Women in the Zambian civil service: A case of equal opportunities?

There is a paucity of empirical microlevel studies of women in the formal sector in developing countries. This article attempts to redress this deficit and focuses on the position of women in the Zambian civil service using information from a sample of personnel records. Although women are disproportionately represented in the civil service compared with other areas of the formal economy, the current positions of males and females are significantly different. However, the results of the survey are not easily encompassed in prevailing theoretical frameworks and, rather surprisingly, it appears that it is age rather than gender that is the crucial explanatory variable. Finally, a number of possible explanations are advanced to account for our findings.     

A world view of cultural diversity

Among his books are Affirmative Action Reconsidered; Civil Rights: Rhetoric and Reality; Classical Economics Reconsidered; Compassion versus Guilt; A Conflict of Visions; Economics and Politics of Race;and Education, Assumption versus History.     

Re-slicing the Big Apple: New Immigrants and African-Americans in the New York Economy

The continuing convergence of immigrants on New York City is a puzzle. On the one hand, the decline of the city's manufacturing sector and the growth of advanced services appear to provide little demand for immigrant labor; on the other hand, the deep penetration of immigrants into the city's economy has been paralleled by a deteriorating employment situation among native blacks. This article, seeks to unravel this puzzk in the light of two conflicting perspectives, the restructuring and the replacement labor hypotheses. The paper assesses each perspective using data from the 1970 and 1980 Censuses of Population and merged sampks of the June 1986 and 1988 Current Population Surveys.     

Factors influencing state progress in the implementation of Public Law 99-457, Part H

Policy implementation has been an infrequently studied process although it has become increasingly evident that the implementation processes of policy development, policy approval, and policy application can shape and delay prospective implementation of legislation. The current study analyzes the implementation of P.L. 99–457 (Part H) the Education for the Handicapped Amendments of 1986. This law provides the states with planning money from the federal government to design a comprehensive interagency, multidisciplinary program of services for children with handicapping conditions and their families. Ratings were taken from key administrators and citizens knowledgeable about the law on state progress in implementing the fourteen requirements of the law and also on proposed influential conditions that might affect that implementation. Additional demographic information was obtained for the fifty states. The factor that seemed to be most influential in a subset of 35 states was the prior presence in the state of systems for interagency planning and development. Neither prior history of early childhood services, available resources, wealth of the state, or geographic region appeared to have a significant influence on policy development. There was some indication that different factors might become influential in the next phase of implementation, policy approval. It appears that progress in state policy development may be linked to the special requirements of the legislation itself and to prior availability of institutional structures that make mandated collaborative efforts more possible.     

The effects of cashing-out food stomps on household food use and the cost of issuing benefits

The recent report produced by Vice President Gore's committee on government efficiency highlights the importance of streamlining government operations. But often there are trade-offs between administrative streamlining and accomplishing substantive program objectives. This article examines these tradeoffs in the context of the Food Stamp Program, an important component of the United States' safety net for providing low-income assistance. We estimate impacts on both administrative costs and substantive outcomes (participant food expenditures) resulting from issuing program benefits in the form of checks rather than the usual food coupons. The findings, which are based on experimental tests of the cashout approach in parts of Alabama and California, suggest that significant cost savings can be attained through cashout but that these savings may be achieved at the cost of weakening the program's ability to achieve its substantive objective of encouraging food use.     

The Pending Revolution in Federal Accounting Standards

Accounting standards constitute the body of guidance needed to provide coherence and direction to accountants on how to keep the books. They inform the accountant about the logic of the way that accounting data should be organized and displayed in order to maximize its value to the prospective user. (The prospective users, in the case of federal accounting, range from the president and Congress through agency managers to the general public.) Federal accounting standards are the equivalent, for accounting, of budget concepts for the federal budget. After a long genesis, federal accounting standards are in the midst of a revolution which, if it succeeds, will transform the way accounting reports on federal fiscal activities and how it relates to the federal budget. This article, written from the perspective of a budget concepts technician who has participated in this effort, reviews these developments and where they seem to be heading.     

Policy makers,policy choices,and policy outcomes: The political economy of reform in developing countries

This article presents an analytic model for understanding the role of decision makers in bringing about significant policy and institutional changes and in understanding how processes of agenda setting, decision making, and implementation shape the content, timing, and sustainability of reform initiatives. Central to the model is the assertion that policy elites and the policy making process are important determinants of reform. The framework indicates that circumstances surrounding issue formation, the criteria that decision makers use to select among options, and the characteristics of specific policies are analytic categories that explain a considerable amount about reform outcomes. The model is based on cases developed by participants in twelve initiatives to bring about policy and institutional change in a variety of developing countries.     

Restructuring the State in South Africa: New Strategies of Incorporation and Control

Although it is now widely conceded that there have been many changes in South Africa in recent years, not least in the political sphere, the nature and significance of these changes remain hotly contested. After sketching the pre-reform system, this article presents a broad and comprehensive account of the institutional reorganization of the South African state and the official justification for it. Acknowledging that at the moment only tentative interpretations of these developments are possible, it poses questions about the adequacy of official explanations and suggests that a deeper motivation for the changes lies in a commitment to both order and reform, the outlines of which are much clearer at the local than at the national level.     

The nuclear family: Correspondence in cognitive and affective reactions to the threat of nuclear war among older adolescents and their parents

In order to assess the relationship between family members' cognitive and affective responses to nuclear war issues, 317 college students and their parents (n=559) independently completed a multifaceted questionnaire that included items concerning personal reactions, predictions, opinions, and attitudes about nuclear war. Results revealed a negligible relationship between the responses of college students and their parents, although the level of concordance between mothers and fathers was somewhat greater. Moreover, parents and students were relatively poor at predicting each others' nuclear threat attitudes, and the strength with which an attitude was endorsed did not enhance its predictability. Results are discussed with regard to heterogeneity in attitudinal and affective reactions within families, and with regard to the idea that infrequent communication concerning nuclear war issues may be occurring.Portions of this article were presented at the meeting of the American Psychological Association, Los Angeles, California, August 25, 1985.Interested in clinical and counseling psychology, the psychological effects of the threat of nuclear war, and parent training.Interested in counseling psychology, nuclear war issues, and the concept-specific measurement of emotionality.Interested in counseling psychology, nuclear war issues, and factors influencing custody decisions.