Regulatory Bundling

Regulatory bundling is the aggregation or disaggregation of legislative rules by administrative agencies. Agencies, in other words, can bundle what would otherwise be multiple rules into just one rulemaking. Conversely, they can split one rule into several. This observation parallels other recent work on how agencies can aggregate adjudications and enforcement actions but now focuses on legislative rules, the most consequential form of agency action. The topic is timely in light of a recent executive order directing agencies to repeal two regulations for every new one promulgated. Agencies now have a greater incentive to pack regulatory provisions together for every two rules they can repeal

The Next (Quiet) Revolution in Higher Education: Toward the Open Access of Research

We live in a time of revolution. How does it feel to be a revolutionary? Didn’t know you were? Strangely enough, this particular revolution is of a most unusual type because many faculty who might benefit from it are unaware of it, do not understand it or, in some cases, do not support it. The revolution of which I write pertains to the push for the Open Access of research and data, countering legacy publishers who have traditionally published faculty research only to sell it back to university libraries at high subscription cost

Exploring the central characteristics of HR shared services: evidence from a critical case study in the Netherlands

Human resource shared service centers (HR SSCs) are foreseen as improving HR service delivery for their end-users: employees, line managers and decentralized HR professionals. Although the concept expects the benefits of HR SSCs to come from centralizing knowledge and decentralizing the control exercised over an HR SSC, research into these two fundamental shared service characteristics is scarce. The purpose of this research is therefore to explore whether resource bundling, combined with business unit control over an HR SSC, is sufficient to improve HR service delivery to its end-users. Using concepts from intellectual capital and agency theory, we find that the combination of these two characteristics of shared services is not sufficient to improve HR service delivery. Rather, we suggest that (1) HR SSCs have to update the knowledge and skills of their staff; (2) end-users have to effectively maintain the codified knowledge centralized in the HR SSC; and (3) business units and the HR SSC need to collaborate in order for the benefits of an HR shared service to be realized

From \u27Trial and Error\u27 to Major Reform: The Politics of Medicare Demonstration Projects

Facing fragmented institutions and partisan polarization, officials in the United States often attempt to engineer policy change without assembling new legislative majorities. To this end, they have increasingly employed demonstration projects, policy innovations undertaken by administrative agencies designed to test alternative approaches to implementation or service delivery on a limited segment of the target population and for a limited period of time. Despite the increasing importance of demonstration projects, they are an undertheorized source of policy change. In this article, we conceptualize demonstration projects as part of a class of experimental institutions that, while incremental in scope, have the potential to \u27scale up\u27 into more substantial reforms. Data from three Medicare demonstrations suggest that policy change is more likely when programmes generate strong support constituencies; minimize administrative and infrastructural costs; are undertaken in contexts with few veto points; and align with the time horizons of elected officials

Taking stock of structural funds implementation : current challenges and future opportunities

This paper highlights several themes which have informed programme management since IQ-Net meeting in June 2002, held in Lulea, Sweden. First, it provides an overview of the main development in programme implementation and the financial execution of programmes, including an exploration of the risks of automatic decommitment faced by the programmes. Second, it describes the progress made with the mid-term evaluations, following on the IQ-Net thematic paper on this subject presented at the Lulea conference. Third, it presents an overview of the current EU-level debate on simplification, highlighting the views of the network's partners as well as, where available, the member state

Unqualified Ambassadors

In making appointments to the office of ambassador, U.S. presidents often select political supporters from outside the ranks of the State Department’s professional diplomatic corps. This practice is aberrational among advanced democracies and a source of recurrent controversy in the United States, and yet its merits and significance are substantially opaque: How do political appointees compare with career diplomats in terms of credentials? Are they less effective in office? Do they serve in some countries more than others? Have any patterns evolved over time? Commentators might assume answers to these questions, but actual evidence has been in short supply. In this context, it is difficult for the public to evaluate official practice and hold accountable those who wield power under the Appointments Clause. This Article helps to correct for the current state of affairs. Using a novel dataset based on a trove of previously unavailable documents that I obtained from the State Department through requests and litigation under the Freedom of Information Act (“FOIA”), the Article systematically reveals the professional qualifications and campaign contributions of over 1900 ambassadorial nominees spanning the Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Bill Clinton, George W. Bush, and Barack Obama administrations, along with the first two years of Donald Trump. In doing so, the Article substantially enhances the transparency of the appointments process and exposes conditions of concern: not only are political appointees on average much less qualified than their career counterparts under a variety of congressionally approved measures, but also the gap has grown along with the commonality and size of their campaign contributions to nominating presidents. These conditions raise the possibility that campaign contributions are generating an increasingly deleterious effect on the quality of U.S. diplomatic representation abroad. The Article concludes by identifying and defending the constitutional merits of plausible legal reforms, including Senate rule amendments and statutory measures to regulate qualifications and enhance transparency

Making Prevention Work: Case Study Netherlands. Materials about Prevention Vol. 18 June 2020

As part of a larger project mapping preventive structures and policies for children, young people and families in 12 European countries, the Making Prevention Work study aims to provide a consistent base for developing preventive policies in Europe. It examines approaches across the EU that demonstrate success with local preventive work. The in-depth case study of the Netherlands presented in this publication is one of three published in the context of the Making Prevention Work study. Making Prevention Work draws on a concept of prevention that is framed in universalist and integrative terms. The concept is universalist in that it addresses all children and young people, even those not seen as being “at-risk.” It is integrative because prevention should be organized from a child’s point of view, not in terms of administrative responsibilities. As such, this concept targets the establishment of prevention chains that link different institutions over the life-course. Making Prevention Work includes summary factsheets of the preventive concepts, structures and practices mapped in 12 EU member states (Austria, Czech Republic, Denmark, England (UK), Finland, France, Germany, Ireland, Lithuania, the Netherlands, Spain and Sweden) as well as three case studies (Austria, France and the Netherlands) featuring data from interviews with experts and implementing actors