The American Review of Public Administration RSS feed -- OnlineFirst Articles

Direct Democracy Provisions and Local Government Fiscal Choices

Park, J., McCabe, B. C., Feiock, R. C. — Tue, 17 Nov 2009 14:47:06 PST

To what extent do local revenue decisions depend on the opportunities and constraints created by provisions for direct democracy in local charters? We treat local government charters as a constitutional contract to identify the potential consequences for local government revenue decisions that arise from provisions for direct democracy. This framework bridges competing models and empirically tests propositions linking local revenues in large cities between 1981 and 2004 to the incentive structure resulting from city charter provisions for initiative, referendum, and recall.We find that initiative provisions stimulate demands for public goods leading to greater revenues but that referendum and recall provisions constrain revenue growth

The Oath of Office as Public Value Guardian

Rutgers, M. R. — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 10:41:02 PST

The oath of office is perhaps the ultimate means to set public office apart: Public functionaries in most countries have to swear to let public interests prevail over private concerns. This seems at odds with the prevailing liberal/managerial idea that public and private employment is not distinct at all. The oath of office establishes a moral commitment to the office that transcends a contractual, managerial, and/or legal approach to public authority. It signifies the guardianship of public officers and links personal conscience with public values and public interests. This article concludes that we should guard against using an oath of office as a remedy against increased reliance on private interests and motivations; rather the latter may endanger a public service ethics and annul any meaning and function an oath may still represent to begin with.

Voting and ID Requirements: A Survey of Registered Voters in Three States

Pastor, R. A., Santos, R., Prevost, A., Stoilov, V. — Wed, 16 Sep 2009 17:11:56 PDT

Since the 2000 election, one of the most contentious issues in election administration has been voter identification requirements. This article provides the results of a survey of registered voters in Indiana, Maryland, and Mississippi, which aimed to explore the extent to which ID requirements pose a problem (if any) to registered voters. The survey found that only 1.2% of registered voters in all three states lack a photo ID and in Indiana, which has the most stringent requirements, only 0.3% lacked an ID. The survey also found that more than two-thirds of respondents believe the U.S. electoral system would be trusted more if voters were required to show a photo ID. The article concludes with a proposal on how to construct an ID system that will assure ballot integrity while attracting new and more voters.

Is American Public Administration Detached From Historical Context? On the Nature of Time and the Need to Understand It in Government and Its Study

Raadschelders, J. C. N. — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 11:38:38 PDT

The study of public administration pays little attention to history. Most publications are focused on current problems (the present) and desired solutions (the future) and are concerned mainly with organizational structure (a substantive issue) and output targets (an aggregative issue that involves measures of both individual performance and organizational productivity/services).There is much less consideration of how public administration (i.e., organization, policy, the study, etc.) unfolds over time. History, and so administrative history, is regarded as a "past" that can be recorded for its own sake but has little relevance to contemporary challenges.This view of history is the product of a diminished and anemic sense of time, resulting from organizing the past as a series of events that inexorably lead up to the present in a linear fashion.To improve the understanding of government’s role and position in society, public administration scholarship needs to reacquaint itself with the nature of time.

Multilevel Performance Indicators for Multisectoral Networks and Management

Herranz, J. — Mon, 31 Aug 2009 11:38:38 PDT

Assessing public network performance is conceptually and methodologically challenging,because it is difficult to account for a public network’s multidimensional characteristics.This is one of the reasons why there are few fully developed conceptual frameworks that are supported by field-based empirical evidence.This theoretical underdevelopment makes it problematic for researchers to propose ways that professional managers may better develop,coordinate,and evaluate public networks.This article helps address this problem by extending and operationalizing Provan and Milward’s framework for multilevel (i.e., organizational, network, community) network effectiveness with Herranz’s concept of multisectoral network coordination strategies (i.e., bureaucratic, entrepreneurial, community). This article addresses the research question of whether network coordination is associated with network performance.The study finds that different network coordination approaches are associated with differential multilevel network performance and suggests that researchers and public managers consider network performance implications within the context of a strategic network coordination framework. Rather than offering a new theory to explain network effectiveness, this article aims to help build out "middle-range" theory as a step toward helping to construct more robust conceptual frameworks that inform the development of network management strategies and performance measurement tools for practitioners.

