Evaluating the Impact of the Congressional Budget Office at Middle Age

The Congressional Budget Office, which turned 40 years old in 2015, was created in order to provide the Congress with independent budgetary and economic information. The impact of CBO has been most clearly felt in its cost estimates of pending legislation. CBO is sometimes criticized for its estimates, and the article addresses several of these criticisms. The future influence of CBO will depend on its ability to maintain its nonpartisan reputation.     

The Congressional Committee Intelligence System: Information,Oversight, and Change

Data from a study of top staffers on congressional committees indicate that Congress is rich in sources of information about the executive branch, and that it exploits these sources surprisingly well. An observer of the contemporary Congress can read Max Weber's classic essay on "bureaucracy" with minimum alarm. Weber's bureaucracy had an "overtowering" position relative to its nominal political masters because of its continuity, expertise, and ability to guard information (secrecy). U.S. congressional committees have built a formidable counter organization. Committee staffers are not mere "dilettantes" who stand opposite administrative "experts." They have a significant level of experience in the areas covered by the agencies they oversee, and well developed communication networks which give them significant opportunities to push aside any veil covering bureaucratic decisions and activities. Moreover, they indicate a surprisingly active approach to keeping track of agency activities, leading one to question the predominance in the contemporary period of the "fire alarm" approach described in the literature. The article develops reasons why an active information seeking style may be more attractive now than in the past and suggests a connection between environmental changes, changes in information seeking behavior, and changes in other aspects of oversight behavior.     

Reconciliation and the Budget Process

John Gilmour. Reconcilable diferences? Congress, the Budget Process, and the Deficit. Allen Schick, The Capacity to Budget. Richard Fenno, The Emergence of a Senate Leader: Pete Domenici and the Reagan Budget. Dennis Ippolito, Uncertain Legacies: Federal Budget Policy from Roosevelt through Rragan. Stanly Collender, The Guide to the Federal Budget, Fiscal 1992.     

Infanticide and infant abandonoment in the new South: Richmond, Virginia, 1865-1915

The Civil War and Reconstruction and the South's postbellum industrialization produced economic dislocation on a tremendous scale. One product of that economic upheaval was an increasing problem of infanticides and infant abandonments. This case study of Richmond, Virginia, examines patterns of abandonment and neonaticide as documented in records of the city almshouse and the city coroner. It demonstrates that race shaped the options available to women with problem pregnancies in that African American women had access to fewer social welfare unstitutions such as maternity homes. As a result, unmarried black women kept their out-of-wedlock babies more often than did whites, but they also committed infanticide at higher rates than did whites. Moreover, racial trends in infanticides and infant abandonment suggest that Ricomond's white working class experienced economic advancements at the turn of the twentieth century, while the city's black working class continued to live in depression-like conditions throughout the period.     

The Federal Budget: Policy,Process, and Politics

Fiorina, Morris. Divided Government. New York: Macmillan, 1992. Pp. xi, 138. $13.00 Paperback.

Jacobson, Gary C. The Electoral Origins of Divided Government: Competition' in U.S. House Elections, 1946-1988. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990. Pp. xvi, 152. $15.95.

Mayhew, David R. Divided We Govern: Party Control, Lawmaking, and Investigations, 1946-1990. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1991. Pp. viii, 228. $25.00 Hardback.     

论美国报刊媒体的大众化(1865-1914)

19世纪下半叶,美国社会开始从“精英时代”进入“大众时代”。当时的报刊杂志恰当地映照了这种变化,主要表现在主观性的政党报刊转向客观性的独立报刊;廉价又通俗的报刊杂志的兴起等。     

Resisting the New South: Commercial crisis and decline in New Orleans, 1865-85

This essay argues that white New Orleanians' obsessions with race, sectional politics, and the 'Lost Cause' mythology played a significant role in retarding the Crescent City's economic growth during Reconstruction and the Gilded Age. Because they resisted efforts to recruit northern capital until after their city had fallen irrevocably behind their 'New South' counterparts, New Orleans civil leaders and businessmen exacerbated the severe structural challenges their city faced from the rise of railroads and other market transformations.     

Research Themes in the Cultural Geography of Domesticated Animals, 1974-1987

Ten themes have characterized recent studies of the cultural geography of domesticated animals. They are: origins of earliest animal domestication, domestication and dispersal of particular species, domesticated animals as agents in vegetation change, dairying and lactose intolerance, the cattle complex of Africa, the sacred cow of India, the pig complex of Melanesia, pastoralism, domesticated animals and human food, and domesticated animals and human disease.     

Time-space trends in Swedish divorce behaviour, 1911-1974

This study examines how the divorce rates in Sweden have varied over time and across different geographical areas during the period 1911-1974, and how these variations can be connected to the political, socio-economic and cultural development in Sweden. The analysis provides empirical support for the hypothesis that increased divorce rates have been the result of changes in the structural conditions that determine the degree of economic interdependence between spouses. There is a strong connection between the degree of urbanization and the divorce rate on a regional level for the entire research period. The statistical analysis of the regional data indicates that these patterns are connected to the more diversified economy that has developed in urban settings, in the form of a more qualified labour market and higher wages for females. These characteristics resulted in a faster and more pronounced reduction of economic interdependence between spouses, which made divorce more attainable in these areas as compared with rural settings.