Bureaus, Clients, and Congress: The Impact of Interest Group Support on Budgeting

Richard Fenno, in Power of the Purse, contends that the budget process responds to interest group pressures. This study examines that hypothesis for 20 bureaus in the Department of Agriculture for the fiscal years 1971-1976. Cultivating clientele support both among interest groups and members of Congress appears to aid a bureau's budget position. Bureaus with strong support not only avoid budget cuts but grow rapidly from year to year.Yeshttps://us.sagepub.com/en-us/nam/manuscript-submission-guideline

Managing in the regulatory thicket: regulation legitimacy and expertise

While the influence of government regulation on organizations is undeniable, empirical research in this field is scarce. This study investigates how the understanding of and attitudes towards government regulation among public, nonprofit, and for-profit managers affect organizational performance, using U.S. nursing homes as the empirical setting. Our findings suggest that managers’ perceptions of regulation legitimacy – views of regulation fairness, inspectors’ effectiveness, and internal utility of the mandates – positively affect service quality. Sub-group analysis suggests that the managers’ views of regulation matter in nonprofit and for-profit, but not public organizations. In nonprofit homes, performance declines when managers report higher regulatory expertise – better knowledge of the regulatory standards. In for-profit facilities, frequent communication with regulators lowers quality. These findings suggest that the regulated entities’ views of government regulation are central to their success, which necessitates improvements in the regulatory process

Lipstick and Logarithms: Gender, Institutional Context, and Representative Bureaucracy

According to the theory of representative bureaucracy, passive representation among public employees will lead to active representation in bureaucratic outputs. Existing research demonstrates that the link between passive and active representation exists for race but not for sex. Past research on this topic has not, however, taken into account the contextual environment that affects whether sex will translate into gender and lead to active representation in the bureaucracy. In this paper, we create a framework that specifies the conditions that affect whether passive representation results in active representation for sex and then test this framework using the case of education. We find that passive representation of women in education leads to active representation and that the institutional context affects the extent to which this link between passive and active representation occurs

The Grizzly, November 14, 1980

Campus Life Committee Discusses Greek Societies • McDonald\u27s Opening Soon • Field Hockey Heading For Nationals • Frats Get Together for Clean-up • Ursinus News In Brief: Honors for Ursinus faculty member; College presents Rafferty art exhibit • Policy Unveiled for Gym • Elephant Man Seen As Statement On Human Behavior • Talented Student Performances • ProTheatre Opens • Aging Is Topic At College Forum • Coffeehouse Sings The Right Tune • En Garde, Ursinus! • Delta Pi Defeats Marines In Football • Disappointing Weekend For Volleyball • Harriers Take MAC Title • Demas, Rho To Meet In Hockey Finals • Grizzlies Win Behind Solid Offense Efforthttps://digitalcommons.ursinus.edu/grizzlynews/1047/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

Taking the Measure of the Universe: Precision Astrometry with SIM PlanetQuest

Precision astrometry at microarcsecond accuracy has application to a wide range of astrophysical problems. This paper is a study of the science questions that can be addressed using an instrument that delivers parallaxes at about 4 microarcsec on targets as faint as V = 20, differential accuracy of 0.6 microarcsec on bright targets, and with flexible scheduling. The science topics are drawn primarily from the Team Key Projects, selected in 2000, for the Space Interferometry Mission PlanetQuest (SIM PlanetQuest). We use the capabilities of this mission to illustrate the importance of the next level of astrometric precision in modern astrophysics. SIM PlanetQuest is currently in the detailed design phase, having completed all of the enabling technologies needed for the flight instrument in 2005. It will be the first space-based long baseline Michelson interferometer designed for precision astrometry. SIM will contribute strongly to many astronomical fields including stellar and galactic astrophysics, planetary systems around nearby stars, and the study of quasar and AGN nuclei. SIM will search for planets with masses as small as an Earth orbiting in the `habitable zone' around the nearest stars using differential astrometry, and could discover many dozen if Earth-like planets are common. It will be the most capable instrument for detecting planets around young stars, thereby providing insights into how planetary systems are born and how they evolve with time. SIM will observe significant numbers of very high- and low-mass stars, providing stellar masses to 1%, the accuracy needed to challenge physical models. Using precision proper motion measurements, SIM will probe the galactic mass distribution and the formation and evolution of the Galactic halo. (abridged)Comment: 54 pages, 28 figures, uses emulateapj. Submitted to PAS

Political and Judicial Checks on Corruption: Evidence from American State Governments

The paper investigates the effects of checks and balances on corruption. Within a presidential system, effective separation of powers is achieved under divided government, with the executive and legislative branches being controlled by different political parties. When government is unified, no effective separation exists even within a presidential system, but, we argue, can be partially restored by having an accountable judiciary. Our empirical findings show that divided government and elected, rather than appointed, state supreme court judges are associated with lower corruption and, furthermore, that the effect of an accountable judiciary is stronger under unified government, where government cannot control itself. The effect of an accountable judiciary seems to be driven primarily by judges chosen through direct elections, rather than those exposed to a retention vote following appointment

Genomic, Pathway Network, and Immunologic Features Distinguishing Squamous Carcinomas

This integrated, multiplatform PanCancer Atlas study co-mapped and identified distinguishing molecular features of squamous cell carcinomas (SCCs) from five sites associated with smokin

Spatial Organization and Molecular Correlation of Tumor-Infiltrating Lymphocytes Using Deep Learning on Pathology Images

Beyond sample curation and basic pathologic characterization, the digitized H&E-stained images of TCGA samples remain underutilized. To highlight this resource, we present mappings of tumorinfiltrating lymphocytes (TILs) based on H&E images from 13 TCGA tumor types. These TIL maps are derived through computational staining using a convolutional neural network trained to classify patches of images. Affinity propagation revealed local spatial structure in TIL patterns and correlation with overall survival. TIL map structural patterns were grouped using standard histopathological parameters. These patterns are enriched in particular T cell subpopulations derived from molecular measures. TIL densities and spatial structure were differentially enriched among tumor types, immune subtypes, and tumor molecular subtypes, implying that spatial infiltrate state could reflect particular tumor cell aberration states. Obtaining spatial lymphocytic patterns linked to the rich genomic characterization of TCGA samples demonstrates one use for the TCGA image archives with insights into the tumor-immune microenvironment

Reflections on a crisis: political disenchantment, moral desolation, and political integrity

Declining levels of political trust and voter turnout, the shift towards populist politics marked by appeals to ‘the people’ and a rejection of ‘politics-as-usual’, are just some of the commonly cited manifestations of our culture of political disaffection. Democratic politics, it is argued, is in crisis. Whilst considerable energy has been expended on the task of lamenting the status of our politics and pondering over recommendations to tackle this perceived crisis, amid this raft of complaints and solutions lurks confusion. This paper seeks to explore the neglected question of what the precise nature of the crisis with which we are confronted involves, and, in so doing, to go some way towards untangling our confusion. Taking my cue from Machiavelli and his value-pluralist heirs, I argue that there is a rift between a morally admirable and a virtuous political life. Failure to appreciate this possibility causes narrations of crisis to misconstrue the moral messiness of politics in ways that lead us to misunderstand how we should respond to disenchantment. Specifically, I suggest that: (i) we think that there is a moral crisis in politics because we have an unsatisfactorily idealistic understanding of political integrity in the first place; and (ii) it is a mistake to imagine that the moral purification of politics is possible or desirable. Put simply, our crisis is not moral per se but primarily philosophical in nature: it relates to the very concepts we employ—the qualities of character and context we presuppose whilst pondering over political integrity