bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Government and the Voluntary Sector in an Era of Retrenchment: The American Experience
Authors: Salmon Lester M.
Published: November 2008

Prevailing conceptions of the welfare state in the United States have failed to acknowledge the widespread partnership that exists between government and private voluntary organizations in the provision of human services. Thanks in large part to this partnership, voluntary organizations have retained a significant role in the American welfare state, delivering a larger share of government-financed human services than government agencies. By cutting back on government spending, therefore, the Reagan administration has significantly reduced the revenues of the nonprofit sector while calling on this sector to do more. Although nonprofits as a group have overcome the resulting cutbacks, they have done so chiefly by increasing their income from service charges, rather than their private charitable support.
Top-Down and Bottom-Up Approaches to Implementation Research: a Critical Analysis and Suggested Synthesis
Authors: Sabatier Paul A.
Published: November 2008

This paper first reviews the implementation literature of the past fifteen years, with particular emphasis on the relative strengths and weaknesses of the ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ approaches. It also argues that the 4–6 year time-frame used in most implementation research misses many critical features of public policy-making. The paper then outlines a conceptual framework for examining policy change over a 10–20 year period which combines the best features of the ‘top-down’ and ‘bottom-up’ approaches with insights from other literatures.
Impacts of Policy Actions on the Family and Household
Authors: Ermisch John
Published: November 2008

The influence of demographic factors on public policy is well recognised, but the impact of policies other than population policy on demographic behaviour is generally ignored. The paper discusses the effects of various aspects of social policy on marriage, fertility, divorce and household formation behaviour. While the focus is on Great Britain, examples from other countries and cross-national comparisons are employed in the analysis. It measures the effects of particular policies in order to show that the impact of social policies on family formation and dissolution is not just a theoretical possibility. They have significant influences on important aspects of the way in which we live, and in most cases these demographic effects were not recognised by policy makers.
Good Blood, Bad Blood, and the Market: The Gift Relationship Revisited
Authors: McLean Iain , Poulton Jo
Published: November 2008

The Gift Relationship (Titmuss, 1970) argued that the UK system of voluntary blood donation was economically, medically, and morally superior to the American system, in which many blood suppliers are paid. The argument was badly put and fiercely attacked, but substantially correct. Developments since Titmuss wrote, especially AIDS, have tragically reinforced his main point: more than half of the severe haemophiliacs in the UK have been infected with the AIDS virus, almost certainly through imported blood products. Titmuss's normative argument is reconstructed, and defended against neoclassical economists who have been his fiercest critics. Finally, policy implications are briefly discussed.
Market and Non-Market Failures: Comparison and Assessment
Authors: Wolf Charles
Published: November 2008

This paper aims to redress the asymmetry in the standard economic treatment of the shortcomings of markets and governments by developing and applying a theory of ‘nonmarket’ failure– that is, of government failure – so that the comparison between markets and governments can be made more systematically, and choices between them arrived at more intelligently. Several conclusions are drawn. First, the choice between markets and governments is not a pure one, actual systems inevitably involve combinations between markets and governments. Second, with respect to both static and dynamic efficiency criteria, markets generally do better than governments. Third, there are various ways in which government can contribute to improving the functioning of markets. Fourth, market forces can play a useful role in improving the functioning of government and reducing the incidence of nonmarket failures.
Capturing Quality?: The Quality Issue in British and American Health Policies
Authors: Pollitt Christopher
Published: November 2008

The quality of health care services has recently become a prominent political issue in both Britain and America. Everyone is in favour of quality. Yet closer inspection reveals that the term is being used with several different meanings, and that its fashionability seems intimately connected with the collision, in both countries, between rising health care costs and a desire on the part of the purchasers or paymasters of health services to restrict their expenditures. The different approaches to assessing quality are not neutral, technical matters. Each carries implications for the future relationships among health care providers, and between providers, payers and patients. Furthermore, changes in these institutional relationships may well lead the debate back to the larger, traditional and more obviously ‘political’ issues of resource allocation, equity and the role of the state.
A Society without a ‘State’? Political Organization, Social Conflict, and Welfare Provision in the United States
Authors: Skocpol Theda
Published: November 2008

Americans lack a sense of the state for many understandable historical reasons. Yet the specific organizational forms that state activities have taken in the United States from the time of the Constitution to the present have profoundly affected the social cleavages that have gained political expression and influenced the sorts of public policies that governments have – and have not – implemented. As an alternative or supplement to theoretical perspectives emphasizing the causal primacy of industrialization, national values, or class politics, this state-society perspective can illuminate patterns of American social policy, from distributive social benefits in the nineteenth century to bifurcations between social insurance and public assistance since the New Deal. These American policy patterns are contrasted with the more comprehensive and nationally uniform policies characteristic of certain Western European welfare states.
The Growing Burden of an Ageing Population?
Authors: Thane Pat
Published: November 2008

