Jeffrey D Straussman
Biographic Data
| ID | 699946 |
|---|---|
| NAME | Jeffrey D Straussman |
| GIVEN NAMES | Jeffrey D |
| FAMILY NAME | Straussman |
| SIGNATURE | STRAUSSMAN J D |
| AFFILIATIONS | University at Albany, State University of New York |
| ORCID | 0000-0002-7832-5417 |
| VERIFIED | Yes |
| TOTAL WORKS | 31 |
| TOTAL CITATIONS | 27 |
| AUTHOR COUNT | 31 |
| EDITOR COUNT | 0 |
| FIRST PUBLICATION YEAR | 1975 |
| LATEST PUBLICATION YEAR | 2022 |
| H-INDEX | 3 |
Co-production at the front line
The concept of co-production (CP) is a key concept highly developed in the public administration literature reflecting the end stage of policy implementation. It is explored through a personal account of struggle and challenges through my two-year experience as a stroke survivor. The paper provides a very personal account of CP and by so doing I hope to shed additional light on the value of CP as a theory with a rich literature and as a valuable …
The Problem of Chronic Refugee Communities
Intractable long-term or chronic refugee communities present serious challenges to common refugee-management strategies. We argue that they are best understood and managed by using adaptive techniques drawn from complexity theory. To illustrate this strategy, we use the refugee communities situated along the Thai–Myanmar border as a case study. The article outlines the key elements of complexity theory, the complexity lens, for use in analysis of…
The Leadership Style of “The People’s Doctor”
David Axelrod, MD, New York State’s commissioner of health from 1979 to 1991, had a panoramic view of public health and a legendary track record of tackling complex issues ranging from the Love Canal environmental disaster to HIV/AIDS and end-of-life ethics. Many raved about Axelrod’s leadership, whereas others criticized his response and style. Two decades later, we describe his leadership attributes. Our retrospective review incorporates interv…
A Modest Defense of Politically Engaged Best Practices
Critics of donor‐funded democracy promotion claim that these programs are frequently designed to reproduce social and governmental models drawn from developed countries and imposed on the recipient country without regard to local conditions, with experts parachuted in to provide guidance based on international “best practices.” The critique focuses on first‐generation development with a neutral, technical focus, whereas democracy promotion has ev…
Improving the Budget Process in Fragile and Conflict‐Ridden States
Both the donor community and scholars have created a cottage industry studying “fragile” states. International nongovernmental organizations that have developed indexes measuring corruption or governance have been unkind to Afghanistan. One index suggests a different and more optimistic story. The International Budget Partnership measures transparency every two years with its Open Budget Index. Afghanistan demonstrated dramatic improvement on thi…
Why So Many Institutional Reforms in Development Fail and How We Can Do Better
Nonpartisan Legislative Budget Offices
Strengthening the budgetary powers of legislatures through nonpartisan budget offices adds to the capacity-building repertoire of development donors. Budget offices are supposed to provide legislatures with information and analysis independent from the executive. The United States Agency for International Development believes that strengthening the legislature's power of the purse improves governance. We highlight USAID-funded legislative strengt…
Public management, politics, and the policy process in the public affairs curriculum
Public Service Reform in Russia, 1991–2006
This article assesses Russia’s post‐Soviet efforts to reform its public service in order to meet the challenges of social and economic transition and describes both obstacles to the creation of a modern public service and efforts to overcome them. First, the authors provide a snapshot of the public service in Russia since 1991. Second, they describe aspects of the Soviet legacy that have impeded efforts to modernize the public service. Third, the…
Searching for balance
Scholars and practitioners have tried to draw the link between the emergence and growth of non‐governmental organisations (NGOs) and civil society in developing and transitional societies. While the literature on the role of NGOs in development is extensive, there is very little attention to the evolution of NGOs in the few remaining communist countries, even though China and Vietnam also display the development of indigenous NGOs. Some of the ma…
Managing intensive student consulting capstone projects
A New Imperial Presidency? Insights from U.S. Involvement in Bosnia
WILLIAM C. BANKS is professor of law, College of Law, Syracuse University. JEFFREY D. STRAUSSMAN is professor of public administration and vice chair, Department of Public Administration, The Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University
