Organizing research in an information society

His publications include Guidelines to the Decentralization of Government Furnctions; Utilization of RANN Research Results: A Survey of the Research Applied to National Needs Program of the National Science Foundation;and A Strategy for Improving Education in Science and Mathematics.     

The political economy of environmental regulation: Towards a unifying framework

There are several theories that attempt to explain various aspects of environmental policy. Building on insights from this theoretical work, and recent advances in our understanding of instrument performance, this paper constructs a more complete theory of environmental regulation. There are two primary contributions of this research. The first is to provide more satisfactory explanations for a number of observed patterns of environmental policy. For example, there is, as yet, no satisfactory theory about the emergence of incentive-based mechanisms, such as marketable permits and effluent fees. The second contribution of this paper is to develop a parsimonious framework for understanding many important aspects of environmental policy. This framework suggests the outputs of environmental policy emerge from a struggle between key interest groups.This research was supported by the National Science Foundation. I would like to thank Gordon Hester for helpful comments. Responsibility for the final product rests solely with the author.     

Manging state government operations: Changing visions of staff agencies

Centralized staff agencies embody the early 20th century bureaucratic reform vision of good government. The behavior of these agencies, as well as the conception of administration contained in the bureaucratic reform vision, are often criticized. Feasible alternative conceptions of staff-line-overseer relations are only beginning to emerge through the contextual development of public management ideas and incremental innovation. This article draws on experience in Minnesota state government in order to formulate a “post-bureaucratic” conception of staff-line-overseer relations. In addition, strategies embedding this conception in the practice of the purchasing, staffing, information policy, and internal service functions are briefly explored.     

Policy makers,policy choices,and policy outcomes: The political economy of reform in developing countries

This article presents an analytic model for understanding the role of decision makers in bringing about significant policy and institutional changes and in understanding how processes of agenda setting, decision making, and implementation shape the content, timing, and sustainability of reform initiatives. Central to the model is the assertion that policy elites and the policy making process are important determinants of reform. The framework indicates that circumstances surrounding issue formation, the criteria that decision makers use to select among options, and the characteristics of specific policies are analytic categories that explain a considerable amount about reform outcomes. The model is based on cases developed by participants in twelve initiatives to bring about policy and institutional change in a variety of developing countries.     

Explaining Privatization: Notes Towards a Predictive Theory

This article starts from the assumption that some of the theoretical work used to explain welfare-state expansion can be used 'in reverse' to explain privatization, here seen as welfare state contraction, i.e., the transfer from the public to the private sector of the responsibility for certain activities involved in welfare provision. To this end, valiants of the 'power resources' approach are examined. Finding that the 'labour movement' thesis does not have a strong predictive value, I then discuss the 'game theoretical' variant of the 'power resources' approach. Its usefulness for predicting privatization patterns seems limited because of the reductionism built into it. Following the neo-Institutionalists' argument that actor preferences and strategies both reflect and form institutional arrangements of the welfare state, some institutional typologies are developed which are relevant to the course and patterns of privatization. An ideal-type dichotomy between 'pluralist' and 'corporatist' institutions is discussed, in connection with a further delineation of decision-making, financing, and implementing structures. In conclusion, an effort is made to combine actor-oriented and institutional approaches to formulate some preliminary predictions about when and where certain patterns of privatization will occur.