The specificity of public service reform

Despite universal recognition of the decline of public services and the need for reforms, considerable divergence of views exists on the strategy and sequencing of reform for individual countries according to their capacities and level of development. This article reflects on the general contours of public service reform, emphasising past experience, the need to be pragmatic rather than idealistic, the mudding of the waters by the New Public Management movement, the complications of structural adjustment programmes of international financial institutions and the damage resulting from the imposition of universal solutions unfitted and unsuitable to local circumstances. Reform needs political and bureaucratic champions, careful preparation, patience and necessary investment, and capacity to neutralise opposition. Ultimately, one has to allow for a shifting combination of history, culture, politics, economics, sociology, ideology and values in each country. This analysis is applied to the possibility of reforming the public service of India, the second most populous country in the world, and the lessons to be gleaned for developing and implementing the strategy. The article then concludes with an outline of some universal problems facing public service reformers all around the globe such as corruption, the future role of government, shape of the civil service, reversing its erosion and addressing issues of fragmentation, compensation and diversity. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Hospital selective contracting without consumer choice: What can we learn from Medi‐Cal?

In the selective contracting era, consumer choice has generally been absent in most state Medicaid programs, including California's (called Medi-Cal). In a setting where beneficiary exit is not a threat, a large payer may have both the incentives and the ability to exercise undue market power, potentially exposing an already vulnerable population to further harm. The analyses presented here of Medi-Cal contracting data, however, do not yield compelling evidence in favor of the undue market power hypothesis. Instead, hospital competition appears to explain with greater consistency why certain hospitals choose to contract with Medi-Cal while others do not, the trends in inpatient prices paid by Medi-Cal over time, and the effect of price competition on service cutbacks, such as emergency room closures. Copyright 2003 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Identity and intimacy: An initial investigation of three theoretical models using cross-lag panel correlations

This investigation specified three models regarding the association between identity and intimacy formation and investigated their potential validity using a longitudinal cross-lag panel design. Seventy-one males and 71 females completed identity and intimacy measures on two occasions over a 5-week period. The primary findings are (1) individuals with a clear sense of identity are more likely, 5 weeks later, to have a more advanced sense of intimacy for both sexes when sex-role identification is removed from gender comparisons; (2) sex-role orientation mediates the identity/intimacy association, while for females, a masculine orientation is associated with a pattern similar to that observed for either masculine- or feminine-oriented males; and (3) femininity is associated with a more fused connection between identity and intimacy for females. This report provides an initial investigation studying the identity/intimacy association during late adolescence based on three theoretical perspectives. Theoretical interpretations and conclusions are offered.Partial support for this project was provided by grants to the second author from the Utah State University Agricultural Experiment Station and the Office of Research, Utah State University. Approved as journal paper No. 3917.Research interests are adolescent identity development in the family context, adolescent sexuality, and sex-role development.Research interests focus on personality and social development during adolescence.     

A study of the interrelationships of several validity scales used in police selection

Validity scale data have received attention recently as providing valuable information about potential problematic police officer candidates. In this study, validity scale data from a number of selection instruments were obtained using 42 state police officer candidates. The scale used were the MMPI-2 L scale, the MMPI-2 K scale, the PAI Positive Impression Scale (PIM), the PAI Defensiveness Index (DI), the IPI Guardedness scale, the Hilson Life Adjustment Profile Lack of Candor scale, and the Inwald Survey 2 Denial of Shortcomings scale. Intercorrelations among the scales were developed and a factor analysis was performed. Factor analysis revealed two factors to be present. One is associated with the Hilson scales and is appropriately named guardedness or defensiveness. The other is associated with the MMPI-2 K scale and the PAI scales and is appropriately named social desirability. The MMPI-2 L scale loaded significantly on both factors and seemed to be the most general of the validity scales in terms of its characteristics. Implications of these analyses for police selection are discussed.     

The Nature of Contracting Hazards in Public–Private Partnerships—Evidence from Ireland

The use of public–private partnerships (PPP) for the procurement of infrastructure and related services can be a complex and challenging process. This article adopts a transaction cost regulation perspective to examine two PPP cases from Ireland that encountered significant obstacles to successful procurement. It finds that both procurements met hazards including uncertainty about the viability of the bids and opportunistic behavior by preferred bidders that held quasi-monopoly positions. The public nature of both cases provided a fertile ground for opportunistic behavior by political opponents and other “interested” parties. The analysis shows how the governance of PPPs is shaped by the attributes of the transactions and the interaction of economic and political hazards that create transaction costs.     

