Fiscal Planning, Budgeting, and Rebudgeting Using Revenue Semaphores

Revenue forecasts play an important role in the state government budget and policy process. These forecasts are generally reported to executive and legislative leaders as point estimates, with no acknowledgment of their corresponding risk and uncertainty. The revenue semaphores proposed in this article outline procedures by which revenue uncertainty directly influences the planning process. The goal is not to make forecasts more accurate, but to make discussions of budget and revenue alternatives more comprehensive. Explicitly incorporating risk and uncertainty measures into the budgeting process increases the degree of real-time budgeting and reduces some adverse effects of budget revisions after the fiscal year begins. The discussion occurs in the context of budget control, management, and policy making.     

Expressive Voting and Government Redistribution: Testing Tullock's `Charity of the Uncharitable'

Models of expressive voting postulate that voters will`consume' ideological stances on issues by voting for them,even when they are against the voter's own narrow selfinterest, if the probability of being a decisive voter is low.When a voter is unlikely to sway the outcome, the odds that avoter will incur any real personal cost (a higher tax burden,for example) from her own expressive vote is small. We testand find support for Tullock's straightforward empiricalimplication of this model, that government welfare (transfer)payments are inversely related to the probability of being thedecisive voter.     

Women's Work? The Distribution and Prestige of Portfolios in the Canadian Provinces

Historically not only have women cabinet ministers in Western democracies been few in number, but they have generally been limited to "women's ministries" such as education, health, social services, and culture. This article systematically investigates the responsibilities and prestige of portfolios that women cabinet ministers in the ten Canadian provinces have held over a 21-year period, 1976–1997, an era in which their share of cabinet positions rose from less than 4% to almost 25%. Although still concentrated in traditional women's ministries, they have diversified the portfolios they hold. Using a tri-fold classification of portfolios into (1) important, (2) middle range, and (3) junior positions, we find that women increasingly have achieved more prestigious portfolios, perhaps a reflection of the reduced number of cabinet positions in the 1990s and more concerted attempts to promote women. But the law of increasing disproportion still exists, at least in overall terms of the relative prestige of cabinet positions.     

Conflict Management With Friends and Romantic Partners: The Role of Attachment and Negative Mood Regulation Expectancies

The degree to which attachment orientations are related to negative mood regulation expectancies and conflict management strategies with best friends and romantic partners was examined for a sample of late adolescent, female college students (N = 140). Correlational and multiple regression analyses yielded results that were generally consistent with theoretical expectations. Adolescents with more insecure attachment orientations were likely to report having difficulties managing conflict with attachment figures and had less confidence regulating negative mood than individuals who endorsed more secure orientations. In addition, more avoidant and ambivalent attachment orientations often predicted specific conflict management difficulties, and confidence in negative mood regulation partially mediated these associations. The results are discussed in relation to previous research on attachment theory and implications for interventions are offered.     

Book reviews

Bill Jordan, The New Politics of Welfare (Sage, London, 1998), 260 pp., ISBN 0–7619–6022–8 (pb)

Michael Cox (ed.), Rethinking the Soviet Collapse. Sovietology, the Death of Communism and the New Russia (Pinter, London, 1998), 294 pp., ISBN 1–85567–321–5 (hb), 1–85567–322–3 (pb)

Adrian Little, Post‐industrial Socialism: Towards a New Politics of Welfare (Routledge, London, 1998), 190 pp., ISBN 0–415–17193–8 (hb), 0–415–17194–6 (pb)

Perry Anderson, The Origins of Postmodernity (Verso, London and New York, 1998), 143 pp., ISBN 1–85984–222–4 (pb), 1–85984–864–8 (hb)

Adrian Guelke, South Africa in Transition. The Misunderstood Miracle (I. B. Tauris, London, 1999), 224 pp., ISBN 1–86064–343–4 (hb)

Ryan Bishop and Lillian S. Robinson, Night Markets: Sexual Cultures and the Thai Economic Miracle (Routledge, London and New York, 1998), 278 pp., ISBN 0–415–91429–9 (pb)

Frank Field, Stakeholder Welfare (Institute of Economic Affairs, London, 1996), 114 pp., ISBN 0–255 36390–7 (pb)

