Abstracts

Clayton Mosher and John Hagan. "Constituting Class and Crime in Upper Canada: The Sentencing of Narcotics Offenders, Circa 1908-1953." Social Forces, Vol. 72, No. 3, March, 1994.

This study combines quantitative and qualitative data in an examination of historical patterns in the sentencing of narcotics offenders in five Upper Canadian cities for the years 1908 to 1953. The analysis reveals that while an emerging emphasis on crime control, primarily reflected in distinctions between narcotics trafficking and possession offenses, changed patterns of judicial decision-making over this period, a sensitivity to issues of social class nonetheless endured. While in the earlier part of the twentieth century sentencing decisions resulted in the more severe treatment of working class offenders, by the middle of the century this sensitivity was expressed in the disproportionately lenient treatment of upper class narcotics offenders, combined with a more uniform but also more severe concentration on working class offenders who became overwhelmingly the target of narcotics law enforcement.

John L. Campbell and Michael Patrick Allen. "The Political Economy of Revenue Extraction in the Modern State: A Time-series Analysis of U.S. Income Taxes, 1916-1986." Social Forces Vol. 72, No. 3, March, 1994.

This research examines individual and corporate income tax rates in order to identify the political and economic conditions that affect the rate of revenue extraction in the modern state. Specifically, it employs multivariate time-series analysis to study the average effective income tax rates paid by both individuals and corporations in the United States from 1916 to 1986. The results reveal that individual income tax rates and corporate income tax rates are affected by many of the same variables. Indeed, both state-centered and society-centered variables influence the rate of revenue extraction, but societal-level variables are generally more important than organizational-level variables. In particular, macroeconomic conditions, state crises, and class organization affect the rate of revenue extraction, but political organization generally does not. Although individual income tax rates and, to a lesser extent, corporate income tax rates are relatively stable over time, both federal income taxes were altered dramatically as a result of World War II. This pattern of stability and change in the rate of revenue extraction by the state is consistent with the concept of "punctuated equilibrium" in institutional theory.

Timothy Bates. "Social Resources Generated by Group Support Networks May Not Be Beneficial to Asian-Immigrant-Owned Small Businesses." Social Forces, Vol. 72, No. 3, March, 1994.

The immigrant entrepreneur is often seen as a member of supportive peer and community subgroups. These networks assist in the creation and successful operation of firms by providing social resources in the form of customers, loyal employees and financing. This study provides evidence that the success and survival patterns of Asian immigrant firms derive from their large investments of financial capital and the impressive educational credentials of the business owners. Heavy utilization of social support networks typifies the less profitable, more failure-prone small businesses owned by Asian immigrants.

John R. Logan, Richard D. Alba, and Thomas L. McNulty. "Ethnic Economies in Metropolitan Regions: Miami and Beyond." Social Forces Vol. 72, No. 3, March, 1994.

The labor market status of racial and ethnic groups is surveyed in seventeen metropolitan areas. Five Asian groups (Japanese, Chinese, Koreans, Filipinos, and Asian Indians) and three Hispanic groups (Cubans, Mexicans, and Puerto Ricans) are compared to non-Hispanic whites and blacks. Minority business concentrations are found mostly in a few low-wage sectors of low capitalization, low levels of unionization, and high proportions of female employees. Patterns of economic incorporation meeting a minimal definition of an enclave economy are identified for several groups. Of these, the Cuban economy in Miami (along with Japanese in Honolulu and Koreans in Los Angeles) is unusual in terms of both size and sectoral diversity; the typical "enclave" appears to be based on a combination of apparel manufacturing and ethnic foods.

Emily Rosenbaum. "The Constraints on Minority Housing Choices, New York City 1978-1987." Social Forces, Vol. 72, No. 3, March, 1994.

This study utilizes a multivariate analysis to evaluate the housing and neighborhood characteristics that predict the residential choices made by non-Hispanic white, non-Hispanic black, Puerto Rican, and other Hispanic mover households in New York City during 1978-1987. This study is unique in that it evaluates minority housing choices in a multigroup context, rather than in a two-group context that implicitly assumes that each minority group competes for housing with only whites. After the influence of household characteristics is controlled, the results show that indicators of low-quality housing and neighborhood conditions significantly increase the likelihood that a minority -- most likely a Puerto Rican -- household moves in, rather than a white household. Moreover, location in an area dominated by a particular minority group significantly increases the chance that the housing unit is occupied by a household belonging to that same group. By constraining minority housing choices, housing market segmentation effectively predetermines the types of housing units and neighborhoods that are available to different groups, and thus maintains racially and ethnically separate neighborhoods and contributes to racial/ethnic inequities in housing consumption.

