Conducting Research on Counties in the 21st Century: A New Agenda and Database Considerations

Given local, regional, national, and global events of the last few years and the ever-increasing service roles and expectations of county governments, American counties warrant greater scholarly attention. To guide researchers, the research agenda published in this journal 15 years ago has been refined and expanded. This 11-point agenda includes fiscal capacity and responsibility; the role of structure, politics, and political participation; intergovernmental relations and networking; professionalism; service delivery; environmental issues; population changes; managing conflict and promoting integration; terrorism and security; information technology; and economic development. In addition, five database concerns and needs that pose significant challenges to researchers are identified and presented for consideration.     

当代美国自然法理论走势

自然法理论可从道德的、法律的等多个角度加以探讨。凡主张法之为“法”必得满足道德要求 ,或者说 ,法最重要的特征之一乃法具备的道德性这一观点 ,均属“交叠理论”。然 ,交叠理论与概念性法哲学相互交叉、渗透 ,衍生出多种不同的表达方式。本文在此基础上 ,本文对当代美国自然法理论的基本走向和流派进行了考查 ,其中 ,尤以菲尼斯、富勒和德沃金等人的理论为重。     

Fighting on: emotion and conflict termination

Why do states persist in enduring, expensive conflicts when the costs seem so high, the potential benefits, at best, somewhat ambiguous? This article suggests that emotional psychology can provide some insights into this problem. Decision-makers construct a vision of the future that is greatly informed by affect. How they feel in the present has a big impact on their conception of events and their decisions about them. The risks they are prepared to take, the desires they anticipate having in future, the lessons of the past they draw on—all are constructed under the influence of current emotions, and all may encourage the persistence of conflict beyond a point at which more dispassionate minds might desist. This theoretical argument is then illustrated with a discussion of US policy-making in the Vietnam War.     

Proverbs and the Evolution of Public Administration

Herbert Simon, in his 1946 essay “The Proverbs of Administration,” indicted public administration as having conflicting and contradictory theories and an absence of a knowledge base that could provide a guide to practice. Simon proposed that public administration define concepts, adopt efficiency as its objective, focus on the study of decision making, and construct models that could predict efficient results. This 75th‐anniversary article revisits Simon's essay in light of contemporary public administration. It examines the progress that has been made and what still needs to be accomplished, and it ends with a list of barriers to further progress.     

Burdened by Bureaucracy? Determinants of Administrative Intensity in Public Organisations

ABSTRACT

Why does the level of administrative intensity—the bureaucratic component of the workforce—vary across public organisations? We address this question by developing and testing a model that is derived from structural contingency theory and public choice theory. The results show that administrative intensity is higher in small organisations, in turbulent external environments, and in organisations with big budgets. Furthermore, we find that the impact of organisational size is nonlinear, that large size mitigates the effects of turbulence, and that administrative intensity is a cause as well as an effect of bigger budgets. The theoretical and practical implications of these results are discussed.     

Motivating the uninvolved worker: some conceptual and empirical observations

This paper focuses on the issue of whether less involved workers are affected by conventional management practices such as group involvement, merit pay, and participative management. The findings suggest that while these management practices have some influence on the performance of uninvolved employees, that uninvolved employees are behaviorally distinct from more actively involved workers. As a consequence, it may be prudent for managers in the public sector to develop management practices and approaches specifically designed to stimulate low involvement employees.