Fiscal Conservatism Research Articles

Neo-Isolationism, Balanced-Budget Conservatism, and the Fiscal Impacts of Immigrants

"A rise in neo-isolationism in the United States has given encouragement to a new fiscal politics of immigration. Growing anti-immigrant sentiment has coalesced with forces of fiscal conservatism to make immigrants an easy target of budget cuts. Limits on legal alien access to social welfare programs that are contained in the 1996 welfare and immigration reform acts seem motivated not so much by a guiding philosophy of what it means to be a member of American society as by a desire to shrink the size of the federal government and to produce a balanced budget. Even more than in the past, the consequence of a shrinking welfare state is to metamorphose legal immigrants from public charges to windfall gains for the federal treasury."

America's most cruel xenophobia.

The tutor watches Mon Vong's leathery face as the old woman struggles to wrap her upturned lips around the strange English words. Mon Vong anxiously fingers the corner of the list of questions she has been studying since December. Like the others in the class, she recently received a letter telling her that she will lose her only source of income, Supplemental Security Income (SSI), unless she can prove by July 1 that she has become a U.S. citizen. The tutor, a young social work student, glances down at the colorfully dressed older women in the classroom, all so much shorter than he. They speak animatedly to one another in their own lilting language but stare with knitted brows at the papers he has given them. knows that Mon Vong is a widow, her husband and children shot to death in the mountains of Laos before she fled for her life. She came reluctantly to the United States in 1988, too old to She tends the six children of her clan neighbors, also cooking for and eating with them, while the adults go to work. The social worker is working to help the women pass the citizenship test. However, Mon Vong, like the others, has never learned to read, even in her own language. His own voice wavers as he proceeds to the next question. Who was Abraham Lincoln? Mon Vong looks up tentatively; He free the slaves? She pauses, then, embarrassed. I not sure. Slaves, indeed, he thinks. The confusion and hypocrisy engendered by the recent welfare reform have obscured the most vicious cuts of the 104th Congress: the termination of SSI, food stamps, and possibly Medicaid for elderly and disabled legal immigrants. Nationally, at least 400,000 legal immigrants are losing federal income benefits averaging about $370 per month. Those affected include some 65,000 legal immigrants residing in nursing homes. These cuts, while terrorizing immigrant communities, raise a cacophony of yet unanswered questions for health care providers and state policymakers. Vigilance toward local implementation of the federal cuts is needed in every state and major city to cushion the most heinous effects of the reforms on people like Mon Vong. When and how did U.S. citizenship become equated with entitlement to assistance from the government? When did lack of citizenship become grounds for denial of the very subsistence on which disabled and elderly people like Mon Vong depend? Is this really what Congress intended last August when it passed the Personal Responsibility and Work Opportunity Reconciliation Act of 1996 (P.L. 104-193) to end welfare as we know it? Why this recent wave of general hostility toward people like Mon Vong, and why is naturalization (becoming a citizen) now viewed as a solution? The answers lie in our nation's recent policies and policymakers' commitment to deficit reduction, along with Americans' general ignorance. Immigrants, seen as a reason for the high cost of social services, were especially vulnerable in recent attempts to reduce government expenditures. As Espenshade (1996) noted, Anti-immigrant sentiment and fiscal conservatism have coalesced to form a new fiscal politics of immigration (p. 1). WHO ARE THE NEW IMMIGRANTS? The United States has always experienced in waves; our shores have opened in times of industrial expansion and closed during economic downturns. The largest waves came a century ago in response to the insatiable demands for labor during the Industrial Revolution. However, the Immigration and Nationality Act of 1924 imposed the first permanent annual quotas and established preferences for immigrants from northern and western Europe. After the act's passage the U.S. foreign-born population declined from almost 15 million in the late 1920s to fewer than 10 million by the late 1960s. The 1965 amendments to the Immigration and Nationality Act (P.L. 89-236) established rules that subsequently facilitated the shift away from European (Espenshade, Fix, Zimmermann, & Corbett, 1997). …