Maureen T. Hallinan. "School Differences in Tracking Effects on Achievement." Social Forces Vol. 72, No. 3, March, 1994.

This paper examines school differences in the effects of tracking students for instruction on student achievement. Two mechanisms are posited for possible school effects: school differences in the determinants of track placement, and school variance in the opportunities for learning presented to students by track. It is argued that track placement is influenced by characteristics of a school's track structure, by assignment criteria, by the flexibility of track membership and by a school's scheduling priorities. Differential growth in achievement within track level across schools is explained by school differences in track size and homogeneity, in the quantity and quality of instruction within track and in the determinants of academic achievement. Longitudinal data from two cohorts of over 4,000 students provide empirical evidence of school differences in tracking practices and tracking effects on learning. Policy implications of the results for the school choice debate and for organizational and pedagogical practice are discussed.

Debra C. Minkoff. "From Service Provision to Institutional Advocacy: The Shifting Legitimacy of Organizational Forms." Social Forces Vol. 72, No. 4, June, 1994.

This article examines changes in the distribution of national women's and minority membership organizations since 1955, emphasizing the increasing legitimacy of the advocacy form of organization and the consequent replacement of service provision as the dominant mode of activity. Using data on the founding and disbanding of national women's and minority organizations since 1955, I argue that Hannan and Freeman's (1989; Hannan & Carroll 1992) theory of density-dependent legitimation and competition, and its extension to cross-effects among organizations, provides a framework for understanding the contemporary development of social change organizations. Though institutional and resource factors are important, they do not fully account for organizational vital rates. Findings indicate that increases in both service and protest organizations promoted the expansion of advocacy groups. As this middle-of-the-road strategy became more legitimate, competition became the predominant mode of interorganizational relationship. This accounts for the growth in the number of advocacy organizations after 1970, as well as the leveling off of service and protest organizations.

Holly J. McCammon. "Disorganizing and Reorganizing Conflict: Outcomes of the State's Legal Regulation of the Strike Since the Wagner Act." Social Forces, Vol. 72, No. 4, June, 1994.

This article, through an examination of U.S. federal labor law's impact on strikes since the Wagner Act, evaluates three theories of the state in capitalist society: the structuralist class, political class, and statist theories. Little support is found for the statist position that state actors will pursue their own agendas when they have the bureaucratic capacities to do so, when elections are competitive, or during recession and war. The results, however, suggest that both class perspectives are useful in understanding the operation of law. Since passage of the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947, the law has selectively restricted those strikes posing significant challenges to employer workplace authority, which supports structuralist perspective. However, the law appears not to have had these selective effects until after more militant factions, viz., Communist leadership in the CIO, were removed from the labor movement, suggesting support for the political class theory. The article concludes that a synthesis of the two class theories is called for.

Barbara Kilbourne, Paula England, and Kurt Beron. "Effects of Individual, Occupational, and Industrial Characteristics on Earnings: Intersections of Race and Gender." Social Forces, Vol. 72, No. 4, June, 1994.

Critics of the "women's agenda" in both research and policy have complained of its exclusive focus on the experiences of white women. As a result we know relatively little about the experiences of black women in the labor market compared to those of white women. We focus on generalizations regarding the effects of experience, education, marital status, occupational characteristics, and industrial sector on earnings. To investigate how these variables interact with gender and race to affect pay, we used fixed-effects on panel data (1966-1981) from the NLS. We use regression decomposition to ascertain what factors: 1) explain the gender gap in earnings, and whether these factors explain the same portion of this gap among blacks and whites, and 2) explain the race gap in earnings, and whether these factors explain the same portion of this gap among women and men.

Roy Bahl and Johannes Linn. "Fiscal Decentralization and Intergovernmental Transfers in Less Developed Countries." Publius, Vol. 24, No. 1, Winter, 1994.

This article addresses the issue of fiscal decentralization in developing countries, and the use of intergovernmental transfers to achieve this objective. We find that developing countries have more centralized fiscal structures and argue that this is consistent with the theory of fiscal federalism. Economic development, however, does push the advantage toward decentralization. We also show that developing countries use a wide variety of transfer instruments to fund local governments, and that these instruments give the national government varying degrees of control over local government finances.

Gordon R. Brown. "Canadian Federal-Provincial Overlap and Presumed Government Inefficiency." Publius, Vol. 24, No. 1, Winter, 1994.

The claim that overlapping government activity in Canada's federal system causes significant government inefficiency has gained considerable currency. The three major studies on the subject have demonstrated the existence of extensive overlap, but they resort to qualitative arguments and anecdotal evidence to conclude either that overlap causes significant government inefficiency (the traditional provincial position) or that overlap is fairly well managed (the traditional federal position). Thus, the debate about overlap remains essentially a debate about federal and provincial power, not about efficiency. This is apparently unavoidable, due to the difficulty of measuring the effect of overlap on efficiency.

