Policy Studies Journal articles from May 2005

Policy Studies Journal archives from May 2005

Editor's notes.(Editorial)
May 1, 2005... This issue of the Policy Studies Journal focuses on advice, influence and control as they bear on public policy and governance. Our first pair of articles considers the matter of neutral competence in the provision of advice to policy makers....

Institutionalizing neutrally competent policy analysis: resources for promoting objectivity and balance in consolidating democracies.(neutral competence )
May 1, 2005... Introduction In broad sweep, Herbert Kaufman (1956) saw the evolution of American public administration as a quest for the core values of representativeness, executive leadership, and neutral competence. He defined neutral competence in...

Neutral competence and political responsiveness: an uneasy relationship.
May 1, 2005... Neutral competence has retained a good deal of currency in the public administration literature despite the realization that politics and administration are intertwined. Although it the concept has been developed has been developed its modern...

Keeping policy churn off the agenda: urban education and civic capacity.
May 1, 2005... Introduction Urban politics literature is replete with examples of how local growth coalitions (Logan & Molotch, 1987; Swanstrom, 1985) or urban regimes (Elkin, 1987; Stone, 1989), composed of downtown business elites, developers, local...

Comparing policy networks: Marine Protected Areas in California.
May 1, 2005... The traditional portrait of policymaking as iron triangles composed of an administrative agency, a legislative subcommittee, and an interest group is well recognized as overly simplistic and unrealistic (Heclo, 1978; Howlett, 2002; O'Toole,...

Introduction to a symposium on public governance.
May 1, 2005... What factors--political, cultural, historical--influence a jurisdiction's choice of governance structures? How do these structures influence managerial behavior? To what extent do the designs and the management of public policies and programs...

Control over government: institutional isomorphism and governance dynamics in German public administration.
May 1, 2005... Introduction One of the central themes in the contemporary public management literature has been that "governance," defined here as a set of instruments of regulation and control, has moved or should move away from a traditional emphasis...

Effects of autonomy, performance contracting, and competition on the performance of a public agency: a case study.
May 1, 2005... Introduction In many industrialized and developing countries a shift can be observed in the way governments control their public organizations that are involved in policy implementation and service delivery (henceforth called "public...

Redesigning political governance: reforms in parliamentary committees' work in Switzerland.
May 1, 2005... Introduction Since the late 1990s, Switzerland has experienced a reform trend that had its conceptual roots based on the international debate about a "new public management." Although this concept was designed from an observer perspective...

Governance and performance: theory-based evidence from U.S. Coast Guard inspections.
May 1, 2005... Introduction The principal-agent model (e.g., Holmstrom, 1979; Shavell, 1979) has been used to study the effectiveness of law enforcement agencies. Principal-agent relationships in law enforcement are usually hierarchical relationships in...