Professionalism and public administration: A bibliography

Abstract

This paper tests public budgeting to ascertain if it has both a long‐run equilibrium and short‐run incremental process. In the model, the decision‐maker strives to achieve budgetary balance over the long‐run but is constrained in the short‐run and follows incremental decision‐making. The interaction between expenditures and revenues, along with several control variables, is tested for each of the Canadian provinces using data between 1961 and 2000. The results show that in the long‐run, expenditures force the budget toward balance in all the provinces with the exception of British Columbia. In that province, there was a fiscal synchronization of revenues and expenditures working in combination. In the short‐run, incrementalism occurs in nine of the ten provinces.     

The hydra of development studies

Development Studies has been mired in allegations of theoretical impasse since the mid-1980's. This article investigates the modalities and vagaries of the dialectic between social science's theoretical image of the Third World, which could be summarized as the oppositional Modernization and Dependency “paradigms” prior to the alleged impasse, and the actual substantive Third World development trajectories that have emerged. Now a new convergence, negative and perhaps enduring, has supplanted the optimism of the original Modernization postulate and may provide a seedbed for a resurrection of the pessimistic Dependency underdevelopment thesis. For the first time there has been a coming together in the study of the Third World on the one hand, manifested as majority theme Development Studies, and on the other hand, actual objective development in the vast majority of countries under study. But this intersection only arises insofar as both appear to be in equivalent difficulty. In the Third World there has been increasing divergence in trajectories of development, with polarization of income both within the South, and in an even more pronounced manner vis-à-vis the First World. If the 1980's have become known as the “Lost Decade' in developmental terms for Africa and Latin America, the 1990's ended with the emergence of a new development blockage among the NIEs and near NIEs of the Asian region. The crisis in Development Studies becomes all the more obvious considering the emergence of the Neo-classical format as part of the 1980's development counterrevolution. Now the neo-classically inspired minimalist state — which was a product of its predecessor, downsized in order to serve the market and contribute to Pareto optimality — a historical reversal of its colonial and earlier post-colonial form — must confront renewed demands to solve the internal problems that accelerated Globalization has generated in the context of a crisis of overproduction.     

Four Years After the Collapse of the USSR

A prominent French political scientist and specialist on Russia introduces this special issue of Post-Soviet Affairs, The essay notes recent literature on Russia's regions and challenges analysts to rethink prevailing conceptions of center-periphery relations, centralization versus decentralization of political power, and authoritarian versus democratic politics. Focis is on regional elites' attitudes toward political inclusion and on the mutual dependence of elites.     

Does providing a written version of the police caution improve comprehension in the general population?

Abstract

Comprehension of the police caution is extremely poor across a variety of populations and jurisdictions and is particularly impaired in vulnerable populations. This has significant consequences for the admissibility of evidence in court. We investigated whether providing individuals with a written version of the caution would improve comprehension in the general population. Sixty participants (30 with low educational attainment and 30 with high educational attainment) were randomly allocated to one of three groups (Verbal presentation; Written presentation; Verbal and Written presentation). Comprehension in the three groups was evaluated using Cooke and Philip's (1998) Scottish Comprehension of Caution Instrument. Results showed that despite 95% of participants claiming to fully understand the sample caution, only 5% of individuals in the verbal presentation group demonstrated full understanding, compared to 40% and 35% in the written and combined verbal and written groups respectively. This highlights both that individuals' self-reports of understanding are higher than actual comprehension and that providing a written version of the caution may improve comprehension in the general population.     

