Recovering the public management variable: Lessons from schools, prisons, and armies

International Journal of Public Administration

Volumn 21, Issue 6-8, 1998, Pages 1147-1168

  DiIulio, John D ^a  

^a PRINCETON UNIVERSITY   (United States)

Author keywords

[No Author keywords available]

Indexed keywords

EID: 84974592594     PISSN: 01900692     EISSN: 15324265     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1080/01900699808525341     Document Type: Article

References (26)

1. Kaufman, Herbert. 1981. The Administrative Behavior of Federal Bureau Chiefs, Washington, D.C.: Brookings Institution. For competing views of the efficacy of individual executives or managers Jameson W. Doig and Erwin C. Hargrove (eds.). Leadership and Innovation: A Biographical Perspective on Entrepreneurs in Government, The Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore and London, 1987
2. Corwin, Edward S., 1929. The Democratic Dogma and the Future of Political Science. American Political Science Review, 23 August: 592 For example, in a 1929 essay, Edward S. Corwin defined political science itself as “criticism and education regarding the true ends of the state and how best they may be achieved” Similarly, strands of this conception are present in the largely atheoretical but nevertheless greatly undervalued work by classic public administration scholars such as Harold Stein; see Harold Stein (ed.). Public Administration and Policy Development: A Case Book, Harcourt, Brace and Company, New York, 1952
3. Almond, Gabriel, Nordlinger, Eric, Lowi, Theodore J., and Fabbrini, Sergio. 1988. Return to the State. American Political Science Review, 82 September: 853–901. Nordlinger, Eric. On the Autonomy of the Democratic State, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1981. In his symposium essay and in his book, Nordlinger is clear that “the state” refers to public officials, individually and collectively. He thereby avoids the anthropomorphic and reification fallacies that plagued earlier generations of “statists.” Setting himself at odds with “pluralists,” he emphasizes the degree to which public officials act contrary to societal preferences and pressures. The truly interesting and as yet unanswered empirical questions, however, concern the conditions under which each paradigm holds and the reasons for variations in state “autonomy” across policy areas, organizational contexts, and time
4. March, James G., and Olsen, Johan P., 1984. The New Institutionalism: Organizational Factors in Political Life. American Political Science Review, 78 September: 734–749. For a discussion that relates the approach to public law studies, see Smith, Roger M. “Political Jurisprudence, the ‘New Institutionalism,’ and the Future of Public Law.” American Political Science Review 82 (March 1988): 89-108
5. Fenno, Richard F., Jr. 1978. Home Style: House Members in Their Districts, xivBoston: Little, Brown. 249
6. U.S. Department of Health, Education, and Welfare. 1966. Equality for Educational Opportunity, Washington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office. written by Coleman, James et al.
7. Coleman, James. 1982. High School Achievement: Public, Catholic, and Private Schools Compared, New York: Basic Books.
8. Fiske, Edward B., 1984. New Look at Effective Schools. New York Times, April 15 Section 12
9. Chubb, John E., 1988. Why the Current Wave of School Reform Will Fail. Public Interest, 90: 28–49. Winter Chubb and Moe's forthcoming Brookings Institution book on the subject is entitled What Price Democracy? Politics, Markets, and American Schools. Also see their “Politics, Markets, and the Organization of Schools.” American Political Science Review 82 (December 1988): 1065-1086
10. Hundreds of studies have been published of the language, leaders, laws, rites, and rituals of prisoners. There are fascinating monographs about the effects on people of the prison ethos and of being imprisoned, about the consequences (or lack thereof) of rehabilitative programs, about inmate argot and roles, and about the informal distribution of authority that develops in prison settings.
11. Dilulio, John J., Jr. 1987. Governing Prisons: A Comparative Study of Correctional Management, New York: Free Press.
12. Useem, Bert. 1988. States of Siege: U.S. Prison Riots, 1971-1986, New York: Oxford University Press.
13. Contrary to much of the “ineffective prisons” literature, Useem's carefully documented work provides no support for the theory that security-driven management and prison violence vary inversely. The idea that the more prison authorities do to control inmates, the more inmates will run out of control is intriguing, counterintuitive, and wholly without empirical evidence to support it. For a discussion of this theory, see DiIulio, pp. 22-33; and Useem.