Defense Contingency Budgeting in the Post-Cold-War World
One of the major government reform initiatives in the industrialized democracies in the 1990s has been the new public management. In the United States, the initiative gained considerable attention when a report issued by a commission chaired by Vice President Al Gore endorsed the development of performance-based measures in government. As prescribed by the National Performance Review (NPR, 1993), agencies should be freed from the red tape of deta…
Judicial Intervention and Local Spending
This study develops a methodology for examining the impact of court orders on local budgets and applies it to one of the most important areas of judicial involvement‐local jails. During the 1980s an increasing number of local jails came under court order due to overcrowded facilities. In many counties this has been matched by equally rapid growth in jail capacity and expenditures. Based on simple comparisons of these trends and case studies of in…
Management by Groping Along
The usefulness of a management metaphor derived from the analysis of individual public managers is highly sensitive to the specific environments of the managers. This principle is illustrated by analyzing the descriptive utility of one metaphor ‐ “Management By Groping Along” (MBGA) ‐which has gained some currency in the teaching and the practice of public management in the United States. While management metaphors cannot be subjected to strict s…
The Impact of Courts on the Decision to Expand Jail Capacity
Over the past 20 years, an extensive literature has focused on the role of courts in shaping public policy and management. Yet despite the continuing interest in the topic, very little "hard" evidence exists on the actual impact of court interventions in public agencies. The objective of this study is to estimate the impact of court orders and mandates on public programs in one of the most important areas of judicial intervention, local jails. Th…
Taming the Bureaucracy
The Content of Strategy
A Thousand Flowers Blooming
Courts and Public Purse Strings
Do judges make budget decisions? At one time the question would have seemed preposterous. No formal constitutional role exists for the courts in the budget process, nor do various portraits of budgeting include a place for the judicial branch. Yet, few would argue that disputes have come before the courts in which resolution has required forms of budgetary action. Consider two easily recognizable illustrations: The federal courts have been partic…
Public Administration
Another Look at the Mandate Issue
Writing in The Public Interest in 1980, New York City Mayor Edward Koch charged that, maze of complex statutory and administrative directives has come to threaten both the initiative and the financial health of local governments throughout the country.' His complaint joined a chorus of voices, all concerned with the impact of mandates on lower level governments. The issue centers on both the financial and political ramifications that occur when o…
Shrinking Budgets and the Shrinkage of Budget Theory
The federal budgetary process in the United States has been surprisingly resistant to change. Reforms come and go but certain budgeting truths seem inviolable. Despite changes in nomenclature, budget systems (such as ZBB and PPB), and the players themselves, the basic game has stayed the same. Budgeting is a largely decentralized political process, governed by highly stylized rules for negotiation and given to predictable outcomes. Each year the …
More Bang for Fewer Bucks? Or How Local Governments Can Rediscover the Potentials (And Pitfalls) of the Market
ActionsWashington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, April 1979), p. vii. 22. Idem. 23. See Jerome B. McKinney, Influence of Lower Level Officials on Policy Making, delivered at the American Society for Public Administration Conference, Denver, Colorado, April 19-21, 1972; see Robert T. Golembiewski, Men, Management and Morality (New York: McGraw Hill, 1965). 24. Idem. 25. Stenberg, op. cit., p. 13. 26. Idem. 27. See Catherine Lovell, Coordi…
Spending More and Enjoying It Less
Public management, politics, and the policy process in the public affairs curriculum
Nonpartisan Legislative Budget Offices
Strengthening the budgetary powers of legislatures through nonpartisan budget offices adds to the capacity-building repertoire of development donors. Budget offices are supposed to provide legislatures with information and analysis independent from the executive. The United States Agency for International Development believes that strengthening the legislature's power of the purse improves governance. We highlight USAID-funded legislative strengt…
Judicial Intervention and Local Spending
