada, an ambitious collaborative conservation program for grizzly bears began in 1999, after extensive controversy over the Cheviot coal mine project and successful negotiation of a unique federal–provincial strategic framework for grizzly bear conservation. Unfortunately that program was effectively terminated without any substantive implementation of its research findings. The regional ecosystem approach for conserving grizzlies in the Foothills Model Forest originated in federal and provincial legislative processes but proved vulnerable to shifting goals and containment by a single powerful participant. This case study’s results demonstrate vulnerabilities of the ecosystem management approach to conserving large carnivores. To enable other such conservation efforts to achieve their goals, we recommend supporting emergent small-scale initiatives and designing collaborative institutions that limit the potential for containment of decision processes.     

The institutional structuring of innovation policy coordination: theory and evidence from East Asia

This article suggests that variations in the dominant pattern of innovation policy coordination can be analysed and understood effectively by dividing innovation and other complementary socio-economic policies into low-complexity and high-complexity tasks.The effective implementation of these two sets of policy tasks that differ in the extent, nature and intractability of collective action problems confronting the coordination process hinges on the strength of two sociopolitical institutions: bureaucratic organizational structures and interactive governing arrangements. While bureaucratic organizational structures are better suited to delivering low-complexity tasks, interactive governing arrangements are more effective in resolving high-complexity policy problems. They interact differently across political economies to structure the management of coordination challenges and thus give rise to divergent patterns of innovation policy-making. The comparative analysis of innovation policy coordination between Hong Kong and Singapore over the past two decades lends strong support to the central theoretical propositions of the article.

     

Presidential coattails and electoral coordination in multilevel elections: Comparative lessons from Brazil

This article seeks to understand how concurrent presidential and gubernatorial elections in strong federal systems affect electoral coordination and coattails voting between national and subnational levels of government. We seek to determine whether the nationalizing effect of presidential elections can overcome the strong incentives for regionalization that can arise in federal systems. We use individual-level survey data and time-series cross-sectional electoral data from Brazil, a federal country with decentralized electoral institutions that has recently adopted concurrent presidential and gubernatorial elections. We find that the congruence between national and subnational elections increases when elections are temporally proximate and the effective number of presidential candidates is low. In short, the coattails effect can not only operate “horizontally,” by shaping national legislative elections, but also “vertically,” by shaping subnational elections.     

Environmental planning,administration and management in Nigerian Cities: The example of Benin City,Bendel State

Third World cities are characterized by weak administrative and managerial capacity for environmental planning. Benin City, Nigeria, is no exception. Benin's environmental problems result largely from its unplanned land use and weak development control. These problems include lack of open space, substandard housing and an increasing volume of refuse. The administrative arrangements to handle environmental problems include the Town Planning Division, which enforces building and housing codes and land use regulations; and the Task Force on Environmental Sanitation, responsible for solid waste management. However, these arrangements have not produced satisfactory results. Failure has been due partly to the ad hoc organization of environmental administration; the overlapping perception of environmental problems; the alienation of the public; dispersal of authority; and the scale of jurisdictional units. Effective environmental planning administration must adopt a holistic approach, which recognizes the need for a comprehensive environmental planning and a concentration of environmental authority. This is based on the premise that environmental issues are the responsibility of one agency but an obligation for all. Structurally, the concentration of environmental authority hinges on the principle of cooperative leadership by the Federal Government. This calls urgently for the establishment of a Federal Environmental Protection Agency at the centre, and Environmental Management Boards at state levels. The Boards would provide an administrative umbrella under which the management of various aspects of the environment are coordinated. In order to maximize the cooperation of the public, the traditional power structure of the Oba (paramount chiefs and community leaders) must be involved in the conception and implementation of environmental planning. Citizen participation would in turn be maximized if the neighbourhood is adopted as the jurisdictional unit, upon which environmental administration and management are systematically built.     

An analysis of voter predictive dimensions and recovery of the underlying issue space

Based on the spatial voting model posited by Enelow and Hinich, this paper presents a means of determining the nature of the issue dimensions used by voters. This method allows for calculation of the extent to which the predictive dimensions recover the underlying issues space. Of particular interest is the extent to which a single predictive dimension can recover the issue space. The method also suggests that Enelow and Hinich are correct in their hypothesis that the social liberal-conservative axis and the economic liberal-conservative axis are the dimensions most used by the electorate.     

