Partnership Arrangements: Governmental Rhetoric or Governance Scheme?

It has become popular to advocate partnership arrangements. Such partnerships may be seen as new forms of governance, which fit in with the imminent network society. However, the idea of partnership is often introduced without much reflection on the need to reorganize policy-making processes and to adjust existing institutional structures.
In this contribution, we discuss the ambiguity of partnerships. An empirical basis is provided by means of an analysis of the policy making on the expansion of the Rotterdam harbor. This case indicates that although new governance schemes are being proposed and explored, they still have to comply with the existing procedures in which they are imbedded. Governments especially are not prepared to adjust to governance arrangements. Policy making continues to be based on self-referential organizational decisions, rather than on joint interorganizational policy making. This raises questions about the added value of intended cooperative governance processes.     

Who Wants to Work for the Government?

In an era when everyone wants to be a millionaire, governments struggle to attract and retain highly qualified employees, making it more important than ever to understand what attracts people to the public service. Using contingency table analysis and logistic regression on the 1989 and 1998 General Social Surveys, we explore how individuals' demographic characteristics and the importance they place on various job qualities influence their preference for and employment in the public sector. Job security may still be the strongest attraction of government jobs, but high income and the opportunity to be useful to society also attract some Americans to the public service. Minorities, veterans, Democrats, and older Americans preferred public-sector jobs more than whites, nonveterans, Republicans, and younger Americans, who were otherwise similar. Women and college graduates were more likely than comparable men and less-educated respondents to have government jobs, but no more likely to prefer them. Overall, desire for government jobs declined markedly between 1989 and 1998.     

Municipal Bond Insurance: Trends and Prospects

Privately sold bond insurance is the most common form of credit enhancement for municipal bonds. Research generally finds that bond insurance reduces interest costs for lower rated, long–term debt issues. Researchers have concluded that these results are consistent with presumed investor risk aversion, as well as more "rational" risk management behaviors, and with theories concerning the efficiency–enhancing properties of financial intermediation in imperfect markets. We propose a research agenda based both on traditional theories and on additional hypotheses that seek to account for the observed use of bond insurance where net savings would not normally be predicted.     

'Learn from Daqing': More dark clouds for workers in state-owned enterprises

Now that China has joined the World Trade Organization, workers employed in the already hard-hit state-owned sector of the economy face the certain prospect of massive new lay-offs. Already, in the early months of 2002, China has seen its largest labor demonstrations since 1949. Not surprisingly, these took place at struggling state-owned enterprises that have recently dismissed thousands of workers. These workers have expressed a great deal of anger at their situation and show little faith in the Communist Party-approved union's--the All China Federation of Trade Unions--ability to protect their interests. For this reason, they have formed an independent trade union, even though the Chinese government has declared such unions illegal. This article provides a context in which to understand these increasingly serious tensions and argues that, without a fundamental change in direction on the part of the Communist Party, China is sure to witness further and more explosive labor problems in the near future.     

Free Riding in State Legislatures

This paper applies the theory of team production to thelegislative process and tests the empiricalimplications of that theory using a uniquestate-level data set. Empirically testablehypotheses are derived from the theory,including predictions that free riding willincrease as chamber (or majority) sizeincreases, and that legislativeinstitutions (such as committee structureand staffing levels) can mitigate freeriding. The hypotheses are tested using apooled state-level data set developed fromthe session laws of twenty-three statelegislatures. The empirical results areconsistent with the major hypotheses.     

Psychosocial Correlates of Intimacy Achievement Among Adolescent Fathers-to-Be

We investigated the relation between urban psychosocial stressors and intimacy achievement in a sample of 59 African American, Hispanic American, and White adolescent fathers-to-be. Participants received an intimacy score based on Orlofsky's Intimacy Status Rating Scale. Those with higher cumulative psychosocial stressors had lower levels of intimacy. One psychosocial risk factor, low interpersonal empathy, was significantly associated with intimacy levels. African Americans had lower levels of intimacy than Hispanic or White participants.