Remaking the House and Senate: Personal Power,Ideology, and the 1970s Reforms

Although much has been written on the critical congressional reforms of the 1970s, few studies have analyzed support for reform systematically. In this article, we draw upon previously untapped sources of information that make an individual‐level, quantitative analysis possible. We analyze 20 indicators that measure support for a wide variety of reforms in both chambers. Our results reveal a remarkably consistent pattern: in virtually every case, junior members and liberals were more pro‐reform than were senior members and conservatives. Also, Republicans were often more likely than Democrats to back reform. Our findings challenge the view that the reform movement was essentially a Democratic party phenomenon; liberals and junior members in both parties—not just Democrats—supported reform.     

INTRODUCTION: EXPLOITING IT IN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION - TOWARDS THE INFORMATION POLITY?

This introduction to the theme issue on Towards the Information Polity? Public Administration in the information age presents the case for the systematic academic investigation of the changing relationships which characterize the ‘information polity’. This perspective on the information polity focuses on the significance of new kinds of informational resources and flows in government, and their interaction with broad directions of reform in contemporary public administration, including the new public management. It is argued that, whereas the literature of business strategy has emphasized the economic logic by which ‘informatization’ encourages organizational transformation, the articles in this issue demonstrate the importance of wider cultural, organizational and political factors to understanding processes of informatization and the changing nature of the emergent ‘information polity’.     

REINTEGRATIVE SHAMING AND COMPLIANCE WITH REGULATORY STANDARDS*

Australian nursing home inspection teams are partitioned into those with an enforcement ideology supportive of reintegrative shaming, those who believe in being tolerant and understanding when confronted with noncompliance with the law, and those with a more stigmatizing ideology toward noncompliers. Nursing homes visited by teams with a reintegrative shaming ideology display significantly improved compliance in the period following the inspection. Nursing homes visited by inspection teams with a more stigmatizing attitude toward noncompliance display an approximately equal drop in compliance. The performance of homes visited by tolerant and understanding inspection teams falls between these two extremes. A more specific test of the theory shows that when interdependency exists between the nursing home and the inspection team, reintegrative shaming has a stronger positive effect on improving compliance. In nursing homes with no link between the home and the inspection team, reintegrative shaming has no effect on compliance levels. These effects demonstrate both the importance and the limitations of reintegrative shaming as a theoretical concept worthy of further empirical investigation.     

Transparency of Risk and Reward in U.K. Public–Private Partnerships

Public–Private Partnerships (PPPs) are an increasingly common mechanism for the renewal of public sector infrastructure, although in the United Kingdom, these have been criticized as representing poor value for money. An inherent assumption of much of this criticism is that a corollary of detriment for the public sector is benefit for the private sector. This paper highlights the difficulty of objectively verifying the many criticisms and assumptions regarding risk and reward associated with PPPs. Public and private sector disclosure policies and systems are analyzed and we conclude that neither sector practices openness and transparency. This results in a democratic accountability deficit in the public sector and a lack of meaningful data being made available to stakeholders in private companies.     

A PUBLIC MANAGEMENT FOR ALL SEASONS?

This article discusses: the doctrinal content of the group of ideas known as 'new public management'(NPM); the intellectual provenance of those ideas; explanations for their apparent persuasiveness in the 1980 s; and criticisms which have been made of the new doctrines. Particular attention is paid to the claim that NPM offers an all-purpose key to better provision of public services. This article argues that NFM has been most commonly criticized in terms of a claimed contradiction between 'equity' and 'efficiency' values, but that any critique which is to survive NPM's claim to 'infinite reprogrammability' must be couched in terms of possible conflicts between administrative values. The conclusion is that the ESRC'S Management in Government' research initiative has been more valuable in helping to identify rather than to definitively answer, the key conceptual questions raised by NPM.