Recovering the Craft of Public Administration

Public sector reform has rarely dropped off the political agenda of Western governments, yet the old craft skills of traditional public administration remain of paramount importance. The pendulum has swung too far toward the new and the fashionable reforms associated with New Public Management and the New Public Governance. It needs to swing back toward bureaucracy and the traditional skills of bureaucrats as part of the repertoire of governing. This article discusses the skills of counseling, stewardship, practical wisdom, probity, judgment, diplomacy, and political nous. Although these skills are of wide relevance, the article focuses on their relevance in Australia, Britain, Canada, and New Zealand. It concludes that the next bout of reforms needs to recover the traditional craft skills. It is not a question of traditional skills versus the new skills of New Public Management or New Public Governance; it is a question of what works, of what skills fit in a particular context.     

Political participation of ethnic minorities in the 1980s

Currently political participation, especially voter registration and turnout, varies substantially with ethnicity. Blacks and non-Hispanic whites participate at roughly equal rates, while Latinos and Asian-Americans are substantially less active. This variation may be the direct product of cultural factors, or it may reflect differences in the distribution of various determinants of participation, most notably education, citizenship, and age. Using data collected in 1984 on samples of California's black, Latino, Asian-American, and non-Hispanic white populations, we conclude that such variables fully account for lower Latino participation rates. Even with these controls, however, Asian-Americans remain less likely to vote. Because ethnic group consciousness is one of the variables related to activity, we conclude that ethnicity does have an indirect effect on participation as a basis for mobilization. In addition, we establish that noncitizens engage in nonelectoral activities, and we project future political participation rates of Latinos and Asian-Americans under several scenarios.     

Captain of “We Band of Brothers”: An Archaeologist’s Homage to Nehemia Levtzion

By inviting archaeologists to collaborate in the revision of his beloved Ancient Ghana and Mali, Nehemia Levtzion confronted the oft-assumed, yet-rarely tested asymmetry in explanatory power between documentary history and archaeology. Others have treated prehistorians as, at best, handmaidens and, at worse, scientific parvenus. Levtzion explicitly rejected several assumptions that render many histories of pre-colonial Africa uninteresting to prehistorians: (1) that that the data of archaeology provide, at best, background and context, (2) that the hierarchical state is the only viable integrative structure when peoples become stratified economically or politically, and (3) that culture change in Africa simply replicates patterns already known from elsewhere, and no others. Levtzion enlisted a plural force of specialists, a “Band of Brothers,” to continue his Good Fight against those who would distain Africa’s accomplishments.     

Evolution of presidential news coverage

This study is the second of two reporting on how the American presidency has been rhetorically constructed for the nation's citizens by the mass media between 1945 and 1985. These research papers examined 412 Time magazine articles on the presidency, keying on such matters as how that magazine documented its reportage, which presidential qualities, behaviors, and problems it emphasized, and how Time used language strategies to describe and evaluate the presidency. By using a variety of content analytic methods, the authors detected two general trends in Time’s coverage: (1) the American presidency has been portrayed as an increasingly besieged institution—socially, politically, and psychologically—and (2) Time’s heavy focus on bureaucratic politics has resulted in an increasing institutionalization of the presidency. A variety of data support these two conclusions and suggest, furthermore, the existence of an over‐arching conceptual model in Time’s discussions of the presidency. The implications of this model are explored briefly here.     

Transferring Corporate Governance Codes: Form or Substance? Corporate Governance in Hungary

This article examines the transfer of the OECD corporate governance code to Hungary. It documents the process of code transmission, and assesses its impact through an examination of corporate governance in the three largest Hungarian private companies—Magyar Telekom, MOL and OTP. The article illustrates the disjuncture between formal commitment to code adoption and its effective implementation, with a case study of the abortive takeover bid by OMV for MOL in 2007–2008. The reasons for the disjuncture are related to national and corporate contextual conditions, management incentives and the channels of transmission.     

The nature of economic perceptions in mass publics

Voters who believe that the nation's economy has been worsening are more inclined to vote against the incumbent president than are those who believe it has not been getting worse. This relationship could be present because voters condition their support for the incumbents upon their perceptions of the economy, or, alternatively, because they condition their perceptions of the economy upon their underlying, partisan-based support of the incumbents.     

Troubled Talk and Talking Cures: From "Smart Talk" to Wise Conversations

Interpersonal communications is widely viewed as both a source of conflict in many social relationships and a cure-all for resolving such conflict. Some theorists assert that we simply do not interact, or talk, enough in modern society; others point out that our communication styles seem increasingly argumentative, exclude important potential contributors, or are strategically facile but shallow. The author discusses the various forms of dysfunctional "talk" in which people engage, then reviews four recent books, all of which focus (at least in part) on how we might talk (and negotiate) with one another more constructively: Bargaining for Advantage , by G. Richard Shell; Winning 'Em Over , by Jay C. Conger; Difficult Conversations , by Douglas Stone, Bruce Patton and Sheila Heen; and The Magic of Dialogue by Daniel Yankelovich.     

为学习、发现和公民权利创造一个充满活力的国际竞争环境

大学发展规划和职员更新对大学发展起着重要作用。要培养创新型人才,必须改造和激活学习环境。为此,要完善研究人员和教学人员的评估激励机制,关注生源渠道,注重能力培养。在科研方面,无论是基础研究还是应用研究、成果转化,都需要出色的研究人员、研究团队及团队成员之间的合作。成果转化和技术转让更离不开创新团队及其同各种机构之间的密切合作。