Academia in Anarchy: 50 years on

Public Choice - In 1970, James Buchanan and Nicos Devletoglou published Academia in Anarchy: An Economic Diagnosis. Even though the book focuses on the industry Buchanan worked in for nearly...     

Anarchy as a Model for Network Governance

This article centers on two interconnected ideas that have garnered increasing attention in public administration: (1) a shift away from centralized institutional authority structures and (2) the concomitant rise of networks in the public sector. While network theories have been viewed as ushering in a new paradigm for understanding governance, they remain rooted in the language and framework of hierarchical bureaucratic systems. The author suggests that embracing an approach not grounded in a centralized institutional perspective may clarify network theories in public administration. Specifically, the author argues that anarchism has much to add to our understanding of networks and illustrates how an anarchist perspective may advance our understanding of networks in three areas—network formation, network stability, and accountability in networks—in which the hierarchical perspective has generated persistent questions.     

Anarchy,self-governance,and legal titling

Scholars and policymakers prescribe legal titling to improve prospects for economic development and political order. However, a public choice literature exists that has long recognized that self-governance often works well and that the state may not be able to improve upon local economic institutions at reasonable cost. Although the implication that legal titling should proceed with caution is seemingly straightforward, the literature on legal titling does not take anarchy seriously as a policy option. In addition, there is a public choice literature that presumes the state is the most important source of property rights. This essay fills this gap in the property rights literature by applying the concept of “efficient anarchy” to legal titling in Afghanistan. Original fieldwork evidence from rural Afghanistan suggests that anarchy of land governance is a better option than legal titling. The essay concludes by opening up the black box of state building by explaining why it often makes sense to sequence improvements in political capacity and political constraints prior to investing in legal titling.     

Collective Leadership and Context in Public Administration: Bridging Public Leadership Research and Leadership Studies

This article challenges the view that public leadership research should maintain a separate perspective in the study of public leadership. It discusses the benefits of further embedding the public leadership research domain within leadership studies, constructing a cross‐fertilization that contributes to advance both. The article maps key concerns in relational leadership theories, contrasting them with current work in the public leadership research domain and offering suggestions to close the gap. It highlights public leadership scholarship's competitive advantage to contribute to theorizing about leadership, given the importance of context for building contemporary theories of relational leadership.     

Special Edition on Organized Crime

This is the first edition of the Oxford Journal of Policingthat we, as General Editors, have entrusted to a guest editor.We have several such future editions planned, because we feelthis is an important way of expanding the number and varietyof voices commentating on policing. This is a key part of themission we have set ourselves—a vigorous debate     

激发政府组织中的组织公民行为——试论和谐社会下改进政府组织绩效的对策

如何提高政府组织绩效是构建和谐社会过程中的一大问题.由于作为自变量的组织公民行为(OCB)对政府组织绩效具有积极的作用,所以通过激发政府组织的OCB可能是改进政府组织绩效的一条有效的路径.针对现阶段提高政府组织绩效所面临的问题和困难,需要从制度层面对组织中影响OCB的相关变量进行调节和控制,从而激发OCB,以提高政府组织绩效.     

Coercive Leadership

We develop a model of leadership in which an informed leader has some degree of coercive influence over her followers (agents). Agents benefit from coordination but face two distinct challenges: dispersed information and heterogeneous preferences. The leader's coercive power facilitates coordination by weakening the effect presented by both of these challenges through “binding” agents to a strategically chosen policy. The leader's policy choice becomes more informative to the agents about the leader's privately held information as her coercive capacity increases. By adjusting her policy choice in response to available private and public information, the coercive leader achieves her preferred average of agents' actions, and in so doing, neutralizes the possibly deleterious coordinating influence of public information. We develop implications of our analysis for understanding autocratic leadership in different political and organizational contexts.     

Street-Level Leadership

Book reviewed:
Janet Coble Vinzant and Lane Crothers, Street-Level Leadership: Discretion and Legitimacy in Front-Line Public Service .     

Revising the Leadership Paradigm in Sub-Saharan Africa: A Study of Community-Based Leadership

Much of the discourse on leadership in sub-Saharan Africa emphasizes leader characteristics, skills, styles, and behaviors, while ignoring the relationships, interactions, practical judgments, and unique contexts that make up leadership in everyday cultural community life. This essay argues that the focus on individual leaders hardly reflects leadership as practice in African communities. An alternative, pragmatic view based on unique historicity and cultural community norms is proposed, one that has a chance of fostering social change and institutional transformation.