Where Federalism Didn't Fail

The governmental response to Hurricane Katrina was not the unalloyed failure that is often portrayed. The response was a mixture of success and failure. Successes occurred when a foundation had been laid for intergovernmental cooperation, as with the largely successful pre-landfall evacuation of Greater New Orleans, the multistate mobilization of the National Guard, and the search and rescue operations of the U.S. Coast Guard and the Louisiana Department of Wildlife and Fisheries. Postmortems should draw lessons from such successes rather than concentrate entirely on the numerous failures.

It is now clear that a challenge on this scale requires greater federal authority and a broader role for the armed forces—the institution of our government most capable of massive logistical operations on a moment's notice.
—President George W. Bush, September 15, 2005
I can say with certainty that federalizing emergency response to catastrophic events would be a disaster as bad as Hurricane Katrina. The current system works when everyone understands, accepts, and is willing to fulfill their responsibilities…. the bottom-up approach yields the best results.
—Florida governor Jeb Bush, October 19, 2005

     

Adolescents Coping with Poverty-Related Family Stress: Prospective Predictors of Coping and Psychological Symptoms

Examined prospective associations among poverty-related family stress, coping, involuntary stress reactivity, and psychological symptoms in a sample of 79 rural, low-income adolescents. Poverty-related family stress predicted adolescents’ anxious/depressed and aggressive behavior 8 months later, controlling for prior symptoms. Coping interacted with initial symptoms and involuntary stress reactivity to predict changes in symptoms over time, showing that primary and secondary control coping were most strongly associated with changes in symptoms for adolescents with low initial symptoms and involuntary stress reactivity. The only significant predictor of coping over time was prior coping, suggesting that coping is not symptom-driven and may be somewhat trait-like. Implications for interventions and additional research are offered. Assistant Professor, University of Denver. Received PhD from University of Vermont. Research interests include the effects of poverty on family functioning, developmental issues in stress and coping, and developmental psychopathology Doctoral student in Clinical Psychology, University of Denver. Research interests include close relationship influences on adolescent development and psychopathology.     

Principles for Public Management Practice: From Dichotomies to Interdependence

In this essay we explore the relationship between management practices and a basic governance dilemma: how to manage flexibly and accountably. The challenge is both practical and theoretical. Managers must respond flexibly to the changing demands and expectations of the public and the ever-changing nature of public problems, yet they must do so in a manner that provides accountability to the public and political overseers. A dichotomous approach to the study of leadership as management action and the governance structures within which managers operate has inhibited the search for a public management theory that reconciles the dilemma. Emphasis upon managers as leaders typically focuses on the flexible actions managers might take to overcome structural "barriers," while emphasis upon governance structures typically focuses on the essential role of structure in ensuring accountability and restraining or motivating particular management efforts. The practicing manager, however, cannot deal with these aspects of the work separately. Managers must attend to demands for both flexible leadership action and structures that promise accountability. Anecdotal evidence provides illustrations of some of the ways that managers can integrate these demands. We suggest that these efforts point to an alternative theoretical framework that understands action and structure as mutually constitutive, creating a dynamic tension in which attention to one requires attention to the other.     

The class as case: “Reinventing” the classroom

New approaches to public management provide principles by which to organize the classroom as a case. In teaching public management one can enhance learning for practice by modeling, experimenting with, and reflecting upon the principles that one is teaching the students. The principles from the new ideas about public management that can be used to organize the classroom as well are strength through diversity, continuous improvement, teamwork, and empowerment. They represent changes in governing relations across the country and globe within which the new approaches to public management rest; each of these principles has a role in the “reinvented” classroom. Such practices require institutional support of various kinds as well. © 1999 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.