New Governance for Rural America: Creating Intergovernmental Partnerships

Throughout the 1990s public demand for a fundamental shift in the relationship between government and its citizens has intensified. In response, a new governance model has emerged, emphasizing decreased federal control in favor of intergovernmental collaboration and increased involvement of state, local, and private agencies. As the authors of this volume show, one of the best examples of new governance can be found in the National and State Rural Development Councils (NRDC and SRDC), created in 1990 as the result of President Bush\u27s Rural Development Initiative and now called the Rural Development Partnership. This effort was part of a move within policymaking circles to redefine a rural America that was no longer synonymous with family farming and that required innovative new solutions for economic revival. By 1994 twenty-nine states had created and ten other states were in the process of forming such councils. In this first detailed analysis of the NRDC and SRDCs, the authors examine the successes and failures of the original eight councils in Kansas, Maine, Mississippi, Oregon, South Carolina, South Dakota, Texas, and Washington; as well as eight other councils subsequently created in Iowa, New Mexico, North Carolina, Vermont, New York, North Dakota, Utah, and Wyoming. Combining empirical analysis with current theories about networks and inter-organizational relations, this volume should appeal to academics and practitioners interested in rural development policy, public administration, public policy and management, and intergovernmental relations. Description Beryl A. Radin is professor of Public Administration and Policy in the Graduate School of Public Affairs at Rockefeller College of the State University of New York at Albany. This Kansas Open Books title is funded by a grant from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation Humanities Open Book Program.https://digitalcommons.pittstate.edu/kansas_open_books/1051/thumbnail.jp

Does Strategic Planning Improve Organizational Performance? A Meta-Analysis

Strategic planning is a widely adopted management approach in contemporary organizations. Underlying its popularity is the assumption that it is a successful practice in public and private organizations that has positive consequences for organizational performance. Nonetheless, strategic planning has been criticized for being overly rational and for inhibiting strategic thinking. This article undertakes a meta-analysis of 87 correlations from 31 empirical studies and asks, Does strategic planning improve organizational performance? A random-effects meta-an

State Rural Development Councils Are Creating Public-Private Partnerships

In 1990, the Federal Government embarked on an experiment to conduct business differently in the rural development field. At the center of that effort, known as the National Rural Development Partnership, was the creation of State Rural Development Councils. The Councils include members from Federal, State, local, and tribal governments and from for-profit and nonprofit organizations. While Councils differ widely, a study of 16 of them found that they had modest early successes in improving communication and cooperation among members, expanding rural issues beyond traditional agricultural concerns to human resource and environmental quality concerns, and addressing local problems in a more coordinated manner

Policy Analysis Reaches Midlife

<div>The field of policy analysis that exists in the 21st century is quite different from that found earlier phases. The world of the 1960s that gave rise to this field in the US often seems unrelated to the world we experience today. These shifts have occurred as a result of a range of developments – technological changes, changes in the structure and processes of government both internally and globally, new expectations about accountability and transparency, economic and fiscal problems, and increased political and ideological conflict.</div><div>It is clear globalization has had a significant impact on the field. Shifts in the type of decisionmaking also have created challenges for policy analysts since analysts are now clearly in every nook and cranny in the decisionmaking world. Thus it is relevant to look at the work that they do, the skills that they require, and the background experience that is relevant to them.</div

Presidential address: The evolution of policy analysis field: From conversation to conversations

Several years ago, the Israeli author A. B. Yehoshua [1993] wrote a very unusual novel about a family. The volume, called Mr. Mani, is constructed as five conversations, set in five different time periods, that take place between a family member and some other individual. Although written as a conversation between two people, Yehoshua presents only one side of the dialogue. It is up to the reader to read between the lines and to create the reality of the other participant in the conversation. On its face, this novel has very little to do with the world of public policy analysis and management. Yet I was intrigued by its potential applicability. At the most basic level, the idea of the conversation does have relevance and appeal to our field. Our identity emerged from the desire to provide policy advice to decisionmakers. Our predecessors-whether the more ancient traditions of Machiavelli or Kautilia One side of a conversation seemed to me to be a powerful metaphor that was worth exploring within the context of the policy analysis field. Yehoshua could present one side of a conversation with the assurance that the reader would accurately deduce the dialogue from that exposition. Would we be able to infer the dimensions of the policy analyst-decisionmaker exchange by looking only at the analyst&apos;s contribution? Have we, in fact, moved from participation in a two-way exchange to a one-sided conversation? Have we moved into multiple conversations involving many players in complex settings, making it difficult to make such an inference? Others have commented on the limitations of the policy analysis process in ways that suggest that we have engaged in one-sided dialogues. More than a decade ago, Alice Rivlin noted that &apos;&apos;policy analysts often seem paralyzed, recognizing the futility of chasing easy solutions, but confounded by their own sense of the complexity of issues. They lose the floor-indeed often han