In most economically developed societies at present there is an active debate about the implications of the growing proportion of their populations who are elderly. In most such countries the changing age structure is seen in almost entirely negative terms. This paper argues for a less pessimistic approach. The transition to an older population will be gradual enough to allow time to plan. The importance of the shift in the so-called ‘dependency ratio’ is exaggerated because ‘dependency’ is unsatisfactorily defined. Nor is there clear evidence that as more people live to be older health and social service costs will rise accordingly: people are remaining fit to later ages and there is strong evidence that they can continue to make a positive contribution to the economy as workers and as consumers until relatively late ages. Social services can also be redesigned to maximize the independence of the elderly while minimizing costs. Since the ageing of society is unavoidable we should seek ways to treat the elderly as a resource rather than viewing them as a burden.
Government Supply and Government Production Failure: A Framework Based on Contestability
Authors: Vining Aidan R. , Weimer David L.
Published: November 2008

A complete conceptual framework for policy analysis requires a theory of government supply and government production failure to complement the well-developed theory of market failure provided by welfare economics. Charles Wolf has made an important start by attempting to draw parallels between market failures and the manifestations of government supply failures. This article provides a more useful analytical framework for government supply failure in two important ways. First, it draws on several perspectives from the economics of organization to sketch both normative and positive theories of government supply. Second, it uses the positive theory of government supply behavior to make direct comparisons with the traditional market failures. It concludes with some implications of the framework for assessing the potential gains from privatization.
Institutionalizing a Stalemate: National Financial Policies and the International Debt Crisis
Authors: Pauly Louis W.
Published: November 2008

This article explores the hypothesis that trends in the financial regulatory and supervisory policies of advanced industrialized countries encouraged the retreat of international banks from lending to developing countries during the 1980s. Drawing upon the illustrative cases of the United States, Japan, Canada, and the Federal Republic of Germany, it assesses the plausibility of the argument that convergent trends in regulatory policies reinforced that retreat, notwithstanding the efforts of top policymakers to promote adequate new lending in the context of a deepening crisis.
Explaining the Puzzles in Policy Change: Local Finance Reform in Britain
Authors: Bramley Glen
Published: November 2008

This paper compares four different theoretical accounts of the reform of British local government finance at the end of the 1980s: public choice, marxian political economy, bureaucratic process, and party politics. Five key questions are identified as the most essential and puzzling features of the change: why reform; the timing of reform and implementation; the national non-domestic rate; the choice of a poll tax; and why the ‘final solution’ of direct central control has been eschewed. The ability of each theoretical approach in answering these five key questions is then assessed in the light of what we know about the history and logic of local government finance in Britain. The conclusion is that the reform can be explained, but that no single theoretical approach can give a completely satisfactory account. Overall, a competitive party politics model, complemented by public choice ideology and bureaucratic process, gives the fullest explanation.
Cost-Benefit Analysis and the Control of Public Expenditure: An Assessment of British Experience in the 1980s
Authors: Florio Massimo
Published: November 2008

This paper examines approaches to public investment appraisal as theyare currently recommended in the British Treasury and implemented byevaluation units within the Department of Health, Department of Transport and the Home Office. The evidence suggests that spending departments have reacted to the pressure for increased selectivity in their expenditures by adopting a heterogeneous blend of appraisal techniques, including financial analysis, cost-effectiveness and option appraisal, withcost-benefit analysis eventually playing a minor role. The imposition of cash limits rations capital expenditures. When these constraints bite departments differently, either a unique social discount rate for projectappraisal is inappropriate or the rations themselves are giving wrong signals to the departments The departments do not have an incentive todevote time and effort to cost benefit analysis and other techniques of a more limited scope are implemented.
Cutbacks and Public Bureaucracy: Consequences in Australia
Authors: Hood Christopher , Roberts Paul , Chilvers Marilyn
Published: November 2008

