Charles H. Levine

Managing Organizational Retrenchament Preconditions, Deficiencies, and Adaptations in the Public Sector

This article presents a discussion of the preconditions necessary for managing a contraction. It examines the constraints operative in the public sector which exclude or limit the availability of the prerequisites for public managers to effectively manage retrenchment. Then it describes how a public organization without these prerequisites behaves under conditions of fiscal stress by using a multistage model of public sector contraction that includes several political dimensions as well as organizational factors. Several of the models components are taken from the experience of New York Citys government since its fiscal crisis of 1973-1974. The article concludes that retrenchment forces public organizations into a position of excessive oversight which stifles initiative and encourages errors. Therefore, over the long run, retrenchment may make public organizations even less effective and less capable of dealing with their problems.

Urban Conflict as a Constraint On Mayoral Leadership: Lessons From Gary and Cleveland

The study of executive leadership includes the common distinction between headship and leadership. The former involves merely occupying an elected or appointive position, while the latter involves the exercise of influence in the pursuit of goals. Guiding innovations through the successful expansion of formal authority and the exercise of informal influence have often been considered a measure of effective executive performance. The process of expanding political roles has frequently been interpreted in terms of political integration and coalition formation. This has been particularly the case in studies of mayoral leadership, where effective executive performance has been equated with a mayor’s ability to create an integrative convergence of power by building an executivecentered coalition (for examples of this literature, see Dahl,