Inaction and public policy: understanding why policymakers ‘do nothing’

Policy Sciences - In recent decades, the policy sciences have struggled to come to terms with the significance of inaction in public policy. Inaction refers to instances when policymakers ‘do...     

Parenting Coordination: The Risks of a Hybrid Conflict Resolution Process

Parenting coordination is a conflict resolution process that blends the roles of mediator, decision maker, monitor, assessor, educator, counselor, and enforcer for families involved in high‐conflict divorces. This article explores the potential benefits and risks of blending roles in terms of efficiency, effectiveness, trust, posturing, dual roles, self‐determination, and allegations of bias.     

PBB in American Local Governments: It's More than a Management Tool

Despite academic findings that performance information seldom is used in appropriations decisions, many professional organizations and governments continue to press for integrating performance information into local public management, planning, and budgeting processes. Is it possible to reconcile such inconsistencies? Looking beyond the executive–legislative relationship and departmental appropriations, the author examines the budget implications of applying performance information at the subdepartmental program level. Case analysis of Indianapolis’s IndyStat initiative underscores that performance measurement application is positively related to intradepartmental program budget changes. Hence, performance‐based budgeting (PBB) can improve local budgeting despite severe political constraints. Still, successful use of PBB requires strong executive leadership, and its effects remain less visible at the departmental level or within the wider political arena of legislative bargaining. The author concludes by recommending some rethinking of the current analytical focus of PBB both in future research as well as recommended practice.     

Donor conception, secrecy and the search for information

Donor conception has historically been shrouded in secrecy. Such secrecy has been underpinned by social views and legal issues concemrning the adults involved in the process--the donor, the recipient parent(s), and, at times, the doctor. However, there is increasing recognition of the need to focus upon donor-conceived people's interests and rights to have identifying and non-identifying information about their donors. This editorial examines issues raised in relation to information release, while also introducing some of the arguments presented by other authors in this Special Issue of the JLM. It also considers recent Australian federal and State government inquiries that have favoured information release and the former Victorian Infertility Treatment Authority's service model to support people in the process of information access and release. While there has been a clear shift to favouring openness and honesty, legislative action is still required to ensure the balancing and realisation of people's interests.     

Les Occidentaux: Western Europe and the United States since the Second World War

In his recent book, Les Occidentaux, Alfred Grosser describes and analyses the complex conundrum of relations between the countries of Western Europe and the United States since 1945. In the late 1970s, this story is of course still incomplete, because there has been no ‘end of an era’ in transatlantic relations, in spite of the deep economic crisis which has affected all the countries involved. His study focuses not only on the facts, but also on how these facts were perceived by those involved; in so doing it poses, answers and provokes many questions. In the following edited and translated extract from the Conclusion of his book, Professor Grosser briefly re‐examines some of the more significant problems he has considered and takes another look at his solutions and their implications.     

Scottish Legal History Group Report 2012

The Enigma of Felix Frankfurter. H. N. Hirsch New York, 1981. Basic Books Inc. x + 253pp (incl. index). £11.25.

Jogtörteneti Tanulmanyok (Studies in Legal History) Edited by A. Adam. F. Benedek and J. Szita. Legal Studies of Pecs University no. 95. Pecs. 1980. 432 pp.