Drawing on data for 60 Australian Commonwealth government bureaucracies 1976–86, this paper explores what measurable consequences for bureaucratic structure can be associated with staffing and spending cutbacks. It looks at cutbacks both at government-wide and at individual-bureaucracylevel, on the basis of a casualty list intended to portray the different dimensions of relative bureaucratic ‘suffering’ more systematically than has hitherto been done in the cutback management literature. It then explores associations between measures of cutbacks and indicators of structural consequences, both at government-wide and departmental level, relating that to the debate as to whether ‘leaner means weaker’ in government cutbacks. The ‘leaner means weaker’ view of bureaucratic cutbacks is hard to sustain from these data.
Policy Style and Issue Environment: The Electricity Supply Sector in West Germany
Authors: Padgett Stephen
Published: November 2008

This work examines the relationship between policy style and issue environment. Empirical research in the electricity supply sector in West Germany suggests that even at the sectoral level the expectation of a monolithic and static policy style cannot confidently be sustained. This sector displays adual policy style, the source of which is located in the relationship between state and sector, the structure of interest representation, and ownership / market relations in the sector. Fluctuations in policy style are related to changes in the issue environment. Addressing the structural dimension of issues, the work abstracts the structure and form which issues assume from their substantive content to identifyissue anatomy. This concept is deployed in an explanation of changing policy style in the face of a complex of sectoral issues.
Introduction: Lesson-Drawing across Nations
Authors: Rose Richard
Published: November 2008

Undertaking cross-national research in order to improve national policy is an idea that goes back centuries. Aristotle examined the constitutions of city-states for the sake of civic betterment. The American Founding Fathers studied the English Constitution to avoid its presumed defects. In turn, Tocqueville examined democracy in America because, as he explained to his French readers, ‘My wish has been to find there instruction by which we may ourselves profit’ (1954 ed.: vol. 1, 14). In the contemporary world, policymakers in every society constantly cite the lessons that they draw from their own past or from the experience of other nations – and in Eastern Europe and the Third World there are many governments anxious to learn from the practice of others how to improve their own policies.
What is Lesson-Drawing?
Authors: Rose Richard
Published: November 2008

Lesson-drawing addresses the question: Under what circumstances and to what extent can a programme that is effective in one place transfer to another. Searching for fresh knowledge is not normal; the second section describes the stimulus to search as dissatisfaction with the status quo. Lessons can be sought by searching across time and/or across space; the choice depends upon a subjective definition of proximity, epistemic communities linking experts together, functional interdependence between governments, and the authority of intergovernmental institutions. The process of lesson-drawing starts with scanning programmes in effect elsewhere, and ends with the prospective evaluation of what would happen if a programme already in effect elsewhere were transferred here in future. Lesson-drwaing is part of a contested political process; there is no assurance that a lesson drawn will be both desirable and practical. The conclusion considers the uncertainty and instability of judgements about the practicality and desirability of transferring programmes.
Cross-National Sources of Regulatory Policymaking in Europe and the United States
Authors: Majone Giandomenico
Published: November 2008

Because events occur too fast and ideas mature too slowly for responses to be designed anew for each pressing problem, policy innovation often relies on pre-existing models, foreign or domestic. This seems to be especially true for regulatory policymaking, since public regulation is typically introduced in conditions of crisis. In this paper we examine several cases of policy innovation in the area of economic and social regulation where the influence of foreign models is quite clear: the development of competition policy in Europe in the 1950s, the growth of European Community regulation, and the impact of the American deregulation movement on the telecommunications policies of different European countries. The analysis shows that while utilization of preexisting models is a common feature of policy innovation, such models are not literally translated into current policy. More or less extensive adaptations to a particular political, institutional and economic context are usually required. We also identify two distinct ways – push or pull – in which foreign models can affect domestic policy.
From the Second to the Informal Economy
Authors: Sik Endre
Published: November 2008

This paper addresses two related questions: How has the transformation from a centrally planned to a market economy affected the second economy and how has the second economy influenced the transformation? The existence of a second economy compensating for some faults of the planned economy has been a contributing factor in the non-violent transformation of the Hungarian economy. Transformation is making the concepts of a first and second economy obsolete. The informal economy, which is replacing the second economy, differs from the latter in its degree of internalization, and in relying upon fulltime rather than part-time work. It is also increasing in size. The social impact of the informal economy is also different, increasing income inequality and regional disparities, thus replacing the gradations of social differences found in the multi-coloured activities of the second economy with sharper black and white differences. The analysis is illustrated with data from Hungary before and after the transformation.
West Germany: The Policy of the Middle Way
Authors: Schmidt Manfred G.
Published: November 2008