Why the gore report will probably fail

The Gore Report on Reinventing Government summarizes the findings of the National Performance Review Board. It is a well-intentioned endeavor, containing many perceptive insights and solutions. Unfortunately, the NPR failed to consider a number of fundamental problems, which will probably cause the reform effort to fail. Foremost among the problems are the neglect of “the public interest,” reform by command rather than by persuasion, the trivialization of the “public” service, the devaluation of citizenship and the cynicism of frustrated expectations. This article discusses some of the implications of those problems. Because The Gore Report-- the popular name for the report of the National Performance Review Board (NPR) -- is, at the same time, both a proposal for managerial reform and a political document, and because our prognosis is so pessimistic, it is important for us to state our beliefs at the outset. First, both authors are social liberals, with a bent toward fiscal conservatism. Both support strong civil rights and environmental programs and have, at various times, been active in such causes. After studying The Gore Report,we believe the intentions of the members of the NPR are honorable and prompted by their commitment to the public's best interests. We especially applaud their wisdom in considering the opinions of governmental employees as they formulated their recommendations for reform. Finally, with just a few quibbles, we enthusiastically support those recommendations. Having said this, however, we also believe that the NPR's attempt to “reinvent” the federal bureaucracy will almost certainly fail. There will be some short-range improvements but, and in spite of President Clinton's assurance that “This performance review will not produce another report just to gather dust in some warehouse. We have enough of them already,”(1) it will go the way of its predecessors, from the Hoover Commission Report to the Grace Commission Report. The attempt will not fail for the lack of decent intentions. It will fail for the same reasons that the Secretary of Defense, Robert MacNamara, failed in his attempt, in the early 1960s, to convert the military into a high-tech corporation run by MBAs with starred shoulder-straps. MacNamara's fundamental mistake was his belief that the theories and practices of business administration could --without modification -- be transposed into the armed forces.(2) He failed, egregiously, to understand that the value bases of business, upon which its theories and practices are predicated, are incompatible with the foundation values of the military. If those theories and practices are to be used with any hope of success, they must first be modified to conform with the value bases of the military. The same is true of the NPR's attempt to impose the unalloyed theories and practices of business administration upon public administration, as discussed below. This is not to say that we cannot learn from business; indeed, we can and we should. But administrative ideas from the private sector, based upon its unique values, must be adapted and made subservient to the public values that should instruct public administration. Without going into too much detail, among the values bases of business are profit-maximization and growth -- which are scarcely values needed in public administration. Thus, the values of business administration must be modified by the values of the public interest. It is often overlooked that Woodrow Wilson made precisely this argument in 1887 in his famous charge that public administration should adopt the techniques of the “science of administration.” He wrote: “The object of administrative study is to rescue executive methods from the confusion and costliness of empirical experiment and set them upon foundations laid deep in stable principle.”(3) Wilson did not want the public service to flounder in trial and error when it could borrow proven techniques from other areas. But he demanded an essential precondition for such borrowing: the moral values underlying business administration must be replaced, or modified, by the moral va1ues underlying the public administration. In short, he considered the adjective “public.” in public administration, as crucial, because it refers to the necessary moral foundation that should instruct the public administration of the Republic. at all levels. Thus Wilson emphasized: “Our own politics must be the touchstone for all [administrative] theories. The principles on which to base a science of administration for America must be principles which have democratic policy very much at heart.”(4)

Ideology and Independent Living: Will Conservatism Harm People with Disabilities?

The prospect of a conservative revolution has raised the anxiety of the predominantly liberal disability leadership. Whether the diverse disability community shares the policy objectives of the leadership, and its concern over the conservative agenda, is not clear. This article considers four major branches of the conservative movement—fiscal conservatism, the federalist movement, social and religious conservatism, and libertarianism—and their compatibility with the independent living movement, a social movement supported by most people with disabilities. It concludes that the two social movements have several consistent tenets, such as individual responsibility, personal and economic freedom, and self-reliance. Conversely, liberal policies, which tend to encourage dependency, appear in direct conflict with the independent living philosophy. The Americans with Disabilities Act is examined as a disability policy that is largely consistent with conservative principles. The article concludes that, to achieve their policy goals, people with disabilities should seek representation on both sides of the political aisle and should develop proposals that will be acceptable to conservatives and moderates as well as liberals.

On the U.S. Budget Deficit Dilemma: Has Television Contributed?

We advance several theoretical reasons for arguing that expansion in television viewership may have contributed to the recent escalation in the U.S. budget deficit. We then develop a multivariate model to test the validity of the hypothesis using alternative measures of television viewership. The empirical results could not reject our contention that the fast evolution of the U.S. television viewership since the early 1970s has significantly contributed to the escalating size of the federal budget deficit over and above the effects of several other possible macro determinants. This evidence provides some support to the claim that there exists a “liberal” bias within the media (particularly television) that undermines fiscal conservatism. Therefore, it appears advisable for policy-makers to take into account the role of television if they aspire to understand and ultimately control the mounting federal budget deficit.

