Designing Health Service Organization in the UK, 1968 to 1998: from Blueprint to Bright Idea and 'Manipulated Emergence'

Four sets of reforms of the National Health Service are employed to illustrate the changing character of policy making in this sector over a thirty year period, from the production of a carefully developed technocratic blueprint for its organization to the promulgation of a series of bright ideas accompanied by incentives for local actors to develop them into concrete organizational arrangements consonant with these ideas. We term this latter approach 'manipulated emergence' and relate it to the literatures of organizational culture and of post-Fordism. The approach adopted by the 1997 Labour government is largely, though not wholly consistent with this, and it remains to be seen whether the high-water mark of manipulated emergence has passed.     

Nodal Governance, Democracy, and the New 'Denizens'

We begin this paper by reviewing some recent transformations in governance. We then propose three new concepts that we believe assist us in coming to terms with these transformations and the political statuses that have emerged as part of them. These concepts are 'nodal governance', 'denizens', and 'communal space'. Following this we will explore the normative implications of nodal governance as it has taken shape to date, with an emphasis on the 'governance disparity' that is paralleling the 'wealth disparity' across the globe. In response to this disparity, we will end with an outline of a normative vision and practical programme aimed at deepening democracy in poor areas of South Africa, Argentina, and elsewhere. We will argue that the main virtue of nodal governance, namely, the emphasis on local capacity and knowledge can be retrieved, reaffirmed, and reinstitutionalized in ways that enhance the self-direction of poor communities while strengthening their 'collective capital'.     

Welfare Reform, Mississippi Style: Temporary Assistance for Needy Families and the Search for Accountability

Through an examination of the implementation of the 1996 Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Act in the state of Mississippi, we explore the adequacy of traditional two-actor principal-agent theory. Using this as our lens, we suggest that the choices made by Mississippi in the area of welfare reform to privatize much of the work and to add several layers to the existing principal-agent relationship substantially reduced accountability and the effectiveness of the monitoring systems. We conclude that not only is traditional principal-agent theory an insufficient tool for understanding the complex interrelationship between democratic actors in this particular case, the decisions of the state of Mississippi to complicate the principal-actor relationship through privatization also undermined the reform effort itself in ways that may have general implications for other like-minded efforts in other policy areas.
There are those who are undermining what we are trying to achieve ...
—Bud Henry, Director of Economic Assistance, Mississippi Department of Human Services     

Bureaucracy,altruism, and monetary policy

It has recently been argued that the fiscal relationship between the Federal Reserve and the Treasury, by which the Fed keeps a portion of its earnings, imparts an inflationary bias to monetary policy because that relationship gives the Fed an incentive to increase its earnings by increasing the monetary base. This hypothesis is tested within the framework of a Federal Reserve objective function incorporating bureaucratic and social goals, and no evidence is found to support it.     

Reflections of the Evolving Concept of 'Private Policing'

Once popular state-centred political frameworks, while declining in popularity on many normative agendas, nevertheless continue to guide how we think about and examine policing. Early studies into the private policing phenomenon have thereby focused upon the formal paid private security sector, a set of agencies which do not depart too radically in appearance from traditional public police services. More recent empirical studies have yielded data inconsistent with the established conceptual frameworks. Theorists have been assembling these data into alternate ways of thinking about collective life, which may have profound implications for the ways in which to choose to govern in the future. Further research addressing developments in networked nodal governance may be suggestive of progressive alternatives.     

The development of the Project NetWork administrative records database for policy evaluation.

This article describes the development of SSA's administrative records database for the Project NetWork return-to-work experiment targeting persons with disabilities. The article is part of a series of papers on the evaluation of the Project NetWork demonstration. In addition to 8,248 Project NetWork participants randomly assigned to receive case management services and a control group, the simulation identified 138,613 eligible nonparticipants in the demonstration areas. The output data files contain detailed monthly information on Supplemental Security Income (SSI) and Disability Insurance (DI) benefits, annual earnings, and a set of demographic and diagnostic variables. The data allow for the measurement of net outcomes and the analysis of factors affecting participation. The results suggest that it is feasible to simulate complex eligibility rules using administrative records, and create a clean and edited data file for a comprehensive and credible evaluation. The study shows that it is feasible to use administrative records data for selecting control or comparison groups in future demonstration evaluations.     

Book reviews

R. Bahro: Die Alternative. Koln‐Frankfurt, 1977, 542 pp. 34.00DM.

R. Bahro: The alternative in Eastern Europe, New Left Books, 1978. 463 pp. £9.50.

Bergson, Abram, Productivity and the Social System—The USSR and the West, Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1978. xi+256 pp. £12.25.

Alec Nove; Political Economy and Soviet Socialism, London, Boston, Sydney: George Allen & Unwin, 1979. 249 pp. £10.00.

Gail Warshofsky Lapidus, Women in Soviet Society: Equality, Development and Social Change. Berkeley, Los Angeles and London: University of California Press, 1978. x + 381 pp. £12.25.

Nationalism in the USSR & Eastern Europe in the Era of Brezhnev and Kosygin. Papers and Proceedings of the Symposium held at University of Detroit on 3–4 October, 1975. Edited by George W. Simmonds. Detroit, Mich.: University of Detroit Press, 1977. 534 pp. $6.95 soft bound, $12.00 hard bound.

Alexander Yanov, The Russian New Right: Right‐ Wing Ideologies in the Contemporary USSR. Berkeley: Institute of International Studies, University of California, 1978. 185 pp. $3.95.

John J. Stephan, The Russian Fascists: Tragedy and Farce in Exile, 1925–1945. New York: Harper and Row, 1978. 450 pp. $15.00.

Michael A. Newcity, Copyright Law in the Soviet Union. New York: Praeger Publishers, 1978. x + 212 pp. Appendix and selected bibliography.

Robin Higham and Jacob W. Kipp, Soviet Aviation and Air Power. A Historical View. London: Brasseys’, 1978; Boulder Co.: Westview Press, 1977. xii + 328 pp. $25.

James Riordan (ed.), Sport Under Communism. London: C. Hurst & Company, 1978. x +177 pp. £6.95.

Vahan D. Barooshian, Brik and Mayakovsky, Slavistic Printings and Reprintings 301. The Hague: Mouton, 1978. 154 pp. + index. Paperback.

Vladimir FiSera (ed.), Workers’ Councils in Czechoslovakia: Documents and Essays 1968–69. London: Motive, 1978. 200 pp. £8.50.

Richard F. Starr (ed.), Yearbook on International Communist Affairs 1978, Stanford, California: Hoover Institution Press, Stanford University, 1978. 497 pp. $35.00.

G. E. Skorov (ed.), Science, Technology and Economic Growth in Developing Countries. Oxford: Pergamon Press, 1978. (tranlated by J. Warren).     

Can Information Change Public Support for Aid?

Donor country publics typically know little about how much aid their governments give. This paper reports on three experiments conducted in Australia designed to study whether providing accurate information on government giving changes people’s views about aid. Treating participants by showing them how little Australia gives or by showing declining generosity has little effect. However, contrasting Australian aid cuts with increases in the United Kingdom raises support for aid substantially. Motivated reasoning likely explains the broad absence of findings in the first two treatments. Concern with international norms and perceptions likely explains the efficacy of the third treatment.