This article focuses attention on the distinctive characteristics of economic and social policy in West Germany during the last four decades. It will be argued, that the distinctiveness of state intervention in West Germany resides in a combination of policies of conversative-reformist, liberal and social democratic complexion. The policy of the middle way which results from this combination differs from the extreme poles that are marked by the model of Social-Democratic welfare capitalism on the one hand and market capitalism on the other, but it also comprises elements of both types of political economies. The emergence and the maintenance of the policy of the middle way can largely be attributed to distinctive characteristics of the policy process, and of processes of learning from historical catastrophes.
The Medical Profession and the State in France
Authors: Steffen Monika
Published: November 2008

French medicine is organised with dialectical relation between the public and private in health and welfare policy; there is also an ideological impact of public/private confrontation. The article retraces the history of the profession and shows how it was set up both with and against the state, emphasising two ideas at once: the idea of the small independent entrepreneur, guarantor of individual liberty, and the idea of the great state servant, guarantor of the public interest. Public/private confrontation is only rhetorical and bears no relation to the real content of the dualistic health system.
British Industrial Relations Policy Transformed: The Thatcher Legacy
Authors: Marsh David
Published: November 2008

It is widely believed by political scientists that the Thatcher Governments transformed British industrial relations and ‘curbed union power’. In contrast, most industrial relations scholars have argued that despite the legislative onslaught relatively little has changed on the shopfloor. This paper examines both claims. Much has changed in Britain since 1979. In particular, the political role of unions has altered substantially. Unions in 1991 are infrequently consulted and have very little influence. In addition, the legislative framework within which unions operate is very different; their activities are much more circumscribed by the law than previously. But much less has changed on the shopfloor; for example, there is limited evidence of a major move to derecognise unions or restrict collective bargaining. Governments can only set the legislative framework within which shopfloor industrial relations operate; it cannot determine outcomes.
Corporatism Without Labor? Industrial Policymaking in the American States
Authors: Gray Virginia , Lowery David
Published: November 2008

This paper extends previous analyses of industrial policy from a corporatist perspective. We advocate a mid-level measure of group influence; the measure is based upon analysis of newspaper stories. A preliminary exploration of NewsBank data is reported, and several interesting trends in economic development policy are isolated. Business and education are heavily involved in policymaking whereas labor and political parties are not at all involved. On the whole, a meso-corporatist model in which business, state government, and education are partners seems to fit better than a business capture model. Some speculations are offered about this new American form of corporatism and its resemblance to the Japanese case.
The Policy Analysis-Critical Theory Affair: Wildavsky and Habermas as Bedfellows?
Authors: Forester John
Published: November 2008

Policy analysis may benefit from specific conceptual contributions derived from Jurgen Habermas's critical social theory. In particular, Aaron Wildavsky's emphasis on the policy analyst's fostering of social and political ‘interactions’ can be given concrete empirical content derived from the critical theorist's account of social and communicative action. In addition, the critical theorist's distinction between action and ‘learning’ extends and sharpens Wildavsky's and Lindblom's account of policy outcomes. Once obstacles to social and political learning are distinguished from ordinary constraints upon citizens' action, policy analysis research (as formulated by Wildavsky and Lindblom) can be more concretely specified and then understood also and essentially to involve fundamental normative judgments of the legitimacy of policy-fostered ‘interactions’.
Harnessing the Guinness Effect
Authors: Hanson Bertil L.
Published: November 2008

Policy-makers are gravely troubled by a lack of means to get things done. They might like to consider harnessing the ‘Guinness effect’: when a measurement is created, persons come forth to be measured by it. A number of moral and practical objections to the use of the Guinness effect in public policy can be raised, but many of these also apply to other policy devices or indicate that care is needed in designing measurements. They do not preclude the introduction of trial uses of the Guinness effect, especially given the voluntary character of undertaking measureable activities under the scheme. A number of activities by individuals and communities suitable for measurement are suggested. Local statistical bureaus might play the part of defining measurements and monitoring performance.
To Sell or Not to Sell? Telecommunications Policy in Britain and France
Authors: Zahariadis Nikolaos
Published: November 2008

Using Kingdon's agenda setting model and broadening it to the entire policy formation process, I offer an explanation of why the British privatised their telecommunications authority but the French did not. Privatisation is brought about by coupling three streams or factors in critical moments in time: available alternatives generated in policy communities, high government borrowing needs, and party politics. The findings illuminate the usefulness of Kingdon's model beyond its original application in the United States, and have implications for broader theoretical debates in comparative policy research.
Integrating Comparisons Across Time and Space: Methodology and Applications to Disparities within Yugoslavia
Authors: Sicherl Pavle
Published: November 2008

An extended conceptual and analytical framework is elaborated where proximity in time as one dimension of a multidimensional concept of disparity is used as a tool to integrate space and time in comparative analysis. Time distance measures the difference in time (number of years) when two compared units achieve a given level of the indicator. Time distance emphasises a novel perspective of disparity between the compared units, and time is a universal unit of measurement comparable between countries, levels and units of comparison. It complements rather than substitutes for conventional measures, at the conceptual level the overall degree of disparity is looked upon as a weighted combination of static and dynamic dimensions of disparity.

