Group Identity and Alienation: Giving the We Its Due

The purpose of this paper is to argue for greater understanding and valuing of group affiliation and the formation of allegiances to groups during early adolescence. An overemphasis on themes of individual identity, self-reliance, and autonomy as the developmental trajectory of adolescence leads to a lack of attention to the positive, normative mechanisms that permit young adolescents to achieve a sense of belonging and connection. We propose developmental processes which underlie the capacity for reflection about groups, 4 basic components of group identity, and 6 propositions about new capacities that emerge as young adolescents struggle with the dialectic between group identity and alienation. The final section suggests opportunities that can emerge through a more appropriate emphasis on group identity as a valued, normative aspect of development during the early adolescent years.     

Is a Local Government’s Decision ‘In Writing?’:The U.S. Supreme Court to Rule

Abstract

An application to place a 108‐foot‐tall cell tower in a residential neighborhood. An outpouring of opposition. A public hearing. A denial—by unanimous vote on an oral motion. And a letter to the applicant stating that the application had been denied and referring to the hearing’s minutes, which reflect reasons why the board may have denied the application. These are the key facts of T‐Mobile South, LLC v. City of Roswell, No. 13‐ 975, a case that the U.S. Supreme Court will consider this fall. The case’s central legal question is also straightforward. The Telecommunications Act of 1996 states that “ [a]ny decision . . . to deny a request . . . shall be in writing. ” The Court will decide whether it is sufficient for a city to state in writing that it has denied the application and to refer to the record, or whether the written denial must also describe the reasons for the city’s decision. The case could have significant impacts on how local zoning boards function and on the form their decisions must take to survive legal challenge. It also could lead to effects on local governments well beyond the narrow issue presented here.     

Constitutional Conversations

This is a review essay of Rajeeva Bhargava's Politics and Ethics of the Indian Constitution (5th ed., 2012), Sudhir Krishnaswamy's Democracy and Constitutionalism in India: A Study of the Basic Structure Doctrine (3rd ed., 2012), and Madhav Khosla's The Indian Constitution, Oxford India Short Introductions (2012).     

A New ‘New Liberalism’? – Directions in Government and Public Policy in Britain

Books reviewed in this article:
David Marquand and Anthony Seldon (eds.), The Ideas that Shaped Post-War Britain
Geoff Mulgan (ed.), Life After Politics – New Thinking for the Twenty-first Century     

Race,Social Welfare,and the Decline of Postwar Liberalism: A New or Old Key?

Fifty-one years ago, when liberalism and social welfare democracy were expanding in all advanced industrialized nations, V.O. Key, Jr., forecast the decline of postwar liberalism in the United States. Current discussion of the decline of liberalism has ignored Key or, when evidence is lacking, has incorrectly cited him. In contrast to Key's relatively direct, simple, and heavily documented reasoning, current explanations are multifactorial, complex, less well documented, and often ideologically loaded. Some explanations for the "postwar" decline identify causal factors more than six years after the war, yet they ignore events in 1945–47. At the fifty-first anniversary of V.O. Key's Southern Politics in State and Nation, attention to Key's forecast and Occam's razor is called for. Key argued that racism in the South, exerted through congressional committees, would lead to a decline of liberalism in the nation. Using "legislative histories," this article compares Key's single-factor "racial" explanation with a two-factor explanation—and by implication with multifactor ones—and finds Key's more compelling and parsimonious. Archival sources indicate that more than two years before the 1948 Democratic Convention, Charlie Ross, Truman's closest advisor, and Truman himself encouraged Key to assess the emerging postwar politics of the South. As Key anticipated, institutionalized racism sunk the Fair Deal and postwar social democracy, despite Truman's efforts. The effects of racism on postwar and current politics and public administration should be reexamined as a key to understanding American distinctiveness or exceptionalism.     

Reinvention As Reform: Assessing the National Performance Review

The conclusion of the Clinton Administration presents an opportune time to investigate the outcomes of the National Performance Review (NPR). Any such evaluation, however, is complicated by the nature of the objectives sought, many of which relate to subtle and elusive elements of organizational life: empowering employees, inducing a less risk-adverse culture, and enhancing the quality of service delivery. The strategy employed here as a means of gaining insight into such phenomena was to couple a broad review of government-wide survey results with an in-depth investigation into the impact of NPR on a single agency, the Social Security Administration. A conclusion is that many of the NPR's "higher-order" objectives have not been met on a systemic basis. While a variety of proximate explanations for this finding can be identified, a more fundamental explanation relates to a failure by the sponsors to adjust their strategy to account for basic differences between NPR and past reforms.