PSC 306: Public Organizations, Timetable.

1. How should American public administration be different from European? [W. Wilson]
2. How has the study of American public administration changed since the age of Wilsonian reformers? [Stillman]
3. In what sense does Martin indicate that a disaster can have multiple causes, and there can be multiple breakdowns of administration and politics in a single program? 

1. What are the functions of government? [Fesler]
2. Do Max Weber's ideas about early Prussian bureaucracy apply to modern American government agencies?
3. Has bureaucracy become a universal form of government, no matter what the political system? [Weber]
4. Was Kristin's death the fault of the perpetrator, the system or individual workers? [Lardner]

1. How does ecology apply to the multiple populations of public administration? [Gauss]
2. How does participation of the poor complicate the way a program is urgently administered? [Aron]
3. How was an effective federal response mounted to the danger of AIDS? [Riccucci]

1. How can bureaus be reformed, and to what effect? [Fesler]
2. How does the political environment affect American public officials? [Long]
3. Was the space shuttle disaster caused more by political or bureaucratic problems? [Casamayou]

1. In what sense if any is there a real bureaucracy problem? [JQ Wilson]
2. Where does red tape originate, and where should blame lie? [Kaufman]

1. How is the US executive branch organized? [Fesler]
2. In the US federal system, how does a state or locality get affected by federal aid and rules? [O'Toole]
3. Are there occasions when a locality should face up to problems locally, rather than calling on federal aid? [Rosegrant]
4. What is Schumpeter's theory of the role of bureaucracy amid democracies?

1. What are the common problems in organizations? [Fesler]
2. Give examples from your own work or other organizations of problems you have observed.
3. How do people's informal groups affect behavior in the workplace? [Mayo]
4. How do people get motivated by attention? [Mayo]
5. How did tensions among informal groups surface at the WTC? [Langewiesche]

1. Explain the processes of decisionmaking and the common problems. [Fesler]
2. Can even the decision to use military force be made by competing groups inside bureaucracy? [Pfiffner]

1. Is a rational, comprehensive approach better than an incremental process of decisionmaking? [Lindblom]
2. Can crises be caused by inaction as well as positive action? [Nagel]

1. How is the civil service organized to create a public non-profit ethos? [Fesler]
2. How is hiring, promotion and training organized in the civil service? [Fesler]
3. How does a professional ethic affect the behavior of the civil service? [Wise]
4. In what ways may ethics rules trip up even dedicated public servants? [Sontag]

1. What types of communication are most productive for each kind of official message? [Garnett]
2. How does lack of communication endanger law enforcement in a crisis?  [Rosegrant]

1. How has reform of the higher public service changed the work of senior civil servants? [Fesler]
2. How can we construct a utopia of society governed by an elite? [Plato]
3. Is executive management more about managing people or solving abstract problems? [Rainey]
4. How could a private firm's disaster be blamed on faulty management? [Langewiesche]

1. What are the common difficulties of putting programs into effect? [Fesler]
2. Explain Matland's Ambiguity-Conflict Model.
3. Why did the plan to attack Al Qaeda before 9/11 not get implemented in time? [Elliott]

1. Is there evidence of cycles of policymaking? [Lewis, 1995, 2005]
2. What were the difficulties of putting into effect the FOIA?  [Lewis, 1995, 2000a]
3. How do the courts, congress and bureaucracies interact in implementing policy? [Lewis, 1995]
4. How does open government affect the way programs are put into effect? [Lewis, 2000a]
5. How was the FOIA adapted to the Internet -- and how does the internet change the way official records are released to the public? [Lewis, 2000b]
6. How does a national security era alter the practice of open govenrment and personal privacy?" [Lewis, 2005]

1. How can Congress oversee the officials? [Fesler]
2. How do groups of experts from outside the Congress or the bureaus, interested in a policy affect the policy? [Heclo]
3. What light does the school lunch reform case shed on the importance of issue networks? [Sims]

1. How do the courts affect US bureaus?

Research Paper with Bibliography Due Monday Week 13.

1. How is federal budgeting developed over the fiscal year? [Fesler]
2. In what sense is budgeting a political rather than administrative exercise?[Rubin]
3. How was Wisconsin's budget shortfall handled? [Conant]

1. Can deregulation liberate citizens from bureaucratic rules -- or does it remove our protections?
2. In what ways do federal officials have a professional ethic that limits their choices of behavior?
3. How did deregulation speed up the vast human genome project? [Lambright]

1. How can "the greatest good for the greatest number" actually be applied to grovernment services? [Utilitarians]
2. Is it ethical to achieve happiness for the greatest number of individuals?
3. Is societal happiness different from that of all individuals?
4. Does quality of happiness matter, or only quantity?

1. What's Fesler's overall view of American bureaucracy?
2. Is there a distinctive public sector ethic?
3. What's the difference between accountability and ethical behavior?
4. What systems of accountability are there for US bureaucrats?
5. In what ways do federal officials have a professional ethic that limits their choices of behavior? [Waldo]
6. How may professional ethics be in tension with the public interest?
7. If political appointees are ideologically hostile to the agencies they serve, what is their ethical responsibility to their employer?
8. Who was responsible for the disastrous election counting system in the 2000 election in Florida? [Montjoy & Slaton]