Desperately Seeking Friends

The author is currently dean of graduate studies and vice provost of Academic Outreach at the University of California, Davis, and former associate director of science at the Office of Science and Technology Policy. She will become chancellor at the University of California, Santa Cruz, on 1 July 1996. WANTED: Reliable, informed friends of science. Must understand importance of science, mathematics, and engineering research and education. Unquestioning willingness to promote investment in scientific discovery. No reciprocal recognition offered. No skeptics need apply. The knowledge created by U.S. scientists and those they have trained has been the basis for the creation of wealth, in very real ways, for this country and the world. Some economists have estimated that nearly 50% of the growth in the U.S. economy over the past few decades is a direct derivative of the federal investment in research. The United States leads the way in virtually all fields of scientific endeavor and, at least at the moment, we remain the major educational resource for scientists worldwide. Numerous documents and testimony recount the ways in which applications of the knowledge generated have led to products or processes that have transformed our world and created opportunities for the next generation. In short, many would argue that scientists, more than members of any other profession, are creating the future. One would think, then, that scientists would have a lot of friends and feel a sense of public appreciation not enjoyed by many other professions. Yet at scientific meetings these days, there is palpable anxiety about the fact that our friends are few and their loyalty uncertain. Politicians tell us that science has no defined constituency and that scientists and their societies are naive, self-important, and frequently ineffective— harsh criticisms that most scientists find offensive but have few ways to counter. This is a tough time for many scientists. The money is getting increasingly tighter, and the nation as a whole shows alarming anti-intellectualism, most notable recently in the revival of efforts to ban the teaching of evolution or to insist that “creation science” be given equal time in grades K-12. Our institutions of higher learning do not insist that undergraduates master the fundamental elements of scientific understanding, and most of the regulations governing the conduct of science are written by legislators who have graduated from law schools that do not require sophistication in scientific or quantitative methodology, even though evidence in many legal cases is now dependent on constantly changing scientific and statistical methodology that is critical to an understanding of comparative risk. Furthermore, the demand for efficiency and accountability in the use of public funds is constantly increasing. It's not hard to understand scientists' growing sense of apprehension and uncertainty. It's time for us to make new friends. But do we know how? We want people to like us, support us, and understand how dedicated we are. However, we don't want to be told that it is our responsibility to be more civically inclined; to be what Neal Lane, the director of the National Science Foundation, calls “citizen-scientists.” We're busy, we claim. Can't someone else do the public outreach? Can't someone else fix our educational system or get the mindless auditors and regulators out of our business? Probably not. Scientists have enjoyed a long run of public confidence that is still strong (as several recent Research America polls, conducted by Lou Harris, have shown). However, with the end of the Cold War, some of the claim we previously had on the public coffers has eroded, and the fiscal conservatism of the moment is encouraging skepticism about the importance of many kinds of scientific endeavor. It's time to change our ways. An event designed to begin a larger dialogue with a broader set of constituencies will occur in Sacramento, California, on 28 and 29 May 1996. This coalition will bring together, in approximately equal parts, research scientists and administrators from the California research universities and national laboratories; business leaders in evolving high-technology industries; and mayors, local economic officers, and state politicians to talk about how to better understand each other's concerns and priorities and to build critical partnerships for the future. Although meetings between universities and businesses interested in research are common, the inclusion of public-sector interests as equal partners in the discussion is much rarer. This is where some of our friends must be made. It's time to listen and to reciprocate.

