Zero Base Budgeting: The Manager's Budget

This article offers an assessment of zero-base budgeting (ZBB) derived from a field study conducted by the Urban Institute and supported by the National Science Foundation. Four cities and four states participated in the study, and several hundred public officials were interviewed.     

The “thinning” blueline: a Bourdieuian appreciation of police subculture

The notion of a recalcitrant “police subculture” is pervasive in the literature on policing, often invoked to explain many of the ills linked to police misconduct and corruption. This article argues that the failure of reform efforts is the result of interventionist strategies which had sought to change police subculture “head-on” without a corresponding change in the structural conditions in which the policing role is so located, and that these efforts, theoretically, have been informed by a conceptualisation of police subculture as homogenous, monolithic, and static. Using the Bourdieuian concepts of the “habitus” and “field”, the view of a “recalcitrant” subculture will be challenged in this article. Using the Singaporean experience as a case in point, it will be shown how changes in the field of policing can bring about changes, intended or otherwise, in the occupational habitus of the police: refashioning the informal repository of knowledge guiding police work.     

Mayors in Seven European Countries: Part I. Selection Procedures and Statutory Position

Abstract

Western European countries differ according to the ways in which they organise local government, not least in the manner in which mayors are selected and in the mayors’ statutory positions and responsibilities. The question is to what extent is mayoral performance affected by selection procedures and the statutory position of the mayoral office? In two exploratory articles, the results of a number of comparative empirical studies will be presented. In this first part the focus will be on the theoretical and methodological framework of the study, and on the variations in selection procedures and statutory positions. In the second part (to be published in the next issue of this journal) we will relate these findings to evidence on mayoral performance.     

As steel goes… A report on Youngstown

This paper analyzes the rhetoric and policy goals of the living wage movement. While the rhetoric focuses on workers in the context of their families, the wage levels demanded by activists and mandated by laws are almost never adequate to support families with children, especially single‐parent families. We contend the problem is a fundamental, conceptual one: focusing only on setting a single hourly wage obscures the diverse needs of poor families. In this context, the needs of the most marginalized families (single‐parent families) become invisible. However, a “living wage” is recently being conceived more broadly by activists, in terms of wage and non‐wage work supports, and is seen as applying to the working poor more generally. We argue that the current transformation of the idea of a living wage must continue if the movement is to represent all poor workers. We explore implications for the policy agenda of the movement.     

What the surrender of extra‐territoriality will mean to us

The paper argues that during the Mandate period the Labor Zionist movement was able to successfully create a Sabra identity based on its ideology that was constructed in opposition to the presumed characteristics of the “exile Jew” and how such an identity played a central role in the formation of a security oriented foreign policy. Labor's creation of the Sabra through the "Hebrew Revolution" can be considered as one of the most successful episodes of the twentieth century in which a new identity was created in order to serve ideological goals. Labor's Zionist ideology, which sought to create a “new Jew” that would form the basis of the Jewish national movement, was translated into an identity that in contrast to the diaspora Jew relied on collectivism, agriculture, secularism, and most important of all physical strength and sacrifice in defence of the Jewish nation. This translated into a security-oriented foreign policy that heavily relied on military force and emphasized internal power and strength, which Labor elites argued could only be achieved through self-reliance and independence particularly in regards to defence issues. Such an orientation would form the basis of Israeli foreign policy for years to come.     

The Lord Chancellor's Advisory Committee

The Qualified Lawyers Transfer Scheme (QLTS) is a comprehensive assessment for lawyers from other jurisdictions and barristers from England and Wales to qualify as solicitors in England and Wales. Three new assessments have been developed which make up the QLTS, in part drawing on testing experience in medicine and in other jurisdictions: the multiple choice test (MCT); the objective structured clinical examination (OSCE) which involves assessment of oral skills (interviewing and advocacy) and which uses Standardised Clients; and the technical legal skills test (TLST) which involves assessment of written skills (legal research, writing and drafting). Some of the assessment methodologies used in the QLTS are discussed, including the use of standardised clients. An explanation is given of how reliability and accuracy of the assessments are calculated and how pass marks are set. The paper presents and reviews the very encouraging statistics from the first major delivery of the three assessments, including success by jurisdiction, ethnic group, gender and disability, and routine quality statistics on reliability and accuracy, as well as a statistical review of the use of standardised clients. QLTS reflects the regulatory aims of the SRA and is a radical departure for assessment of law in England and Wales. It is to be hoped its assessment methodologies will have a substantial influence on the future.     

Discussion of 'International Political Economy from a Chinese Angle'

According to Zhu Wenli, Chinese scholars of political economy have been examining many of the same issues as their American counterparts, but have reached quite different conclusions. Chinese scholars accept the importance of globalization, but do not believe that globalization is making the nation-state less relevant or international regimes more powerful. They concede that economic and other transnational issues are becoming increasingly salient in international affairs, but conclude that they are simply altering the ways in which nations compete for power rather than making the international system more cooperative. They agree that much of today's world order is rooted in American hegemony, but do not consider that US foreign policy can be characterized as 'benign'. These conclusions have troubling implications for US‐China relations. They suggest that China will not agree to be integrated into an international community led by the United States, and that the relationship between Beijing and Washington is more likely to be competitive than cooperative.     

Criminals' explanations of their criminal behavior, Part I: The contribution of criminologic variables.

The author reviewed the literature concerning criminals' explanations of their crimes and then studied the explanations given by 100 incarcerated men. He found no significant associations between juvenile or adult arrest histories, alias use, age at time of the crime, trial plea, sentence length, duration of incarceration, and explanation types used. Only murderers significantly used a specific explanation type. These observations suggest that explanations are largely independent of traditional criminological attributes; that prolonged confinement to prison does not result in offenders admitting to their crimes; and, that killers have an especially difficult time accepting responsibility for taking the life of another human being.