Delbert A. Taebel

Administrative innovation in municipal government

The purpose of this study is to identify those factors which account for administrative innovation in municipal government bureaucracies. Two dimensions of administrative innovation are examined: management and technology. Management innovation refers to procedures and methods by which policies are implemented. Technology innovation refers to the adoption of new physical products or processes. Multiple indicators of specific innovative practices are used to create a management scale and a technology scale and the two scales are then combined to create a composite administration innovation scale. In order to explain the dimensions of innovation the study employs a model comprised of three sets of independent variables: community variables, political system variables, and bureaucratic variables. Multiple regression analysis is used to examine the relationship between each set of independent variables and the dipensions of innovation. A second stage of analysis combines the three sets of explanatory variable...

Cumulative Voting in a Municipal Election: a Note on Voter Reactions and Electoral Consequences

C UMULATIVE voting was used to elect members of a local governing body in the United States for the first time this century when, in July of 1987, The City of Alamogordo, New Mexico employed that voting system to elect part of its city council. This was the first use of the system in any public election in this country since the State of Illinois, in 1980, adopted a single-member districting arrangement to elect the lower chamber of its state legislature, thereby abandoning the system of cumulative voting within three-member districts it had been using for over 100 years.2 Rules permitting cumulative voting may be employed in conjunction with any multimember district. If voters in such a district are provided with more than one vote, cumulative voting allows them to aggregate or cumulate their votes behind a particular candidate or candidates if they wish. For example, in a three-seat, three-vote situation, voters have the option of casting their votes in the traditional manner, giving each of three different candidates one of their votes, or they may cast two votes for one candidate and one for another, or even cast all three votes for one candidate. Cumulative voting, in short, allows voters to do more than choose among candidates, it allows them to express the intensity of their preferences as well (see generally Lakeman 1974: 87-90).

Bureaucratization and Responsiveness: A Research Note

Although the Weberian model has long served as a paradigm for organizational theorists,&dquo; modem scholars have come to view the normstive implications of this model with some misgivings. The human relation scholars first suggested the abrasive impact of bureaucracy on the eanployee. 2 More recently, scholars have pointed out the deleterious effects of bureaucracy on the client. Orion White, for example, posits a ~dialectical&dquo; organization, the antithesis of the dominant bureaucratic model and one which by implication is more responsive to the client.a Since White’s study is based on a case study, it would seem appropriate to expand its scope and compare a variety of organizations. In undertaking such a comparative analysis, we can hypothesize that the greater the degree of bureaucratization, the less responsive the organization will be, A second proposition would be that clients with a high degree of bureaucratic empathy will regard bureaucratic organizations as responsive.