The Use of Contracting in the Public Sector

Around the world and especially in English-speaking countries there has been a wave of contract-based public sector management following on the heels of a wave of corporatisation and privatisation.     

Does involuntary outpatient commitment lead to more intensive treatment?

Studies of involuntary outpatient commitment (OPC) among persons with severe mental illness have concluded that OPC is only effective in improving treatment outcomes when it is sustained for 6 months or longer and is combined with frequent outpatient services. This article explores factors that influence the delivery of outpatient services to subjects in a randomized trial of OPC and finds 2 general patterns. Outpatient visits were more frequent among all subjects with apparent clinical need, regardless of study assignment, and among subjects whose OPC was sustained beyond an initial court order. These results suggest that, in practice, sustained OPC represents a consensual agreement between clinicians and the court to more intensively address the complex needs of persons with severe and persistent mental illness.     

A dynamic test of the marginality hypothesis

The marginality hypothesis is an attempt to relate the voting margins of members of Congress to their subsequent legislative behavior. A major corollary of the hypothesis is that members of Congress with small victory margins will be more responsive to constituents than those with large victory margins. This has been assumed to mean that electorally secure representatives can afford to be more loyal to their congressional parties, since they have less cause to worry about their chances for reelection. Previous empirical studies have produced mixed results. We ask the question in a different way: Do changes in marginality affect party voting within Congress? If so, major shifts in the electorate potentially can have a fundamental impact on the behavior of Congress itself. We find that this is not true. Electoral margin is simply not related to party loyalty.