Horizontal Accountability in Transitional Democracies: The Human Rights Ombudsman in El Salvador and Guatemala

Postwar El Salvador and Guatemala have undertaken to reform and democratize the state and to support the rule of law. Each country entered the 1990s hobbled by a legacy of authoritarian rule, while a corrupt and politicized judiciary offered virtually no check on the abuse of power. Because the judiciary has performed poorly as an institution of horizontal accountability, this article examines the performance of a new "accountability agency," the Human Rights Ombudsman. The article discusses the context in which the office was established and developed in each country, perceptions of its performance, and political responses as the office began to perform its function of holding public officials accountable in their exercise of power. Unfortunately, this new office may fall prey to the same weaknesses that have plagued older institutions in both countries.     

People and Performance: Challenges for the Future Public Service— the Report from the Wye River Conference

What are the key challenges for the public sector at present, and what will the future public service look like if it is to meet these challenges? These questions were put to public‐sector leaders at a conference at the Wye River Plantation in June 1999. The leaders agreed on aspects of a broad vision for the future and the urgent need for a detailed debate on the transition questions that arose.     

Trust-Based Relational Intervention (TBRI): A Systemic Approach to Complex Developmental Trauma

Children and youth who have experienced foster care or orphanage-rearing have often experienced complex developmental trauma, demonstrating an interactive set of psychological and behavioral issues. Trust-Based Relational Intervention (TBRI) is a therapeutic model that trains caregivers to provide effective support and treatment for at-risk children. TBRI has been applied in orphanages, courts, residential treatment facilities, group homes, foster and adoptive homes, churches, and schools. It has been used effectively with children and youth of all ages and all risk levels. This article provides the research base for TBRI and examples of how it is applied.     

Australia's Adoption of Compulsory Voting: Revising the Narrative — not Trailblazing,Uncontested or Democratic

Presentations of the history of Australian democracy inevitably dwell on the innovative and early democratic practices of the colonies and, later, the nation. Compulsory voting is typically placed in this frame. This article challenges three key pillars of the accepted narrative of the Australian adoption of compulsory voting by placing nineteenth‐century debates over the mandatory franchise in the Australian colonies in the context of other similar democracies in North America. It shows that compulsory voting debates in the colonies were contentious, protracted and motivated by negative experiences of democracy and a desire to limit or order democracy to ensure that engaged minorities did not overwhelm an apathetic majority.     

Communicating the Vision: How Face‐to‐Face Dialogue Facilitates Transformational Leadership

For public managers facing political and structural constraints, transformational leadership promises to meaningfully improve outcomes by communicating an inspiring vision of the organization. But this promise rests to a great degree on the communication skills and behaviors of the leader. A better understanding of how transformational leadership functions in organizations therefore requires a deeper application of theory from the field of communications. This article explores the question of what communication behaviors facilitate transformational leadership. A media richness framework is applied to propose that transformational leaders will be most effective when employing a face‐to‐face dialogue approach to communication. Using a multisource longitudinal research design, the authors find support for this proposition in an empirical test of 256 Danish tax units, lower and upper secondary schools, child care centers, and bank branches. The findings also show that size matters, with diminishing effectiveness of face‐to‐face dialogue in larger organizations.     

The Enduring Effects of Social Pressure: Tracking Campaign Experiments Over a Series of Elections

Recent field experiments have demonstrated the powerful effect of social pressure messages on voter turnout. This research note considers the question of whether these interventions’ effects persist over a series of subsequent elections. Tracking more than one million voters from six experimental studies, we find strong and statistically significant enduring effects one and sometimes two years after the initial communication.     

The adaptation of American business school teaching techniques in Lesotho,Africa: A case study

This study deals with the transfer of American business school technology to the National University of Lesotho. The study considers the nature of the transfer process, the local innovations to the education program, and the role of the government of Lesotho in the transfer. Appropriate recommendations are offered to further improve the effectiveness of the educational package and its effect on the economic development of Lesotho.     

Environmental remediation technology implementation decision patterns

Each year, environmental technology implementation involves many millions of dollars in the United States alone. The economics of making decisions to continue research, to make changes to processes, or to introduce new products is a critical element in the success of organizations. In previous work by Paladino and Longsworth (1996), the importance of economic factors has been postulated to increase according to a set pattern throughout the implementation process. The authors seek to validate this theory and develop a better understanding of decision patterns related to technology implementations in the environmental remediation business area.