Bargaining Power in the European Union: An Evaluation of Competing Game-Theoretic Models

This article evaluates, by drawing on Barry's distinction between 'power' and 'luck', the predictive accuracy of competing bargaining models. We explore whether models that take various facets of political power into account predict legislative outcomes more precisely than purely preference-based models like the Nash Bargaining Solution (NBS). Our empirical examination compares how well different formal models predict the outcome of 66 legislative decisions made within the European Union (EU). A model that considers the saliency actors attach to a contested issue performs best among all the models under examination. Although resource-based models provide less accurate forecasts on average, they offer relatively precise point predictions. The analysis also shows that domestic constraints are not a particularly important bargaining resource in legislative decision making.     

Psychological Injury and Law: Assumptions and Foundations, Controversies and Myths, Needed Directions

Psychological injury and law is a fast-developing field that is constructing a set of foundational assumptions and core knowledge guiding its science and practice. At the same time, it is marked by controversies, functions in an adversarial legal system and related systems, and is bedeviled by myths. I present a list of 25 basic assumptions, core knowledge, controversies, myths, and needed directions. With well-designed conceptualization and research on critical issues, the assumptions and core knowledge base in the field of psychological injury and law can continue to improve in quality, reducing its controversies and myths, and moderating the impact of the adversarial nature of the legal system and related systems in which it must function.     

Psychological Injury and Law: An Integrative Model

This article briefly reviews the literature on three areas of psychological injury, post-traumatic stress disorder, chronic pain, and traumatic brain injury, preparatory to presentation of an integrated biopsychosocial and forensic model of multifactorial causality. The model is the first in the field to (a) cover in one model the three types of psychological injury, (b) while including a full range of causality factors relevant to forensic psychology (such as pre-event, event-, post-event, and unrelated factors), and (c) while addressing the relevance of biopsychological and stress as a cohering factors in all conditions. (d) The model emphasizes the importance of individual differences, for example, in causality of symptom presentation. (e) The model acknowledges that in individual evaluations, psychologists need to consider threats to validity, response biases, and possible malingering, and verify whether pre-event factors fully explain post-event presentation.     

Athletic Involvement and Adolescent Delinquency

Athough conventional wisdom suggests that organized sport deters delinquency by building character, structuring adolescents’ time, and providing incentives for socially approved behavior, the empirical evidence to date has been mixed. Based on a sample of approximately 600 Western New York adolescents, the present study examined how self-reported jock identity, school athlete status, and frequency of athletic activity differentially influenced a range of delinquent behaviors. Neither athlete status nor frequency of athletic activity predicted these behaviors; however, jock identity was associated with significantly more incidents of delinquency. This finding was robust across both gender and race. Follow-up analyses indicated that jock identity facilitated both minor and major delinquency, with major delinquency effects for white but not black adolescents. Research scientist at the Research Institute on Addictions and adjunct assistant professor of sociology at the University at Buffalo, SUNY. Her research interests focus primarily on adolescent and young adult health-risk behaviors such as substance use, sexual risk-taking, and suicidality. She is the principal investigator of a exploratory study of athletic involvement, gender, and substance use by college students. Professor of physical education and sport at S.U.N.Y. Brockport for 33 years. A native New Yorker, he has also held adjunct faculty appointments at universities in Finland, Israel, England, New Zealand, and Norway. He has authored or edited nearly a hundred publications in physical education, sociology of sport, and social psychology of sport, including Sports Fans: The Psychology and Social Impact of Spectators (Routledge) and Contemporary Issues in Sociology of Sport (Human Kinetics). Senior research scientist at the Research Institute on Addictions and adjunct associate professor of sociology at the University at Buffalo, SUNY. Her research interests include family influences on the development of adolescent substance use and other problem behaviors, including gambling. Professor of sociology at D’Youville College, and director of the Center for Research on Physical Activity, Sport & Health. He has conducted numerous nationwide studies of the links among sport, health, and educational outcomes. An avid scholar on gender relations, his recent book Prison Masculinities (Temple University) focuses on the USA prison system. Professor of sociology at the University at Buffalo, SUNY. Author of numerous articles and books on adolescent and parental development in families and groups, his most recent book is Collaborative Circles: Friendship Dynamics and Creative Work (University of Chicago).     

Policy representation of constituency interests

This paper examines two aspects of congressional representation: the responsiveness of House candidates to constituency opinion and the effect of candidate positions on House election outcomes. For both Democratic- and Republican-held seats, constituency liberalism (as measured by the constituency's vote for McGovern in 1972) is strongly related to the liberalism of incumbent candidates but less so to the liberalism of challengers. House election outcomes are visibly influenced by the positions of incumbent candidates but not those of nonincumbent candidates. The paper argues that elections contribute significantly to achieving congressional representation. Candidate positions are measured from a 1974 CBS survey of all major House candidates.