Measuring party positions and issue salience from media coverage: Discussing and cross-validating new indicators

Recent studies have started to use media data to measure party positions and issue salience. The aim of this article is to compare and cross-validate this alternative approach with the more commonly used party manifestos, expert judgments and mass surveys. To this purpose, we present two methods to generate indicators of party positions and issue salience from media coverage: the core sentence approach and political claims analysis. Our cross-validation shows that with regard to party positions, indicators derived from the media converge with traditionally used measurements from party manifestos, mass surveys and expert judgments, but that salience indicators measure different underlying constructs. We conclude with a discussion of specific research questions for which media data offer potential advantages over more established methods.     

Success and failure in electoral competition: Selective issue emphasis under incomplete issue ownership

Political parties are often argued to compete for voters by stressing issues they feel they own – a strategy known as ‘selective emphasis’. While usually seen as an electorally rewarding strategy, this article argues that cultivating ‘your’ themes in the public debate is not guaranteed to be electorally beneficial and may even become counter-productive. It describes the conditions under which ‘selective emphasis’ becomes counter-productive, and applies the argument to recent discussions regarding the strategies of mainstream parties confronting the extreme right.     

Building an integrated issue management process as a source of sustainable competitive advantage

This paper defines the key values, principal participants and operational requirements that characterise a strategically relevant global issue management process. It is the authors' intention to reveal and provide support for the most important ‘truth’ about this great discipline: ‘Excellence and relevance is determined by the optimal mix of dedicated, focused and highly imaginative people with processes that unleash their remarkable innovative potential. You need both.’ Copyright © 2002 Henry Stewart Publications.     

Defining the policy-making function in government: An organizational and management approach

Applying what is in effect a roles and missions approach to the management of the office of the chief planner in large scale public operations is at variance with modern public administration theories. However, a definitional approach is advanced here as a needed step in organizing and managing the policy-making process, which in most agencies is in constant flux. Five key functions are defined: Planning, Analysis, Research, Demonstration and Evaluation. A simplified scenario is used to show how these functions and their management interact over several years of policy-making. Activities identified with each function are spaced chronologically and are shown to be mutually reinforcing. The scenario also makes extensive use of the initial earmarking of portions of the Research and Evaluation budgets for coordinated use in response to requirements growing out of the overall policy determination process.     

The linkage between predictive dimensions and candidate issue positions in American presidential campaigns: An examination of group differences

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the empirical utility of a new theoretical model of elections developed by Enelow and Hinich (1982, 1984a, 1984b) and Hinich and Pollard (1981). At the heart of this model is the assumption that candidate positions on campaign issues can be reduced to a set of positions on a smaller set of predictive dimensions. Factor analysis can be used to test the empirical adequacy of this assumption. Further, factor scores can be used as estimates of each voter's linear translation coefficients, measuring the linkage between candidate positions on the underlying dimensions of the campaign and candidate positions on real campaign issues. To obtain estimates of these translation coefficients, we factor analyze six candidate variables, using voter perceptions of each candidate's issue positions in the 1980 Pre-Election NES Survey. We then assign scores to each voter-issue pair on each of two underlying factors and examine group differences in these scores. We find systematic differences in mean factor scores among racial, ideological, partisan, educational, and income groups. These differences are consistent with the results obtained from a direct examination of perceived issue differences between Jimmy Carter and Ronald Reagan.     

On-line processing in candidate evaluation: The effects of issue order,issue importance,and sophistication

This article reports the results of a study that replicates and extends the impression-driven model of candidate evaluation reported in Lodge, McGraw, and Stroh (1989). This model holds that evaluations are formed and updated on-line as information is encountered, and that as a result, citizens need not rely on specific information available from memory to form their candidate evaluations. In the present work we explore whether the order in which information is encountered, as well as whether information that is personally important, influences the weight accorded to evidence in on-line processing. In addition, differences in information-processing strategies due to political sophistication are examined. The results indicate that important information receives more weight than unimportant information. In addition, the evidence suggests that political sophisticates are more efficient on-line processors than are less sophisticated individuals. The implications of these results for models of candidate evaluation are discussed.