The comparative analysis of socio-economic data sometimes employs comparison across time within a country, e.g. monitoring trends in productivity, per capita income or unemployment. Alternatively, comparison is made across space between countries, e.g. comparing the level of productivity or unemployment in different countries at a given point in time. In each case, the analysis seeks to identify disparities. The purpose of this article is to demonstrate the advantage of analysing disparities, referred to often as inequalities or differences, by intergrating comparisons across both time and space. Empirical examples from the regions (republics and autonomous provinces) of the former Yugoslavia are used to provide empirical illustrations of this expanded analytical framework
Nationalization and Privatization: A Rational-Choice Perspective on Efficiency
Authors: Pint Ellen M.
Published: November 2008

This paper analyzes the use of nationalization and privatization policies to redistribute costs and benefits among interest groups, using a rational-choice framework. The major cases considered are the post-war nationalizations and the current wave of privatizations in the United Kingdom, plus France and the United States. The analysis indicates that governments tend to redistribute benefits to more concentrated interest groups, such as organized labor or shareholders, and to impose costs on more diffuse groups, such as consumers and taxpayers. This type of redistribution is often economically inefficient, but politically efficient for the party in power. Policy design is also influenced by the ease with which policies can be changed by future governments within the prevailing political institutions.
Understanding Local Government Responses to Fiscal Pressure: a Cross National Analysis
Authors: Wolman Harold
Published: November 2008

Fiscally pressured local governments face the same basic choices in both the United States and the United Kingdom: whether to increase locally raised revenues in order to maintain existing services or to reduce local services. The article first posits a model of local government decision-making in response to fiscal pressure drawn primarily from organizational and systems theory. Local governments are viewed as organizations concerned with maintaining their equilibrium relationships with their external environment (public employees and their unions). The model suggests a series of hypotheses about how local government will respond to fiscal pressure. Case studies of fiscally pressured local governments in both the United States and the United Kingdom are then utilized to describe actual local responses and to assess the usefulness of the model. The article concludes by setting forth a rough hierarchy of preferred local responses.
Between Pluralism and Corporatism German Business Associations and the State
Authors: Streeck Wolfgang
Published: November 2008

This paper explores the complexities and ambiguities of the relationship between the state and business associations by examining the case of West Germany. While business associations continue to lobby the state on behalf of their members, they perform a number of other roles. Association staff often provide information and expert advice to the state. The state can lend associations organisational support by setting rules of political influence that are favourable to them. Business associations become involved in the formulation and even implementation of what are effectively public policy functions, though associations have a ambivalent attitude, preferring both autonomy from the state and influence. Business associations may fend off attempts by the state to subject their members' behaviour to legal regulation by offering self-regulation with state approval; however, this can critically affect relations between associations and their members. Devolution of public authority to business associations is resorted to pragmatically, or opportunistically, by both associations and the state as an expedient solution to individual problems. This arises because associations lack a consistent theory defining their status in relation to the state.
Policy Change in Direct Government Responses to UK Unemployment
Authors: Moon Jeremy
Published: November 2008

This article examines the patterns of policy change in the field of direct responses to unemployment in the UK. After discussing the nature of the policy area, the article proceeds to identify instances of policy innovation, persistence, succession and termination under the headings of Job Creation, Employment Subsidy, Training, and Youth. As this is a relatively new problem for British government there are several cases of policy innovation, but the most striking finding is of a high number of policy successions. Discussion is then focused upon the relevance of a range of factors which might explain the patterns of policy change deduced, suggesting that the most important of these have been (i) ‘symbolic pay offs’ of policy change; (ii) the in-built terminators in most special employment measures; (iii) the nature and strategic position of the unemployment policy community; (iv) changing cabinet objectives. It is concluded, despite the several problems of this form of analysis pin-pointed, that in this study programme changes were generally good indicators of policy change, providing a useful over-view of this important sphere of government policy.
When Consumers Oppose Consumer Protection: The Politics of Regulatory Backlash
Authors: Vogel David
Published: November 2008

