Measuring the Impact of Lotteries on State per Pupil Expenditures for Education: Assessing the National Evidence

State‐operated lotteries have recently been asserted by public administrators and academicians as panaceas for eradicating revenue disparities existing across public school districts in the American states. The purpose of this research project is to empirically test the hypothesis that lottery revenues raise the state expenditures for public education. A state‐level national dataset, which includes fifty American states over the period 1977–1997, was used for the analysis. Pooled time‐series cross‐sectional and ARIMA modeling was employed to test the hypothesis. This study finds that lottery revenues had a positive influence on state per pupil expenditures for education. The evidence for the impact of lotteries on state per pupil expenditures for education was robust and statistically significant.     

Mapping the New South Wales Public Integrity System

This article summaries conclusions from the New South Wales public sector component of the National Integrity System Assessment. The evidence here suggests that the NSW public sector integrity activity is relatively complex and that the existence of multiple integrity agencies has disadvantages for complainants, integrity agencies and agencies under their scrutiny. The coherence of the NSW integrity system must therefore be questioned. The capacity of integrity agencies is hard to determine, with money and staffing levels not in themselves resolving debate over where capacity ought to be directed. The evidence suggests that the long‐running debate between those who want capacity directed to coercive investigations and those who want it aimed at systemic and cultural change is a false one, with the best strategies coupling the two types of activity. Judgements differ on the consequences of public sector integrity activity. Greater agreement exists that integrity has improved over the last decade or so, but while external integrity oversight appears to be responsible for some of that improvement, activities within public sector agencies appear to have been equally important.     

From Greek Temple to Bird's Nest: Towards A Theory of Coherence and Mutual Accountability for National Integrity Systems

Since the 1990s, recognition has grown that the answer to corruption–political, bureaucratic or corporate–does not lie in a single institution, let alone a single law. Rather the institutionalisation of integrity through a number of agencies, laws, practices and ethical codes is increasingly recognised as the best option for limiting corruption in many societies. This article addresses the key issue of coherence between these various institutions, picking up on the third and final theme of the Australian national integrity system assessment. The assessment has shown, firstly, that concepts of ‘horizontal’ or ‘mutual’ accountability are important but also need to be developed and better contextualised as a framework for designing integrity systems; secondly, that integrity system coherence can be usefully measured and mapped using standard network analysis approaches, helping more clearly identify the need for more deliberate strategies for coordination of integrity policies; and thirdly, that new metaphors can and should be developed for communicating the nature and significance of the institutional interactions that constitute integrity systems. The new metaphor suggested here is that of a bird's nest, in which a multitude of often weak institutions and relationships can combine to more effectively protect and promote the fragile goal of public integrity.     

Book reviews

ACHIN VANAIK, The Furies of Indian Communalism: Religion, Modernity and Secularization (Verso, London, 1997), 374 pp., ISBN 1–85984–016–7

EDWARD REISS, Marx: a Clear Guide (Pluto Press, London & Chicago, 1997), 180 pp., ISBN 0–7453–1014–1 (pb)

ERNST FISCHER, HOW to Read Karl Marx (Monthly Review Press, New York, 1997), 192 pp., ISBN 0–85345–974–6 (pb)

CAROLINE KENNEDY‐PIPE, The Origins of the Present Troubles in Northern Ireland (Longman, Harlow, 1997), 204 pp., ISBN 0–582–1073–9

DUNCAN WATTS, Political Communication Today (Manchester University Press, Manchester and New York, 1997), 228 pp., ISBN 0–7190–4792–7 (hb), 0–7190–4793–5 (pb)

JACK HAYWARD (ed), Elitism, Populism and European Politics (Clarendon Press, Oxford, 1996), 257 pp., ISBN 0–19–828035–1

JOHN GRAY and DAVID WILLETTS, IS Conservatism Dead? (Profile Books, London, 1997), x + 186 pp., ISBN 1–86197–042–0     

Analyzing Criminal Trajectory Profiles: Bridging Multilevel and Group-based Approaches Using Growth Mixture Modeling

Over the last 25 years, a life-course perspective on criminal behavior has assumed increasing prominence in the literature. This theoretical development has been accompanied by changes in the statistical models used to analyze criminological data. There are two main statistical modeling techniques currently used to model longitudinal data. These are growth curve models and latent class growth models, also known as group-based trajectory models. Using the well known Cambridge data and the Philadelphia cohort study, this article compares the two “classical” models—conventional growth curve model and group-based trajectory models. In addition, two growth mixture models are introduced that bridge the gap between conventional growth models and group-based trajectory models. For the Cambridge data, the different mixture models yield quite consistent inferences regarding the nature of the underlying trajectories of convictions. For the Philadelphia cohort study, the statistical indicators give stronger guidance on relative model fit. The main goals of this article are to contribute to the discussion about different modeling techniques for analyzing data from a life-course perspective and to provide a concrete step-by-step illustration of such an analysis and model checking.

Joined‐Up for What? Response to Carey and Harris on Adaptive Collaboration

Carey and Harris present the concept of adaptive management as a practice for supporting effective collaboration, suggesting that performance information be used to modify actions. They observe that end‐outcome performance information is less useful because of long delays between actions and effects, and recommend instead that the performance information should concern the collaborative process itself. The New Zealand government has followed a similar path to the Australian journey described by Carey and Harris. First, New Zealand tried using end outcomes to drive collaboration. Then, New Zealand tried using process measures, but found that the resulting collaboration lacked purpose and urgency. More recently, New Zealand has found great success in using intermediate‐outcome measures to drive adaptive collaboration: measures with intrinsic value, but short delay between action and effect. We echo Carey and Harris’ call for adaptive collaboration, but write to suggest that intermediate outcomes, rather than process measures, may drive more purposive management.     

Population drug use in Australia: a wastewater analysis

Accurate information on drug use in communities is essential if health, social and economic harms associated with illicit drug use are to be addressed efficiently. In most countries population drug use is estimated indirectly via surveys, medical presentations and police and custom seizures. All of these methods have at least some problems due to bias, small samples and/or long time delays between collecting the information and analysing the results. Recently the direct quantification of drug residues in wastewater has shown promise as a means of monitoring drug use in defined geographical areas. In this study we measured 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine (MDMA), methamphetamine and benzoylecgonine in sewage inflows in metropolitan and regional areas of Australia and compared these data with published European data. Cocaine use was small compared to European cities (p<0.001) but was compensated for by much greater consumption of methamphetamine (p<0.001) and MDMA (p<0.05). MDMA was more popular in regional areas (p<0.05) whereas methamphetamine and cocaine were mainly consumed in the city (p<0.05). Greater than 5-fold increases in MDMA use were detected on weekends (p<0.001). This approach has the potential to improve our understanding of drug use in populations and should be further developed to improve prevention and treatment programs.     

Partisan politics and fiscal policy in the Canadian provinces

This article evaluates the impact of partisanship on provincial fiscal policies over business- and electoral-cycles between 1981 and 2016. There were partisan differences between left-wing governments (the New Democratic Party and the Parti Québécois), on the one hand, and conservative ones, on the other. The evidence is particularly strong for business-cycles, where left-wing parties pursued much more countercyclical strategies than conservatives. In contrast, there was little difference between most Liberal administrations and conservative ones. Left-wing fiscal policies nevertheless lost their distinctiveness during the last third of the study period. The article concludes by discussing possible explanations for this change.