The future of professionalization and professionalism in public administration: Advancements,barriers, and prospects

This article examines the advancements, barriers, and prospects of the field of public administration as it seeks professionalism through professionalization. Overall, this essay delves into six broad areas of advancement and an equal number of obstacles. The milestones focus on the criteria of a profession and public administration's fulfillment of those standards, far-reaching credentialization, the expanding entry of women and minorities, the development of performance criteria, intergovernmental networking, and an expansion of associations. The impediments to the further evolution of the field toward professional development include the continuing value conflicts over the ultimate purposes of the field; the persistent politicization of the federal workforce; the inability of public servants to affect the uses of privatization; the erosion of national, state, and local governmental human-resource capacity; the confusion over the teaching of ethics and the promulgation of operational codes; and the prevalence of authoritarian administration without significant democratic inroads. The respective enumerations were not intended to suggest an exact symmetry between accomplishments and obstacles in the field--only that progress and deficiencies are prominent and substantial. Nor were these considered lists intended as exhaustive.

The central theme of this article is that, paradoxically, the prospects of this profession are encouraging because of the growing public need for its services despite persistent, widespread unpopularity. This research concludes that public administrators face an ambivalent future in which their emerging profession continues to prosper and expand amidst increasing alienation and frustration from the public whom they serve. This irony may not be alleviated until there is a socially and politically agreed-upon agenda for public servants to execute. If such a consensus is ever forged, then public administrators may become popular as well as professionally effective.     

Health care reform content and process:propositions from the states

Health care reform and cost containment have become central campaign and policy issues in the United States. Although focus now centers on federal health care reform policy, state governments have been actively introducing health care reform legislation. Some of the health care reform initiatives on the state level have influenced deliberations on the federal level and President Clinton's health care reform initiatives will spur further state experimentation regardless of legislative success in Congress, In 1992 nearly all 50 states had either legislation introduced, or special task forces assigned that addressed health care reform issues. This exploratory research compares the content and process of health reform in four states that attempted major reform in 1992—Florida, Washington, Michigan, and Wisconsin—and draws propositions for state reform based on comparisons of content and process. The four states chosen represent geographic diversity and a balance between legislation seeking partial change and legislation calling for universal health care reform. The principal reform bills in each state are compared and assessed on the degree to which they address eight reform elements; high tech medicine, administration, tort reform, long-term care, regulation, insurance mandates, small business insurance, and insurance portability. These initiatives are also compared on a series of reform process variables that relate to the political process for adopting reform: degree of health sector support, type of political strategy used, reform champion, degree of cooperation among policy stakeholders, and timing of initiative. Based on these four cases the phased/partial approach seems to have a greater chance for legislative success than immediate universal reform. Florida's partial, consensus-building approach resulted in the only signed bill of the four states. Washington's bill, which also took a partial approach, passed the state senate before ultimate defeat in 1992 and eventual passage in 1993. Neither of the more ambitious universal health care reform packages introduced in Wisconsin or Michigan got out of committee. Although some of the plans were thorough, none adequately addressed the tradeoff between increasing access to care and containing costs. In addition, this study will demonstrate that universal health care legislation, does not necessarily equate to comprehensive health care reform. The propositions derived from this research have implications for future state health care reform efforts, as well as for federal health care reform policy in terms of the substantive content of reform proposals and the political process by which they are advanced.     

Local government in post-communist poland: A study of federalism and executive authority in plock

This article examines the establishment of local government in post-communist Poland. Its purpose is to examine the realignment of central state and local government authority established through the Polish National Assembly's (Sejm) 1990 reforms and to provide an assessment of developing local government autonomy and executive authority in the new city government structure.

The conceptual framework is comparative, using an American perspective to examine issues of local government autonomy and executive authority.     

Exploring the implementation of solid waste recycling programs

This article explores the implementation of municipal solid waste recycling programs through comparisons of mandatory vs. voluntary programs and privatized vs. in-house programs. It also looks at whether or not the adoption of recycling service fees impact levels of participation. The linkage between the collection mechanism and recycling participation is a pertinent issue because local jurisdictions must respond to tougher state mandates and federal guidelines on environmental standards and waste stream reduction. Evidence presented here suggests that recycling studies should incorporate more characteristics of voluntary programs to better understand compliance variation and methods used to enhance effectiveness.     

How best to open up local democracy? A randomised experiment to encourage contested elections and greater representativeness in English parish councils

Interventions aimed at increasing the supply and representativeness of elected officials range from facilitative to the formally authorised. This paper reports on a field experiment aimed at testing the effect of facilitative approaches at the local level based on a collaboration between parish councils and the research team. We randomly allocated 818 parish council clerks across five counties in Southern England, either to receive information and the opportunity for member training for recruitment, or not to receive this contact. We investigated the effect of this intervention on political recruitment. Despite evidence of an effect on use of social media, our results suggest that there are significant institutional and structural barriers to participation in local politics that cannot easily be overcome using facilitative measures.     

Joint care and joint funding

One of the most important possible sources of conflict of interest between central and local governments is difference in political preferences with respect to, for example, income redistribution. If local governments are of a different political composition than the central government, they may be inclined to reinforce or weaken the redistribution policies as pursued by the central government. We empirically test whether local governments in the Netherlands do pursue income redistribution policies over and above the central government's redistribution policy and we find that the distribution of the local tax burden over the various household types differs according to the political composition of the local council.     

Europe and local government

The Care in the Community initiative has resulted in a renewed interest in collaboration between local and health authorities. The focus of such collaboration is commonly on the transfer of long‐stay patients from psychiatric and mental handicap hospitals that are due to close, though the extent of local authority involvement in closure programmes varies considerably.

Joint planning typically involves a number of local authority departments: social services, housing, chief executives’ offices and legal services. It sometimes also involves education, recreation and leisure departments. Joint planning can be very time‐consuming and can call for considerable effort. It frequently gives rise to a good deal of conflict between the participating agencies. The pay‐offs, on the other hand, often appear to be small. Such plans as are finally implemented tend to be small‐scale: attempts at broader strategic planning almost invariably come to grief. The question then has to be asked, whether joint planning is worth all the effort. In the end, the primary justification for such planning has to lie in its ability to produce more appropriate services for service‐users.

This paper examines one local authority's experience of joint planning in relation to the closure of a large psychiatric hospital. Despite several setbacks, joint plans were eventually agreed and a number of former long‐stay patients were able to move into the community. The paper considers both the achievements and the shortcomings of the authority's collaboration with the health service.