Health Literacy in High-Risk Youth: A Descriptive Study of Children in Residential Care

Although previous studies have demonstrated that children in out-of-home care present with elevated levels of mental and physical health, educational, and behavioral problems, little is known about youth's ability to manage health care needs or access health information and support. This study evaluates the health literacy skills of 229 youth served in a residential setting. Results revealed that the majority of youth demonstrated some level of risk, and anywhere from one-quarter to one-third demonstrated significant health literacy deficits suggesting a need for additional research and treatment intervention. Implications, study limitations, and recommendations for practice and future research are discussed.     

The Influence of External and Internal Correlates on the Organizational Death of Domestic Far-Right Extremist Groups

The domestic far-right movement has existed in the United States for many years. During that time, groups have appeared, disappeared, and reappeared. Unfortunately, very little is known about what causes these groups to disband. An interdisciplinary approach identified external and internal correlates of organizational death to empirically test which of these correlates influences whether a group dies. Results from this study provided empirical support for some previously only anecdotal explanations for organizational death, while also undermining other claims.     

A Strategic Framework for Devolving Responsibility and Functions from Government to the Private Sector

Whether a function should be performed within or outside government is a very broad issue that relates to personal values and views concerning the relationship between individual and state, as well as a complex set of management issues. Without trying to answer those questions here, this article begins from the premise that a particular function has been judged by the political process to be the responsibility of government. The article seeks to develop an approach for government managers to use when deciding whether to perform the function directly in-house or to perform the function indirectly through the use of a non-governmental organization. The first part of this article begins by delineating distinguishing characteristics of government, nonprofit, and private organizations, and then assesses the degree to which those characteristics impede or facilitate the performance of public functions. The article then develops a framework and a method for making privatization decisions. The decision to privatize requires strategic thinking; this article provides an example of how a strategic framework might be applied by analyzing the issues that would be faced in privatizing a key element of New York City's homeless program.     

The effect of the choices available on voting behaviour: the two Japanese elections of 1993

Voters make their choices based on an interaction between their preferences and the options available. One cannot vote for a candidate or a party that is not running in one's district. Voting research has heretofore focused almost exclusively upon voter preferences, assuming that all the relevant options are available to all voters. In this paper, we seek to redress the balance somewhat by focusing on variation in the options available to voters in the 1993 Japanese general election. In that election, three new parties ran and were themselves a major issue in the campaign. Voters were asked to express themselves on the question, “should we break the mold of postwar politics by voting for a new party?” We demonstrate that electoral results and voting behavior both varied significantly between those electoral districts with, and those without, a new party option. There were, in effect, two elections in 1993, one in which voters chose between new and established parties and another in which voters chose from among the established parties only. We argue that one cannot assume that an electoral outcome reflects the “will of the people” without adding the important caveat, “given the available alternatives”.     

How Sophistication Affected The 2000 Presidential Vote: Traditional Sophistication Measures Versus Conceptualization

The 2000 Presidential vote is modeled using voter sophistication as a source of heterogeneity. Three measures of sophistication are employed: education, knowledge, and the levels of conceptualization. Interacting them with vote predictors shows little meaningful variation. However, removing the assumption of ordinality from the levels of conceptualization uncovers considerable heterogeneity in the importance of the vote predictors in explaining the vote. Thus, different sophistication measures should not be treated as equivalent, nor combined as if they are equivalent. Few of the issue and candidate components are relevant to those with a less sophisticated understanding of politics. The opposite partisan attachments of the two most sophisticated groups suggest that sophistication’s impact on the vote can be confounded by partisanship.     

Managerial Tacit Knowledge,Individual Performance,and the Moderating Role of Employee Personality

This study investigates the relationship between knowledge-sharing mechanisms, managerial tacit knowledge, and individual performance in the Malaysian public sector. Moderation effects of employee personality on these variables were also examined. Findings from 308 Malaysian public sector managers suggest that individual performance is influenced by levels of accumulated managerial tacit knowledge (LAMTK), which were moderated by employee personality traits. The findings also show that individual performance has an impact on the effectiveness of knowledge-sharing mechanisms.     

Public Administration in the Middle East and North Africa

ABSTRACT

This article highlights the objective of the special issue which is to understand the status of public administration in six profiled countries – Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Libya, United Arab Emirates (UAE), and Turkey – in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA). The special issue explores public administration as a concept—the diversity of guiding general principles that determines how governments administer the affairs of state in the context of their governance frameworks—and as praxis—the diversity of public administration structures, procedures and practice, and reform initiatives. It is evident that the countries profiled have adopted a mode of public administration and governance that mirrors its history, and its cultural, geo-political, socio-economic, and conflictive environments. In this context, the editors hope that the articles presented in this special issue will contribute to advancing the public administration literature in MENA.     

Advocating within and outside the shadow of hierarchy: local government responses to Melbourne’s outer suburban deficits

Where urban and regional development processes create deficits in infrastructure, services or employment, governments are expected to respond. One specific dimension is local government advocacy within a multi-tiered state. Although democratically proximate to residents, local government represents a creature of higher government tiers and is subject to the centralist ‘shadow of hierarchy’. To interpret whether advocacy is stunted by hierarchical influences, a distinction is drawn between passive, active and aggressive advocacy. Using interviews conducted with outer Melbourne’s growth area councils, the paper evidences the multidimensional and evolving nature of local and regional advocacy within the shadow. Illustrative of intra-sector variation, some peripheral councils have stepped beyond the metaphoric shadows and adopted politically confrontational or aggressive advocacy. Overarching conceptual framings must be appreciative of spatial and temporal variation in local government advocacy, and the local embeddedness of all government tiers through representative structures.