Evaluating the Impacts of an Enhanced Family Self-Sufficiency Program

We conduct an impact analysis of the Denver, Colorado, Housing Authority’s Home Ownership Program (HOP) employing quasi experimental methodologies (i.e., nearest-neighbor matching, inverse probability weighting with regression adjustment) that permit causal inferences of program impacts with substantial confidence. HOP is an unusual, enhanced variant of the Family Self-Sufficiency program that incentivizes and assists participants’ purchase of a home. We analyze whether, compared with the control group, HOP participants exhibited significantly greater earnings growth during the program, enhanced economic security, and rates of home buying. We find that participants with a high intensity of treatment showed significant improvement in all outcomes. Results are robust to model specification and insensitive to omitted variable bias typically found in the social sciences. We conclude that a well-conceived and well-executed public housing authority program aimed at building the financial, human and social assets of low-income households receiving housing assistance can yield substantial benefits to participants.     

Cave Dwellers or Labyrinth Diggers? Castoriadis and Plato on Philosophy and Politics

Beginning with a consideration of Castoriadis’s elucidation of autonomous thinking, both by way of the contrast he draws with the inherited tradition and in relation to his account of the demands of the political project of autonomy, we compare Plato’s story of the Cave to suggest that Castoriadis overestimates the power of questioning and of creating new social forms. We then argue that Castoriadis and Plato emerge as two extremes: whereas the first favours the power of questioning to the exclusion of receiving value, the second privileges the power of receiving over creation and creativity.     

THE SECOND ANNUAL MEYER ELKIN ADDRESS

A year ago, our journal had the opportunity to publish the inaugural Meyer Elkin Address by Jonah, Peter, and Marian Wright Edelman. This past summer, the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts was honored to have George Thomson speak at its conference in Vancouver, British Columbia. Thomson was presented with this honor for his hard work and dedication to family law in Canada and throughout the world. The Family and Conciliation Courts Review is honored to publish this speech by Thomson. Described by his colleagues as a “miracle worker” and “superman”, Thomson has led a fascinating career that has followed several different paths. As an undergraduate student, Thomson attained a B.A. in philosophy and English from Queen's University in Kingston, Ontario. He remained at Queen's University and received an LL.B., then completed his formal education with an LL.M. from the University of California. Thomson has had a diverse background in the legal field, serving as an educator, a judge, and a government official. From 1968 until 1971, he worked as both an associate professor and assistant dean at the University of Western Ontario in London, Ontario. After his brief stint with the university, he was appointed judge of the Provincial Court for the Province of Ontario. Thomson held this position for five years before becoming an associate deputy minister of Community and Social Services, where he served as the head of the Children's Services Division. In the 1980s, Thomson returned to the bench in the provincial court. Additionally, he was the director of education for the Law Society of Upper Canada. Most notably, however, Thomson chaired a provincial committee on social welfare reform. By 1989, Thomson had moved from the bench into governmental work. He briefly served as the deputy minister of citizenship for Ontario. He was then appointed the deputy minister of labor until 1992. From 1992 until 1994, Thomson served as Ontario's deputy attorney general. He then became the deputy minister of justice and deputy attorney general of Canada. Most recently, Thomson has been a special advisor to the minister of justice and attorney general of Canada. The following Meyer Elkin address was presented at the annual Convention of the Association of Family and Conciliation Courts in Vancouver, Canada, in June 1999.     

Measurement of S&T Performance in the Government of Canada: From Outputs to Outcomes

A major trend in the assessment of R&D program performance over recent years has been the shift from a focus on activities and outputs as measures of success to a more comprehensive perspective which includes analysis of the recipients and beneficiaries and the immediate, intermediate, and longer term outcomes of R&D. This transition to a more complete view of performance has proven more difficult in practice than in theory, as it involves a significant culture shift. This article describes how some groups in the Government of Canada have used a performance framework approach to successfully measure R&D performance in federal organizations. The Canadian experience suggests that three elements are critical to the successful establishment of a performance management culture in an organization. First, a shared vision of the role performance information can play in the management process is necessary. Second, there must be a commitment to the vision as demonstrated by the appropriate organizational incentives and culture—including senior management support. Finally, the organization must have the capacity not only to produce credible performance information, but also to use it effectively.     

