Fitting the Community Development Block Grant Program to Local Politics: Who is the Tailor?

This article examines the CDBG decentralization experiment inPhoenix, Scottsdale, and Casa Grande, Arizona through the firsteight years of the Community Development Block Grant (FY 1976–FY1983). These settings shared certain general political/legalcharacteristics, but differed greatly along important dimensions,including jurisdiction size, economic conditions, experiencein HUD programs, staff interest and experience, and form ofinteraction between HUD and local officials. CDBG resulted ina distinctive set of local community development activitiesin these three jurisdictions. Yet despite HCDA's billing asan act of decentralization, these specific local activitieswere not the result of pure local determination. Rather, CDBGoutcomes in the three communities were found to be the end productof a series of choices and responses made following substantialinteraction among federal and local staffs and local electedofficials. ^*An earlier version of this paper was presented at the AmericanPolitical Science Association Annual Meeting, New York City,September 1978. Data and support for this paper were providedby the Brookings Institution Longitudinal Field Network EvaluationStudy of the Community Development Block Grant, under the initialdirection of Richard Nathan and latter direction of Paul Dormnel.The analysis provided in this paper is, however, the sole responsibilityof the author and does not represent the analysis or views ofthe officers, trustees, or other staff members of the BrookingsInstitution.     

Ideology and candidate evaluation

How does the expressed political ideology of voters influence their evaluation of presidential candidates? The classic answer to this question is provided by the spatial theory of electoral choice in which utility for a candidate is a function of the proximity between the voter and candidate positions on the liberal-conservative continuum. We have argued elsewhere that spatial theory, while intellectually appealing, is inadequate as an empirical model of mass behavior. We have developed a directional theory of issue voting that we believe provides a more realistic accounting of how specific policy issues influence utility for a candidate. Directional theory is based on the view that for most voters issues are understood as a dichotomous choice between two alternative positions. While ideology is widely understood as a continuum of positions, the directional model can be applied to the relationship between ideology and candidate evaluation. In this paper we compare the two theories using National Election Study data from 1972 to 1988. The results tend to favor the directional model over the traditional proximity model. We conclude by briefly tracing out the implications of this finding.     

The Role of Procedural Controls in OSHA's Ergonomics Rulemaking

Few, if any, regulations over the past decade have received as much publicity or engendered such controversy as the ergonomics regulation of the Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA). Some may see the ergonomics rule as the paradigmatic instance of procedural hurdles holding up and eventually destroying a regulation. This article examines the role that procedure played in the ergonomics rulemaking. Lessons are drawn from an analysis of the four publicly available versions of the regulation and interviews with seven high-ranking officials at OSHA and the Small Business Administration. Of the procedural hurdles faced by OSHA, the notice-and-comment requirement had the largest impact on the final rule. OMB review and requirements to conduct a cost-benefit analysis served largely as a fire alarm to political overseers, and the required small business panel had largely symbolic effects. The more traditional control of congressional budgetary oversight had the greatest effect by delaying the rule for three years, and thus eventually doomed OSHA's attempts to regulate.