From the President
There are several items that I would like to call to the attention of the members.
The Aaron Wildavsky Award
At the 1994 meeting the section will present its first Aaron Wildavsky Award for an enduring
contribution to the study of public policy. This award will be given to a book or an article published more than ten
but no more than twenty years ago that has made a significant and continuing contribution to the study of public
policy. I would like the section members to participate in the award process, elsewhere in Policy Currents is a call
for nominations. The selection committee is David Lowery (chair) University of North Carolina, Saundra
Schneider, University of South Carolina, and Hank Jenkins-Smith, University of New Mexico.
Policy Currents
Our call for applications and nominations for the new editor of Policy Currents that appeared in the last
issue generated a modest amount of mail but no applications or nominations. The continued excellence of Policy
Currents is vital to the public policy section. Accordingly, I am appointing a committee composed of David
Webber (chair) University of Missouri, Anne Schneider, Arizona State University, and Matthew Cahn, California
State University, Northridge to search for and select a new editor. Suggestions should be made to David. His
email address is polidjw@mizzoul.missouri.edu
Proposed By-Law Amendment
I would like to propose expanding the number of Council members on the section's governing council to
12 (from the current six). Negotiations are proceeding with both the Science, Technology and Environmental
Policy Section and the Applied Political Science Section over possible mergers with the Public Policy section. Our
section is already one of the most diverse in the association. Should additional sections join with us, it will be even
more difficult to represent all concerns on the council with only six members. Council members also do a great
many of the tasks of the section. A council member must chair the nominations committee, and they also serve on
a variety of committees or undertake special projects such as sponsoring a workshop. Expanding the council six
would permit the section to spread this work load more and also to reward more individuals for their previous
service to the section. The proposed amendment would change Article III, Section I of our by-laws to read as
follows:
Section 1. Governing Council
The Governing Council shall consist of twelve Council members, plus the President, Vice-President, and
Secretary Treasurer. The Governing Council shall be responsible for all decisions regarding the Section, although
it may decide to submit certain critical matters to the membership for advice or vote. Proposals concerning
changes in dues must be submitted to the Annual Membership Meeting. The Governing Council shall meet at
least once a year in order to plan the Annual Membership Meeting and conduct whatever business is deemed
advisable by its members. It may also establish procedures for conducting business via mail. All Governing
Council decisions shall require at least eight (of fifteen) votes. The twelve Councilmembers shall serve for three
year terms, with four members elected each year (except for the initial start-up period).
The only actual changes in the by-law are the substitutions of twelve for six and the adjustment in what is
a majority vote. According to our by-laws, this amendment can be adopted only by a two-thirds vote at the annual
business meeting.
Mergers and Acquisitions
The Presidents of both the Science, Technology and Environmental Policy Section and the Applied
Political Science Section have talked with me about possible mergers with the Public Policy Section. I asked both
the Presidents to talk with their membership and come back to us with a specific proposal on merger that could be
submitted to the Governing Council. The APSA clock for having 250 members starts this spring. Sections with
less than 250 members have one year to either increase their membership, merge, or go out of business. The
merger discussions are likely to go on for a while. At this point, I do not know if there will be a specific proposal
at the annual business meeting.
The reason for the 250 members rule was the difficulty in coordinating 32 sections, especially for the
annual program. Some persons submit the same paper proposal to five or six different sections. Coordinating
multiple submissions as well as trying to make sure a public policy panel on environmental policy does not conflict
with a public administration panel on regulatory administration, or a comparative politics panel on the same topic
is an administrative nightmare. I suspect that the pressure for consolidation will increase in the future.
1994 Grants Workshop
David Webber is putting together a grant writing workshop/short course for the 1994 meeting. More
information on the workshop appears elsewhere in Policy Currents.
The Program
The 1994 program has been completed and submitted to the association. The section was allocated 16
panels, and discussions are currently on-going as to panels to be cross-listed, etc. A full listing of the public policy
panels will appear in the next issue of Policy Currents.
If submissions to participate in the program are any indication, the public policy section is flourishing. I
received 140 individual paper proposals as well as 18 full panel proposals. The acceptance rate for paper proposals
was 33%; that for full panels was 22%. This strikes me as a low rate of acceptance. Clearly there were some
excellent papers and panels that could not be scheduled. I have written the APSA staff on this matter, but given
severe constraints on program size it is unlikely we will receive any windfall increase in panels in the short run.
One key factor in assigning the number of panels is average panel attendance. On this factor the section does not
do very well. There are two advantages to attending panels: the section can increase its panel allotment, and you
can ask embarrassing questions of Paul Sabatier even if he is not on the panel.
The effort to group public policy panels by theory, approach, or method rather than substance as indicated
in the call for proposals was only partly successful. Many people submitted proposals who did not follow the
suggestions in the call. In other cases, proposals did not have a theory. Despite these problems, there will be some
theoretically coherent panels with some effort to communicate across substantive policy areas. Among the
theoretical panel themes are social construction and policy instruments, policy design and control, democratic
values in public policy research, quasi-experiments in public policy, policy subsystems, manipulating the
environment, transaction costs and free riders, and policy networks in a comparative perspective. There are also
an array of traditional substantive policy panels.
Nominations
I have appointed the following nominations committee: Sheldon Kamieniecki, University of Southern
California, Karen Hult, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, and Paul Sabatier, California Davis. If
you have suggestions for Vice President or the Council, please send your suggestions to a member of the
committee.
Communication
If you have ideas for the Section, want to react to something proposed here, or simply want to tell me how
misguided I am, the email address is meier@csd4.csd.uwm.edu
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