David G. Green, Reinventing Civil Society; the Rediscovery of Welfare without Politics (Institute of Economic Affairs, London, 1993), 166 pp., ISBN 0–255 36279‐X (pb)

David G. Green, Benefit Dependency; how Welfare Undermines Independence (Institute of Economic Affairs, London, 1998), 49 pp., ISBN 0–255 36433–4 (pb)

Will Hutton, Stakeholding and its Critics (Institute of Economic Affairs, London, 1997), 102 pp., ISBN 0–255 36396–6 (pb)

Lawrence M. Mead, From Welfare to Work; Lessons from America (Institute of Economic Affairs, London, 1997), 155 pp., ISBN 0–255 36399–0 (pb)     

Mothers' and Fathers' Perceptions of Their Adolescent Daughters' Shape, Weight, and Body Esteem: Are They Accurate?

This study examined parents' awareness of their daughters' attitudes, beliefs, and feelings about their bodies. Sixty-six daughters aged 12–15 years completed the Stirling Eating Disorder Scale, a body figure rating scale, and made ratings of their shape and weight. They also completed a more comprehensive measure of body satisfaction, the Body Esteem Scale (BES). Mothers and fathers estimated their daughters' shape and weight, and completed the BES with instructions to complete the measure from their daughters' perspective. While there were few differences between mothers' and fathers' reports, parent–daughter congruence scores varied according to methodology and attribute measured. That is, parents' ratings of objective daughter characteristics on single-item rating scales were more congruent with daughters' self-reports than parents' estimates of daughters' feelings about their bodies using a more comprehensive measure. Greater discrepancies between parents' estimates of daughters' body esteem and daughters' self-reported body esteem were associated with greater body dissatisfaction in daughters.     

"Welfare Magnets" and Benefit Decline: Symbolic Problems and Substantive Consequences

In response to concern about "welfare migration," some stateshave been freezing benefit levels and trying to institute lowerbenefits for newly arrived out-of-state applicants. There isalso evidence that rising welfare rolls lead states not to raisebenefits. Yet, interstate variation in welfare benefits hasnarrowed over the last two decades. There is also evidence thatwhile interstate competition, or comparison of benefit levels,discourages high-benefit states from raising benefits, stateslook more at themselves then they look at each other. The mostsignificant factor affecting AFDC benefit-levels appears tolie in the intergovernmental arrangements for financing publicassistance (i.e., states often allow Food Stamps and Medicaidto substitute for AFDC). In addition, the migration of poorfemale headed families is patterned after the migration of thepopulation in general; they move to where there is job growth.A major political consequence of stressing welfare migrationmay be its symbolic value in reinforcing prejudices againstwelfare recipients.     

Opening late-industrializing economies: lessons from Argentina and Australia

Economic liberalization has met substantial resistance in polities as different as Argentina and Australia. For these late industrializing nations the verb protect came to mean much more than just granting favors to industrialists. It also involved reducing the risks previously taken by societies engaged in economic modernization. After histories of vulnerability to external forces, they deliberately fostered collusion between the public and private sectors in an attempt to achieve benefits at the lowest cost for participants from all social classes. Consequently, economic liberalization now demands more than revisions in economic logic and the attitudes of industrialists, as recent attempts to reform economic strategy in both nations indicate. For three generations who were nurtured on these rent seeking notions of political economy, it requires a fundamental transformation of popular attitudes about the creation and distribution of private and public goods.This article is a substantially revised version of a paper I presented at the 46th International Congress of Americanists, Amsterdam, The Netherlands, July 4–8, 1988. I am especially grateful to Carlos Waisman who invited me to write the paper, to an anonymous reader for this journal who suggested many useful revisions, and to the journal's editor, William Ascher, for his leadership.     

Administrative ethics and organizational learning in Kuwait and the united states: an empirical approach

This article explores how a sample of public agencies in Kuwait respond to ethics failure. The learning response is examined in detail, in order to understand how these agencies attempt to inquire into the organizational causes of ethics failures and implement organizational changes in response to the inquiry. This study builds upon a previous methodology for measuring the strength of the organizational learning response. The data from Kuwait is compared to an earlier, similar study of organizational ethics learning conducted in the United States. The sampled agencies devote only moderate efforts to learning from ethics failure.