This article examines a neglected phenomenon in the existing literature on social regulation, namely political opposition to regulation that comes not from business but from consumers. It examines four cases of successful grass-roots consumer opposition to government health and safety regulations in the United States. Two involve rules issued by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, a 1974 requirement that all new automobiles be equipped with an engine-interlock system, and a 1967 rule that denied federal highway funds to states that did not require motorcyclists to wear a helmet. In 1977, Congress overturned the Food and Drug Administration's ban on the artificial sweetener, saccharin. Beginning in 1987, the FDA began to yield to pressures from the gay community by agreeing to streamline its procedures for the testing and approval of new drugs designed to fight AIDS and other fatal diseases. The article identifies what these regulations have in common and examines their significance for our understanding the politics of social regulation in the United States and other industrial nations.
From Claiming Credit to Avoiding Blame: The Evolution of Congressional Strategy for Asbestos Management
Authors: Twight Charlotte
Published: November 2008

This paper develops a theory synthesizing credit-claiming and blameavoidance explanations of congressional behavior and evaluates it against asbestos policy in the United States from the 1920s through the 1980s. Public policy is viewed as shaped by officeholders' ability to achieve political ends through augmenting information costs and other transaction costs facing the public. Public perceptions are seen both as the endogenous product of congressional information-cost manipulation and as an exogenous constraint that changes in identifiable ways over time. Different policy stances - open credit claiming, concealed credit claiming, early-stage blame avoidance, and full-scale blame avoidance – are predicted to emerge in response to specified conditions, yielding implications about the expected timing of public policy changes. Specific types of transaction-cost manipulation are predicted to accompany the identified policy stances. The US asbestos policy experience is shown to be consistent with the predictions of the model.
Towards a European System of Labor Relations?
Authors: Armingeon Klaus
Published: November 2008

Are the systems of collective labor relations in member countries of the European Communities converging towards a common European system of industrial relations? In this paper the hypothesis is put forward that the national systems have not been converging in the past and probably will not do so in the immediate future. The analysis is based on changes in procedural rules of collective labor relations and on data on labor unions, strikes, wage structure, and government employment.
Charges for Merit Goods: Third World Family Planning
Authors: Godwin R. Kenneth
Published: November 2008

This article examines the arguments for and against user fees, privatisation, and decentralisation of health care and family planning delivery systems and compares the effectiveness of fee-for-service delivery by decentralised systems with that of centralised systems with services provided free of charge. Developing countries have achieved remarkable reductions in fertility rates in the past 25 years, but continuing gains depend largely upon increasing the capacity of family planning and health care delivery systems in rural areas. National governments are unlikely to allocate additional funds to improve delivery systems to rural areas because of the greater political influence of urban areas and the declining health-care budgets of the central government. This situation has led many to propose alternative arrangements for health-care delivery in rural areas.
Don't Blame the Bureaucracy!
Authors: Milward H. Brinton , Rainey Hal G.
Published: November 2008

Public agencies and public employees are increasingly berated as inept and inefficient. We argue that the public bureaucracy in the United States is more valuable and effective than generally recognized. Where public agencies do perform badly, the problem is often due to external factors. We discuss the oversimplified calls for more businesslike efficiency in government, the value complexity which complicates evaluation of the public bureaucracy, and the higher standards imposed on the public sector. We also discuss the challenges imposed on public agencies by special interest politics, an overload of highly complex assignments, and adverse public stereotypes. The danger of overlooking these issues is that we will continue to have a huge, active public sector, and decisions about its role and management must not be determined by oversimplification and stereotype.
Budget Deficits, Inflation Accounting, and Macroeconomic Policy: A Skeptical Note
Authors: Catsambas Thanos
Published: November 2008

This paper challenges the mechanical application of inflation accounting to public sector deficits as it has been suggested in recent years. Although the theoretical considerations underlying the proposed adjustment for the inflation premium of interest payments are well taken, the new approach has fundamentally focused on measurement issues with little attention paid to the behavioral aspects of microeconomic adjustment. This paper, therefore, raises skepticism about the usefulness of inflation accounting, if such a correction is not accompanied by a conceptual model that links behavioral responses of individuals to balance sheets and other stock variables. In a departure from previous investigations, the paper also points out the possibility that inflation accounting might have more relevant implications for public, rather than private, spending.
Systematically Pinching Ideas: A Comparative Approach to Policy Design
Authors: Schneider Anne , Ingram Helen
Published: November 2008

