FROM PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION TO PUBLIC MANAGEMENT: REASSESSING A REVOLUTION?

Changes to the study of public administration tend to follow those in the practice of the administration of government. The recent shift to public management is characterized and assessed both as a practice and a field of study. The result has been less a revolution in paradigm than the emergence of a vision of government which competes with but does not supplant traditional public administration.     

Reexamining the Institutional Effects of Term Limits in U.S. State Legislatures

Research on term limits suggests that they have substantial consequences for the power of legislatures vis‐à‐vis the executive and interest groups and for the relationship between leaders and rank‐and‐file members within a chamber. Existing work, however, has not accounted for the actual power of relevant state actors. We contribute to this research by examining the effect of term limits on the influence of institutional actors conditional on the existing political power structure in a state. The inclusion of controls for the direct and moderating effect of actual institutional power suggests some significant extensions of previous findings regarding the institutional effects of term limits.     

Parties,Preferences, and Petitions: Discharge Behavior in the Modern House

Although discharge petitions lie at the confluence of personal preferences, committee prerogatives, and party leadership in Congress, these procedures have received little scholarly scrutiny. We capitalize on the public nature of petition signatures since 1993 to examine the behavior of the most cross‐pressured members in discharge battles: bill sponsors and cosponsors belonging to the majority party who personally prefer the bills they have sponsored but who face party pressure not to sign the petitions that threaten the leadership's control of the legislative agenda. After controlling for personal preferences, we find a statistically significant partisan effect in the U.S. House, which further illuminates the “Where's the party?” debate.     

WOMEN IN UK PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION SCHOLARSHIP?

The promotion of gender equality has been adopted onto many national policy agendas with the introduction of legislation, public policies and regulatory duties. Yet, gender occupational segregation and discrimination persists. This paper examines the gendered nature of the UK public sector and questions the extent to which public administration scholarship addresses gender bias. The evidence, based on secondary and primary data, reveals that public administration scholarship tends to value masculinity. The intention of the paper is to stimulate a debate by providing a critical reflection of public administration scholarship, and concludes with some tentative suggestions on ways forward for the field of study.     

GIRL FRIENDS ARE BETTER: GENDER,FRIENDS, AND CRIME AMONG SCHOOL AND STREET YOUTH*

In recent years, popular media has drawn attention to “mean girls” and their negative treatment of others, particularly other females. But while the attention to girls' aggression and their mistreatment of their peers highlights understudied aspects of female behavior, it neglects the beneficial aspects of female friendship. We argue that compared to relationships with males, friendships with females provide more social control, fewer opportunities and less motivation for offending and may therefore discourage crime. Because an adolescent's gender likely influences the association between the gender of one's friends and crime, we anticipate that the association will be stronger for females than for males. The relationship is also likely affected by the context in which relationships originate; we expect that those that develop in less conventional contexts will have weaker effects on crime. We explore these hypotheses with a comparative analysis of effects of friendships on property crime in two samples of youth: those who live at home and attend school and those who are homeless and spend their days and nights on the street. Our findings support our hypotheses. The relationship between female‐dominated friendship networks and property crime is negative and significant; however, this association is strongest for school females, weaker for school males and females who live on the street, and nonsignificant for homeless males.     

Budget Deficits in the States: Connecticut

Like many states, the State of Connecticut has recently faced substantial budget problems. This article is one of several that explore budget deficits in the states. We explore the reasons, extent, and current solutions to the budget deficits in Connecticut. Connecticut's fiscal circumstances include very poor accounting practices; dueling revenue estimates; large amounts of debt (both bonded and for post-employment benefits); a structurally strong legislature and governor; a governor and legislative majority of different political parties and fiscal philosophies; and a legislature with the ability to override gubernatorial vetoes. The combination of these ingredients has led to a highly partisan and contentious approach to budget discussions amid some of the largest budget deficits the state has ever experienced.     

From process consultation to a clinical model of development practice

This article argues that two related concepts, process consultation and, in particular, the clinical perspective, developed by the organizational psychologist Edgar Schein, can improve the understanding, teaching and conduct of development practice. Process consultation, which is more than just the application of so-called process approaches, and the clinical perspective are described, and the case for them is put, in relation to contrasts with ethnography and action research and in the light of contemporary debates about the relationship between development studies and development practice. Five particular aspects of the clinical model—the primacy of the ‘helpful intervention’, the subservience of science to helping, its client centredness, its recognition of interventionists’ financial and political status, and its overt normativeness—are seen as particularly relevant to development practice. In conclusion, the clinical model is seen to pose four challenges for development studies: the creation of development's own theory of practice, the establishment of rigorous practitioner training programmes, the consequent institutional change, and an acknowledgement of the implications of development studies’ disciplinary biases. © 1997 by John Wiley & Sons Ltd. Public Admin. Dev. Vol. 17 , 325–340 (1997). No. of Figures: 0. No. of Tables: 0. No. of Refs: 48.