Manging state government operations: Changing visions of staff agencies

Centralized staff agencies embody the early 20th century bureaucratic reform vision of good government. The behavior of these agencies, as well as the conception of administration contained in the bureaucratic reform vision, are often criticized. Feasible alternative conceptions of staff-line-overseer relations are only beginning to emerge through the contextual development of public management ideas and incremental innovation. This article draws on experience in Minnesota state government in order to formulate a “post-bureaucratic” conception of staff-line-overseer relations. In addition, strategies embedding this conception in the practice of the purchasing, staffing, information policy, and internal service functions are briefly explored.     

Explaining Privatization: Notes Towards a Predictive Theory

This article starts from the assumption that some of the theoretical work used to explain welfare-state expansion can be used 'in reverse' to explain privatization, here seen as welfare state contraction, i.e., the transfer from the public to the private sector of the responsibility for certain activities involved in welfare provision. To this end, valiants of the 'power resources' approach are examined. Finding that the 'labour movement' thesis does not have a strong predictive value, I then discuss the 'game theoretical' variant of the 'power resources' approach. Its usefulness for predicting privatization patterns seems limited because of the reductionism built into it. Following the neo-Institutionalists' argument that actor preferences and strategies both reflect and form institutional arrangements of the welfare state, some institutional typologies are developed which are relevant to the course and patterns of privatization. An ideal-type dichotomy between 'pluralist' and 'corporatist' institutions is discussed, in connection with a further delineation of decision-making, financing, and implementing structures. In conclusion, an effort is made to combine actor-oriented and institutional approaches to formulate some preliminary predictions about when and where certain patterns of privatization will occur.     

A POLICY OF OUR OWN: LOCAL FEMINIST NETWORKS AND SOCIAL SERVICES FOR WOMEN AND CHILDREN

This article examines the ways in which a feminist family policy agenda has led to significant political action and change within American cities. Feminist groups, during the past fifteen years, became a part of emerging local women's rights policy networks that effected changes in several services for women and children: libraries (programming for women and non-sexist children's literature acquisitions policies); public education (gender equit under Title IX); social welfare (child care and displaced homemaker services); and criminal justice and health (the treatment of the victims of rape and domestic violence). This policy success stems not only from the workings of traditional interest group politics and policy networks but also from the astute use of political symbols, bureaucratic norms, and the federal system.     

INCREASING THE ECONOMIC WELL-BEING OF SEPARATED, DIVORCED, AND WIDOWED WOMEN OVER AGE THIRTY

Data from the Continuous Longitudinal Manpower Survey and the Current Population Survey were used to estimate the effects of CETA, a governmental jobs program, on the economic well-being of separated, divorced, and widowed women over age thirty. After training, CETA participants had increases in earnings and tended to have higher earnings than comparable CPS respondents. Participants in on-the-job training and public service employment had greater increases than participants in the other CETA programs. CETA enrollees with a high school degree had greater increases in earnings than those who had not completed high school, while whites had greater increases in earnings than non-whites.     

Concealed takings: Capture and rent-seeking in the Indian Sugar Industry

This paper has attempted to test the applicability of the Public Choice approach in explaining regulation in the Indian Sugar Industry over the 1967–82 period. A test for discriminating between Public Interest and Capture theories of regulation was developed and implemented in the context of the historical pattern of controls found in the Indian Sugar Industry. The results point toward the rejection of the Public Interest theory of regulation and are consistent with the hypothesis of the capture of regulation by the regulated industry. The importance of the various interest groups and their influence on the regulation actually enacted was also revealed by the analysis.The findings are consistent with the existence of substantial rent-seeking and other D.U.P. activity (Bhagwati, 1982) in the Indian sugar sector during the post-independence period. They point toward the substantial welfare losses suffered by consumers and the economy at large as a result of the control regime that has existed in the Indian sugar sector. Removal of such controls will more than likely increase the availability of sugar at lower prices thus increasing the welfare of consumers while reducing the extent of corruption and other rent-seeking activity that the controls have generated.