Abstract
As we move into the second half of Volume 53, the July 2021 issue again illustrates the remarkable richness and diversity of the research and scholarship delivered in the pages of Administration & Society (A&S). Questions concerning U.S. immigration policy, government advisory council effectiveness, performance measurement systems, organizational boundary spanning, and the effects of policy inconsistencies are brought to the fore in this issue.
Vicki Lens and Samantha Kanelstein lead off the issue with an analysis of judicial responses to the Trump Administration’s reinterpretation of U.S. asylum law and the extent and limits of administrative power in a quintessential arena of presidential policy discretion. Quim Brugue, Joan Font, and Jorge Ruiz analyze the characteristics of advisory councils in Spain across levels of government, discerning signs of performance variation across levels, especially with respect to participant satisfaction.
Asking what makes boundary spanning work at the level of the boundary spanner, Nicholas Zingale and Alexandra Higl use a detailed case study of the Ohio Children’s Trust Fund to delve into the question. They examine how public administrators exercise philosophical hermeneutics in the context of the uncertainties of program transition and the boundary spanning necessary to form collaborative networks. Luke Fowler and Joel Vallett test the explanatory value of the multiple streams framework to highlight the conditional relationship among the streams in a setting where the intended goal of a new policy is to establish a consistent norm of administrative behavior.
In the realm of performance measurement, Yi Lu, Kaifeng Yang, and Blair Thomas scrutinize the NYPD’s Compstat performance management regime for evidence of the drivers of unintended consequences. They find several key drivers in the form of excessive pressure, expectations mismatches, and ambiguity about government performance. Finally, in a new contribution to our year-old Perspectives feature, Peter Woelert also looks at performance measurement, specifically the micropolitical dynamics growing out of the efforts to game the metrics by those subject to the performance measurement system.
We hope our readers find much of value in the knowledge and insights these authors offer in this issue, and in the articles and commentaries in the issues of 2021 still to come in A&S.