Recovering the Craft of Public Administration

Public sector reform has rarely dropped off the political agenda of Western governments, yet the old craft skills of traditional public administration remain of paramount importance. The pendulum has swung too far toward the new and the fashionable reforms associated with New Public Management and the New Public Governance. It needs to swing back toward bureaucracy and the traditional skills of bureaucrats as part of the repertoire of governing. This article discusses the skills of counseling, stewardship, practical wisdom, probity, judgment, diplomacy, and political nous. Although these skills are of wide relevance, the article focuses on their relevance in Australia, Britain, Canada, and New Zealand. It concludes that the next bout of reforms needs to recover the traditional craft skills. It is not a question of traditional skills versus the new skills of New Public Management or New Public Governance; it is a question of what works, of what skills fit in a particular context.     

Patterns of childhood poverty: New challenges for policy

Poverty takes many forms. Using data from the U.S. Panel Study of Income Dynamics, this article (1) distinguishes different kinds of childhood poverty, defined in terms of the spacing, severity, and duration of spells; and (2) establishes the extent and distribution of childhood poverty, employing new measures that take into account both duration and severity. Some strategies for targeting assistance on particular forms of poverty are briefly considered.     

Political participation of ethnic minorities in the 1980s

Currently political participation, especially voter registration and turnout, varies substantially with ethnicity. Blacks and non-Hispanic whites participate at roughly equal rates, while Latinos and Asian-Americans are substantially less active. This variation may be the direct product of cultural factors, or it may reflect differences in the distribution of various determinants of participation, most notably education, citizenship, and age. Using data collected in 1984 on samples of California's black, Latino, Asian-American, and non-Hispanic white populations, we conclude that such variables fully account for lower Latino participation rates. Even with these controls, however, Asian-Americans remain less likely to vote. Because ethnic group consciousness is one of the variables related to activity, we conclude that ethnicity does have an indirect effect on participation as a basis for mobilization. In addition, we establish that noncitizens engage in nonelectoral activities, and we project future political participation rates of Latinos and Asian-Americans under several scenarios.     

A two-step approach to assessing composition effects of the National Voter Registration Act

Using aggregate level data from 1996 and 1998 this paper employs a two-step strategy to explore the impact of implementing the National Voter Registration Act (NVRA) on the education, income, age, and racial/ethnic composition of state electorates. The results of the project suggest that implementation of the reform had a moderate effect on reducing the tendency of state registered electorates to be skewed toward higher education, income, and age groups. The implementation of NVRA procedures was also associated with reductions in the tendency of the voting electorate to be skewed toward higher socioeconomic groups and older Americans. The impact was indirect, however, in that changes in the voting electorate were a result of changes in the registered population, which were, in part, due to the implementation of the reform.     

Presidential rhetoric on cybercrime: links to terrorism?

Abstract

Presidents often give speeches about crime issues as a way to convince the public that there are significant problems for which an easy solution can be found. Studies have shown that presidential rhetoric on crime not only influences the public’s perception of the problem, but also the perception of the best solution. More recent research has demonstrated that presidents sometimes draw on the public’s fear of crime as a way to further affect the public’s perception of crime. In other words, presidents link crime with the public’s anxiety about other fearful events as a way to further impact the public’s perception of a problem (and thus further their agenda). This study examines presidential rhetoric on cybercrime to determine if executives link cybercrime with other issues such as national security. The findings provide credibility to both Cavelty’s threat frames approach as well as assertions made regarding the politics of fear.     

The ‘private plot’ in Soviet agriculture

The paper examines the main components of Mexican agrarian populism, and the attractions of the populist position in the light of the current crisis within the Mexican agricultural sector. It is suggested that the ‘campesinistas’ (agrarian populists) have incorporated various aspects of marxist analysis, but have nevertheless emphasised ways in which their approach pans company with that of most marxists in Latin America. According to writers like Gustavo Esteva, perhaps the leading ‘campesinista’, the peasant economy in the process of developing can co‐exist with capitalism for a protracted period, and considerable doubt exists as to whether the peasant economy is ‘ultimately’ inconsistent with capitalist development. The agrarian populists look to the peasantry in Mexico as a vehicle for rural development, believing that a better understanding of the internal logic of peasant production might facilitate an alternative series of policy measures. The weaknesses of the ‘campesinista’ position are explored, and doubts expressed about the viability of the populist stance as long as Mexico has the option of importing basic foodcrops.     

Captain of “We Band of Brothers”: An Archaeologist’s Homage to Nehemia Levtzion

By inviting archaeologists to collaborate in the revision of his beloved Ancient Ghana and Mali, Nehemia Levtzion confronted the oft-assumed, yet-rarely tested asymmetry in explanatory power between documentary history and archaeology. Others have treated prehistorians as, at best, handmaidens and, at worse, scientific parvenus. Levtzion explicitly rejected several assumptions that render many histories of pre-colonial Africa uninteresting to prehistorians: (1) that that the data of archaeology provide, at best, background and context, (2) that the hierarchical state is the only viable integrative structure when peoples become stratified economically or politically, and (3) that culture change in Africa simply replicates patterns already known from elsewhere, and no others. Levtzion enlisted a plural force of specialists, a “Band of Brothers,” to continue his Good Fight against those who would distain Africa’s accomplishments.