Civic Ignorance and Democratic Accountability

There is growing recognition that Americans’ diminished civic participation and the erosion of democratic norms are linked to low levels of civic literacy, defined as a basic understanding of the structures and values of American Constitutional government. This Essay considers the evidence for that link and the importance of civic education in a diverse society

Improving support for older people looking after someone with advanced cancer

The briefing paper is about the findings and recommendations from a research project conducted at the University of Nottingham, with funding awarded by Macmillan Cancer Support. The project was set up to study the experiences and main support needs of older carers looking after someone with advanced cancer and to facilitate the active involvement of carers in the research process. Looking after someone with advanced cancer approaching the end of their life has a substantial and enduring impact on older carers. Various factors contribute to the diverse quality and impact of end of life care experiences for both the person with advanced cancer and their caregiver. These include factors relating to the care giver and care recipient, such as the communication style and quality of relationship between them; the availability, provision and quality of informal support, and the duration of the end of life care phase. They also include factors external to the care giver and care recipient such as the availability, provision and quality of formal health and social care services for both the care giver and the person with advanced cancer. The study participants main support needs and recommendations for improving support for older carers are provided

Thirty Years of Public Management Scholarship: Plenty of “How” Not Enough “Why”

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to determine the overarching lessons to be gleaned from 30 years of public management literature. Design/methodology/approach The methodology was simple: review the professional literature generated during that time period. Findings Despite important contributions to our understanding of everything from bureaucratic motivation, public budgeting processes, the promises and pitfalls of contracting out and identification of the skills needed to be an effective public manager, to the scientific arcana of sustainability and the respective responsibilities of public administrators and elected officials, the profession would benefit greatly from more sustained emphasis upon the history and philosophy of the constitutional choices made by those who framed America’s original approach to governance. Originality/value The lack of a common understanding of America’s legal culture, or even a common vocabulary for exploring our differences poses immense challenges to public administrators, whose effectiveness requires a widely shared, if necessarily superficial, agreement on the purposes of America’s governing institutions and an ability to recognize the bases of government legitimacy. In the past 30 years, however, literature that addresses the important connections between constitutional theory and management practice, between the rule of law and the exercise of public power and discretion, has been all too rare. Let us hope that the next 30 years corrects that deficiency

Electoral Integrity: How Gerrymandering Matters

Gerrymandering (partisan redistricting) is widely believed to deprive citizens of meaningful participation in the democratic process. It is seen as an obvious conflict of interest because there is ample evidence that lawmakers use redistricting to protect both their personal electoral prospects and their party’s legislative advantages. The impression that an inherent conflict of interest occurs when legislators determine the composition of the population that will vote for them has revived efforts to reform the ways states handle redistricting and reignited scholarly disputes over the degree to which the ills ascribed to partisan redistricting are accurate. The U.S. Supreme Court is poised to revisit its redistricting jurisprudence, making it timely to revisit the contending academic arguments about the political effects of gerrymandering and the existing constitutional jurisprudence

Kontekst je važan: pedagogija i komparativna javna uprava

Those who teach public management increasingly encourage students to consult resources from countries other than their own, and to look around the globe as well as around the corner for answers to local problems of service delivery and agency administration. While the reference to »best practices« has much to recommend it, it should not be allowed to obscure important differences in national legal and constitutional cultures – differences that reflect the specific value criteria and political framework within which each country’s citizens evaluate their government’s performance. The challenge for public administrators and those who teach them is to distinguish between the areas that can benefit from best practices, and those where a nation’s distinctive history and culture make importation of a practice problematic.Pedagogija javne uprave u značajnom se dijelu bavi mjerenjem legitimiteta i odgovornosti. Takve su ocjene, međutim, nužno kontekstualne naravi. Oni u javnoj upravi koji su prije svega usredotočeni na uvoz »najbolje prakse« moraju prije no što učine takvo što razmotriti o kakvoj se praksi radi te u kojoj mjeri njezin uspjeh ili propast ovisi o upravnom kontekstu u okviru kojega ista ima smisla. Nažalost, ne postoji jednostavan test primjerenosti; svaki se slučaj mora razmatrati i ocjenjivati ponaosob. Ono što možemo učiniti jest skrenuti pozornost na problem i njegovu važnost. Svi pravni i upravni sustavi počivaju na promišljenim normativnim prosudbama o tome kako pravilno voditi javne poslove, prosudbama koje se temelje na povijesnoj i iskustvenoj posebnosti neke zemlje. Pokušati podučavati javnu upravu bez stalnog referiranja na spomenute temeljne prosudbe isto je kao da pokušavamo podučavati čitanje bez referiranja na abecedu

The Grassroots Home: How Local Communities Are Fighting Homelessness

In the 1980s federal policy combined with market forces to produce the American tragedy of homelessness. Since that time influential policymakers have debated every aspect of the issue, but avoided the large-scale commitment needed for solutions. Locally, however, grassroots efforts have made these commitments and forged the coalitions needed to address the issue. The solution to homelessness lies in harnessing these same successful public and private resources on the regional and national levels

Older Carers and Involvement in Research

The briefing paper describes the views, experiences, motivations and plans of six older carers who decided to stay involved in research following their participation in a one year project and some research training at the University of Nottingham funded by Macmillan Cancer Support. The project was set up to study the experiences and main support needs of older carers looking after someone with advanced cancer and was designed to also encourage and facilitate the active involvement of carers in the research proces

Recent Work: Cultural Excavations

For many people, the relationship of the product of architecture to the contents within which it is produced, commissioned, or used ultimately remains unquestioned. Our work in design research concerns itself with a critical inquiry into new surfaces, sites, programs, and materials that may operate as a scaffolding for contemporary logics of production which define our culture\u27s attitudes towards the artifacts which it produces

Fiscal Magic: Outsourcing and the Taxing Power

Some state and local governments in the United States are increasingly outsourcing services through third-party surrogates. In some instances, outsourcing is used as a mechanism to raise revenue to cover current deficits or pay for goods that would otherwise require increasing taxes. We argue that certain forms of outsourcing have been used to mask accountability for the levying fees that are substantively indistinguishable from taxes and thus shift tax burdens. We call for additional research to examine the shifting cost burden associated outsourcing deals and the increased challenge of maintaining public fiscal accountability