Management by Inquiry: A Discursive Accountability System for Large Organizations

Over the past decade, American police departments have developed a new management methodology that is beginning to be adopted by agencies outside law enforcement. Although the technique has been given different names by different agencies, this article refers to it generically as "management by inquiry" because the approach uses frequent, highly formalized meetings of top executives, middle management, and line personnel to inquire into the operations of individual units. The authors have had five years of direct experience with management by inquiry and have observed it in other jurisdictions. The present analysis draws on Habermas's theory of communicative action to contrast the communication premises in much management theory and practice with those implicit in inquiry-centered management. The article concludes that management by inquiry has dramatic effects on administrative behavior because it takes advantage of universal communicative norms that public administration has long overlooked.     

Party system stability and conflict initiation

The study of interstate conflict has yielded a voluminous literature to date, yet much of the recent work has only just begun to underscore the importance of domestic factors in predicting conflict initiation in democracies. In short, some of these studies find that when electoral accountability is greater—measured in a variety of ways—interstate conflict becomes less likely. Despite this burgeoning literature, scholars have spent far less time analysing the role linkage institutions, such as stable party systems, have played in foreign policy discussions. To address this gap, we argue that in more stable party systems conflict initiation becomes less likely due to the greater accountability present in these systems. This conjecture is supported by the results of a time-series cross-sectional analysis of 48 democracies from 1978 to 2000 that uses multiple measures of conflict initiation and party system stability.     

Interpreting the dynamics of public housing: Cultural and rational choice explanations

Abstract

This article uses culture of poverty and rational choice theories of poverty to explain how quickly nonelderly household heads leave public housing. Data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics serve as the basis for the analysis.

Although a significant proportion of all household heads have public housing spells lasting five or more years, the majority have spells lasting less than five years. The availability of other housing options has a strong impact on how quickly individuals move out of public housing. Family structure and human capital play a more modest role. To the extent that one's childhood experiences affect the likelihood of exiting public housing, they appear to do so mostly through their effect on the acquisition of human capital. Finally, the evidence presented is inconsistent with the notion that public housing is a trap from which it is more difficult to escape the longer one lives in it.     

Adaptive management and adaptive governance in the everglades ecosystem

The Everglades is an intensively managed ecosystem where control of the water has allowed agricultural, urban and economic development, while struggling to meet biodiversity conservation goals. The over 100 year history of control began in response to a disastrous series of floods and droughts followed by environmental crises at an ecosystem scale. Each of these events precipitated technological fixes that extended control of water resources. Institutional structures have been continually reorganized over the last century to meet shifting social objectives, the latest of which is ecosystem restoration. However, the basic response, which employs engineering and technological solutions, is a type of social trap, where governmental mandates, planning-based paradigms and vested interests all interact to inhibit the resolution of chronic environmental issues. Experience from other resource systems indicates that in such an inherently complex system wrought with multiple uncertainties, restoration must be discovered through experimentation and learning embraced by adaptive management. Though minimal steps towards adaptive management have been made, we argue that adaptive forms of experimentation and governance are needed to resolve chronic resource issues and achieve restoration goals.     

State crimes against democracy in the war on terror: applying the Nuremberg principles to the Bush–Cheney Administration

This article asks whether, in waging war in the Middle East, the Bush–Cheney Administration developed and executed a conspiracy comparable to the one for which Nazi leaders were tried, convicted, and executed at Nuremberg after World War II. To meet the Nuremberg standards, such a conspiracy must include efforts to subvert the constitutional order. Today, scholars refer to these actions as ‘state crimes against democracy’ (SCADs). After explicating the Nuremberg standards, the article applies them to the Bush–Cheney Administration's ‘war on terror’. The conclusion reached is that evidence of a SCAD-driven conspiracy is extensive and certainly adequate by the Nuremberg standards to warrant investigations and trials.     

‘Bad’ Boys and ‘Sad’ Girls? Examining Internalizing and Externalizing Effects on Parasuicides Among Youth

Suicide and parasuicides (i.e. suicidal ideation and suicidal attempt) have long been recognized as serious social problems, especially among youth. A series of logistic regression models were developed incorporating various internalizing and externalizing risk factors experienced by young people with the goal of predicting parasuicides among Canadian youth. The main objective of the research is to determine whether or not there are significant sex differences between these internalizing and externalizing influences on suicidal behavior. Data were used from the National Longitudinal Study of Children and Youth—Waves 3 through 6, for a total sample of 2,499 15-year olds (48.9% male). Results show that both suicidal ideation and attempt are more frequent for girls compared to boys. Contrary to expectations, externalizing problems had a greater impact on girls and internalizing problems had a marginally greater impact on boys. This casts doubt on the notion that “bad boys” and “sad girls” are at greater risk for suicidal behavior. These results are discussed in light of their substantive importance, policy implications, and suggestions for future research.