Dancing with Wolves

I9m a biologist. My fascination with wolves began when I was very young. Wolves are beautiful; wolves are smart; wolves tend to work together; wolves protect their young. Wolves also prey on the ill, the young, and the wounded of other species, and humans are afraid of them. Today, two of the most powerful federal agencies supporting scientific research (Health and Human Services and the Department of Energy) are headed by women, one of whom is African American. The Office of Management and Budget has a prominent female economist as its director; the chair of the National Economic Council is another outstanding female economist; in most of the science agencies, distinguished female scientists preside at the deputy and director levels; and in at least several of those agencies there are prominent minority scientists. Many national scientific societies, notably the AAAS, the American Society for Cell Biology, the American Physical Society, the American Chemical Society, the American Association of Immunologists, the American Institute of Nutrition, and the American Society for Clinical Nutrition are or have recently been headed by women or minorities. In 1994, the female share of new U.S. doctorates rose to an all-time high of 46%; the number of women in science disciplines increased substantially; and although minorities are still woefully underrepresented in many areas of science, at least their overall participation has increased. Twenty-five years ago, these statistics and examples were unimaginable. Yes, more progress is needed, but why aren9t we celebrating this remarkable testimony to the power of cultural and civil rights reform? Why do many women and minorities fear not only for their own careers but for the careers of those who will follow? Maybe it9s because the wolves are circling. This is a time of extraordinary paradox. Just as we begin to reap the benefits that diversification of the scientific leadership of the nation is bringing us, we are also faced with a new popular perception that the tools that helped to open our doors and our eyes were wrong, that they created “preferences,” not equalizers. This is a bit hard for some of us to swallow. We remember the days when a “gentleman” with a C could get a job not available to a “lady” with an A. It may be true that it is harder for the “average” male to get a job at the same level as he could two or three decades ago, but this is not because unqualified women and minorities have taken over. Rather, it is because the hard work of concerned educators, enlightened male colleagues, and others has helped to ensure the success of more qualified women and minorities than ever before. If affirmative action dies a victim of inflated rhetoric and media blitzes uninformed by data, then we need the next generation of diversity tools and we need them now. Drawing more women and minorities into science is no longer so much about righting the wrongs of the past as it is about developing talent for the next century. Recent estimates indicate that between the mid-1980s and the year 2000, the majority of growth in the labor force will come from the entry of women, people of color, and immigrants. In an international, stridently competitive “information age,” we have to mobilize all of the latent talent in this new work force. Scientific leaders from diverse backgrounds, some of whom you will meet or remeet in this issue, are desperately needed because their presence will help inspire others to follow their lead. As the pressure to downsize the scientific effort increases in response to fiscal conservatism, it will be tempting to not spend money on “frills” such as special needs science education and access programs for women and minority scientists. This is a temptation we must resist. As my grandmother said when trying to teach me proper “English” tea-time manners: “It9s easy to learn and practice your manners when there is plenty of food, but when food is in short supply, people forget their manners.” The mark of a civilized society is the ability to do what is right in the face of challenge. In our attempts to survive as individuals, we must not forget that we have an obligation to ensure that those who follow us can also be nourished. The wolves may be circling, but scientists, whatever their gender or ethnicity, can outsmart them. Indeed, when one overcomes one9s primitive fear, the wolves no longer look so threatening. Their dance is dangerous, but not lethal. [The full text of the special section is posted on Science 9s Next Wave along with an interactive forum that runs until 7 June 1996.]

LOYAL TO THE CORE

In business, flashy risk takers often get more attention than companies that quietly stick to their knitting. But as Gannett's results show, unswerving focus on core competencies and fiscal conservatism are more likely to pay off year after year.

Fiscal conservatism as a response to the debt crisis

In this paper we develop a model in which social conflict and adjustment costs induce delayed inflation stabilization. We show that the longer this delay is the less demanding are the conditions that some groups will accept in order to stabilize. In the context of the Latin American debt crisis, our model gives a rationale for the time lag between the outset of the crisis and the implementation of reform programs as well as for the strongly conservative nature of those that are currently being implemented.

The “Sputnik” Challenge: Eisenhower’s Response to the Soviet Satellite by Robert A. Divine