James D. Chesney. "Intergovernmental Politics in the Allocation of Block Grant Funds for Substance Abuse in Michigan." Publius, Vol. 24, No. 1, Winter, 1994.

This article examines the intersection between federal programmatic goals and state politics in the allocation of substance-abuse block-grant money by the State of Michigan. The Alcohol and Drug Abuse and Mental Services (ADMS) block grant allows states more flexibility in allocating "Drug War" funds. The ADMS formula determines the amount of money going to Michigan but does not determine the distribution of funds within the state. An examination of the distribution of ADMS funding among the eighteen coordinating agencies in Michigan finds that neither the state nor the national formulas distribute funds in a manner that reflects substance-abuse deaths. Michigan's formula produces a result consistent with the federal formula, despite the separate state and national formula negotiations. The process is not one of bargaining or even coercion; it may be described as mutually independent decisionmaking--or parallel policies. Models of intergovernmental relations must be revised to include the possibility of joint synergistic action without coordination.

Lawrence B. Mohr. "Authority in Organizations: On the Reconciliation of Democracy and Expertise." Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Vol. 4, No. 1, January, 1994.

The issue is whether democracy and expertise can be reconciled as bases for the allocation of authority in organizations. If expertise is the criterion, then the experts will dictate and the nonexperts will simply follow. If democracy is the criterion, then all have a legitimate right to influence and the expert is no more authoritative than the nonexpert. There is much to be said in favor of both of these criteria, but each appears to rule out the other. If a choice must be made, expertise would seem to have preference because research has shown that democracy is not very workable. The factors that most enhance the success of worker participation, whether truly democratic or not, are interest in the area of decision, competence to help make decisions, and generally accepted norms of product quality. On this basis, a "voluntarist model" of organizational democracy is introduced, covering task decisions in organizations that should be made in the rational mode. Under this model, democracy prevails, but participants voluntarily submit to the influence of experts as required by quality norms and the viability of the group. A few examples show that the voluntarist model can be implemented successfully and can reconcile democracy with expertise.

E. Sam Overman and Kathy J. Boyd. "Best Practice Research and Postbureaucratic Reform." Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory, Vol. 4, No. 1, January, 1994.

Best practice research (BPR) is the method of choice for contemporary postbureaucratic reform theorists. Public management researchers increasingly examine "best practices" to advocate postbureaucratic principles of customer-driven, value-focused, entrepreneurial, market-oriented government. BPR and postbureaucratic theory may be a positive, practical, prescriptive, and innovative new paradigm in public management research and theory, but numerous practical and scientific challenges remain. BPR is theoretically self-validating, noncumulative, limited in scope, and politically skewed. BPR demonstrates the unique problems that arise when research and reform in public management become too closely linked. BPR successfully brought post-bureaucratic theory to market, but it cannot now be responsible for evaluating the administrative reforms it has generated. The methodology of "reforms as experiments" is more suited for this task.

Attila Agh. "Europeanization through Privatization and Pluralization in Hungary." Journal of Public Policy, Vol 13, No. 1.

Analytically, privatization and pluralization may be treated as separate economic and political phenomena, but in the actual conditions of a post-Communist society they are integrally related to the development of a middle-class society that was absent due to "deprivatization" in a one-party state. The creation of a society of plural interests and private enterprise represents a shift from Sovietization to Europeanization. However, the process is extremely difficult, for there are many paradoxes in the logic of privatization. In addition, issues of ownership-past as well as future-are major political battlefields. Political strategies of privatization include a grand coalition; a new state party; Latin-Americanization; creating a broad entrepreneurial class and/or a European working class; and a wide coalition. These complexities are examined with particular reference to the experience of contemporary Hungary.

John Markoff and Veronica Montecinos. "The Ubiquitous Rise of Economists." Journal of Public Policy, Vol. 13, No. 1.

Professional economists have for a long time had significant roles as advisers to policy makers. In recent years they have gone well beyond this in many countries and have come to occupy the highest positions in government. While their technical knowledge is an important reason for their influx into governments, their acquisition of the highest positions of authority, we contend, is to an important degree a ceremonial display. The symbolic aspect of the appointment of high-level economist-politicians is as significant as any specific stock of knowledge they bring to political life and is a part of an emerging transnational political culture in which economists occupy a sacerdotal role.

Romano Dyerson and Frank Mueller. "Intervention by Outsiders: A Strategic Management Perspective on Government Industrial Policy." Journal of Public Policy, Vol. 13, No. 1.

