F. Ted Hebert

State Agencies and Their Environments: Examining the Influence of Important External Actors

Research on the federal bureaucracy has long recognized the importance of organization environment for differentiating among agencies and affecting their political support as well as policy outputs. Although the environment has been considered an element in the behavior of state agencies as well, research at this level has been less sensitive to important differences across agency environments. This article identifies four major actors in the policy environment of state agencies--the governor, legislature, clientele groups, and professional associations--and based on a 1978 survey of state administrators, evaluates empirically the influence of these sources over a sample of agencies encompassing all 50 states. Data analysis shows that in addition to agency type, several factors are systematically associated with differences in the nature of the environment confronted, including agency structural characteristics, funding provisions, exogenous shocks to normal operations and state political environment. Just as at the federal level, then, this research suggests that at the state level, bureaucracy more closely resembles a collection of heterogeneous agencies than a monolithic institution.

GUBERNATORIAL INFLUENCE AND STATE BUREAUCRACY

Previous research has concentrated on differences in gubernatorial power across states. Relatively little research attention has been devoted to the sources of gubernatorial influence over state agencies. Based on data collected from state administrators in 1978, this study examines the effects of four sets of factors on the perceived influence of the governor over the state administrative apparatus. These sets are: formal powers of the governor, characteristics of the agencies, characteristics of the positions held by administrators, and personal characteristics of these officials. Results show that these factors account for nearly one-fourth of the variance in the influence of the governor over state agencies, as reported by agency heads.

Controlling Administrative Agencies in a Changing Federal System: Avenues of Gubernatorial Influence

Gubernatorial control over state agencies has become a topic of great concern as state governments have undergone reorganization and as financial and programmatic responsibilities have shifted from Washington to the states. Avenues and instruments of gubernatorial influence are identified from survey responses of state agency directors. The importance of each of these is then assessed using statistical analysis, with reported gubernatorial influence over the agency as the dependent variable. Analysis reveals that governors have access to important avenues of influence that will facilitate their control over state agencies.

Federal contracts to perform analysis and management services: Can not-for-profits successfully compete?

This study uses a random sample of HUD contracts to determine if not-for-profit organisations have advantages or disadvantages in the competition for fedral procurement awards. Interest focuses on 228 competitors for awards selected in the sample. Differences between for-profit and not-for-profit groups are examined with respect to awareness of opportunity, willingness to compete, abiity to compete technically, and ability to be cost-competitive. Generally, not-for-profit organizations compete well with for-profit ones in efforts to obtain awards to provide analysis and management services. Managers of not-for-profit organizations need not believe that their organizations are incapable of competting successfully against for-profit organizations.

Zero-Base Budgeting in Historical and Political Context: Institutionalizing An Old Proposal

to public administrators and politicians alike, is certainly not a new idea to students of government budgeting. Its history reaches back almost as far as the history of American executive budgeting itself. Writing in 1924, just three years after passage of the Budget and Accounting Act, E. Hilton Young and N. E. Young describe the start of a British budget cycle as follows: On October 1 st [the Treasury] sends a circular letter to the officers responsible for the preparation of the estimates in each civil department, requesting them to prepare estimates of the departments in the coming year. There are two stereotyped admonitions in this circular: one is general, that the state of the public revenue demands the utmost economy; the other is a particular warning against assuming last year’s estimates as the starting point for those of the