Multilevel governance and organizational performance: Investigating the political‐bureaucratic labyrinth

Research on governance has extensively explored the complex interactions of governmental, nongovernmental, and for‐profit entities in the execution of public policy. It has consistently failed, however, to model empirically the joint effects of political and bureaucratic actors in governance systems. To address this issue, a theory of multilevel governance built upon the foundation of representative bureaucracy was developed and tested. Results from an analysis of Texas school districts suggest that Latinos at all levels of the governance system, political and managerial, influence representation at other levels. Findings also indicate that Latinos at each level of governance have positive effects, directly and indirectly, on outcomes for Latino students. The influence of both political and managerial actors at times extends beyond the immediately adjoining level; the effects of such actors cascade through the governance system. The results show that a priority for systematic research should be the identification of approaches and settings for examining the multilevel aspect of governance. © 2004 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

A place at the table: Policy analysis,its postpositive critics,and future of practice

Postpositivist critics have brought a new stridency to the ongoing discourse about the nature, applications, and usefulness of policy analysis. Regrettably, their critique is based on a decontextualized caricature, virtually a parody, of policy analysis training and practice. Their assertions are chilling but false, ideological rather than analytical, and detached from the inconvenient realities of policy making and management. Far from being narrowly technocratic and scientistic, policy analysis is dedicated to improving the craft of governance. It is fueled by intuition, argument, and ethical promptings; clearly engaged with the world of political action; and often identified with interests and values otherwise unrepresented at the table. Q‐methodology and other approaches to values identification and analysis can be important contributors to policy analysis practice, but postpositivists have a very long way to go if they are to be relevant to the practical challenges of democratic governance that arise in the many roles that working policy analysts perform. © 1999 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

(Re)Connecting the Global and Local: Europe's Regional Seas

One of the challenges to sustainable development is the disconnection between environmental impacts and their underlying causes. Whilst impacts are often localized and perceptions limited accordingly, sources can often be traced to broader factors, and there is a need for methodologies to establish these linkages between localized effects and global causes. Europe's Regional Seas provide a useful illustration, characterized by a variety of ecological problems influenced by a range of local and wider factors within complex ecosystems. The Driver-Pressure-State-Impact-Response (DPSIR) model is one methodology used to establish connections between ecological conditions and human activity. Whilst there are some significant challenges in developing and using such models, they deepen understanding of ecological systems and the influences of socio-economic forces on them. In particular, they can help in contextualizing the apparent effectiveness of regulatory interventions and understanding the role that the forces of globalization play in creating localized ecosystem degradation.     

L’exil et la négociation du manque dans trois romans de Calixthe Beyala

This article takes as its theme the literature of sub-Saharan Africa, and in particular the prolific work of the Cameroonian author Calixthe Beyala, who, since 1987, has published numerous novels in exile. Calixthe Beyala is among those expatriate writers for whom exile, far from being synonymous with banishment, on the contrary represents true salvation. The article examines how Calixthe Beyala speaks of expatriation in three of her novels: Tu t’appelleras Tanga (Your name shall be Tanga) (1988), Les honneurs perdus (1996) and Comment cuisiner son mari à l’africaine (2000). Belonging to three successive decades, these works relate specifically to the theme of exile and plunge to the heart of Cameroon and to the Cameroonian diaspora in Paris, shedding light on the grieving process linked to the loss of one’s own geographic space, and to the loss of self.     

How Should We Estimate the Performance Effect of Management? Comparing Impacts of Public Managers’ and Frontline Employees’ Perceptions of Management

Many areas of public management research are dominated by a top-focused perspective in which emphasis is placed on the notion that managers themselves are usually the best sources of information about managerial behavior. Outside of the leadership literature, managers are also the typical survey respondents in public management studies. An alternative perspective on management can be provided by subordinates’ perceptions of what management is doing. Surveys of subordinates and of managers each pose potential advantages and potential disadvantages when it comes to measuring management, and each approach is likely to prove more fruitful for measuring certain management functions. Using a unique data set of parallel surveys on management with managers and their subordinates as respondents, we examine the differences and relationships between Danish school managers’ and teachers’ perceptions of management functions and the implications of such relationships for organizational performance. We find a surprisingly low correlation between manager and teacher responses regarding the same management functions. Teacher responses are better predictors of student performance for management aspects that are visible to and mediated by teachers. However, manager responses better predict performance for manager expectations that are less visible to employees.     

Quelles mobilités pour quelles ressources?

In West Africa, where the available natural and financial resources are not always sufficient to support a family for a whole year, mobility has become a strategy for accessing the resources of the region as a whole. Daily life is based on a mixed sedentary and mobile logic which responds to opportunities at greater or lesser distances, for longer or shorter periods of time, and with greater or lesser regularity of movement, and which enables survival or a better livelihood to be secured. Mobility requires mobilisation – of social networks, individual capacities and sociabilities, elements we can also refer to as resources, only this time social resources. This article explores the notion of resources and its connotations to show how populations in the West African Sahelian space seek a balance of survival and livelihood through mobility.     

Cuba: heading for a new development and political model – an introduction

Cuba, this iconic revolutionary island which has brought so much hope to the Third World and, at one point, worry for a nuclear World War III, is going through a process of change never seen since Fidel Castro led his revolutionary forces to triumph around New Year’s of 1959. Yet, 10 years into the change process, led by the younger Castro Raúl (now 85), nobody can really forecast where the country will end up in socio-economic and political terms. In this TWQ subsection, two economists and three political scientists – two Cubans and three European Cuba watchers – analyse the reforms and their possible outcome.