John W. Swain

Issues in Public Management Information Systems

What are the key issues facing information systems managers in the public sector? Most public IS managers surveyed show more concern for agency-wide management issues than for technical ones. They care about what information systems can do for their agencies. They want people in their agencies to understand the importance of managing information and information technology effectively.

Partisan Consequences of the Post-1990 Redistricting for the U.S. House of Representatives

Following each recent round of redistricting, scholars have tried to determine whether that round worked to one partys advantage and whether control of the redistricting process by members of one party led to gerrymandering. They have reached mixed conclusions. Here, we examine the partisan consequences of the post-1990 redistricting for the U.S. House of Representatives. We create two sets of projections of partisan support levels for the 1990 and 1992 districts based on district-level 1988 presidential election data. One set of projections assumes an incumbency advantage, and one set assumes the hypothetical situation of all open seats, i.e., no incumbency advantage. We ask whether either party benefited and whether gerrymandering occurred. When we take incumbency into account, we find that our projections show that the two parties came out just about even in redistricting, with an increase in the number of districts evenly split between them. However, when we assume all open seats, our projections show an increase of 21 Republican districts, a decrease of 3 Democratic districts, and a decrease of 17 evenly split districts. We conclude that the Republican party gained from redistricting and that incumbency and other short-term factors obscure changes in the underlying partisan support in districts. In a state-level analysis of redistricting outcomes, we find no evidence that parties succeeded in using control of state government to gain partisan advantage through redistricting.

Machiavelli and modern management

Shows how Machiavelli influenced modern management in much more fundamental ways than simply his well‐known advice to be ruthless, upon which many management writers focused. First, it explains his reputation for advising ruthlessness by discussing his life and times and the subject‐matter on which he wrote. Second, it details his positive teaching with regard to the modern world, the division of that world into a public and a private sector, and his foundation for the modern executive. In that context, ruthlessness is a tool for his executive figure to maintain stability in the public sector, so that people can focus more of their attention on the private sector in a modern world devoted to people serving their own needs.

A New Look at Turnover in the U.S. House of Representatives, 1789-1998

Despite concern with turnover in the U.S. House of Representatives, few scholars have attempted to view turnover in historical perspective or in all its forms. Confusion over the basic facts has impeded attempts to explain and evaluate levels of turnover. We present a broad descriptive overview of turnover over the entire history of the U.S. House in terms of the levels of overall turnover, forms thereof, and patterns, particularly within party periods. The findings include that turnover has declined over the years but not in a continuous fashion and not evenly among the different forms, that general election defeat is not the primary form of turnover, that common methods of reporting turnover magnify the apparent importance of electorally based turnover, and that turnover varies systematically by party period. A research agenda is proposed for explanatory work on turnover including strategic retirement and the impact of partisan realignments on levels and forms of turnover.

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR RESEARCH ON ETHICS IN PUBLIC POLICY FROM A PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION PERSPECTIVE: BARKING DOGS AND MORE

We make recommendations for ethics research in public policy based on the experience of public administration. In many ways, literature in public administration on ethics relates appropriately to public policy, albeit with specific gaps and specific peculiarities. The specific gaps apply particularly to aspects of public policy that are not especially emphasized in public administration (e.g., ethics in policy formulation and evaluation). Peculiarities include the tendency to avoid empirical and practical hands-on issues in ethics in favor of dealing with them from a theoretical and normative perspective and to assume a cohesive self-identification of public administrators with public organizations. After appropriate preliminaries, including a brief review of public administration literature on ethics, we recommend concrete and reality-oriented ethics research after the manner of Sir Arthur Conan Doyles Sherlock Holmes, who took an empirical and practical hands-on approach to investigations.

Multiple perspectives on the meaning of revenue

The full range of the meaning of revenue emerges from seriously considering how people understand revenues from various perspectives. Explicit discussion of revenue meanings may contribute to improving our understanding of revenue-related phenomena. Insights can be gained from considering revenues from various perspectives. Revenue conceptualizations examined here range from the most immediate one, the notion of resources, to policy devices, mediation of relationships, measurements of political situations, and values. These discussions show that a variety of meanings are associate with revenues and that revenues are at least as fundamental to public budgeting as expenditures.

Raising revenues: an introduction

Raising revenues, although necessary to budgets, has received relatively scant attention from students of public budgeting. This special issue focuses attention on that topic. The contributions to this special issue show the diverse ways in which raising revenues is important.