Policy design, whether conceptualized as a verb referring to the process of formulating policy ideas, or as a noun describing the logic through which policy intends to achieve its objectives, remains relatively uncharted territory. This paper reviews what we know about how policy designs emerge, and identifies the kinds of biases and weaknesses that are introduced into designs by the decision heuristics employed. Theories of policy invention and expert decision-making suggest that individuals search through large amounts of relevant information stored in memory, reason by analogies, make comparisons, and either copy or simulate patterns of information. Policy scholars may contribute to improved policy design by making more explicit the biases introduced through reliance on decision heuristics, and by suggesting a more formal, self conscious search and selection process that enables designers to be more discriminating when they pinch policy ideas from other contexts. To perform this task, comparative policy analysis is needed in which common elements that exist in virtually all policies are identified and the underlying structural logic of the policies is made explicit. In this paper we set forth generic elements found in policies, describe and compare some of the more common design patterns, and discuss the circumstances where these may be inappropriately copied or borrowed, thereby thwarting the effectiveness of the policy.
International Coordination of Fiscal Policies
Authors: Tanzi Vito
Published: November 2008

International coordination of macroeconomic policies has attracted much attention in recent years. The main issue has been whether economic performance can be improved by coordination. Although still a controversial issue, many economists have argued that coordination would make a positive contribution to economic performance. This paper deals with the requirements for successfulfiscalcoordination. It concludes that those requirements are such that the best fiscal policies that countries can pursue are those aimed at putting their house in order.
Deregulation and Privatization in Germany
Authors: Vogelsang Ingo
Published: November 2008

Public enterprises in the Federal Republic of Germany are about average for all nonsocialist countries and markets are more heavily regulated than in the United States. Compared to American deregulation and British privatization, there have been few developments in the Federal Republic. Why? In the last ten years new schools of thought have provided a stronger normative foundation for and a stronger positive explanation against deregulation and privatization in Germany in the near future. The German political debate on deregulation and privatization is characterized by three institutional peculiarities. Major steps to deregulate or privatize economic sectors require legislation, which is influenced by political parties. Trade unions exert a strong influence on the major parties and are opposed to privatization and deregulation. The European Community forces some deregulation upon the Federal Republic in order to liberalize service sectors.
The Long Road to Long-Term Care Insurance in Germany
Authors: Götting Ulrike , Haug Karin , Hinrichs Karl
Published: November 2008

This paper represents a case study in welfare state expansion. It takes an actor-centered point of view and reconstructs the long process which has ultimately led to a compromise solution to the problem of providing long-term care, especially for the elderly. It describes the previously means-tested arrangement of long-term care provision and its shortcomings. Furthermore, it sketches the different stages through which the political debate on this issue has passed during the last twenty years: from the initial phase of defining the “social problem”, to the final stage when the approval of the compromise package became a question of “all or nothing”. The analysis of the politics of long-term care insurance reveals that the difficulties of reaching an agreement mainly resulted from the complex decision-making situation. It was in essence a problem of decision-making under conditions of general uncertainty.
Politics and Exchange Rates: Britain, France, Italy, and the Negotiation of the European Monetary System
Authors: Walsh James
Published: November 2008

When the European Monetary System was negotiated in 1978, governments in France, Britain, and Italy took very different approaches to this new international institution for coordinating exchange rate policies. The French government actively supported the creation of the European Monetary System, the Italian government entered the system but on weaker terms than the French, and the British government refused to enter the system, preferring to allow the pound to float. To explain these different policy choices, I analyze the impact of domestic politics and institutions on exchange rate policy, paying particular attention to how the organization of bank-industry relations and government instability shape policymakers' policy preferences and their abilities to implement these preferences.
Development Policy and Its Determinants in East Asia and Latin America
Authors: McGuire James W.
Published: November 2008

A policy-focused human capital approach to development, incorporating industrial policy but stressing land reform, education, and labor-intensive production, is used to explain why South Korea and Taiwan have developed more successfully since 1960 than Argentina, Brazil, or Mexico. The policy-focused human capital approach is contrasted to free-market and cultural-values approaches.
Planning Systems and Policy Implementation
Authors: Hambleton Robin
Published: November 2008

This article relates two developing themes in planning theory and practice in government: the proliferation in recent years in Britain of policy planning systems and the concern in a number of countries with processes of implementation. The growth of policy planning systems can be analysed from a number of perspectives: (1) procedural planning theory; (2) interorganisational theory and (3) the theory of fiscal crisis. The paper discusses five major factors which shape the implementation process in relation to policy planning systems: (1) the policy message; (2) the multiplicity of agents; (3) perspectives and ideologies; (4) resources; (5) the politics of planning.
European Community Labour Market Harmonisation
Authors: Teague Paul
Published: November 2008

