Institutions, Ideology, and the Tragedy of the Commons: West Texas Groundwater Policy

West Texas is the setting for an unintended experiment in commonsresource management. Dispersed, autonomous, local groundwaterdistricts use nonregulatory strategies to promote conservationand groundwater quality. The central force driving this organizationalform appears to be ideological. West Texans seek alternativesto state management of groundwater pumping. This study useskey-informant interviews to evaluate the strength of ideologyin explaining West Texas groundwater policy and to provide atheoretical framework for discussing the importance of the "localsolution.’ Time-series data substantiate the claim thatlocal groundwater districts succeed in slowing depletion rates.     

Reviews

Roman Szporluk (ed.), National Identity and Ethnicity in Russia and the New States of Eurasia. New York and London: M.E. Sharpe, 1994, xiii + 328 pp., £40.00 h/b, £16.00 p/b.

Paul Kolstoe, Russians in the Former Soviet Republics. London: Hurst, 1995, xii + 340 pp., £35.00.

Ronald Grigor Suny, The Révenge of the Past. Nationalism, Revolution and the Collapse of the Soviet Union. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1993, xix + 207 pp., £25.00 h/b, £10.95 p/b.

Ian Bremmer & Ray Taras (eds), Nations and Politics in the Soviet Successor States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, xxvii + 557 pp., £55.00 h/b, £17.95 p/b.

Charles A. Kupchan (ed.), Nationalism and Nationalities in the New Europe. Ithaca & London: Cornell University Press, 1995, xi + 224 pp., £31.50 h/b, £11.95 p/b.

Christopher Williams, AIDS in Post‐Communist Russia and its Successor States. Aldershot: Avebury, 1995, xvi + 216 pp., £35.00.

Amin Saikal & William Maley (eds), Russia in Search of its Future. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, xii + 239 pp., £30.00 h/b, £10.95 p/b.

Marco de Andreis & Francesco Calogero, The Soviet Nuclear Weapon Legacy. New York: Oxford University Press, 1995, x + 130 pp., £25.00.

Eva Haraszti‐Taylor, The Hungarian Revolution of 1956. A Collection of Documents from the British Foreign Office. London: Astra Press, 1995, xxxii + 404 pp., £5.95.

Julian Cooper, Maureen Perrie & E. A. Rees (eds), Soviet History, 1917–53: Essays in Honour of R. W. Davies. London and Basingstoke: St Martin's Press, 1995, xxviii + 273 pp. £45.00.

Tsentral'nyi gosudarstvennyi arkhiv Sovetskoi Armii. Putevoditel’ v dvukh tomakh. Minneapolis: East View Publications, Vol. 1, v + 421 pp., Vol. 2, vi + 531 pp., 1991, 1993, £59.00.

Vladimir N. Brovkin, Behind the Front Lines of the Civil War: Political Parties and Social Movements in Russia, 1918–1922, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1994, xiv + 455 pp.

Semion Lyandres, The Bolsheviks’ ‘German Gold’ Revisited: An Inquiry into the 1917 Accusations. Pittsburgh: Carl Beck Papers No. 1106, Center for Russian and East European Studies, University of Pittsburgh, 1995, 132 pp., no price.

Al Richardson (ed.), In Defence of the Russian Revolution: A Selection of Bolshevik Writings. 1917–1923. London: Porcupine Press, 1995, xvi + 287 pp., £12.99.

Neil Robinson, Ideology and the Collapse of the Soviet System. A Critical History of Soviet Ideological Discourse. Aldershot: Edward Elgar, 1995, x + 227 pp., £45.00.

Alexsandras Shtromas (ed.), The End of “Isms"? Reflections on the Fate of Ideological Politics after Communism's Collapse. Oxford: Blackwell Publishers, 1995, 234 pp., £13.99.

Simon Tormey, Making Sense of Tyranny: Interpretations of Totalitarianism. Manchester: Manchester University Press, 1995, vi + 199 pp., £7.95.

David L. Hoffmann, Peasant Metropolis: Social Identities in Moscow, 1929–1941. Ithaca and London: Cornell University Press, 1994, xv + 282 pp., £26.95.

Heather Hogan, Forging Revolution: Metalworkers, Managers, and the State in St. Petersburg, 1890–1914. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 1993, xviii + 319 pp., £32.50.