Community Policing and Community Building: A Case Study of Officer Perceptions

Glaser, M. A., Denhardt, J. — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 12:06:57 PDT

This research uses the responses from more than 500 officers serving a Midwestern city to understand their perceptions of themselves, fellow officers, the police department, neighborhood organizations, and the larger community in relation to community policing. Based on this data, the authors explore how community policing might be used to create a greater convergence of purpose among citizens, neighborhoods, organizations, and the broader well-being of the community. Findings indicate that officers doubt the ability of citizens to rise above their own self-interest, but they think that they and their fellow officers can do so. Furthermore, findings suggest the need for an overarching community agenda to prevent neighborhoods from becoming "civic cocoons" and to promote convergence of purpose between neighborhoods and the broader community. Finally, this research suggests that police departments that engage in transparent decision making that carefully balances departmental and community interests are better able to encourage this collaboration.

Patterns of Tax Abatement Policy: Lessons From the Outliers?

Reese, L. A., Blackmond Larnell, T., Sands, G. — Wed, 05 Aug 2009 12:06:56 PDT

This paper uses a unique database that includes municipal tax abatements granted in the State of Michigan over the past two decades. The time series nature of the data allows for identification of patterns in abatement use. Of particular interest, are the outliers; municipalities that have gone through most of the time period forgoing abatements, only to begin using them in earnest within the last five years and those that began using abatements early and consistently but in more recent years have begun to offer significantly fewer abatements. Specifically, the following questions are addressed:

• What are the patterns of abatement use over the past 26 years among municipalities in Michigan?

• What is the extent of deviation from past findings that abatement use is highly path dependent?

• What types of communities are likely to be early, as opposed to late, starters?

• How often are municipalities able to stop using abatements once they have begun?

• What circumstances cause cities to rely heavily on abatements over time and then, if not stop, at least reduce the flow?

• What public policy lessons can be learned from these outlying cases?

Goal Ambiguity, Work Complexity, and Work Routineness in Federal Agencies

Lee, J. W., Rainey, H. G., Chun, Y. H. — Tue, 07 Jul 2009 14:40:09 PDT

Prominent scholars have observed that public organizations and policies tend to have ambiguous goals, but research on these assertions is scarce. This analysis adds to a recent set of studies that developed measures of organizational goal ambiguity and found that federal agencies vary on these measures due to differences in funding patterns and other variables. This study adds variables representing the nature of the agencies’ work—the routineness and complexity of their technologies and tasks. As hypothesized, complexity relates positively to one dimension of goal ambiguity, "directive goal ambiguity." Routineness of tasks relates negatively to "evaluative goal ambiguity," whereas complexity relates positively to it. These results further evince the value of the measures of goal ambiguity and their potential contribution to analysis of variations among government agencies, and to such issues as the applicability of various managerial reforms to different agencies. The results also contribute indicators of organizational task complexity and routineness that researchers can use to take into account the type of work that an agency does, in analyzing government agencies and differences among them.

Competing for What? Linking Competition to Performance in Social Service Contracting

Lamothe, M., Lamothe, S. — Tue, 16 Jun 2009 15:02:43 PDT

This article explores the links between competition and contractor performance often assumed by market theory. Using data from Florida social service contracting, the authors test to see if competitively procured vendors outperform their noncompetitive peers regarding adherence to contract terms. It is found that, contrary to market theory, this is not the case. It is also found that district management capacity is positively related to performance and the performance of nonprofit vendors is indistinguishable from for-profits (whereas both appear to be outperformed by other government contractors). Finally, this study finds little evidence that performance or competition is related to the likelihood of maintaining contracts.

