PROGRAM CHANGE, REVENUE EFFECTS, AND THE PATHOLOGY OF IMPROVED PERFORMANCE

In certain circumstances, improved performance in government programs can actually lead to declines in program impacts. Ironically, increases in efficiency do not invariably lead to increases in effectiveness. Regulatory programs are especially prone to this pathology of improved performance, as the targets of regulatory actions may increase avoidance tactics of program efficiency increases. Declines in effectiveness may not be discovered until revenues from the regulatory activities decline, because of weaknesses of internal monitoring systems in local government. Data on the licensing of businesses in Chicago are presented that illustrate the phenomena.     

A Speculative Model of Population Influences on Australian Ecology,Economy and Society

A lack of empirical data and sufficient conceptual frameworks precluded the 1994 national population inquiry from proposing demographic targets for the future ‘carrying capacity’ of Australia. A speculative model is proposed here of population impacts in the ecological, economic, social and relational domains. The model is ‘run’ under scenarios of growing and stable population so that key interactions can be explored and thereby advance debate about broader population policy in Australia.     

Representation and Agenda Setting

We develop a new approach to the study of representation based on agenda setting and attention allocation. We ask the fundamental question: do the policy priorities of the public and of the government correspond across time? To assess the policy priorities of the mass public, we have coded the Most Important Problem data from Gallup polls across the postwar period into the policy content categories developed by the Policy Agendas Project ( Baumgartner & Jones, 2002 ). Congressional priorities were assessed by the proportion of total hearings in a given year focusing on those same policy categories, also from the Agendas Project. We then conducted similar analyses on public laws and most important laws, similarly coded. Finally we analyzed the spatial structure of public and congressional agendas using the Shepard‐Kruskal non‐metric multidimensional scaling algorithm. Findings may be summarized as follows: First, there is an impressive congruence between the priorities of the public and the priorities of Congress across time. Second, there is substantial evidence of congruence between the priorities of the public and lawmaking in the national government, but the correspondence is attenuated in comparison to agendas. Third, although the priorities of the public and Congress are structurally similar, the location of issues within the structure differs between Congress and the general public. The public “lumps” its evaluation of the nations most important problems into a small number of categories. Congress “splits” issues out, handling multiple issues simultaneously. Finally, the public tends to focus on a very constrained set of issues, but Congress juggles many more issues. The article has strong implications for the study of positional representation as well, because for traditional representation to occur, there must be correspondence between the issue‐priorities of the public and the government. We find substantial evidence for such attention congruence here.     

Noah and Joseph Effects in Government Budgets: Analyzing Long‐Term Memory

This article examines the combined effects of what mathematician Benoit Mandelbrot has termed “Noah” and “Joseph” effects in U.S. national government budgeting. Noah effects, which reference the biblical great flood, are large changes or punctuations, far larger than could be expected given the Gaussian or Normal models that social scientists typically employ. Joseph effects refer to the seven fat and seven lean years that Joseph predicted to the Pharaoh. They are “near cycles” or “runs” in time series that look cyclical, but are not, because they do not occur on a regular, predictable basis. The Joseph effect is long‐term memory in time series. Public expenditures in the United States from 1800 to 2004 shows clear Noah and Joseph effects. For the whole budget, these effects are strong prior to World War II (WWII) and weaker afterward. For individual programs, however, both effects are clearly detectable after WWII. Before WWII, budgeting was neither incremental nor well behaved because punctuations were even more severe and memory was not characterized by simple autoregressive properties. The obvious break that occurred after WWII could have signaled a regime shift in how policy was made in America, but even the more stable modern world is far more uncertain than the traditional incremental view.     

Decolonisation and mysticism in William Butler Yeats's The Celtic Twilight and The Secret Rose

Yeats's responsibilities as one of Ireland's most prominent artists commenced with his aspiration to make Ireland a nation. His writings incorporate the three phases of development that Frantz Fanon posited for all new nations. Although Fanon described his three phases of decolonisation well after The Celtic Twilight and The Secret Rose were compiled, Fanon's framework elucidates Yeats's writings. Yeats's use of mystical elements embodies Fanon's idea of the colonial binary, the negritude binary, and transnational consciousness. Yeats discovered the answers to decolonisation in mysticism. His insights about folklore when coupled with imagination brought about many mystical revelations that linked Ireland to mysticism of global dimensions. Yeats's insights moved Ireland beyond binaries and solely nationalistic thinking to encourage Ireland to develop a transnational consciousness, transcending postcolonial binaries to achieve nationhood.     

Europe's Christian Democratic Parties and American Possibilities

In this paper, I survey the histories of Europe's Christian Democratic parties and suggest that inasmuch as they show that religiously framed party politics can have significant and positive effects on both institutions and supporters, it is difficult to see how those lessons translate straightforwardly to the American social and political order. Even if they did, making a success, both electorally and substantively, of a Christian Democratic movement in the United States would require a degree of statesmanship that certainly seems in short supply these days.