LITIGATION, JUDICIAL DEFERENCE, AND POLICY CHANGE

Social scientists have reported extensively on the impact of Supreme Court decisions overturning public policy, but not on those sustaining it. This article stresses the need to study the impact of litigation, including the impact of losing lawsuits. Presenting data on the impact of San Antonio Independent School District v. Rodriguez, the article demonstrates how a losing lawsuit can produce positive policy change from the consumer's perspective. After comparing the policy aftermath of Rodriguez with that of two winning school-finance cases, I suggest that the final judicial decision may not be the most significant event in litigation stimulating policy change.     

LONDON DOCKLANDS: AN ANALYSIS OF POWER RELATIONS BETWEEN UDCs AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT

This article sets up a framework for examining the differences and relations between Urban Development Corporations and local government. It analyses the interest to which the two sorts of body are responsive, the organizational structures which condition their relationship and the styles of decision-making through which they operate. This framework is used to analyse the London docklands experience with the objective of distinguishing the special aspects of this case from those which are likely to be generally applicable.     

DECISION MAKING REVISITED

Decision Making is a case study of the decision to raise the Bank Rate by 2 per cent (to 7 per cent) on 19 September 1957. Following the decision there were rumours that there had been improper disclosure of information before the official announcement. There was newspaper speculation and Questions were asked in the House of Commons. Later, a Tribunal of Inquiry was set up which found that there had been no improper disclosure but which revealed much not previously known about the way the Treasury and the Bank of England worked, both separately and together. This article reconsiders selected aspects of the original study in the light of files recently released in the Public Record Office and of other publications since the book was published. It includes comments about the availability of files, open government, and the study of public administration in the United Kingdom.     

DIFFERENTIAL RATES OF RURAL-URBAN DELINQUENCY: A Social Control Approach

Official statistics and numerous sociological studies indicate that rural areas generate lower rates of delinquency than do urban areas. This study attempts to explain these differential rates by drawing on the social control theory of Hirschi. Questionnaires were administered to a rural and an urban juvenile detention center population to investigate both extent of delin-quency involvement and degree of commitment to five institutional orders: family, church, school, peers, and formal authority. As hypothesized, the rural sample reported significantly less delinquent activity than the urban sample. Control theory also received support from the data. A strong inverse relationship was found between commitment and delinquency. When intro-duced as a control variable, commitment specified the original relationship between locality and delinquency. The specified relationships were strongest for rural youth with high commitment and for urban youth with low commitment.     

The Extra-Parliamentary Tory Party: McKenzie Revisited

This chapter almost coincides with the fiftieth anniversary of Robert McKenzie's British Political Parties , a study which contested that power in the Tory party was centralised in its Parliamentary leadership, with its constituency members having only a marginal influence. The chapter revisits McKenzie's analysis in the light of developments since 2001, particularly the victory of Iain Duncan Smith in that year's 'democratised' Conservative leadership contest.
The chapter argues that Duncan Smith's victory strengthened McKenzie's claim that democratised parties are seldom popular, and describes how IDS, ironically, spawned reforms that diminished his extra-Parliamentary supporters. But the chapter is also an updated reminder that McKenzie underrated grass root power in certain areas - notably candidate selection - and suggests a lesson from the Tories' short-lived revival under Michael Howard, namely that long-term party recovery requires an energised party membership as well as a competent party leader.     

UK Privatisation Revisited: Ideas and Policy Change, 1979–92

Privatisation in the UK was facilitated by the interplay of ideas, institutions, actors, and economic interests. The motivations of the programme were ideational and political, but the objectives were economic and administrative. Together these paved the way for the success of the policy. Although several rationales were at play in the unfolding of privatisation, the ideological predilection of the Thatcher governments underpinned this far-reaching policy reform. This explains why the Thatcher government did not reform nationalized industries within the public sector, but instead shifted them into the private sector. Privatisation succeeded because it was championed by new right policy entrepreneurs, was supported by interest groups prepared to support, or least not impede, such dramatic policy change, and when the public enterprise status quo was deemed in need of reform. Of course, ideas only act as a catalyst for policy change when an established policy agenda having withered, been worn-out or otherwise discredited, can then be successfully challenged.     

EXPLAINING VARIATION IN PERCEPTIONS OF RED TAPE: A PROFESSIONALISM‐MARKETIZATION MODEL

In the public administration literature, ways in which perceptions of red tape vary between different parts of the public sector remains relatively unexplored. In this article we define organizational red tape as a subject‐dependent concept; that is, we expect to see variations in the level and type of red tape between different internal stakeholder groups. We then explain variations with two organizational‐based variables, professionalization and marketization. The empirical analysis is undertaken on nearly 800 English local government services. The framework correctly predicts that officials in highly professionalized and marketized services perceive higher levels of red tape, while those in less professionalized and marketized services report lower levels. We then summarize our findings and comment on their theoretical and practical significance.