14. DiIulio, John J., Jr. Barbed-Wire Bureaucracy: Politics and Administration in the Federal Bureau of Prisons, New York: Oxford University Press. forthcoming
15. DiIulio, John J., Jr. September 10 1987. “ Interim Report on Corrections in New York City ”. September 10, New York: New York City Board of Corrections. Koehler, Richard J. “Memo to First Deputy Mayor Stanley Brezenoff,” New York City Department of Corrections, April 19 1988
16. To pluck the beam from my own eye, it relies too heavily on participant observation and not enough on quantitative methods. There are more precise and systematic ways of investigating the relationship (if any) between prison management practices and levels of order, amenity, and service. Also, while Chubb and Moe may be guilty of overgeneralizing about the superiority of “team management” in schools, in Governing Prisons, I am guilty of failing to stress adequately that paramilitary, bureaucratic management may be counterproductive in low-custody settings; crying “exploratory research” and offering a few footnotes to that effect are not enough to make this crucial point stick. Finally, while I and the other “well-governed prisons” authors take some pains to defend the normative presumptions in our arguments, we have not gone nearly far enough: order, amenity, and service are not reading, writing, and arithmetic; the empirical and the normative relationship of these goals to the “ultimate aims” of imprisonment (punishment, deterrence, incapacitation, rehabilitation—pick your favorite combination) needs to be clarified.
17. Marshall, S.L.A., 1947. Men Against Fire, New York: William and Morrow. Shils, Edward A. and Janowitz, Morris. “Cohesion and Disintegration in the Wermacht in World War II.” Public Opinions Quarterly 12 (1948); Stouffer, Samuel A. The American Soldier, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, 1949; Morris Janowitz (ed.). The New Military: Changing Patterns of Organization, Russell Sage Foundation, New York, 1964; Moskos, Charles C. The American Enlisted Man, Russell Sage Foundation, New York, 1970; Van Creveld, Martin. Fighting Power: German and US Army Performance, 1939-1945, Greenwood Press, Westport, Connecticut, 1982
18. Huck, you will recall, acted to oppose slavery not because he knew (or cared) much about its moral standing as a matter of principle; indeed, he reckoned that slavery was probably right. But Huck loved Old Jim, and so he risked life, limb, and hellfire to help Old Jim escape.
19. Henderson, William Darryl. 1985. Cohesion: The Human Element in Combat, 156–160. Washington, D.C.: National Defense Press. Some analysts, however, argue that little has been done to achieve military unit cohesion. See
20. That is not to say that the supposed training/primary relationships/battlefield performance nexus does not exist; it is merely to say that it has not been documented except by circumstantial evidence, anecdotes, and “war stories.
21. Hadley, Arthur T., 1986. The Straw Giant: Triumph and Failure of America's Armed Forces, New York: Random House.
22. Trager, Frank L., Jeffries, Chris L., Korb, Lawrence J., Dancy, Albert G., and Steiner, Barry H., 1977. Symposium on National Security and Public Administration. Public Administration Review, 37 July/August: 319–367. One reason for this lack of study is the historic inattention of public administration scholars to questions of national security and military organization. See the essays One excellent statement on defense organization is Huntington, Samuel P. “Defense Organization and Military Strategy.” Public Interest 75 (Spring 1984): 20-46
23. Halloran, Richard. 1988. Air Force and Marines Battle ‘Ticket-Punchers.’. New York Times, April 25: A18
24. Henderson, William Darryl. Cohesion: The Human Element in Combat An Army colonel with a doctorate in international politics, Henderson commanded a rifle company in Vietnam in 1966-1967 and was wounded seriously in an attack by North Vietnamese in the demilitarized zone in 1975. In Cohesion, he draws creatively on both his academic and his military experiences
25. Shaker, Steven M., and Wise, Alan R., 1988. War Without Men: Robots on the Future Battlefield, Elmsford, New York: Pergamon-Brassey. The most serious ongoing challenge to this view comes from those who argue that, in modem warfare, technology dwarfs the “human element.” For example, see
26. Arnold, R. Douglas. The Logic of Congressional Action For example, how is it that the same House of Representatives that produces an arguably sound package of tax reform measures also produces an obviously flawed series of pork-barrel bills? To what, if any, extent can such variations in the quality of national legislation be explained by intra-House differences in organization? For an answer grounded creatively and intelligently in work by public choice theorists forthcoming