Under what conditions do motherhood penalties emerge in countries undergoing transition from state socialism to capitalism? This analysis identifies the ways managers in global financial firms employ gendered assumptions in constructing and implementing labor practices among highly skilled professional workers in Hungary. Relying on 33 in-depth interviews with employers as well as interviews wi…
I explore gender messages in Boy Scout and Girl Scout handbooks through an analysis of how gender is infused in the context and content of Scout activities as well as in instructions about how the Scouts are to approach these activities. I find that girls are offered more activities intended to be performed in group contexts than are boys. Boys are offered proportionately more activities with s…
Despite a declining interest in the relationship between leadership, culture, and performance in the scholarly literature, culture change is alive and well among leaders in the public sector as a means to improve performance. This essay reviews the trajectory of culture studies and proposes a modest model of organizational culture that sets aside many of the conceptual and methodological argume…
Few topics in the study of contemporary public organizations better illustrate the burdens—and potential benefits—of sustaining dialogue between practitioners and scholars than the interplay between leadership, organizational culture, and public sector performance. Following two decades of intensive research and advocacy, the last 10 years have seen diminished scholarly attention to this subjec…
Changes during the last decade have significantly altered the nature of election administration and driven up its costs. Interviews with practitioner representatives from the elections community reveal a number of issues that continue to influence this field. Expense data from two counties illustrate how policy changes affect election costs. Scheduled ending of federal funding threatens a “perf…
Interlocal cooperation through service-sharing agreements has a long history, but its use has increased in popularity during the last 20 years. The decisions of local government units to collaborate through intergovernmental service agreements are best understood as a two-stage process. The first stage, in which communities decide whether to consider interlocal cooperation, involves the nature …
Eminent domain is an urgent problem facing local government administrators and scholars throughout the United States. However, the literature is sparse regarding how local leaders make decisions on this hot-button issue. A 2006 Government Accountability Office report noted a lack of data about local governments’ use of their eminent domain authority. A survey of county managers in North Carolin…
Data from approximately 1,000 small, mostly rural municipalities in Illinois, New Hampshire, and Wisconsin address local choices on production and contracting arrangements for a wide range of services. The results suggest that the use of both for-profit contractors and cooperative agreements with other governments correlate negatively with population size. Small municipalities are less likely t…
What is the current state of research on business improvement districts (BIDs)? What is an appropriate framework for analysis? What are key questions for advancing future BID research? BIDs can be understood best within a network governance framework. The research shows, first, a blurring of the line between the public and private spheres as a result of BIDs; second, BIDs are increasingly impor…
The rise of the left across Latin America is one of the most striking electoral events to occur in new democracies during the last decade. Current work argues either that the left's electoral success stems from a thoroughgoing rejection of free-market policies by voters or that electorates have sought to punish poorly performing right-wing incumbents. Whether the new left has a policy or perfor…
This article explores the origins of peak employers' associations to understand why countries produce highly centralized macrocorporatist groups, weaker national associations but stronger industry-level groups, or highly fragmented pluralist associations. The authors suggest that the structure of partisan competition played a vital causal role in the development and evolution of these peak asso…
How do state policies that regulate the relationship between ethnicity and nationality change? This article examines the dynamics of persistence and change in state policies toward ethnicity. In order to better comprehend the nature of political contestation over these state policies, the author first develops a new typology, “regimes of ethnicity,” and categorizes states as having monoethnic, …
How do changes in electoral rules affect the nature of public policy outcomes? The current evidence supporting institutional theories that answer this question stems almost entirely from quantitative cross-country studies, the data of which contain very little within-unit variation. Indeed, while there are many country-level accounts of how changes in electoral rules affect such phenomena as th…
Commentators have argued that we have entered a new era of migration described by Vertovec as a ‘transformative diversification of diversity’. Multiple variables of difference in the ethnicity, immigration status, rights and entitlements, age and gender profiles and patterns of distribution, of new migrants mean that the UK, and many other EU countries, are now home to the most diverse populati…
The award in 2009 of contracts to operate private prisons to consortia which included charities has reignited debates in the UK about the costs of state patronage among the voluntary sector. This article argues that the controversy has highlighted current dilemmas of institutionalization arising from the interpenetration of civil and penal spheres, as public policy nurtures an emergent ‘penal v…
This paper discusses the social and political processes health care transformation in postcommunist Europe has involved in practice. It begins by suggesting a theoretical framework for the study of postcommunist welfare. Focusing on Poland, it examines what lies behind the frictions which have become an integral feature of health care change, which most recently has centred on the privatization…
Governments often use multiple policy instruments for pursuing policy goals with mutually reinforcing effects. These effects include supplementation and substitution. This article examines both effects by studying two instruments of state budget stabilization policy: general fund balances and budget stabilization funds. States normally maintain budget surpluses in the general fund. In recent de…
India’s 2005 Right to Information Act (RTIA) is among dozens of national laws recently adopted similar to the U.S. Freedom of Information Act. Drawing on several large studies examining the act’s implementation, the author finds that Indian citizens filed about 2 million requests for information under the RTIA during its first two and half years. However, use of the law was constrained by uneve…
In July 2005, the Little Rock, Arkansas, school district implemented a new policy to reorganize its management structure in order to create a more efficient bureaucracy. Using Richard Matland’s ambiguity-conflict model of policy implementation, the authors examine the implementation of this school reorganization policy. Interviews and surveys were conducted with the superintendent and his execu…
It is widely believed that projected changes in the age structure of the U.S. population will create serious fiscal pressures at the federal level. Irrespective of any reforms undertaken at the federal level, these demographic trends also will have a direct impact on the way state and local governments operate. A review of recent population projections to 2020 reveals a great deal of heterogene…