Making decentralization work: The view from City Hall

The success of decentralization experiments depends ironically on central government—and, in particular, on the character of City Hall initiatives, designs, and administrative organization. Urban administrators were forced to experiment in the dark with decentralization, and their initiatives often traced an erratic, evolutionary course marked by false steps and by serendipity. In particular, programs that looked promising from a City Hall perspective often failed because they were insensitive to street-level behavior. City Hall initiatives have also been hampered by problems of cooperation between citizens and public employees and by coordination within government. Seen in this light, successful decentralization requires a learning process in which citizens and public employees develop strategies for working together on focused neighborhood problems.This article is based on Chapter 8 of my book, Neighborhood Democracy: The Politics and Impacts of Decentralization (Lexington, Mass.: D. C. Heath, 1973).     

Patterns of entry,professional identity,and attitudes toward crime-related education: A study of criminal justice and criminology faculty

In the field of crime-related education, examination of the characteristics of teaching, research, and institutional differences has recently been a concern. This study examines full-time faculty (N=929) and their patterns of entry, including academic degree held, academic major, past academic and agency experience, and type of institution; and the extent to which differing methods of access are associated with attitudes toward research, scholarship, agency practice, academic collegiality, and orientation toward crime-related study. Dual paradigms seem to exist in crime-related education: one centering on teaching, field practice, and professionalism; the other on research, scholarship, and the more traditional values of academe.