This study develops a methodology for examining the impact of court orders on local budgets and applies it to one of the most important areas of judicial involvement‐local jails. During the 1980s an increasing number of local jails came under court order due to overcrowded facilities. In many counties this has been matched by equally rapid growth in jail capacity and expenditures. Based on simple comparisons of these trends and case studies of in…
Public Administration
A Modest Defense of Politically Engaged Best Practices
Critics of donor‐funded democracy promotion claim that these programs are frequently designed to reproduce social and governmental models drawn from developed countries and imposed on the recipient country without regard to local conditions, with experts parachuted in to provide guidance based on international “best practices.” The critique focuses on first‐generation development with a neutral, technical focus, whereas democracy promotion has ev…
Managing intensive student consulting capstone projects
The "reserve army" of unemployed revisited
What Did Tomorrow's Future Look like Yesterday
A New Imperial Presidency? Insights from U.S. Involvement in Bosnia
WILLIAM C. BANKS is professor of law, College of Law, Syracuse University. JEFFREY D. STRAUSSMAN is professor of public administration and vice chair, Department of Public Administration, The Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University
A Thousand Flowers Blooming
A Typology of Budgetary Environments
Budget reforms often have two goals that are not necessarily compatible. The primary goal is improving agency performance; the second implicit goal is exercising fiscal restraint to curb expenditure growth. The author describes four different budgetary environments to show that while fiscal restraint seems to be a necessary though not suf ficient requirement for successful budget reform, the interaction of reform and fiscal restraint actually may…
"Full" Employment Growthmanship and the Expansion of Labor Supply
During World War II, fears of postwar depres sion led to proposals for guaranteeing every adult American the "right to a useful and remunerative job." Under the Employment Act of 1946, the job guarantee was displaced by triple-layered guarantees to insure corporate growth: assured expansion of market demand, assured returns on capital, and guaranteed supply of inputs including trained or educated labor. While these growthmanship policies suc cess…
What Did Tomorrow's Future Look like Yesterday
The "reserve army" of unemployed revisited
Budget "Reform" as a Technique of Managerial Assertiveness
A Typology of Budgetary Environments
Budget reforms often have two goals that are not necessarily compatible. The primary goal is improving agency performance; the second implicit goal is exercising fiscal restraint to curb expenditure growth. The author describes four different budgetary environments to show that while fiscal restraint seems to be a necessary though not suf ficient requirement for successful budget reform, the interaction of reform and fiscal restraint actually may…
Public Sector Unionism and Tax Burdens
One factor that has affected state and local politics since the 1960's is the growth of public sector unionism. Conventional wisdom assumes that the “fist generation” of public unionism has been a major cause of the fiscal problems faced by many state and local governments in the 1970's. State level cross‐sectional analysis (1960–71) questions this widely held assumption with respect to the impact of strike activity and collective bargaining legi…
More Bang for Fewer Bucks? Or How Local Governments Can Rediscover the Potentials (And Pitfalls) of the Market
ActionsWashington, D.C.: U.S. Government Printing Office, April 1979), p. vii. 22. Idem. 23. See Jerome B. McKinney, Influence of Lower Level Officials on Policy Making, delivered at the American Society for Public Administration Conference, Denver, Colorado, April 19-21, 1972; see Robert T. Golembiewski, Men, Management and Morality (New York: McGraw Hill, 1965). 24. Idem. 25. Stenberg, op. cit., p. 13. 26. Idem. 27. See Catherine Lovell, Coordi…
Spending More and Enjoying It Less
Shrinking Budgets and the Shrinkage of Budget Theory
The federal budgetary process in the United States has been surprisingly resistant to change. Reforms come and go but certain budgeting truths seem inviolable. Despite changes in nomenclature, budget systems (such as ZBB and PPB), and the players themselves, the basic game has stayed the same. Budgeting is a largely decentralized political process, governed by highly stylized rules for negotiation and given to predictable outcomes. Each year the …
Public Administration
Another Look at the Mandate Issue
Writing in The Public Interest in 1980, New York City Mayor Edward Koch charged that, maze of complex statutory and administrative directives has come to threaten both the initiative and the financial health of local governments throughout the country.' His complaint joined a chorus of voices, all concerned with the impact of mandates on lower level governments. The issue centers on both the financial and political ramifications that occur when o…
