The thrill of victory,the agony of defeat

This paper presents experimental evidence from a rent-seeking exercise where the highest bidder wins the rent, but all bidders, including the winner, lose their wagers. This exercise closely resembles the rent-seeking dilemma facing agents in many settings. There are two main conclusions from the results. First, there is a tendency towards overdissipation of the rent. Second, some individuals are willing to pay more for a rent than its face-value would warrant. We attribute this phenomenon to a “thrill of victory” effect.     

Mediation and Restorative Justice in Belgium

In this article we present, discuss and try to evaluate initiatives which were recently introduced into the Belgian criminal justice system, aimed at the development of creative answers to crime that avoid the use of traditional prison sentences. We decided to focus this analysis on the practice of mediation as it is actually considered the most innovative approach to the crime problem. Mediation as a problem-solving intervention has to be considered in direct relation to the discussion of the purpose of the criminal justice system. By putting the emphasis on the dialogue between the victim and the offender, a common solution is worked out with the help of a mediator. In this way reparation, redress and sometimes even reconciliation become core values of the penal action.     

Urban Drug Problems, Policymakers and the General Public

The main focus of this paper is: how strong are people's opinions and policy preferences on the issue of drugs and drug users influenced by their own exposure to drug problems? From a general population survey conducted in eleven European cities, it is concluded that opinions and policy preferences are influenced only to a limited degree by exposure. The people who are not exposed to drug problems in their neighbourhood are more strongly inclined towards a repressive approach than the people who are affected by drug nuisance. Personal experiences with illicit drugs play an important part in the viewpoints. People who have tried drugs themselves lean far more strongly towards a health approach. That tendency is even stronger among those who are exposed to drug-related nuisance.     

The policy process: an institutionalist perspective

Abstract: The stages model of the policy process constitutes the conventional wisdom about the policy-making for much of political science and public administration. That model has performed a number of important tasks for these disciplines, but also contains a number of fundamental weaknesses. These include its assumptions concerning linearity and the temporal ordering of the stages, and the difficulty of the model in coping with policy change. Further, outcomes of the stages model tend to be determined by the environment of politics, rather than by the actors and institutions within government. The analysis presented in this article attempts to restore institutions (including the public bureaucracy) to a more appropriate central position in the formulation and determination of policy choices. The use of institutional analysis not only reflects more clearly the complex reality of policy-making and the interaction of organizations within the public sector, but it restores value concerns to a central place in the analysis and interpretation of public policy. Sommaire: Le modèle d'étapes utilisé dans le processus d'élaboration des politiques constitue le modèle conventionnel par excellence pour une bonne partie des sciences politiques et de l'administration publique. Bien que ce modèle ait permis de mener à bien des tâches importantes dans ces disciplines, il fait preuve de faiblesse sur certains points fondamentaux. Mentionnons notamment ses hypothèses sur la linéarité et l'ordonnancement temporel des étapes, ainsi que ses difficultés à tenir compte des changements de politiques. De plus, les résultats obtenus avec ce modèle tendent àêtre déterminés par l'environnement des politiques, plutôt que par les intervenants et les institutions au sein du gouvernement. L'analyse présentée dans cet article tente de redonner aux institutions (dont la bureaucratie publique) la place plus centrale qu'elles méritent dans l'élaboration et la détermination des politiques. Le recours à une analyse institutionnelle ne se contente pas de refléter plus clairement la réalité complexe de l'élaboration des politiques et l'interaction des organisations au sein du secteur public, mais il redonne une place essentielle aux questions de valeurs dans l'analyse et l'interprétation des politiques publiques.     

Administration in the year 2000: serving the client

One component of the increasing emphasis on management in the public sector is an emphasis on serving the “customer” of public sector agencies. Although it is difficult to argue that the clients of the public agencies should not be served courteously and efficiently, there are a number of questions about whether they should be thought of as customers in the same way as in the private sector. Some of those questions are empirical, related to difficulties in clearly identifying the customers of agencies. Other questions are normative, related to the proper definition of the role of the clients of public agencies and the definition of the public interest. These problems require serious rethinking of any simplistic adoption of a customer orientation in government.