Long–Serving City Managers: Why Do They Stay?

The literature on council–manager government often mentions the political difficulties that city managers face with their elected officials and constituent groups. In addition, the generally accepted route to success for city managers is to move to larger and better–paying cities. As a result of these push–and–pull factors, the average tenure of city managers is short. There are, however, a relatively small number of city managers who enjoy long tenure in single cities. The authors identified the 146 city managers who are serving and have served for at least 20 years the same city and sought to determine the factors leading to their long service. The survey indicates that long–serving city managers are more likely to be found in smaller cities that are homogeneous and politically stable. The majority of these city managers are white males with above–average educational levels, strong support from elected officials, and personal commitments to the cities they serve.     

Interpretive policy inquiry: A response to its limitations

With positivist and technocratic notions still prevalent, Paul Healy's (1986) insightful effort to advance “interpretive policy inquiry” both underscores the limitations of conventional analysis and helps us to grasp the policy process in human terms. Yet the article falls short of a systematic presentation of the interpretive position and, in doing so, reveals the limitations of that approach: the need for an explicitly critical posture becomes clear. This point is made with particular attention to a pre-positivist figure, Machiavelli. An erratum to this article is available at .     

Information technology and economic recovery in Western Europe

This article sets out to analyse the response of West European governments and of the European Community to the challenge of information technology (IT). European countries have joined the race among industrial nations to restructure their economies around the industries of the future (micro-electronics, computers and advanced telecommunications). The race is currently led by Japan and the United States with Western Europe following a poor third. In order to catch up, West European governments have for some time pursued national strategies and are now attempting to develop a common approach with the assistance of the European Commission. This attempt has been bedevilled, however, not only by national chauvinism, but by conflict between the ambitions of governments and the goals of private sector strategies. Eureka - Europe's response to America's Strategic Defence Initiative - marks a step towards resolving such differences. But as this article suggests, it will not resolve the deeper tensions between the major aims of current policies: the concentration of research and production resources while also creating an open and fully competitive market for IT in Western Europe.This article is part of a wider project on new technology policies in Western Europe, funded by the Leverhulme Trust and directed by Professor J.J. Richardson. The main findings will be published in Information Technology and the State, Oxford University Press, forthcoming.     

State Rainy Day Funds and Fiscal Crises: Rainy Day Funds and the 1990–1991 Recession Revisited

The recession of the early 1980s prompted many states to establish budget stabilization (rainy day) funds. Initial examinations of rainy day funds find a limited impact by the funds in alleviating fiscal stress. In this article, we propose an enhanced model of rainy day fund impact. Using data from 48 states for the 1990–1991 recession, our analysis indicates that the presence of a number of structural factors and the maintenance of generally large balances in other funds entering recession helps to alleviate fiscal stress when a state's economy is in recession.     

Mistake of Law and Culpability

When does a defendant not deserve punishment because he is unaware that his conduct breaches a penal statute? Retributivists must radically rethink their answer to this question to do justice to our moral intuitions. I suggest that modest progress on this topic can be made by modeling our approach to ignorance of law on our familiar approach to ignorance of fact. We need to distinguish different levels of culpability in given mistakes and to differentiate what such mistakes may be about. I discuss the advantages and disadvantages of this approach with special attention to how to contrast offenses from defenses. The alternative I tend to favor probably should not be implemented in existing penal codes. As a result, we are likely to remain dissatisfied with the decisions made by our criminal justice system about the exculpatory effect of ignorance of law.     

Social welfare and decision-making in the public sector†

Abstract. This paper is an examination of the important issue of measuring social welfare. The first part of the paper shows that the traditional quantitative methods of socio-economic evaluation may give society misleading answers about the impact of public policy and achievement of social objectives. Social indicators as an approach to policy evaluation are discussed in the second section and their relation to the Economic Council of Canada's ‘goal indicators’ is examined. The paper concludes with a brief comment on how social indicators may complement existing traditional socio-economic measures. Sommaire. L'auteur de cette communication examine l'importante question de la mesure du bien-être social. Dans la première partie, il indique que les méthodes quantitative traditionnelles de l'évaluation socio-économique peuvent induire la société en erreur, quant à l'effet de la politique publique et la réalisation de ses objectifs sociaux. Il examine dans la deuxième partie les indicateurs sociaux en tant que moyen d'évaluation des politiques et leurs rapports avec les ‘indicateurs d'objectifs’ du Conseil économique du Canada. Il conclut en indiquant brièement comment les indicateurs sociaux peuvent complèter les mesures socio-économiques traditionnelles.