Courts and Public Purse Strings
Do judges make budget decisions? At one time the question would have seemed preposterous. No formal constitutional role exists for the courts in the budget process, nor do various portraits of budgeting include a place for the judicial branch. Yet, few would argue that disputes have come before the courts in which resolution has required forms of budgetary action. Consider two easily recognizable illustrations: The federal courts have been partic…
A Thousand Flowers Blooming
Taming the Bureaucracy
The Content of Strategy
Management by Groping Along
The usefulness of a management metaphor derived from the analysis of individual public managers is highly sensitive to the specific environments of the managers. This principle is illustrated by analyzing the descriptive utility of one metaphor ‐ “Management By Groping Along” (MBGA) ‐which has gained some currency in the teaching and the practice of public management in the United States. While management metaphors cannot be subjected to strict s…
The Impact of Courts on the Decision to Expand Jail Capacity
Over the past 20 years, an extensive literature has focused on the role of courts in shaping public policy and management. Yet despite the continuing interest in the topic, very little "hard" evidence exists on the actual impact of court interventions in public agencies. The objective of this study is to estimate the impact of court orders and mandates on public programs in one of the most important areas of judicial intervention, local jails. Th…
Judicial Intervention and Local Spending
This study develops a methodology for examining the impact of court orders on local budgets and applies it to one of the most important areas of judicial involvement‐local jails. During the 1980s an increasing number of local jails came under court order due to overcrowded facilities. In many counties this has been matched by equally rapid growth in jail capacity and expenditures. Based on simple comparisons of these trends and case studies of in…
A New Imperial Presidency? Insights from U.S. Involvement in Bosnia
WILLIAM C. BANKS is professor of law, College of Law, Syracuse University. JEFFREY D. STRAUSSMAN is professor of public administration and vice chair, Department of Public Administration, The Maxwell School of Citizenship and Public Affairs, Syracuse University
Defense Contingency Budgeting in the Post-Cold-War World
One of the major government reform initiatives in the industrialized democracies in the 1990s has been the new public management. In the United States, the initiative gained considerable attention when a report issued by a commission chaired by Vice President Al Gore endorsed the development of performance-based measures in government. As prescribed by the National Performance Review (NPR, 1993), agencies should be freed from the red tape of deta…
Managing intensive student consulting capstone projects
Searching for balance
Scholars and practitioners have tried to draw the link between the emergence and growth of non‐governmental organisations (NGOs) and civil society in developing and transitional societies. While the literature on the role of NGOs in development is extensive, there is very little attention to the evolution of NGOs in the few remaining communist countries, even though China and Vietnam also display the development of indigenous NGOs. Some of the ma…
Public Service Reform in Russia, 1991–2006
This article assesses Russia’s post‐Soviet efforts to reform its public service in order to meet the challenges of social and economic transition and describes both obstacles to the creation of a modern public service and efforts to overcome them. First, the authors provide a snapshot of the public service in Russia since 1991. Second, they describe aspects of the Soviet legacy that have impeded efforts to modernize the public service. Third, the…
Public management, politics, and the policy process in the public affairs curriculum
Nonpartisan Legislative Budget Offices
Strengthening the budgetary powers of legislatures through nonpartisan budget offices adds to the capacity-building repertoire of development donors. Budget offices are supposed to provide legislatures with information and analysis independent from the executive. The United States Agency for International Development believes that strengthening the legislature's power of the purse improves governance. We highlight USAID-funded legislative strengt…
Political science (27 works) · Law (20 works) · Law (18 works) · Economics (16 works) · Public Administration (12 works) · Public Administration (11 works) · Politics (10 works) · Sociology (10 works) · Business (9 works) · Computer Science (6 works)