Stand by Me: Organization Founding in the Aftermath of Disaster

Campbell, D. A. — Fri, 22 May 2009 17:25:48 PDT

Over 250 new nonprofit organizations were founded in the immediate aftermath of the 9/11 attacks. This study explores the characteristics of those organizations, the role they played and founders' motivations. The creation of new organizations is compared to the Disaster Resource Center's typology of organized responses to disaster. The study finds that classification of the organized response to recovery efforts following 9/11 requires a different typology and identifies two elements: derivative and unaffiliated organizations. Most of the new 9/11 organizations were temporary and defined long-term recovery as one to two years; those that endured five years had close institutional or experiential ties to victims’ families. New organizations created in response to disaster have a shorter lifespan than other populations of new organizations. The study indicates that the setting of a disaster and how its victims are defined affect the kinds of organizations people create, their role and endurance.

Mission--Market Tensions and Nonprofit Pricing

Young, D. R., Jung, T., Aranson, R. — Fri, 08 May 2009 15:30:01 PDT

Nonprofit organizations must address their social missions while breaking even financially, facing trade-offs between mission responsive and financially rewarding actions, including alternative pricing policies. The paper draws on alternative theories of nonprofit pricing. In one theory, nonprofits price their services to maximize net revenue. In another theory, nonprofits price their services to achieve maximum mission impact within the constraint of financial solvency. These theories are explored through case studies of three multi-service organizations in a local social services federation. Alternative behavioral patterns are found, including pricing to balance financial and mission impacts on a service by service basis as well as differentiated, strategic pricing policies to achieve overall mission impact. In all cases nonprofit managers struggle with pricing-related mission-market tensions and could benefit from a system to help them resolve these tensions. One case is described in depth as an exemplar of how such a system can be developed.

Reassessing the Link Between City Structure and Fiscal Policy: Is the Problem Poor Measures of Governmental Structure?

Carr, J. B., Karuppusamy, S. — Mon, 04 May 2009 10:23:05 PDT

This study assesses the proposition that local government structure affects municipal expenditure levels. Despite decades of research, this question remains unsettled. Early on, analyses of this topic confirmed a linkage between municipal structure and fiscal policy, but more recent works have challenged this finding. Despite the widespread view that municipal structures are increasingly complex, many scholars continue to use simple measures of structure based on the use of the mayor–council or council–manager form. This gap between structures in practice and the measures used in research designs may explain the increasing frequency of studies with null findings. This proposition is examined through an analysis of the link between the per capita expenditures of 263 Michigan cities and four approaches to classifying local government structure. Regardless of the approach used or the complexity of the measure, no evidence was found that city structure is linked to per capita spending in these cities.

A Case Study of China's Administrative Reform: The Importation of the Super-Department

Dong, L., Christensen, T., Painter, M. — Wed, 15 Apr 2009 15:14:50 PDT

Although it is generally acknowledged that China, in its public sector reforms, has "learnt from the West," the mechanisms and effects of the processes of learning and imitation in China are little understood. The recent "Sixth Round of Administrative Reforms" in which the Western concept of the "super-department" was presented as a key theme is used as a case study of the processes involved. Chinese leaders intentionally and actively sought the administrative reform experience from Western nations. A broad and coordinated search for models and lessons was undertaken involving a number of government agencies and research institutions, including universities. However, the government-sponsored research seemed to stay at the surface of the issue and, once the model was chosen, the policy makers tended to idealize it in order for it to be accepted by the public. We conclude that this was a case of "superstitious learning" and "biased contextualization" in which the symbolic—as distinct from instrumental—purposes of borrowing a Western reform idea for domestic purposes was the predominant feature.

State Government Human Resource Professionals' Commitment to Employment at Will

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 10:35:26 PDT

This article examines the attitudes of a key set of state government officials—state human resource (HR) professionals—toward employment at will (EAW) in state government. It presents original survey data obtained from HR professionals in four southern states: Georgia, Florida, Texas, and Mississippi. Drawing on these data, the article creates an index measuring respondents’ commitment to EAW, as measured by their attitudes toward arguments used to advocate for EAW. The index is used as the dependent variable in an exploratory regression analysis indicating the importance of respondents’ experiences with the exercise of EAW discretion, years of public sector service, educational background, and state context to explaining variation in commitment to EAW. The article concludes with a discussion of the findings’ implications for the future of civil service reform in the United States.