Budget reform in Saskatchewan: a new approach to program-based management

Abstract. Public sector management is continuing to face new challenges accentuated by the dramatic rise in government spending at all levels during the past decade. Two of the key elements in the management of government activities are the budget mechanism and tile information system supporting it. During the last ten years attempts at improving these aspects of public management in Canada and in the United States have usually involved the implementation of program-based budgeting systems such as PPBS. Much of the early enthusiasm that accompanied the onset of PPBS in the mid-1960s has waned, however, in view of recent abandonments by various governments of that approach. This paper describes a new approach to the implementation of budget reform being attempted in Saskatchewan and also identifies some of the ways in which the approach: might help to avoid the pitfalls that have destroyed program-based systems in other jurisdictions. Sommaire. La gestion du secteur public continue à faire face à de nouveaux défis, accentués par l'augmentation dramatique des dépenses gouvernementales, à tous les niveaux, durant ces dix dernières années. Deux des principaux éléments de cette gestion sont, dune part, le mécanisme budgétaire et, d'autre part, le systéme d'information qui le soutient. Les tentatives des dix derniéres années pour améliorer ces aspects de la gestion du secteur public au Canada et aux Etats-Unis, ont généralement entrainé la création de systémes budgétaires programmés, tel que le PPBS. Une bonne part de l'enthousiasme qui avait accompagné au premier abord la création du PPBS dans ies années 60 s'est cependant dissipée quand différents gouvernements ont récemment abandonné ce systéme. Le présent document décrit donc une nouvelle tentative de réforme budgétaire en Saskatchewan, et indique quelques moyens qui pourraient permettre d'éviter les traquenards qui ont détruit les systèmes programmes dans d'autres jurisdictions.     

Desistance and Legitimacy: The Impact of Offender Notification Meetings on Recidivism among High Risk Offenders

Legitimacy-based approaches to crime prevention assume that individuals will comply with the law when they believe that the law and its agents are legitimate and act in ways that are “fair” and “just.” Currently, legitimacy-based programs are shown to lower aggregate levels of crime; yet, no study has investigated whether such programs influence individual offending. Using quasi-experimental design and survival analyses, this study evaluates the effectiveness of one such program—Chicago’s Project Safe Neighborhoods’ (PSN) Offender Notification Forums—at reducing individual recidivism among a population of returning prisoners. Results suggest that involvement in PSN significantly reduces the risk of subsequent incarceration and is associated with significantly longer intervals that offenders remain on the street and out of prison. As the first study to provide individual-level evidence promoting legitimacy-based interventions on patterns of individual offending, out study suggests these interventions can and do reduce rates of recidivism.     

Preparing children for cross-examination: do the practice questions matter?

Research has shown that a brief intervention involving practice and feedback can help children maintain accuracy when challenged with cross-examination-style questions. To date, however, researchers have prepared children using the same cross-examination challenges that they would encounter during the subsequent cross-examination interview. It is unknown whether the intervention will still be effective when children later face novel cross-examination-style questions. Six- to 11-year-old children (n?=?132) took part in a staged memory event, and were then interviewed with analogues of direct-examination (1–2 days later) and cross-examination (6–8 weeks later). One week prior to the cross-examination interview, some children participated in a preparation session, where they were given practice answering cross-examination-style questions about an unrelated topic, and feedback on their responses. For half of these children, the cross-examination-style challenges they encountered during the preparation session were the same as the challenges they subsequently faced during cross-examination; for the others, there was no overlap. Relative to a control group that did not receive the intervention, the preparation session resulted in better performance during cross-examination, regardless of the degree of overlap. These findings are encouraging given that we can never predict the questions that cross-examining lawyers will ask children.     

The Double Delegitimatisation of Julia Gillard: Gender,the Media,and Australian Political Culture

This article explores Australian media coverage of Julia Gillard's leadership. It employs a comparative discourse analysis of the gendered nature of media reporting on her sexism and misogyny speech and eventual demise. The article places these gendered framings within two contexts: that of the more general gendered expectations of the double bind facing all women leaders; and the more specific challenge to Australia's women leaders, posed by exclusivist national identity narratives. These narratives — of mateship, the ANZAC myth, and various apparently ideal‐type masculinities — serve to further disassociate Australian women from positions of national leadership. Together, we argue that the twin constraints of gender expectations and exclusivist national identity narratives amounted to a double delegitimisation of Julia Gillard's leadership, on the basis of her being a woman leader, generally, and an Australian woman leader, specifically.     

Truth,Effort, and the Legal Battle

In lawsuits, relative success depends upon two main factors:the true degree of fault, and the efforts invested on eachside. A proposed Litigation Success Function displays thisdependence while satisfying other essential properties. Undertwo different protocols, Nash-Cournot and Stackelberg,solutions are obtained for the litigation efforts,proportionate success, and values of the lawsuit on each side.Outcomes are evaluated in terms of two normative criteria; (i)achieving `justice' (interpreted as equality between Defendantfault and relative Plaintiff success) and (ii) minimizingaggregate litigation cost. Achievement of these aims isdetermined by the decisiveness of litigation effort relativeto true fault.     

Making a difference? Public perceptions of coalition,single-party,and minority governments

It is often argued that coalition governments are less likely to ‘make a difference’ than single-party governments. Because they are composed of multiple actors who need to agree to policy innovations, and because there are fewer personnel changes between successive coalition governments, coalitions are associated with fewer policy differences. From this it follows that public perceptions that governments should ‘make a difference’ will be weaker under coalition than single-party governments. The same logic applies to minority governments, which require support to pass legislation from opposition parties, and hence are less likely to deliver on their commitments. Using data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, this paper tests these hypotheses. The expected effects, albeit small ones, are found for coalition governments, but only in old democracies.