PROGRAM IMPLEMENTATION VERSUS PROGRAM DESIGN: WHICH ACCOUNTS FOR POLICY "FAILURE"?

Many influential implementation scholars now argue that "street-level" bureaucrats, rather than legislators or high-level administrators, make public policy in the U.S. Such authors as Pressman and Wildavsky cite creaming in employment and training programs as an especially clear example of well-meaning programs that fail when implemented. This paper argues that two of the most significant and lasting of these programs, the U.S. Employment Service and the Manpower Development and Training Act, were designed to encourage creaming. The essay asserts implementation scholars overstate the disconnection between program design and program implementation because they assume there is little disconnection between program legitimation and program design. A better conception of design permits one to perceive that these programs were legitimated on the grounds they would serve a large number of constituents, but were designed to do so by serving employers. The combination of these premises made creaming an imperative of program operation, and the implementors who cream remain faith ful to original program strategy. This finding suggests a redirection of policy research toward a more rlgorous analysis of program design and a better understanding of the relationship between legitimation, design, and implementation.     

Doomed to Defeat? Electoral Support and the Conservative Party

This article recaps the main trends in public opinion and electoral support for the Conservative party since the last general election in June 2001 by examining the overall polling data relating to party popularity. The article also considers by-elections, local elections and leadership change, as well as the most recent elections in 2004. The various challenges the party faces as it attempts to position itself as a credible alternative government to the Labour party under Tony Blair are considered.
Given the clear biases of the electoral system used for the House of Commons, which are certain to benefit Labour substantially even if the Conservatives get close to them in terms of overall vote share, or indeed even overtake them, it still seems unlikely that such success will be sufficient to achieve much more than to reduce Tony Blair's House of Commons majority in 2005.     

PRESTIGE OF JOURNALS IN CRIMINOLOGY AND CRIMINAL JUSTICE

The prestige of professional journals is an important element in the academic world because of the relationship of journal prestige to the careers of individuals and to the reputations of academic institutions. This study investigates the system of journal prestige in the field of criminology and criminal justice, using the ratings of professional journals obtained from a sample of respondents who are members of professional associations in criminology and criminal justice. The results show that there is a relatively high degree of agreement about the relative prestige of journals in the field, despite the fact that criminology and criminal justice is a multidisciplinary field involving professionals from a wide variety of occupational settings.     

SOCIAL CLASS AND VIOLENT BEHAVIOR*

This paper examines the relationship between violent behavior and a variety of measures of social class. Police records from one study and questionnaire data from two studies are analyzed. The strength of the relationship between class and violence varies significantly, depending primarily on the measure of class used. The implications of these findings are potentially profound for class-based theories of crime and delinquency. Methodological implications of the findings are significant for sampling issues as well as for conceptualizations of class.     

Periodical Prestige in Criminology and Criminal Justice

Journals in criminology and criminal justice have been ranked using subjective techniques to assess journal presitige as well as objective measures intended to assess journal eminence. Two recent studies have resulted in somewhat similar rankings of professional journals although each used distinct methods of data analysis and asked different research questions. This finding suggests that there is a consensus among professionals in the field concerning the importance of particular journals.     

Deregulation and Participation: An International Survey of Participation in Electricity Regulation

Amidst the wave of privatization and "deregulation" across the globe, a new set of regulatory structures is being created. The fact that deregulation actually involves "re-regulation" has been acknowledged in the recent literature, but the tension between regulation and public participation has been understudied in these new structures. While some private markets need effective regulation to reduce transactions costs and ensure stable market rules, consumers need regulation that is responsive to, and protective of, their interests. Consumer participation, therefore, is an important component of effective regulation. Effective regulation must also consider collective national or public interests, including the well-being of corporations. Therefore, regulatory agencies need to be both independent from, and responsive to corporate, consumer, and public interests. This article will briefly examine the tension among the competing goals of regulatory independence and responsiveness, and then conduct a broad survey of the status quo of public participation in national regulatory structures for electricity in the Americas. Our case studies demonstrate a wide variety of institutional mechanisms for participation, yet we find that no existing system seems to embrace direct participation by a wide set of consumers. The problems are even more acute in developing countries. We conclude by looking at recent experiments and proposals to improve the levels of participation in regulatory decision making.