Making Sense of COMPSTAT: A Theory-Based Analysis of Organizational Change in Three Police Departments

COMPSTAT, the latest innovation in American policing, has been widely heralded as a management and technological system whose elements work together to transform police organizations radically. Skeptical observers suggest that COMPSTAT merely reinforces existing structures and practices. However, in trying to assess how much COMPSTAT has altered police organizations, research has failed to provide a broader theoretical basis for explaining how COMPSTAT operates and for understanding the implications of this reform. This article compares two different perspectives on organizations—technical/rational and institutional—to COMPSTAT's adoption and operation in three municipal police departments. Based on fieldwork, our analysis suggests that relative to technical considerations for changing each organization to improve its effectiveness, all three sites adopted COMPSTAT in response to strong institutional pressures to appear progressive and successful. Furthermore, institutional theory better explained the nature of the changes we observed under COMPSTAT than the technical/rational model. The greatest collective emphasis was on those COMPSTAT elements that were most likely to confer legitimacy, and on implementing them in ways that would minimize disruption to existing organizational routines. COMPSTAT was less successful when trying to provide a basis for rigorously assessing organizational performance, and when trying to change those structures and routines widely accepted as being "appropriate." We posit that it will take profound changes in the technical and institutional environments of American police agencies for police departments to restructure in the ways anticipated by a technically efficient COMPSTAT.     

Boubou

He was only a little monkey, a very little one the first timeI saw him, not more than 9 inches tall; and when he died 3 yearslater, fully grown, he did not measure more than a foot anda half.     

转型期小股东参与机制实证研究——以洋务官督商办企业为例

文章采用史论结合的方法,在对洋务官督商办企业小股东来源、特点分析的基础上,对其在公司的参与机制这一前人研究相对不足的问题进行了探讨。研究表明官督商办企业中的股东具有明显“人合”性质,股东大会处于虚置状态。文章还对官督商办企业小股东无权地位的传统观点进行了否定,认为小股东与经营决策者之间存在一对多的委托代理关系,从而实现相对有效的参与。这种相对有效的参与机制是早期官督商办受到欢迎的重要原因。     

鲍德里亚符号政治经济学批判的一般理论建构

符号政治经济学批判是鲍德里亚早期思想建构中的重要内容,也是他分析消费社会的理论平台。鲍德里亚认为,使用价值与交换价值的区分同符号的能指与所指的区分具有理论的同质性,在消费社会中,能指与所指的区分构成了现代资本主义合法性的前提。这决定了马克思的政治经济学批判只有发展为符号政治经济学批判,才能揭示消费过程中意识形态的产生过程。也正是在这一思考中,鲍德里亚离开了马克思,经过《生产之镜》转向后马克思思潮。     

论侦查观念及其理论基础

宏观上的侦查观念主要包括侦查程序意识、侦查诉讼意识和侦查均衡意识。侦查程序意识的理论基础是侦查程序具有独立价值,即其本身应具有公正性、人道性等价值要求,侦查程序具有使侦查结果正当化的作用;侦查诉讼意识的理论基础是明确侦查是一项诉讼性认识活动,区别技术角度和诉讼角度,区分侦查与侦查程序、侦查程序与侦查策略、侦查的技术规则和侦查的程序规则等相关概念;侦查均衡意识的理论基础是侦查活动具有多元价值目标,应对发生冲突的价值目标进行均衡和抉择,当必须作出选择时,应以有利于实现维护法治利益和社会秩序这一根本目的为取舍标准。     

A Desultory Defense of Democracy: OAS Resolution 1080 and the Inter-American Democratic Charter

This article evaluates the effectiveness of OAS mechanisms for safeguarding democracy through multilateral diplomacy, what some scholars have dubbed the interamerican defense of democracy regime. Drawing on a range of international relations theories, this study derives competing hypotheses about member states' responses to democratic crises in the Americas. It then analyzes all instances in which a collective response—that is, an application of Resolution 1080 or the Inter-American Democratic Charter—was debated in the OAS between 1991 and 2002. Patterns of state behavior suggest that domestic politics, rather than the structural or systemic traits of the interamerican system, best explain foreign policy responses to crises of democracy in the region. The OAS record in confronting such crises is uneven.