Electoral Competition, Participation, and Government Responsiveness in Mexico

In this article I test two competing visions about how democracy produces responsive government. Electoral theories of democracy posit that elected governments are responsive to public demands because citizens are able to sanction bad politicians and select good ones. Participatory theories attribute responsiveness to a citizenry's ability to articulate demands and pressure government through a wider range of political action. I test hypotheses derived from these two approaches, using an original dataset that combines electoral, socioeconomic, and public-financial indicators for Mexico's 2,400 municipalities, from 1989 to 2000. The data show that electoral competition has no effect on municipal government performance. But the results are consistent with the hypothesis that nonelectoral participation causes improved performance. Thus, I suggest that the quality of municipal government in Mexico depends on an engaged citizenry and cooperation between political leaders and their constituents, rather than the threat of electoral punishment. I recommend that scholars broaden the study of government responsiveness to account for participatory strategies of political influence and critically assess the claims of those who would promote elections as a cure-all for poor democratic performance.     

Civil Service Reform as National Security: The Homeland Security Act of 2002

The events of 9/11 have influenced policy making in public administration. The Homeland Security Act of 2002, which created the Department of Homeland Security, contained language that empowered the secretary of homeland security and the director of the Office of Personnel Management to establish a personnel management system outside the normal provisions of the federal civil service. Why did civil service reform succeed as part of this legislation when previous attempts at large‐scale reform had failed? A case analysis of the enactment of civil service reform in the Homeland Security Act points to theories of policy emergence and certain models of presidential and congressional policy making. In this case, civil service reform became associated with national security instead of management reform. An assessment of the rhetorical arguments used to frame this policy image offers a powerful explanation for the adoption of the personnel management reforms in the Homeland Security Act. This case has implications for understanding how policy makers might approach future management reform agendas.     

Explaining Japan's Tortured Course to Surveillance Satellites

On December 25, 1998 the Japanese government reinterpreted a long‐standing policy prohibiting the use of outer space for military purposes by announcing its intention to develop a network of domestically produced and deployed “information‐gathering” satellites to be utilized primarily by the Japan Defense Agency (JDA) and other national security institutions. This decision is important in its own right—for one, Japan is a major player in the space technology arena—but also because of the precedent it sets for other areas of technology and military policy in Japan today. As many observers have noted, Japan appears to be undergoing a broad reexamination both of its view of the appropriate level of interaction between government bureaucracy and industry and of its military security strategy in the first decade of the twenty‐first century. The case of surveillance satellites links these two areas together, offering broader lessons for the course of Japanese policy in numerous areas in the future.     

Law Enforcement Lessons Learned from Hurricane Katrina

Major disasters represent infrequent events that often require response organizations to vicariously learn from the experiences of others in order to improve their operations. A primary mechanism for such knowledge diffusion is the different practitioner and empirical journals for the organizational fields that comprise disaster response. A review of the literature for the law enforcement field, however, reveals that little attention is given to how these organizations manage actual disasters. In particular, the presentation of organizational experiences, whether through case studies or other methodologies, is very limited in the practitioner and empirical literature of this field. This represents a considerable problem for improvements of disaster response operations given that law enforcement agencies represent a key component in such efforts. The research presented in this article is an effort to fill this knowledge gap and thereby facilitate organizational learning to improve future law enforcement disaster response activities. The authors traveled to Mississippi and Louisiana after Hurricane Katrina to examine the response efforts of state and local law enforcement agencies to the storm. The findings from this research are reported here in a lessons‐learned format to inform law enforcement disaster response policy.     

中国经济体制改革与劳动合同制的发展

任何劳动用工形式都是由当时的经济体制决定并随之而发展的.从劳动用工终身制到合同制,再从<劳动法>到<劳动合同法>,改革开放后中国的劳动用工形式发生了重大改变.<劳动合同法>颁布后各界反应不一,只有将此过程同三十年来中国经济体制转型的大背景相结合,才能从根本上理解中国劳动合同制产生、发展和规范的历史脉络,也才能从根本上理解<劳动合同法>.     

构建社会主义核心价值观的关键词

社会的核心价值观是社会价值理念、社会价值尺度的核心和灵魂,是一个国家的、社会的、民众的价值理念。中国特色的核心价值观必须基于现时代党的理论支撑和现实国情。建设社会主义核心价值观,必须充分把握四个关键词,即人本、公正、民主和和谐。对社会主义核心价值观的弘扬,突出表现在社会的意识形态宣传和社会制度安排上。     

政府公务人员工作生活质量与行政效能之关系研究

随着对企业人力资源管理研究的深入,学者们对公共部门人力资源管理的研究也步入了正轨。公共部门人力资源管理重要目的之一是要使公务人员有良好的绩效表现及较高的服务品质,即具有较高的行政效能。难免要涉及到公务人员的工作生活质量问题。现代公共人力资源管理已经抛弃了传统的人事管理那种重控制、重监督、重处罚的消极管理,进入了创造良好的工作生活质量,并以此激发公务人员的活力的时代。