Strategic adaptation to new electoral systems

How quickly, to what extent and under what conditions do voters and elites adapt to new electoral institutions in order to not waste their votes and effort on hopeless competitors? A latent‐curve model of strategic adaptation is developed and fitted to district‐level election data from Spain. The extent of strategic adaptation is generally found to vary with the strength of the electoral system. However, grave ethnic tensions are demonstrated to seriously retard adaptation even under favourable institutional conditions.     

ONSET AGE,PERSISTENCE, AND OFFENDING VERSATILITY: COMPARISONS ACROSS GENDER*

Offending specialization has received considerable attention in past research on criminal careers. Relatively little attention has been given to examining the relationships between various sub‐group differences and the extent to which individuals tend toward specialization or versatility in their criminal careers. In the present analysis, we examine hypotheses derived from Moffitt's recent developmental theory that bear directly on offending specialization. Our analysis examines direct relationships between gender, onset age, persistence and offending specialization as well as the interaction of these influences and offending specialization. Our findings reveal results that are both consistent and inconsistent with Moffitt's dual taxonomy of offending behavior.     

Prisoners of the paradigm: process consultants and ‘clinical’ development practitioners

It is argued that process consultancy and clinical development practice, which are the dominant methods underlying much of the consulting work undertaken by development practitioners, are adopted for ideological rather than pragmatic reasons. The behaviour of process consultants is said to bear the hallmarks of the puzzle-solving activity of normal scientists operating within a ruling paradigm. The scientific and practical limitations of process consultancy are discussed within this context. A pragmatic approach, which attempts to match consultancy method with the circumstances in which it is to be applied, is presented on logical and empirical grounds as being more likely to produce desirable outcomes. It is also suggested that, in many development contexts, desirable outcomes are more likely to be achieved where emphasis is given to ends rather than means. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. Public Admin. Dev. Vol. 17 , 341–349 (1997). No. of Figures: 0. No. of Tables: 0. No. of Refs: 38.     

The colour purple: perceptions of accountability across the Tasman

This article explores the changing rhetoric and substance of accountability in the relationships between parliamentarians and public servants in what Alex Matheson terms the ‘purple zone’—where the ‘blue’ of political strategy and ‘red’ of public administration merge in ‘strategic conversation’. The primary focus is on current developments in Australia. As the Westminster system of governance, and the role of public administration within it, undergo profound transformation, the prerogatives of elected parliamentarians (in the blue corner) and the responsibilities of career public servants (in the red corner) are changing fundamentally. In Australia and New Zealand the increasingly complex relationships that exist between government, parliament, public service and the wider community challenge the traditional notions of accountability. Both the lines of accountability, and its standards, are under challenge. The acceleration of Australia's move to contract out the delivery of government services is creating new arenas of creative tension between administrative review and management for results. Public service agencies are increasingly perceived to be themselves in a contractual relationship with government. There is a risk that the public good may become subverted by private interest. How will we ensure that agencies will ‘not contract out responsibility at the citizen's expense’? © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Public Admin. Dev. Vol. 17 , 293–306 (1997). No. of Figures: 0. No. of Tables: 0. No. of Refs: 33.