Philip H. Jos

The Accountability Paradox in an Age of Reinvention The Perennial Problem of Preserving Character and Judgment

The rapidly expanding literature on accountability reveals a centrally important paradox: Responsible interpretation and application of external accountability demands depends on the cultivation of the virtues that support good administrative judgment, but the institutions and mechanisms that are used to communicate these external standards, and that monitor compliance with them, often threaten the very qualities that support responsible judgment. Consulting a rich and varied literature, this paradox is explored as it emerges in both the more familiar compliance-based accountability processes and the less well-understood performance-based processes associated with reinvention and the new public management.

Time and Space: The Origins and implications of the new public management

Abstract We explain the swift rise of the theory and practice of the new public management by exploring the economic, cultural, and epistemological roots of evolving capitalism. Our analysis focuses on the changing epistemologies, expressed as temporal or spatial thinking, that characterize both industrial and post-industrial capitalism and the way in which these forces shape forms of administrative organization. We explore the implications of these changes and assess the cogency and effectiveness of public administration’s resistance to market-inspired models of organization.

The Charleston Policy on Cocaine Use During Pregnancy: A Cautionary Tale

he conflict between pregnant women freely using cocaine and the well-being of fetuses presents a difT ficult social problem. Since 1985, at least 200 women, in thirty states, have been criminally prosecuted for using illicit drugs or alcohol during pregnancy Such policies enjoy considerable public and political support. Nonetheless, treatment programs that include referral to law enforcement officials raise serious ethical and legal issues for hospitals and health care providers. In this paper, we assess the development of one medical university’s controversial treatment program for pregnant women addicted to cocaine. In October 1989, the Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC) instituted a new program, called the Interagency Policy on Management of Substance Abuse During Pregnancy (Interagency Policy), designed “to ensure appropriate management of patients abusing illegal drugs during pregnancy.”’ This program required some pregnant women to seek drug counseling and prenatal care under the threat of criminal sanctions. This bold manner of dealing with the problem attracted national attention. Five years later, on September 1, 1994, MUSC agreed to discontinue the policy, which, by that time, had resulted in the arrest of forty-two pregnant women who had tested positive for cocaine but did not follow up on recommended treatment for chemical dependency The academic medical center, located in Charleston, South Carolina, made the change in a settlement with the Civil Rights Division of the Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS). After the policy was discontinued, the federal Office of Protection from Research Risks (OPRR) determined that the program constituted human experimentation conducted without req-

Social Contract Theory: Implications for Professional Ethics

Social contract theorists of the 17th and 18th centuries provide diverse accounts of human nature and the social processes that shape conflict, cooperation, and compliance. These ideas are applied to the challenges of contemporary public administration, specifically; the effort that often underlies both the search for public administrations identity and professionalization more generally: the effort to build consensus on shared values and ideals and ensure ethical practice with a minimum of external policing. A consideration of social contract theory yields a heavy dose of realism when it comes to this objective but invites neither despondency nor complacency.

The contemporary challenge to the administrative state: a Weberian analysis

Examines the current attack on the legitimacy of the administrative state, and the question of how public administration should respond, in light of Weber’s account of bureaucratic domination. Finds in Weber a political theorist who rejects rather explicity the claim that bureaucracy can articulate and defend substantive values properly or wisely; one who provides an account of why administrators ‐ notwithstanding their considerable talents ‐ are an especially threatening participant in struggles over the ends of the state. Explores Weber’s account of the tension between political leadership and a system based increasingly on expertise and instrumental rationality. Explains how Weber’s analysis offers fresh insight into the current dilemma of public administration with respect to its role in governance and its search for professional status.

Comparative anti-corruption policy: the american, soviet and russian cases

In light of significant conceptual and methodological difficulties that face comparative corruption research, we propose to treat comparative anti-corruption policy as worthy of study in its own right. By using measures of enforcement activity as evidence of anti-corruption, rather than flawed proxy measures of corruption, we endeavor to surmount some of obstacles to comparing radically different political systems. We compare anti-corruption activity in the US and the USSR and elaborate three theoretical perspectives-emphasizing political, institutional, and symbolic factors--and show how each might improve our understanding of anti-corruption policy in the two nations. By applying these three frameworks to the Russian republic, we assess anti-corruption policy in an unsettled, emerging political system and suggest that the dynamics that underlie Russias anti-corruption policy will more closely resemble US policy than was the case in the USSR.

Administrative Practice and the Waning Promise of Professionalism for Public Administration

For two decades public administration has considered a series of evolving conceptions of professionalism, designed to address some of the fields central concerns. The authors evaluate professionalisms ability to provide practitioners a sense of unity and purpose, to promote virtuous and competent administrative practice, to defend public administrations legitimate institutional role in governance, and to enhance the standing of the field in the eyes of the public and its representatives. They conclude that the professional ideal, even a revised professionalism that avoids explicit claims to autonomous practice, is one that the field should relinquish.

Advancing Social Equity Proceduralism in the New Governance

A commitment to social equity is often thought to require that administrators engage in explicit forms of direct policy advocacy but the inter-organizational, cross-sector networks that characterize 21st-century administration offer many opportunities to advance social equity by ensuring procedural fairness. Focusing on key aspects of collaborative governance reveals such opportunities as they emerge in the selection, recruitment, and retention of stakeholders; in facilitating the deliberations and work of collaboratives, and ensuring accountability within the network of partners.

Privileging Knowledge Claims in Collaborative Regulatory Management An Ethnography of Marginalization

We examine how a good faith effort at collaboration with Native peoples in the regulation of white-fronted geese in North America nonetheless resulted in their marginalization. Our investigation explores how dramatically different ways of knowing are articulated and contested in a complex, structurally differentiated, and highly professionalized institutional setting—the Migratory Bird Management Regime of North America. We find local knowledge emerging among and being legible to the street-level administrators of the management regime, but unable to penetrate regional management, where methodological commitments reinforced existing problem frames and administrative objectives.

The forgotten worker: Neglected aspects of public service in an information age

One of the most consistent themes among contemporary administrative theorists is that the workplace of the future will be a more hospitable environment for public workers than is currently the case. Decentralization, participative management, and intrinsically satisfying work are commonly forecast. Using survey data from state employees, this study identifies a large class of civil servants that has not yet, and probably will not, enjoy the enriched jobs that are so often predicted. The discussion identifies a number of factors in the work environment of these workers that are likely to frustrate attempts to make their jobs more meaningful and pleasant. Having acknowledged their existence and assessed their plight, the study concludes with a summary of measures that can be taken to address the needs of these “forgotten workers.”