Why Has Public Administration Ignored Public Education,and Does It Matter?

Although education accounts for one-quarter of the United States' state and local government spending, employs one-third of all governmental employees, and consistently ranks as a high priority of citizens, public administration has neglected public education. This article considers the neglect of public education by public administration scholars, researchers, and practitioners and documents the sparse coverage of public education in textbooks, journals, books, professional association activities, and curricula. This neglect can be attributed to public administration's federal focus, ideological views about the relationship between public education and politics and resulting structural and organizational barriers, and the costs of overcoming these barriers. The separation limits the generalizability of public administration research and theory, harms policy development, constrains the capabilities of public administration program graduates, and impedes the success of public education. This article outlines steps needed to bring public education under the umbrella of public administration.     

The Varieties of CitiStat

Baltimore's performance strategy, CitiStat, has been adapted by a number of cities in the United States. None of these adaptations is identical to the original or to any of the others. In fact, this analysis identifies five important features of CitiStat along with 20 sub-traits of these features that can be used to specify the important differences among these various CitiStats.     

Electoral Competitiveness and the Voting Decision Evidence from the Pooled Senate Election Study

Scholarship on congressional elections holds that competitive elections are different from noncompetitive elections. Specifically, some scholars argue that the level of competitiveness determines the criteria or the weight of various criteria for the voting decision. Using the 1988–1990–1992 Pooled Senate Election Study, this research finds that enhanced electoral competitiveness increases the importance of assessments of presidential performance on the voting decision. These effects are particularly large for voters with high levels of educational attainment. Contrary to previous research, in highly competitive elections the role of ideological considerations is smaller than in less competitive elections.     

Election Campaigns,Social Communication,and the Accessibility of Perceived Discussant Preference

This paper examines the communication of political preferences between citizens during the course of an election campaign. We are particularly concerned with the ability of individuals to make judgments regarding the likely votes of others within their networks of relationships. To this end, we employ the concept of accessibility and its measurement device—response latency or response time—in the context of a computer-assisted telephone interview. We argue that the accessibility of respondent perceptions regarding the voting preferences of their associates depends on a range of individual and contextual factors, and the analysis focuses on variation across individuals, across relationships, and across the temporal contexts of election campaigns.     

HEALTH-CARE REFORM UNDER PRESIDENT CLINTON: ISSUES,IDEAS AND IMPLICATIONS

Abstract: President Clinton's proposals to reform health-care in the United States have stimulated unprecedented levels of discussion amongst stakeholders, commentators, policy analysts and the media. It seems obvious that there is a need to reform a system that consumes 14% of gross domestic product, yields only OECD-average morbidity and mortality rates and fails to provide coverage to millions of people. Nevertheless, forces against change are marshalling considerable resources in opposition to Clinton's proposals, and now that the November 1994 mid-term elections have routed the democrats in both the House of Representatives and the Senate, the belief is that his reforms will never be adopted in their original format. Some of the issues and ideas emanating from the American debate parallel trends in Australian health-care. Elements in transition include the switch from an input-to an outcomes-orientation, improving the quality of care, focusing on the customer and securing greater value-for-money. Unlike America, Australia has a limit on national health-care spending and this poses different challenges. However, the American debate is of vital interest to Australia. Australian and American hospitals are increasingly in competition to export services to South-East Asia. Of particular importance to Australia are: the extremely public nature of the American debate, which should be emulated, the fact that explicit rationing is now clearly on the international health-care agenda, the need to reconceptualise western culture's preoccupation with immortality, the need to alter economic incentives to health-care providers and the shift to outcomes measurement and effectiveness. Despite the comparatively healthy state of the Australian system, complacency should not be allowed to set in. Lessons for Australia from America are numerous, and it behoves us to monitor closely developments, trends and options arising from the Clinton-inspired debate.     

Fiscal Centralization in the American States: Findings From Another Perspective

Studies of the determinants of fiscal centralization have produced conflicting results. The difficulty may lie in reliance on cross-section analyses and their presumptions of the sources and nature of change. Studies of the current relative positions of political units ignore historical factors which may have "pushed" units away from some sort of normal position. An historical analysis of the American states demonstrates these points.     

Moral responsibilities and political realities

Responsibility depends on neither causes nor intentions. It is a matter of answerability to a community of obligation. Only individuals are responsible, for collective actions as well as personal ones. Responsibility is both political and moral. Politics give substance to moral responsibility. Political forms, in turn, reflect the prevailing structure of moral responsibility. Both policy makers and policy analysts can be held responsible; this act itself, however, must be done responsibly.This article is based on the Presidential Address, Israel Philosophical Association, April 21, 1981.The author can be contacted at 2434 Benedict Canyon, Beverly Hills, CA 90210, U.S.A. until August 1982.     

Discounting the benefits and costs of environmental regulations

This paper develops a two-stage procedure for discounting the benefits and costs of environmental regulations that is a variant of the shadow price of capital approach. Under this approach, the capital costs imposed by a regulation are annualized using the marginal rate of return on capital and then both benefits and costs are discounted using the social rate of time preference. This approach yields results that differ significantly from those of conventional discounting when benefits occur with a substantial lag or when benefits are long term.