Good government and sustainable anti-corruption strategies: A role for independent anti-corruption agencies?

Aid donors are increasingly seeking to link assistance to sustainable reform, including the provision of a responsible and responsive political and legal framework, the improvement of recipient countries' social, health and educational prospects, and the promotion of economic development and liberalization. Much attention is given to the first of these because of the size and cost to the state and the perceived constraints it exercises on the longer-term changes to the economy and society; in general terms, good government is an essential precondition for good governance and economic development. Increasingly donors have focused on corruption, both as a core obstacle to the encouragement of good government, and on the steps taken to dealing with it as evidence of commitment and the will of recipient countries to their introduction. While the types of activity associated with corruption are readily identifiable, as are the means to attempt to deal with it, it is usually much more difficult to determine effective implementation, particularly with limited resources at a time when longer-term political and economic reforms are also being promoted. It is therefore especially important that, in relation to corruption and good government, a practicable, effective and sustainable means is available to deal with corruption from preventative, investigative and reform perspectives.     

Decision pathways from crisis

Crisis simulation is by definition an exercise in cognitive structuring. It is argued that this automatically entails a search for heuristics and organizational decisions which might render complex, highly interactive social and technological situations comprehensible, hopefully amenable to being programmed and, ultimately, controlled. In this paper, a cognitive analysis is presented of alternative paths available to an organization that is in a crisis state to move away from crisis back to more routine modes of operation. Cognitive mapping of plausible post-crisis decision-paths results in a multi-path scheme that enables one to comprehend, even assess, the erratic development of political and socio-technological events in a post-crisis period. The specific example that is used to illustrate the applicability of such a multi-path scheme concerns the revival of NASA following the Space Shuttle disaster. In contrasting the cognitive opportunities in post-crisis situations with the cognitive failures implicit in pre-crisis settings, the multi-path simulation technique enables a more sophisticated understanding of the dynamics of crisis development.     

Leading learning and change from the middle: Reconceptualising strategy's purpose,content, and measures

When implementing a transformational global vision and mission, three problems typically confront international NGOs: aligning different levels of planning and strategy; balancing global analysis and priorities against local realities; and identifying measures that both indicate progress and promote and encourage innovation. This article reports on the efforts of CARE International's Latin America Regional Management Unit to address these problems by introducing 'reversals' to common strategic planning principles and processes. It shows middle managers in NGOs how they can lead 'from the middle', and considers 'the region' to be the nexus enabling an organisation to change and learn across multiple hierarchical levels.     

Concentrated deviance and the “underdass” hypothesis

The “underclass” is perhaps the defining feature of current research in urban distress and of current debates regarding urban policy. The leading measurement strategy (proposed in this journal) is somewhat divorced from the careful specifications of the leading theoretical work (notably that of W. J. Wilson). Several alternative measurement strategies demonstrate that the findings are extremely sensitive to the measurement used. Theory is the only reliable basis for choosing a measurement strategy and for avoiding the empiricist approach taken by other studies. If we cannot identify the best measurement strategy, then there is no basis for further research or for recommending policies.     

THE SNOWMAN COMETH

The following is an analysis of primarily the cocaine trade in New York from 1910 to 1917. The data used come from the investigative files of the Bureau of Social Morals, part of the New York Kehillah. The Kehillah itself was a broadly based communal agency which functioned in part as a counter to accusations of Jewish criminality current in the press. The analysis deals with the social backgrounds of cocaine dealers. and then looks at the manner in which cocaine was distributed especially by criminal collectives known as combinations. It concludes that the structure of drug syndicates was exceptionally loose, fluid, and often kin-centered. Finally, the essay strongly suggests the need to integrate urban history with studies of organized crime in general.