214 Book Reviews TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Wernher von Braun thus fails to satisfy the need for a reliable popular biography. Although another is under way that promises to be less partisan, it is clear that we will have to wait a few more years before we will finally have a thoroughly researched work on this important and fascinating figure. Michael J. Neufeld Dr. Neufeld curates World War II exhibits at the National Air and Space Museum. His history of Peenemiinde and the German Army guided-missile program, The Rocket and the Reich, will be published shortly. The “Sputnik” Challenge: Eisenhower’s Response to the Soviet Satellite. By Robert A. Divine. New York: Oxford University Press, 1993. Pp. xviii+ 245; notes, index. $25.00. If Dwight Eisenhower was one of the more competent and more scientifically aware of modern American presidents, how did he make such an awkward and, in the opinion of many witnesses, inadequate job of leading the United States into the opening years of the Space Age? Indeed, was Eisenhower’s early space policy quite so feeble as has often been thought? Supplementing internal White House memoranda and diaries held at the Eisenhower Library with contemporary published sources, Robert Divine builds a largely convincing account of the responses of American policymakers to the launching of the world’s first space satellites (Sputniks 1 and 2) by the Soviet Union in the fall of 1957. Those responses included the transformation of the American gov­ ernment’s science advice apparatus, some measure of national edu­ cational reform, the establishment of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, a partial reorganization of the Department of Defense, and an overhaul of the latter’s missile development pro­ grams. While previous historians have looked at these as separate topics, no other book so usefully disentangles and exhibits all the main strands of the story. Divine presents an uncomfortable and privately more or less exasperated president who was obliged to yield significant ground to his newfound and vociferous critics, especially on the size of the military budget and on elements of the near-term space program such as lunar probes. But Eisenhower and his advisers are also shown skillfully deploying the resources of the modern presidency to win on almost all the major issues such as limiting the federalization of education, protecting and prioritizing the WS-117L spy satellite program, and refusing to allow such massive procurements of firstgeneration missiles as might have delayed their already-planned successors. Eisenhower’s fiscal conservatism, often blamed both then TECHNOLOGY AND CULTURE Book Reviews 215 and since for the Soviet victory in the first space race, is shown as holding up well against the pressures of the crisis, alongside his confidence, based partly on secret information from U-2 overflights that he could not share with his critics, that the underlying balance of power was favorable to the United States and would remain so. Regrettably, Divine’s account breaks off sharply at the end of 1958, not even sparing a chapter to reflect on the two remaining years of Eisenhower’s space policy, during which the American public’s cha­ grin at the successful Soviet lunar probes (after the relatively unim­ pressive American shots of 1958) amounted to a partial reprise of the Sputniks crisis and contributed to a revival of “missile gap” accusations in the 1960 presidential campaign. There are also involuntary limitations. Divine’s unfamiliarity with the history of space technology, and with the unreliability of many space-history texts, results in an irritating rash of errors, some minor but others less so. The unproven allegation that Sputnik 1 was hard to see because it was painted black is revived; the 6-inch Vanguard “test spheres” are referred to as if they replaced the main Vanguard satellites instead of supplementing them; the widely documented cosmic ray and solar radiation instruments on Sputnik 2 are arbitrarily deleted from the record; and so on. Like many before him, Divine inflates the impact of the Sputniks by rescheduling events on the American side. The decision to put miniature satellites on the Vanguard test vehicles, taken in July 1957, is assigned to the aftermath of Sputnik 1 in October. Pre...

The Democrats' Dilemma: Walter F. Mondale and the Liberal Legacy.

What does Walter Mondale's career reveal about the dilemma of the modern Democtratic party and the crisis of postwar American liberalism? Steven M. Gillon 's answer is that Mondale's frustration as Jimmy Carter's vice president and his failure to unseat the immensely popular President Reagan in 1984 reveal the beleaguered state of a party torn apart by generational and ideological disputes. The Democrats' Dilemma begins with Mondale's early career in Minnesota politics, from his involvement with Hubert Humphrey to his election to the United States Senate in 1964. Like many liberals of his generation, Mondale traveled to Washington hopeful that government power could correct social wrongs. By 1968, urban unrest, a potent white backlash, and America's involvement in the Vietnam war dimmed much of his optimisim. In the years after 1972, as senator, as vice president, and as presidential candidate, Mondale self-conciously attempted to fill the void after the death of Robert Kennedy. Mondale attempted to create a new Democratic party by finding common ground between the party's competeing factions. Gillon contends that Mondale's failure to create that consensus underscored the deep divisions within the Democratic Party. Using previously classified documents, unpublished private papers, and dozens of interviews -including extensive conversations with Mondale himself- Gillon paints a vivid portrait of the innerworkings of the Carter administration. The Democrats' Dilemma captures Mondale's frustration as he attempted to mediate between the demands of liberals intent upon increased spending for social programs and the fiscal conservatism of a president unskilled in the art of congressional diplomacy. Gillon discloses the secret revelation that Mondale nearly resigned as vice president. Gillon also chronicles Mondale's sometimes stormy relationships with Jesse Jackson, Gary Hart, and Geraldine Ferraro. Eminently readable and a means of access to a major twentieth-century political figure, The Democrats' Dilemma is a fascinating look at the travail of American liberalism.