In assessing whether or not harmonisation is an appropriate policy goal for a social dimension to the European Community, the article compares different aspects of employment conditions, practices and legislation in member states to see the extent to which these converge or diverge. The thesis is that harmonisation for the most part depends on whether convergence already exists in specific aspects of the member states' labour markets. If there is considerable divergence, then it will be practically impossible to obtain harmonisation without highly disruptive and far-reaching policy changes by some member states, changes which may not necessarily yield them beneficial results.
Whatever Happened to Social Indicators? A Symposium
Authors: Andrews Frank M. , Bulmer Martin , Ferriss Abbott L. , Gershuny Jonathan , Glatzer Wolfgang , Noll Heinz-Herbert , Innes Judith Eleanor , Johnston Denis F. , Macrae Duncan , Vogel Joachim , Ward Michael
Published: November 2008

Twenty years ago the publication of Toward a Social Report by the United States Department of Health, Education and Welfare was hailed as a major forward step in developing indicators of conditions in society into a national system of social accounting of relevance to public policy. The resulting social indicators movement quickly mobilized able social scientists to produce a variety of indicators monitoring trends in their society, and internationally. National governments too began to sponsor new types of social reports. The years since have seen an apparent decline in the momentum of the social indicators movement. Hence, to evaluate developments, the Journal of Public Policy invited a number of distinguished pioneers in the movement in Europe and America to give their individual assessment of what has happened to social indicators.
Time Budgets as Social Indicators
Authors: Gershuny Jonathan
Published: November 2008

The social indicators movement sought to establish a system of social accounting that was broader than the money-based national income accounts. Specialized studies of social trends in housing, health, crime, and so forth could be successful in illuminating a specific area of social life, but together they became obstacles to the achievement of the ideal of an integrated set of social accounts. Even if crime and housing have a relationship the statistics generated within each domain are together incommensurable.
Disappointments and Legacies of Social Indicators
Authors: Innes Judith Eleanor
Published: November 2008

The social indicators movement has been a disappointment to its originators. By the late 1970s, at least in the US, the great hopes for social indicators to become a major influence on public policy had been tempered. The outpouring of literature using the term ‘social indicators’ dwindled. Policy scientists turned their attention to other topics or found new labels for their interests. The Social Science Research Council closed its Social Indicators Research Center in Washington, DC and stopped publishing its newsletter. And in the US no annual social report seemed likely to be institutionalized. Many observers decided the social indicators movement was a failure.
Improbable Implementation: The Pressman–Wildavsky Paradox Revisited
Authors: Alexander Ernest R.
Published: November 2008

The Pressman–Wildavsky model of implementation finds a paradox in the success of any federal programs, based on their low probability of approval. Bowen relaxed this model's independence assumption to improve implementation. Here the model is reexamined: a. its sensitivity is tested; b. the empirical base for the probability range is reviewed; and c. its fit with implementation processes in general is checked. The conclusions are (1) the model's ‘proof’ depends on its assumptions and computations, (2) there is no empirical basis for the probability estimates, and (3) the model only fits one special case of implementation processes. Better models can be developed, and successful implementation may require organizational interdependencies.
Pension Policies in OECD Countries: Background, Trends and Implications
Authors: Holzmann Robert
Published: November 2008

Concerns about reforming public pensions schemes are an OECD-wide phenomenon. This paper highlights in a first part the background and various causes of the reform debate, summarized in five broad areas: budgetary, economic, social, population aging, and system maturation. The second part presents major directions of current reform approaches of public pension schemes. Despite the different structure and history of these schemes, the major trends in reform are strikingly similar. The final part discusses some major policy considerations resulting from the current reform approach in the face of an aging population. At present, the pace of the reform process in most countries must be considered insufficient to put the pension systems on a financially sound basis and thus to avoid future individual welfare losses and intergenerational income distribution.
The Transformation in Gender Inequality in Tertiary Education
Authors: Castles Francis G. , Marceau Jane
Published: November 2008

Between 1960 and 1981 there was a very substantial increase in female enrolment and a move towards a much lessened degree of gender inequality in tertiary education in most advanced industrial societies. The article seeks to locate the main determinants of cross-national variance in gender inequality at both time points and of change across time. The hypotheses examined suggest the influence of a variety of economic, social structural, political, demographic and attitudinal variables and a multivariate analysis demonstrates that all are implicated in the transformation of educational policy outcomes during the period.