Does Reinvention Need Reinvention? Lessons from Tmncated Managerialism in Britain

Since the 1970s, reformers have pressed innovation in Whitehall management. However, the reinvention efforts by both the Thatcher and Major governments under the banners of public choice and managerialism have led the reform movement to a dead end. Using interviews ranging from 1978 to 1993 and drawing upon the works of public management theorists, this article analyzes the obstacles to reinventing government in the UK. Namely, the politicization of the process coupled with HM Treasuy's stronghold on expenditures has limited managerial discretion and built mistrust of veforms among civil servants. Rather than creating an environment conducive to innovations in public management, the UKs efforts have deepened the divide between policymakers and administrators.     

CRIMINAL INVOLVEMENT OF FEMALE OFFENDERS

Two theoretical approaches tend to dominate the literature on the manner in which exoffenders reintegrate into society. These are the structural and subcultural models. The structural model (Merton, 1938; Cloward and Ohlin, 1960: Ohlin, 1970) posits that closing of the legitimate opportunity structure leads to secondary deviation and it also traces initial criminality to a discrepancy between means and ends for achieving success goals. The subcultural model (Cohen, 1955; Pownall, 1969) views the primary factors explaining the failure of the exoffender to adjust to society as influences exerted by the criminal subculture. These have traditionally been treated as competing theoretical models. The research reported here sought to evaluate these two approaches and to combine them in an applied framework called differential integration. Data on 874 exoffenders provided with job placements during 1976 show that structural variables tended to differentiate the employment outcomes of exoffenders much more than subcultural variables and that there is partial support for the differential integration concept .     

ECONOMIC MAN AND ORIGINAL

Abstract. Are we descended from Adam or from rational economic homunculi? Rational-man theories usually favour the latter. But all four main versions run into famous puzzles of collective action. The cause is an underlying Humean philosophy of mind, by which desires, not reasons, move the rational man. When this is replaced, the idea of expressive rationality can be made to work. It requires a model of man, which gives human nature less variables and more constants. Among the constants there needs to be a pride, which spurs men both to create a social framework and to undermine their own creation. The old name for this source of social contradictions is Original Sin.     

Where Has Child Protection Gone?

The government introduced its ambitious plans to transform children's services as its response to the tragic death of Victoria Climbie, the victim of child abuse. However their scope is far more than improving child protection services. The aim is to develop preventive services, responding to low level concerns, so that all children are helped to achieve their potential. This article asks what the impact of this shift in emphasis will be for child protection work. It argues that the refocusing carries the risk of taking resources and professional time away from investigating serious cases of abuse and fails to address the problems in professional practice identified in the Climbie report.     

The social dimension of the Single European Market: National versus transnational regulation

Abstract. Labour market regulation in the 1980s was subject to transnational pressures for deregulation, especially in the form of 'flexibilisation'. The 'Single European Market' project (SEM) promises further development in this direction. At the same time, proposals for a 'Social Charter' are meant to introduce a European level of regulation to counteract the SEM's potential destabilizing consequences. However, regulatory disputes and pressures contrary to convergence are likely to be intensified by the SEM. Still further uncertainty will be created by changes in Eastern Europe, as well as by greater opportunities for cross-border production shifts. Neoliberal and neocorporatist variants of the 'competition state' will be increasingly at odds at both state and Community level, with the future of 'social Europe' at stake. To the extent that market integration means a globalisation of the European economy, it may effectively disintegrate its component parts, dividing those which have more solid foundations for growth - the well-regulated, high pay/high productivity areas - from those which do not. The market logic of the Single European Market programme will manifestly contradict the efforts of the Community to avoid this future.     

COLLECTIVE SECURITY AND THE OWNERSHIP OF FIREARMS FOR PROTECTION

This paper examines the hypothesis that people purchase firearms for protection when confidence in collective institutions of justice and security declines. Analysis of survey data from Detroit indicates that gun ownership for protection is inversely related to confidence in the police and in the courts, and that these relationships are independent of demographic and socioeconomic variables and fear of crime.