Marjorie Mandelstam Balzer (ed.), Culture Incarnate: Native Anthropology from Russia. Armonk, New York, London: M.E. Sharpe, 1995, xii + 270 pp.

Michael D. Kennedy (ed.), Envisioning Eastern Europe: Postcommunist Cultural Studies. Michigan: University of Michigan Press, 1994, 249 pp., £30.00.

Blanche H. Gelfant, Cross‐Cultural Reckonings: A Triptych of Russian, American, and Canadian Texts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1995, x + 190 pp., £35.00.     

Social welfare functions when preferences are convex,strictly monotonic,and continuous

The paper shows that if the class of admissible preference orderings is restricted in a manner appropriate for economic and political models, then Arrow's impossibility theorem for social welfare functions continues to be valid. Specifically if the space of alternatives is R ₊ ⁿ , n ≥ 3, where each dimension represents a different public good and if each person's preferences are restricted to be convex, continuous, and strictly monotonic, then no social welfare function exists that satisfies unanimity, independence of irrelevant alternatives, and nondictatorship.     

A Second Republic for Italy?

Radical change in the representative dimension of Italy's political system was expected to bring a transition to a 'Second Republic' in Italy. That has not happened. Nevertheless, after three consultations using the new parliamentary electoral system, studies focusing on the 'input' side of Italian politics are beginning to agree that substantial change has occurred. It is, however, too early to identify the extent of change in public administration and centre–local government relations, whilst even in parliament it is argued that consensual decision-making continued at least into the late 1990s. The impact of party system change on policy-making has thus been shown to be less direct than many expected, providing rich material for research into the relationship between institutional and policy change. Nevertheless, institutional change continues, particularly with regard to the decentralisation of government, and some studies suggest that this is the key to Italy's political transformation, rather than electoral reform or even change in the form of government. Still, the election of Italy's first right-wing majority government in 2001 may yet bring change in parliamentary practice and policy-making more generally.     

Bureaucracy,Network, or Enterprise? Comparing Models of Governance in Australia,Britain, the Netherlands,and New Zealand

Theories of democratic government traditionally have relied on a model of organization in which officials act impartially, accept clear lines of accountability and supervision, and define their day–to–day activities through rules, procedures, and confined discretion. In the past 10 years, however, a serious challenge to this ideal has been mounted by critics and reformers who favor market, network, or "mixed–economy" models. We assess the extent to which these new models have influenced the work orientations of frontline staff using three alternative service types—corporate, market, and network—to that proposed by the traditional, procedural model of public bureaucracy. Using surveys of frontline officials in four countries where the revolution in ideas has been accompanied by a revolution in methods for organizing government services, we measure the degree to which the new models are operating as service–delivery norms. A new corporate–market hybrid (called "enterprise governance") and a new network type have become significant models for the organization of frontline work in public programs.     

The performance framework: a systems approach to understanding performance management

The article presents a framework for better understanding the nature of performance in organisations involved in the provision of overseas development assistance (ODA). It uses a case study to illustrate the three main features of the framework which are: goals, performance assessment and performance management. It is asserted that a vibrant performance culture is one which links these features together to form an organisation capable of continual improvement through producing effective learning. Organisational culture determines the nature of linkages between the three sub‐systems. The article stresses how the notion of performance may extend beyond various forms of evaluation and scrutiny to being part of a sentient learning system rooted in an organisation's culture and structure. The article concludes with consideration of key issues associated with the generation of a reflexive learning organisation operating in the ODA sector. These are concerned with understanding the role and nature of systems, organisational vision, the embracing of diversity, training and accountability. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Challenges for donor agency country‐level performance assessment: a review

This review of country‐level performance assessment in donor agencies is primarily based upon the experiences documented by bilateral donors to developing countries. The review suggests that four emerging themes can be identified in the literature on country‐level performance review: ownership, decentralisation and leadership, accountability and learning and complexity. The review considers the implementation of ‘results‐based’ approaches used by a number of international agencies and examines their relationship with ‘evidence‐based’ approaches. A key challenge, in the development of performance assessment, is bringing in a stronger evidence‐based approach into the planning and evaluation of donor country‐level programmes. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.