摘要:

This article compares the strength, history, and characteristics of public interest groups in the United States and France. French and American public interest groups differ dramatically in their resources, popular support, and in their relations with state agencies. French groups, dependent on a more powerful central state bureaucracy, are often able to achieve their goals by having them adopted by state elites. American organizations, faced with a more diffuse public sector, seek broader access and use a greater diversity of means of influence. They are often less influential, but paradoxically are stronger organizationally because they are forced to be independent from the state. The differing relations with the state explain the different tactics and organizational maintenance strategies pursued by public interest groups in the two countries. Tight links bind the development of a nation's interest‐group system with that of its constitutional structures. An explanation of a national interest‐group system must include consideration of the institutional context within which it opera

ISSN:0952-1895    

DOI:10.1111/j.1468-0491.1996.tb00231.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1996

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

The search for a definition of political corruption that adequately captures the nuances of governmental activity has been a long one. This article defends social or attitudinal definitions of corruption against some recent criticisms. It examines the value of Arnold Heidenheimer's widely cited distinctions among “black,”“gray,” and “white” corruption using empirical evidence from an interview study of over 100 Australian politicians and 500 voters. The results show that the broad dimensions of corruption — the official, the donor, the payoff, and the favor — identified by John Peters and Susan Welch affect the views of both politicians and voters alike.Nonetheless, elites and the public come to judgments from different perspectives, and they judge some acts differently. Put another way, some corruption is gray. Politicians judge actions more subtly than do voters, who are more likely to see corruption in all acts. As Michael Johnston has suggested, the different experiences of political insiders and outsiders explain this disparity in their moral outlooks. Insiders are socialized to see at least some actions as functional and therefore not corrupt. Outsiders, unaware of the insiders' rules, tend to judge political action by moral absolutes. Thus the structure of liberal democratic government contributes to conflicting elite and public views of political

ISSN:0952-1895    

DOI:10.1111/j.1468-0491.1996.tb00232.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1996

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

This study contributes to the growing literature on differences in attitudes between public and private sector employees, particularly with respect to their receptivity or resistance to public management reforms. We begin by asking the question: to what degree does perceived self‐interest play a role in accounting for attitudes toward public management reforms such as downsizing, privatization, and public spending? Using attitudinal data from Sweden, a social welfare state with a large public bureaucracy, a tension is observed both among public employees in different levels of government and between public and private sector employees. In the context of public management reforms, national government employees emerge as more right‐leaning politically and more supportive of public management reforms than those working in local government. The analysis finds, particularly among national government employees, that while interest as measured here is strongly related to attitudes toward reform, status as a public employee and status as a public bureaucrat are not as significant as other components of interest in accounting for attitudes toward public management ref

ISSN:0952-1895    

DOI:10.1111/j.1468-0491.1996.tb00233.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1996

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

H. Eckstein could say a few years ago that “political culture theory may plausibly be considered one of two still viable general approaches to political theory and explanation proposed since the early fifties to replace the long‐dominant formalism‐legalism of the field — the other being political rational choice theory” (1988, 789). For the last two decades, the rational choice approach has been dominant and thriving in many fields of political science, whether in international relations, political sociology, public administration or public policy; it has greatly reinforced the theoretical and empirical basis of the explanation of human freedom of action. But it has recently shown some signs of intellectual fatigue. Critics now underscore that, assuming that individuals compare expected benefits and costs of actions prior to adopting strategies for action, is valid and useful only in relatively simple choice situations where information is easily available and interpretable (Elster 1989; Dunleawy 1991). Some neo‐institutionalists have claimed that rationality comes not as means‐end calculus prior to action but rather as an ex‐post justification after choice (March, Olsen 1989; Hall 1986, 15–20). Others have come to say that the rational choice approach, which explains how people ought to act in order to achieve aims and not what these aims ought to be, totally misses the central question of why it is that people have “preferences” and pursue some aims rather than others (Wildavsky 1987; Cook, Levi 1990; Wildavsky 1994). It does not mean that the rational choice approach should be discarded: there should rather be a “contextualization” of rationality which explains both why the same man in different situations or contexts adopts different rationalities, and why in the same context two men can adopt different rationalities (Wildavsky 1994).But the rational choice approach is also showing its limits in the very field where it was born and has blossomed: economics. In a recent issue of a French national newspaper, two articles dealing with economics and development were pointing at the same problem: cultural explanations of economic behavior are needed. In the first article, the former General Secretary of the United Nations, now President of the UNESCO‐UNO World Commission on Culture and Development, J. Perez de Cuellar, advocated a cultural approach of the economic development of the Third World countries in order to find, at last, an enduring and practical solution to their endemic problems (1994). In the second article, a journalist reflecting on why the same hard economic therapies have worked in Poland but not in Russia could only refer to the “specific economic culture of Russia” described by economists (Vernholes 1994).These clear limits imposed upon the rational choice approach have brought culturalist theory back into favor among social scientists. Does this mean that a well‐built culturalist theory might be a new “explanatory panacea, a universal nostrum” (Thompson, Ellis, Wildavsky 1992, 516)? The aim of this article is to try to unravel the cultural approach and assess its potential in the specific field of public administration. To do this, we shall draw on two close but relatively separate disciplines — political science and organizational theory — which we believe (should) meet to give a richer account of administrative reality. Our purpose is to question the recent interest in and utilization of the cultural metaphor(s) by bureaucrats, politicians, “special advisers” and authors in the analysis and implementation of administrative reform. The reason for this inquiry is that, contrary to analysts of private sector organizations, specialists of public sector organizations have not yet seriously addressed a culturalist theory of public administration while acknowledging that there is or there are public administration culture(s). We therefore hope to evaluate the usefulness of a culturalist theory for public administration. In this rather complex theoretical field, we prefer to take the simple solution to try to explain first the classical culturalist theory, and second, the new culturalist theory. Third, we should see whether there is or should be anything specific about administrative culture and

ISSN:0952-1895    

DOI:10.1111/j.1468-0491.1996.tb00234.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1996

数据来源: WILEY

摘要:

Book review in this article:Brazilian Industrialists and Democratic Change. By Leigh PayneEnvironmental Change: Federal Courts and the EPA. By Rosemary O'Leary

ISSN:0952-1895    

DOI:10.1111/j.1468-0491.1996.tb00235.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1996

数据来源: WILEY

ISSN:0952-1895    

DOI:10.1111/j.1468-0491.1996.tb00236.x

出版商:Blackwell Publishing Ltd    

年代:1996

数据来源: WILEY