Cops,spies and private eyes—changing patterns of Russian policing: A review article

Yevgenia Albats, KGB: State within a State. London: IB Tauris, 1995, 401 pp., £10.95.

Mikhail Boltunov, “Al'fa”—sverkhsektretnyi otryad KGB. Moscow: Kedr, 1992, 208 pp.

Martin Ebon, KGB: Death and Rebirth. Westport, CT: Praeger, 1994, xii + 229 pp., $24.95.

Amy Knight, Spies Without Cloaks. The KGB's Successors. Princeton, NJ: Princeton UP, 1996, xx+ 318 pp., £16.95.

Hsi‐Huey Liang, The Rise of the Modern Police and the European State System from Metternich to the Second World War, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1992, xiii + 345 pp., £30.00.

Joan Neuberger, Hooliganism. Crime, Culture and Power in St Petersburg, 1900–1914. Berkeley & Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1993, 324 pp., £33.50.

Louise Shelley, Policing Soviet Society. The Evolution of State Control. London: Routledge, 1996, 269 pp., £14.99 p/b, £40.00 h/b.

Leonid Tokar, Sovetskaya militsiya 1918–1991. St Petersburg: Eksklyusiv, 1995, 232 pp.

J. Michael Waller, Secret Empire. The KGB in Russia Today. Boulder, CO and Oxford: Westview, 1994, 390 pp., £13.50 p/b, £42.50 h/b.

Fredric Zuckerman, The Tsarist Secret Police in Russian Society, 1880–1917. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996, xiii + 345 pp., £45.00.     

Institutions, Ideology, and the Tragedy of the Commons: West Texas Groundwater Policy

West Texas is the setting for an unintended experiment in commonsresource management. Dispersed, autonomous, local groundwaterdistricts use nonregulatory strategies to promote conservationand groundwater quality. The central force driving this organizationalform appears to be ideological. West Texans seek alternativesto state management of groundwater pumping. This study useskey-informant interviews to evaluate the strength of ideologyin explaining West Texas groundwater policy and to provide atheoretical framework for discussing the importance of the "localsolution.’ Time-series data substantiate the claim thatlocal groundwater districts succeed in slowing depletion rates.     

Social welfare functions when preferences are convex,strictly monotonic,and continuous

The paper shows that if the class of admissible preference orderings is restricted in a manner appropriate for economic and political models, then Arrow's impossibility theorem for social welfare functions continues to be valid. Specifically if the space of alternatives is R ₊ ⁿ , n ≥ 3, where each dimension represents a different public good and if each person's preferences are restricted to be convex, continuous, and strictly monotonic, then no social welfare function exists that satisfies unanimity, independence of irrelevant alternatives, and nondictatorship.     

A Second Republic for Italy?

Radical change in the representative dimension of Italy's political system was expected to bring a transition to a 'Second Republic' in Italy. That has not happened. Nevertheless, after three consultations using the new parliamentary electoral system, studies focusing on the 'input' side of Italian politics are beginning to agree that substantial change has occurred. It is, however, too early to identify the extent of change in public administration and centre–local government relations, whilst even in parliament it is argued that consensual decision-making continued at least into the late 1990s. The impact of party system change on policy-making has thus been shown to be less direct than many expected, providing rich material for research into the relationship between institutional and policy change. Nevertheless, institutional change continues, particularly with regard to the decentralisation of government, and some studies suggest that this is the key to Italy's political transformation, rather than electoral reform or even change in the form of government. Still, the election of Italy's first right-wing majority government in 2001 may yet bring change in parliamentary practice and policy-making more generally.     

Bureaucracy,Network, or Enterprise? Comparing Models of Governance in Australia,Britain, the Netherlands,and New Zealand

Theories of democratic government traditionally have relied on a model of organization in which officials act impartially, accept clear lines of accountability and supervision, and define their day–to–day activities through rules, procedures, and confined discretion. In the past 10 years, however, a serious challenge to this ideal has been mounted by critics and reformers who favor market, network, or "mixed–economy" models. We assess the extent to which these new models have influenced the work orientations of frontline staff using three alternative service types—corporate, market, and network—to that proposed by the traditional, procedural model of public bureaucracy. Using surveys of frontline officials in four countries where the revolution in ideas has been accompanied by a revolution in methods for organizing government services, we measure the degree to which the new models are operating as service–delivery norms. A new corporate–market hybrid (called "enterprise governance") and a new network type have become significant models for the organization of frontline work in public programs.     

The performance framework: a systems approach to understanding performance management

The article presents a framework for better understanding the nature of performance in organisations involved in the provision of overseas development assistance (ODA). It uses a case study to illustrate the three main features of the framework which are: goals, performance assessment and performance management. It is asserted that a vibrant performance culture is one which links these features together to form an organisation capable of continual improvement through producing effective learning. Organisational culture determines the nature of linkages between the three sub‐systems. The article stresses how the notion of performance may extend beyond various forms of evaluation and scrutiny to being part of a sentient learning system rooted in an organisation's culture and structure. The article concludes with consideration of key issues associated with the generation of a reflexive learning organisation operating in the ODA sector. These are concerned with understanding the role and nature of systems, organisational vision, the embracing of diversity, training and accountability. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Challenges for donor agency country‐level performance assessment: a review

This review of country‐level performance assessment in donor agencies is primarily based upon the experiences documented by bilateral donors to developing countries. The review suggests that four emerging themes can be identified in the literature on country‐level performance review: ownership, decentralisation and leadership, accountability and learning and complexity. The review considers the implementation of ‘results‐based’ approaches used by a number of international agencies and examines their relationship with ‘evidence‐based’ approaches. A key challenge, in the development of performance assessment, is bringing in a stronger evidence‐based approach into the planning and evaluation of donor country‐level programmes. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.