Goal-Based Learning and the Future of Performance Management

All levels of government have begun to pursue results-based reforms, which assume that managers will use performance information to make better decisions. However, reforms have neglected the insights of a large and relevant literature on organizational learning. This article revisits this literature, treating results-based reform as an organizational learning mechanism and a deliberate structural effort to induce learning. From an organizational learning perspective, most results-based reforms target narrow process improvement (single-loop learning) rather than a broad understanding of policy choices and effectiveness (double-loop learning), even though the latter is more critical for long-term organizational success. Case evidence from state governments illustrates single- and double-loop learning and the importance of two frequently neglected aspects of organizational learning: learning forums—routines where performance information is deliberately examined—and the role of organizational culture in enabling or limiting learning.     

Human Capital and Administrative Burden: The Role of Cognitive Resources in Citizen-State Interactions

One means by which the state reinforces inequality is by imposing administrative burdens that loom larger for citizens with lower levels of human capital. Integrating insights from various disciplines, this article focuses on one aspect of human capital: cognitive resources. The authors outline a model that explains how burdens and cognitive resources, especially executive functioning, interrelate. The article then presents illustrative examples, highlighting three common life factors—scarcity, health problems, and age-related cognitive decline. These factors create a human capital catch-22, increasing people's likelihood of needing state assistance while simultaneously undermining the cognitive resources required to negotiate the burdens they encounter while seeking such assistance. The result is to reduce access to state benefits and increase inequality. The article concludes by calling for scholars of behavioral public administration and public administration more generally to incorporate more attention to human capital into their research.     

Critique of Schuker “J.M. Keynes and the Personal Politics of Reparations”

In “J.M. Keynes and the Personal Politics of Reparations,” Parts I and II, published in Diplomacy and Statecraft (2014), the American historian Stephen Schuker claims that Keynes’ scientific arguments against the policy of reparations were distorted by both political passion and his emotional attachment to the German banker, Dr. Carl Melchior. He provides no evidence for this argument, and Keynes’ analytic positions emerges without reference to either.     

Selecting Constitutional Judges Randomly

This article discusses from the perspective of democratic theory an innovative proposal for the selection of constitutional, supreme court, or federal judges that aims at combining the values of expertise and political independence. It consists in combining a certification process – selecting a pool of properly qualified candidates – with a random selection among this pool. We argue that such selection procedure would better respect the separation of powers and the specific legitimacy of courts, and we champion this two‐stage mechanism vis‐à‐vis other, more traditionally employed, selection procedures. We then deal with a diversity of objections to our proposal and conclude by taking stock of both its virtues and limitations.     

Ecological Validity of the Inventory of Problems-29 (IOP-29): an Italian Study of Court-Ordered,Psychological Injury Evaluations Using the Structured Inventory of Malingered Symptomatology (SIMS) as Criterion Variable

The Inventory of Problems-29 (IOP-29; Viglione, Giromini, & Landis, Journal of Personality Assessment, 99(5), 534–544, 2017) is a 29-item, recently published, self-administered test aimed at assessing the credibility of various symptom presentations. Although available research strongly supports the use of this symptom validity test in malingering-related contexts, to date, only few studies have analyzed data from real-life forensic evaluations. To fill this gap and explore ecological and convergent validity, the current study analyzed data from 74 court-ordered evaluations aimed at establishing the possible presence of psychological injury. Such evaluations are high-stakes situations in which exaggeration or malingering occur relatively often. We used a research-supported and popular symptom validity test, i.e., the Structured Inventory of Malingered Symptomatology (SIMS; Smith & Burger, Journal of the American Academy on Psychiatry and Law, 25:180–183, 1997), as our criterion variable. The IOP-29 produced excellent area under the curve (AUC) values of .98 with a recommended SIMS total score cutoff (≥ 17) and .99 when eliminating too-close-to-classify cases (Rogers & Bender, 2018) and very large Cohen’s d effect sizes of 2.98 and 3.59, respectively. Crucially, when implementing established cut scores from previous research, the IOP-29 yielded very high specificity and sensitivity rates, and the predictions from the two tests were strikingly similar. Taken together, these findings support the strong convergent validity of the IOP-29 and its utility in applied clinical and forensic settings.