Between Democracy and Efficiency: Trends in Local Government Reform in the Netherlands and Germany

In this article attention is drawn to a striking difference between recent attempts to reform local government in the Netherlands and in Germany. What has been the prime focus of attention in the Netherlands in the 1980s is being emphasized in Germany in the 1990s, and what is being emphasized in the Netherlands in the 1990s has been the prime focus of attention in Germany in the 1980s. Trends in local goverment reform in the Netherlands have been going from a focus on more efficiency to a focus on more democracy, while trends in local government reform in Germany have been going the other way around. Likely explanations for these intersecting reform trends are built on four pillars: financial crises, legitimacy crises, formal institutions and informal institutions     

Implicit theories of criminal responsibility

Three questions relevant to insanity decisions were examined: (a) What informational cues are weighed most heavily in the attribution of criminal responsibility? (b) How do verdict forms influence these attributions? And (c) How do individuals' beliefs about insanity and responsibility influence decision making? Undergraduate subjects (n=181) responded to vignettes portraying an act by a mentally disordered defendant. Psychiatric jargon was avoided, so that attributions were not a function of diagnostic terminology. It was found that, under the traditional scheme of not guilty by reason of insanity (NGRI) vs. guilty, level of mental disorder (schizophrenia vs. personality disorder) was the primary determinant of insanity decisions. Also, insanity judgments were more likely to be made for acts performed without planful intentionality. Under the alternative scheme of NGRI vs. guilty but mentally ill (GBMI) vs. guilty, mental disorder still controlled NGRI verdicts; a bizarre act increased the likelihood of a GBMI over a guilty verdict; and the GBMI verdict option reduced markedly the proportion of psychotic defendants found NGRI and the proportion of personality disordered defendants found guilty. There were no significant differences between diagnostic groups in the likelihood of being found GBMI. Most subjects preferred to utilize the GBMI option as a compromise verdict even in the face of very severe mental illness. Attitudinal data revealed considerable variation in agreement with the classic moral logic of the insanity defense and accounted for a significant amount of the variance in insanity decisions. The implications for both social policy and future research are discussed.     

Allocations among programs having counteractive outcomes

Difficulties have been encountered in attempting to apply benefit-cost analysis to the problem of determining resource allocations among social programs, especially when there are multiple outcomes associated with each of the programs. Further complications result when program outcomes are characterized as counteractive: a specific allocation of resources to a program is likely to achieve a favorable impact regarding certain objectives while that allocation is also likely to have an unfavorable impact regarding other objectives. A model which promises to be useful in determining optimal resource allocations among programs having counteractive outcomes is presented. Two steps are required for the use of the model: (1) values, reflecting priorities, need to be assigned to the various objectives that programs are intended to accomplish and (2) an ensemble of probabilistic functions relating resources to program outcomes needs to be specified and combined to reflect the value of an ensemble of programs. In addition to determining optimal resource allocations, the model provides insights into the consequences of resource decisions based on noneconomic considerations. An example illustrates the major features of the model.