The Strength Of Solidarity

For almost a month,China has been engaged in a heroic fight against the novel coronavirus.While the problem is principally in Hubei Province in central China with most cases,other provinces such as Guangdong in the south,Zhejiang in the east,and Henan in central China,have also been affected,though to a much smaller extent.     

Reluctant policy innovation through profit concession and informality tolerance: A strategic relational view of policy entrepreneurship in China's urban redevelopment

This paper engages with the theoretical perspective of policy entrepreneurship to examine the pattern and process of policy change in the context of China's urban redevelopment. Drawing upon a strategic-relational reinterpretation of policy entrepreneurship, this paper identifies a distinctive form of reluctant policy innovation in the “three old renewals” scheme initiated in Guangzhou where profit concession and informality tolerance were practiced to create a small window of opportunity for the project of urban redevelopment to break ground. The motivation of policy entrepreneurship in the successful urban renewal projects in Guangzhou was heavily contingent upon the geographically important location of the project site and the historically incidence of hosting the 2010 Asian Games, which forced municipal government to become entrepreneurial and innovative in decision making and income redistribution in order to get things done as quickly as possible. The distinct fashion of policy innovation identified in the case of Guangzhou points to the polymorphous and dynamic nature of policy entrepreneurship and advocates a relational treatment of the strategies and motives of policy entrepreneurs embedded in concrete geographical and historical context.     

Organizational design and its consequences for administrative reform: Historical lessons from the U.S. Budget and Accounting Act of 1921

The landmark U.S. Budget and Accounting Act of 1921 (BAA) instituted a series of administrative reforms that proponents claimed would improve budgetary control, stability, and coherence. We maintain that the compatibility of governance structures between agency and system levels is critical for understanding why these administrative centralization efforts were successful in achieving these aims for some federal agencies but not others. The BAA reforms impact on budgetary outcomes is evaluated using panel data on major U.S. federal agencies between 1894 and 1940. Applying semiparametric heterogeneous treatment estimation techniques, we find compelling support that administrative centralization of the federal budgetary process enhanced budget stability and coherence for executive departments while resulting in a lower caliber of budgetary performance for independent agencies. These findings imply that system‐level administrative centralization efforts may be effective only when public agencies are structurally amenable to such reforms.     

Does foreign aid distort incentives and hurt growth? Theory and evidence from 75 aid-recipient countries

Foreign aid transfers can distort individual incentives, and hence hurt growth, by encouraging rent seeking as opposed to productive activities. We construct a model of a growing small open economy that distinguishes two effects from foreign transfers: (i) a direct positive effect, as higher transfers allow the financing of infrastructure; (ii) an indirect negative effect, as higher transfers induce rent-seeking competition by self-interested individuals. In this framework, the growth impact of aid is examined jointly with the determination of rent-seeking behavior. We test the main predictions of the model for a cross-section of 75 aid-recipient countries. There is evidence that aid has a direct positive effect on growth, which is however significantly mitigated by the adverse indirect effects of associated rent-seeking activities. This is especially the case in recipient countries with relatively large public sectors.     

Epistemic Community or Tower of Babel? Theoretical Diffusion in Public Administration

This article takes a comparative look at the development of the public administration discipline in three countries: Australia, Brazil and Canada. The nature of the international public administration academic community is assessed through content analysis of articles in the Australian Journal of Public Administration (AJPA), Revista de Administração Pública (RAP), and Canadian Public Administration (CPA). The method is based on that used by existing United States (US) research, allowing for comparison with that national context. The focus is on the diffusion of theoretical approaches between these national contexts, assessing whether the international public administration discipline better approximates an epistemic community, in which theoretical approaches move seamlessly between the national contexts; or a ‘Tower of Babel’, in which the different national contexts remain largely isolated.