Justice and emotional reactions to the disadvantaged

Various attitutidinal, cognitive, emotional, and actional reactions to problems and needs of less fortunate people (unemployed, poor people in the developing countries, foreign workers in West Germany) were assessed in a questionnaire study with 865 respondents. The external validity of self-report data was established by external ratings. The focus was on emotional reactions (existential guilt, sympathy, moral outrage because of unjust disadvantages, anger about the disadvantaged, contentment with one's own advantages, fear of losing these, hopelessness with respect to the fate of the less fortunate). Several justice-related variables (beliefs, views, appraisals) as well as responsibility-related variables and social attitudes were assessed as predictors of emotions. The importance of justice-related variables for the arousal of different social emotions was clearly shown. The use and usefulness of cognitive models of discrete emotions is discussed. The impact of emotions on the readiness to various forms of prosocial activities in favor of the less fortunate was also shown: Moral outrage and existential guilt proved to be much more salient predictors than sympathy. Crucial differences between these three prosocial emotions as well as the impact of justice-related variables on readiness to prosocial activities are discussed.     

Ways of Knowing and Inclusive Management Practices

The authors engage structural and agentic perspectives to examine opportunities for deliberation and the purposeful role of managers in creating those opportunities. Drawing on actor-network theory as a way of understanding the process of structuring knowledge, this essay focuses on the continuous enactment and reenactment of networks of human and nonhuman actants and the associations that connect them. This thinking is applied to policy issues, which the authors propose should be understood as ways of knowing. The fluidity of such ways of knowing provides opportunities for public managers to use the inclusive practices associated with boundary experiences, boundary objects, and boundary organizations to facilitate deliberation.     

Competitive Institution Building: The PT and Participatory Budgeting in Rio Grande do Sul

In the late 1990s, the Workers' Party (PT) government of the Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul introduced participatory budgeting, a process in which citizens establish annual investment priorities in public assemblies. This innovation was one of several attempts by incumbent parties to structure political conflict using budget institutions. The character of participatory budgeting is most evident in its policymaking processes and policy outcomes. The process circumvented legislative arenas where opponents held a majority, privileged participation by the PT's voter base, and reached into opposition strongholds. The outcomes favored the interests of potential supporters among poor and middle-class voters. The political project proved vulnerable to its own raised expectations: it failed to sustain the image of clean government; brought tax increases along with fiscal insecurity; and left unfulfilled the participants' expectations for targeted investments. This article highlights the role of participatory budgeting, indeed all budgeting, in partisan actors' institutional choices.     

Differenzierte Mitgliedschaft und die EU‐Osterweiterung: Das Beispiel der Arbeitnehmerfreizügigkeit

Die Arbeit untersucht die Auswirkungen der Vergabe eingeschränkter Mitgliedschaftsrechte auf den Verlauf und die Ergebnisse der EU‐Osterweiterung. Die Studie zeigt auf, dass die EU‐Mitgliedstaaten Übergangsfristen für die Liberalisierung der Arbeitsmärkte durchsetzten, um die zu erwartenden Erweiterungsgewinne zugunsten der, von der Freizügigkeit negativ betroffenen Altmitglieder ‐ Deutschland, Österreich und Italien ‐ umzuverteilen und so ein Scheitern der Aufnahmeverhandlungen zu verhindern. Die Diskussionen der EU‐Mitglieder über die Einführung einer eingeschränkten Arbeitnehmerfreizügigkeit für die Neumitglieder und ein Überblick über andere Verhandlungskapitel legen nahe, dass die Verteilung differenzierter Mitgliedschaftsrechte an neue Mitglieder eine bedeutsame Handlungsalternative insbesondere zur Nichtmitgliedschaft darstellt.     

Evaluating partnerships for community health improvement: tracking the footprints

Private-public partnerships are increasingly seen as an important mechanism for improving community health. Despite their popularity, traditional evaluations of these efforts have produced negative or mixed results. This is often attributed to weak interventions or an insufficient period of time to observe an impact. This study examines two additional possibilities--the need for a well-articulated shared vision and the governance and management capabilities of the partnership itself. We conducted a midstream process evaluation of twenty-five community partnerships associated with the Community Care Network (CCN) Demonstration Program. We examined how the roles of a common shared vision, strong governance, and effective management influence a partnership's ability to achieve its objectives. The findings, based on both qualitative and quantitative analyses, underscore the importance of membership organizations' perceived benefits and costs of participation and management capabilities to the partnership's progress toward a vision. Based on the qualitative data, six key governance and management characteristics are identified that separate the top performing partnerships from the lowest performing ones. We explore the implications of this research for future evaluations of public-private community health partnerships.