DOES POLITICAL CHANGE AFFECT SENIOR MANAGEMENT TURNOVER? AN EMPIRICAL ANALYSIS OF TOP‐TIER LOCAL AUTHORITIES IN ENGLAND

In many political systems the political neutrality of senior managers' tenure is often cherished as a key part of the politics-administration dichotomy and is subject to formal safeguards. We test hypotheses about the impact of political change on senior management turnover drawn from political science, public administration and private sector management theory. Using panel data to control for unobserved heterogeneity between authorities, we find that changes in political party control and low organizational performance have both separate and joint positive effects on the turnover rate of senior managers. By contrast, the most senior manager, the chief executive, is more sheltered: the likelihood of a chief executive succession is higher only when party change and low performance occur together. Thus the arrival of a new ruling party reduces the tenure of senior managers, but chief executives are vulnerable to political change only when performance is perceived as weak.     

THE VALUE OF CHOICE IN PUBLIC POLICY

Conceptualizing and measuring choice is problematic both in theory and in practice. Measuring by counting the alternatives seems counter-intuitive as a smaller set of better or more diverse alternatives seems to provide more choice than one that is simply larger. However, concentrating upon better alternatives leads to choice being defined by welfare or utility which is also counter-intuitive. The implications of this paradox are considered in relation to examples drawn from the choice agenda in British social policy. Empirical difficulties in measuring the welfare gains through implementing greater choice at a time of other central-led policy initiatives such as targets are discussed, and the extant evidence discussed. Criteria for judging whether or not choice has been welfare-enhancing are suggested. It is argued that 'soft choice' where service providers provide information and explain different options is preferable to 'hard' choice of simplistic targets to increase choice by ticking target boxes.     

Law and Disorder: The Brazilian Landless Farmworkers' Movement

Abstract — The Brazilian Landless Farmworkers' Movement (MST) occupies idle farmland and demands that it be expropriated under the terms of Brazil's agrarian reform law. The MST uses illegal tactics in the field to force the government's hand and at the same time asserts its legitimacy with legalism and invocation of public sentiment in favor of land reform. It confronts repression promoted by the landowning class and increasingly from the state itself. Through the combination of militant and legal tactics it has won expropriation of many farms and turned them into successful agricultural enterprises.     

COURT COMMUNITIES UNDER SENTENCING GUIDELINES: DILEMMAS OF FORMAL RATIONALITY AND SENTENCING DISPARITY

Efforts to structure sentencing through guidelines involve a fundamental dilemma for the sociology of law—guidelines attempt to emphasize formal rationality and uniformity (Savelsberg, 1992) while allowing discretion to tailor sentences to fit situations and characteristics of individual defendants when courts deem it warranted (substantive rationality). This exercise of substantive rationality in sentencing based on "extralegal" criteria deemed relevant by local court actors risks the kind of unwarranted disparity that guidelines were intended to reduce. We view local courts as arenas in which two sets of sentencing standards meet—formal rational ones articulated by guidelines vs. substantive, extralegal criteria deemed relevant by local court actors. We use statistical and qualitative data from Pennsylvania, a state whose courts have operated under sentencing guidelines for over a decade. Our analysis examines extralegal differences in three county courts' sentencing outcomes, and then documents ways in which substantive rational sentencing criteria are intertwined with defendants' exercise of their right to trial and their race and gender.