As the debate throughout the eighties has concluded, the efforts of governments to intervene at the firm level has largely been disappointing. Using two examples drawn from the British experience, Rover and Inmos, this paper offers an analysis as to why the Government has encountered difficulties when it has sought to intervene in a strategic fashion. Essentially, public policy makers lack adequate mechanisms to intervene effectively in technology-based companies. Locked out of the knowledge base of the firm, inappropriate financial control is imposed which reinforces the "outsider" status of the Government. Having addressed the limitations of strategic intervention, the paper, drawing on the comparative experience of other countries, then goes on to address how this policy boundary might be pushed back in the long term.

Wenfang Tang. "Post-Socialist Transition and Environmental Protection." Journal of Public Policy, Vol. 13, No. 1.

This article examines the institutional characteristics of market and centrally planned economies and their impact on the environment. It argues that while the planned economies are utilising market mechanisms in environmental protection, their market counterparts are facing more and more environmental problems that require governmental intervention. Using the latest statistical information, the records of sulphur dioxide emission under market and planning over the past twenty years are compared. The findings show that while planned economies generated more pollution due to energy inefficiency, they were nevertheless quite effective in reducing pollution under centralised coordination. This is particularly true at the initial stage of pollution control. Although the industrialised market economies were capable of diverting resources into pollution control, they were equally capable of causing environmental disruption, especially at their early stages of industrialisation. Finally, it is argued that environmental protection in post-socialist societies is likely to experience a downturn in the new future. This is due to the decreasing role of government coordination, the lack of a legal system, and the difficulty of developing a well-functioning market.

Tsuyoshi Kawasaki. "Policy Ideas and Change in Japanese Bureaucratic Politics: The Ministry of Finance in International Monetary Crisis, 1969-1971." Journal of Public Policy, Vol. 13, No. 1.

Under what conditions do dominant policy ideas change in Japanese bureaucratic organizations? The answer is developed in reference to a rare empirical case in which critical information has been released about intra-bureaucracy politics, the Japanese Ministry of Finance, during the 1969-1971 international monetary crisis. The paper contends, first, that the crisis did not automatically lead to a change of a dominant policy idea prevalent in the Ministry. A policy change occurred only after tactful leadership was exercised by the highest Ministry official. Second, dynamics of paralysis and change were strongly shaped by structures and norms characteristic of Japanese organizations. At a more general level, the case study shows that the exercise of policy-changing leadership vis-a-vis bureaucracies depends on two intra-governmental structure variables: institutional arrangements within and surrounding bureaucracies; and the level of information control exercised by bureaucracies.

Dietmar Braun. "Who Governs Intermediary Agencies? Principal-Agent Relations in Research Policy-Making." Journal of Public Policy, Vol. 13, No. 1.

The role of semi-public intermediary institutions is underestimated in political research. This paper elaborates the dynamics of the interaction pattern of mission-agencies, promoting and conducting research in the United States, Great Britain, France, and Germany. The principal-agent-model serves as the organizing theoretical concept. By stressing the role of the third party, usually neglected in the model, it is shown that intermediary agencies in policy-making are drawn into cooperative and almost symbiotic relationships with the recipients of programs. The use of intermediary agencies becomes a double-edged sword for policy-makers. While close relationships with the scientific community improve the acceptance of political research programs, the formulation of research policies becomes subject to compromise and coalition building within funding agencies.

H. Richard Friman. "From Policy Beliefs to Policy Choices: The Resurgence of Tariff Retaliation in the U.S. Pursuit of Fair Trade." Journal of Public Policy, Vol. 13, No. 1.

Policymakers hold and seek to act on beliefs concerning trade strategies as well as those concerning trade tactics and instruments. In contrast to prominent hypotheses in the literature, this article argues that constraints placed on specific dimensions of trade policy by societal groups and state institutions appear to play a greater role in shaping the impact of beliefs on policy choices than overall shifts in discretion accorded to policymakers. Insights into the resurgence of the retaliatory tariff in U.S. trade policy during 1985-88 are at the interaction of policy beliefs and variation in executive discretion. Although lending support to scholarship focusing on the interaction of ideas and institutions, these findings raise questions concerning prominent claims about the significance of policy beliefs.

Kirsten S. Weaver and Christopher S. Allen. "The Financial System and Corporate Governance in Germany: Institutions and the Diffusion of Innovations." Journal of Public Policy, Vol. 13, No. 1.

Germany's economic resilience, even in the face of the extreme pressures of unification, cannot be explained by the neoclassical economic approach. Its social market institutions induce the major actors in the political economy to negotiate over the terms of economic and political adjustments in such a fashion as to diffuse innovative new organizational and institutional practices broadly and thoroughly throughout the economy and polity. The reorganization of the financial sector and the spread of new forms of workplace organization and corporate governance are used to illustrate this dynamic. The paper concludes with implications for how we think about regulations.