Two Decades of Change: A Ranking of Key Issues Affecting Intergovernmental Relations

This article describes the results of a 1981 survey of 1,000randomly selected scholars of American government and politicswho were asked to rank the most significant intergovernmentalevents and trends of the past twenty years. Responses were receivedfrom almost 40 percent of these scholars; no significant returnbiases were detected. These scholars ranked civil rights andvoting rights acts as the most significant events of these decades.General Revenue Sharing and the reapportionment cases were rankedsecond and third in importance. The increased flow of federaldollars to states and local governments was ranked the mostimportant trend affecting intergovernmental relations, followedby the increased public disaffection with government and thegrowing dependence of local governments on state and federalaid. The Vietnam War and the inflationary spiral it initiatedwas ranked as the most significant social event affecting thecourse of intergovernmental relations, followed closely by theenergy crisis and the beginnings of the "Great Society." Thearticle also examines the effects of party identification, age,year of degree, government experience, region, and city sizeon scholarly attitudes toward these events and trends. Whilethe overall rankings were not dramatically altered, partisanship,region, and city size all were factors found to be noticeablyrelated to scholarly rankings of these important events andtrends.     

The relationship of abuse and witnessing violence on the Child Abuse Potential Inventory with black adolescents

A number of social and psychological factors present in most adolescent parents place them at high risk for abusive behavior toward their children. However, current child abuse potential measures do not include adolescent samples as part of the psychometric data base. Consequently, the purpose of this study was twofold: (1) to investigate whether a Black adolescent sample would perform differently than an adult nonabusing sample on the Child Abuse Potential Inventory (CAP), and (2) to examine the relationship between history of abuse or witnessing violence to scores on the CAP. Results revealed that Black adolescents scored significantly higher than the adult normative sample on the CAP; consequently, cutoff scores need to be empirically established for adolescents. Additional analyses indicated that a history of abuse, as well as a history of witnessing violence, are associated with a high potential for abuse.     

An Impeditive Administrative Culture? The Legacy of Australia's First Auditor‐General on the Australian Audit Office

This historical study provides an account of the Australian Audit Office from its formation in 1901 until the end of the term of Australia's first Auditor-General in 1925. The Audit Office was created to assist the Commonwealth Government in discharging and reporting on its accountability for the economical use of resources. The philosophy upon which the Audit Office was created was one based on small government where a minimalist role for the audit function was envisaged. Accordingly, the initial Audit Act dictated a detailed audit methodology. However, the expansion of Commonwealth activities due to the outbreak of the First World War, the realities of a decentralised Commonwealth administration and the more commercial activities of government created numerous problems for both the Office and government. The Auditor-General was unable, or unwilling, to adapt his audit methodologies to suit the changing circumstances of Australian public administration and the workload of the Audit Office periodically fell into backlog. Relations with the executive became strained over these matters prompting intervention by subsequent governments. This early period is important historically as it provides a window through which to view the development of the public sector audit function and its contribution to an efficient public sector. In addition, the events of this period illustrate the importance of relations between the Audit Office and the government, and the role of the Auditor-General in contributing to an efficient public administration.