Conflict and rent-seeking success functions: Ratio vs. difference models of relative success

The rent-seeking competitions studied by economists fall within a much broader category of conflict interactions that also includes military combats, election campaigns, industrial disputes, lawsuits, and sibling rivalries. In the rent-seeking literature, each party's success p_i (which can be interpreted either as the probability of victory or as the proportion of the prize won) has usually been taken to be a function of the ratio of the respective resource commitments. Alternatively, however, p_i may instead be a function of the difference between the parties' commitments to the contest. The Contest Success Function (CSF) for the difference from is a logistic curve in which, as is consistent with military experience, increasing returns apply up to an inflection point at equal resource commitments. A crucial flaw of the traditional ratio model is that neither onesided submission nor two-sided peace between the parties can ever occur as a Cournot equilibrium. In contrast, both of these outcomes are entirely consistent with a model in which success is a function of the difference between the parties' resource commitments.In preparing successive drafts of this paper I have benefited from suggestions and comments from Michele Boldrin, Avinash Dixit, Arye L. Hillman, David Hirshleifer, Eric S. Maskin, David Levine, Eric Rasmusen, John G. Riley, Russell Roberts, and Leo K. Simon.     

NIST bullet signature measurement system for RM (Reference Material) 8240 standard bullets

A bullet signature measurement system based on a stylus instrument was developed at the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) for the signature measurements of NIST RM (Reference Material) 8240 standard bullets. The standard bullets are developed as a reference standard for bullet signature measurements and are aimed to support the recently established National Integrated Ballistics Information Network (NIBIN) by the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms (ATF) and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI). The RM bullets are designed as both a virtual and a physical bullet signature standard. The virtual standard is a set of six digitized bullet signatures originally profiled from six master bullets fired at ATF and FBI using six different guns. By using the virtual signature standard to control the tool path on a numerically controlled diamond turning machine at NIST, 40 RM bullets were produced. In this paper, a comparison parameter and an algorithm using auto-and cross-correlation functions are described for qualifying the bullet signature differences between the RM bullets and the virtual bullet signature standard. When two compared signatures are exactly the same (point by point), their cross-correlation function (CCF) value will be equal to 100%. The measurement system setup, measurement program, and initial measurement results are discussed. Initial measurement results for the 40 standard bullets, each measured at six land impressions, show that the CCF values for the 240 signature measurements are higher than 95%, with most of them even higher than 99%. These results demonstrate the high reproducibility for both the manufacturing process and the measurement system for the NIST RM 8240 standard bullets.     

SWGDAM developmental validation of a 19-locus Y-STR system for forensic casework

A Scientific Working Group on DNA Analysis Methods (SWGDAM) developmental validation study was carried out on two Y-STR multiplex systems (MPI and MPII) that collectively permit the co-amplification of 19 Y-STR markers, including DYS393, DYS392, DYS391, DYS389I, DYS389II, Y-GATA-A7.2 (DYS461), DYS438, DYS385a and DYS385b (MPI); DYS425, DYS388, DYS390, DYS439, DYS434, DYS437, Y-GATA-C.4, Y-GATA-A7.1 (DYS460), Y-GATA-H.4, and DYS 19 (MPII). Performance checks subsequent to PCR parameter optimization indicated that MPI and MPII were suitably reproducible, precise and accurate for forensic use. The sensitivity of the systems was such that a full 19-locus Y-STR profile was obtainable with 150-200 pg of male DNA, and some loci were detectable even with as little as 20-30 pg of input DNA. Primate specificity was demonstrated by the lack of cross-reactivity with a variety of commonly encountered bacterial and animal species, with the single exception of a monomorphic canine product that was outside of the size range of human alleles from any of the 19 loci. Not surprisingly, cross-reactivity was observed with a number of male and female nonhuman primates. Environmentally compromised samples produced full or partial Y-STR profiles. For example, a semen stain exposed to the outdoor elements for six months still gave a 13-locus Y-STR profile. Although a limited number of female DNA artifacts were observed in mixed stains in which the male DNA comprised 1/300 of the total, the full 19-locus male profile was easily discernible. Even at a 1500-to-2000-fold dilution of male DNA with female DNA partial Y-STR profiles were obtained. Furthermore, the potential utility of MPI and MPII for forensic casework is exemplified by their ability to dissect out the male haplotype in a variety of case-type samples, including, inter alia, post-coital vaginal swabs, admixed male and female bloodstains, the nonsperm fraction from a differentially extracted semen stain, and determination of the number of male donors in mixed semen stains.