Activity-Based Costing in Government: Possibilities and Pitfalls

Activity-based costing (ABC) is at the center of the larger management perspective known as activity-based management, or ABM. Despite its popularity in the literature, relatively little is still known about the details of ABC, especially in government circles. There are many unanswered questions relating to the details of how to go about implementing ABC, its possible uses, and its costs and benefits. Indeed, it is still unclear to many whether it is even appropriate to use ABC in government, given the reality that many governmental programs do not sell their services This article attempts to address these concerns by presenting the conceptual underpinnings and details of ABC, contrasting the system with more traditional cost accounting systems, discussing the fit of ABC in government, and considering in some detail how one small city might benefit from implementing ABC.     

Image analysis of gunshot residue on entry wounds: I – The technique and preliminary study

An automated image analysis (IA) technique has been developed to obtain a measure of the amount (i.e. number and area) of gunshot residue (GSR) particles within and around a gunshot wound. Sample preparation and IA procedures were standardised to improve the reproducibility of the IA measurements of GSR. Measurements of GSR from test firings into goat hide were enhanced by staining the barium and lead components present on the skin sections with Alizarin Red S. The amount of GSR detected on the stained skin sections was compared with backscatter electron micrographs of the same sections. The differences were deemed to be insignificant when the variability in the repeated test firings were taken into consideration. Preliminary results indicated that the decreasing relationship between firing range and the amount of GSR deposited was non-linear, and that for firing ranges of up to 20 cm the amount of GSR deposited from repeated shots fired from the same distance was highly variable.     

Democracy, Colonization, and Human Capital in Sub-Saharan Africa

This article examines an empirical anomaly. In most developing regions, poor democratic nations enroll more primary school students than their authoritarian counterparts. Regime type, however, cannot account for the wide variance in enrollment in Africa. This study demonstrates that colonial heritage is a good predictor of primary school enrollment for low-income countries in Africa. Additional analysis shows that colonization's impact on education has not diminished since independence. Rather, the initial differences in enrollment between the former French and British colonies have grown over time. The results hold important implications for the study of political institutions and their impact on economic development. Even after they no longer exist, political institutions can have substantial lingering effects on important developmental outcomes. David S. Brown is an assistant professor of political science at Rice University. His work has appeared recently inThe American Political Science Review, Political Research Quarterly, and inComparative Political Studies. His work focuses on the political economy of development and is based on cross-regional work with specialization in Latin America. Specific areas of interest are human capital, democracy, and the international determinants of domestic politics.     

Structural and functional information

Fernandes and Simon propose to examine decision making in complex and ambiguous situations by inviting various professionals (architects, doctors, engineers, and lawyers) to contemplate a paradoxical case, but the thoughts which this exercise generates are then summarized in terms of categories proposed a priori (structural information). A functional approach, by way of contrast, endeavors to examine a phenomenon as closely as possible in terms of its intrinsic character. An alternative is presented using Q methodology and factor analysis as a way to reveal functional responses to the same decision making scenario employed by Fernandes and Simon.     

Building civic infrastructure: implementing community partnership grant programmes in South Africa

This article examines recent efforts to establish Community Partnership Grant Programmes (CPG) in six South African communities. CPG programmes provide the financial and organizational infrastructure to support citizen‐initiated neighbourhood projects. We review our efforts to disseminate the CPG programme model in three different environments in South Africa—a large metropolitan area, three smaller municipalities and two tribal villages—and analyse why preliminary implementation results were positive in some communities but not others. Our findings form the basis of a model of CPG programme implementation based on the mode of implementation and the breadth of stakeholder involvement. We use this model to make recommendations to increase the likelihood of implementation success for similar programmes. The article concludes with observations about the applicability of the CPG programme idea as a way to develop civic infrastructure, and on the political lessons learned from our implementation experience in South Africa. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.