President Eisenhower, Economic Policy, and the 1960 Presidential Election

This article examines economic policy in the Eisenhower years and the president's role in the 1960 election. I measure the impact of changes in fiscal policy on real GNP and show that policy in 1959 was unusually contractionary and cannot be dismissed as merely evidence of Eisenhower's fiscal conservatism.

How Japan affects the international system

To cope with more than incremental change in the international system, the neorealist concept of structure and the neoliberal concept of process must be complemented by a third analytically distinguished element: the concept of action. All three concepts can be used on the systemic level of analysis of international relations theory. Their obvious differentiation is the degree of systemic consolidation, with structure at the highest, action at the lowest, and process at unstable intermediate degrees. Without analyzing prevailing models of action of important units of the international system, it is impossible to predict the possible range of outcomes of processes and structural changes in the international system.This article offers Japan's “strategic pragmatism” as a model of action. The model, representing a functional cut across contending economic doctrines, combines relative fiscal conservatism with “progressive” provision of credit, dynamic capitalism with public policy activism, and critical rationalism with philosophical pragmatism. Japan's strategic pragmatism has not only enabled its government and enterprises to cope with uncertainty and change in their domestic and international environment but has also increased global welfare and changed the balance of strategic components of power in the international system. The spread of this model of action both within and beyond Japan's control points to a paradigm change in economic and international relations theory—that is, to the most pervasive form of systemic consolidation.

The Corporate Elite, the New Conservative Policy Network, and Reaganomics

Recent analysts have traced the rise of Reaganomics to the rise of cowboy capitalists and to a "right turn" of the corporate elite. We provide a policy history of the formulation of the Reaganomics program and its insertion into the national political agenda, showing that it stemmed from policy-planning efforts of a new conservative network of policy organizations. During the 1970s, this conservative network synthesized fiscal conservatism, monetarism, and supply-side economics into a new economic program of austerity and supply-side tax incentives. We then provide an elite analysis of the structure of this policy network, showing that the inner circle and upper tier of the capitalist class supported the austerity camp as well as the traditional Keynesian moderates, while sunbelt cowboys tended to support the more conservative supply-siders. The corporate elite remains the hegemonic group within the capitalist class, working in coalition with a newly mobilized cowboy stratum.

The political and economic context of mental health care in the United States.

Since the mid-1970s, the mental health treatment system in the U.S. has faced budgetary famine. This is in stark contrast to the growing cornucopia of fiscal resources enjoyed by the overall health care system. This paper explores the complex reasons for this disproportionate allocation in health spending. On the one hand, mental health may suffer from the perception that its diagnoses are largely "subjective" and its treatments do not fit the traditional "medical model" that can be defined precisely and paid for by third-party insurers. But more importantly, the death of mental health resources can be attributed to the peculiar nature and characteristics inherent in American politics. This paper describes the American political environment, from both a historical and a contemporary perspective, to give some insight into the development of policies affecting the mental health system in the U.S. Given the current climate of fiscal conservatism in this country toward any increases in social spending, it is likely that the profound mismatch in need and spending for mental health programs will continue indefinitely.

Consequences and costs of shutting off methadone

In the face of rising fiscal conservatism, many states and localities with sizable addict populations have reduced or eliminated public funding for methadone maintenance (MM) programs and permitted private-fee-for-service programs to replace them. The social and economic costs of these changed funding policies with reference to the California experience were analyzed. A two-and-a-half year follow-up of a sample of San Diego MM clients (195 men, 129 women) terminated from a public subsidized program compared outcome results to clients from publicly funded MM programs in Orange, Riverside and San Bernardino counties (129 men, 131 women). In a secondary analysis, San Diego clients who transferred into private (fee-for-service) treatment programs were compared with those who did not transfer. Major adverse consequences were found for clients unable or unwilling to transfer to private programs: higher crime and dealing rates, more contact with the criminal justice system, and higher rates of illicit drug use were demonstrated by nontransfer clients. Moreover, the savings resulting from a reduction of MM program costs were nearly offset by increased direct costs for incarceration, legal supervision, and other government- funded drug treatment. Indirect costs were not assessed.

Regional and welfare perspectives on the public-private hospital dichotomy in New Zealand

Concern with the social welfare implications of dual (public and private) hospital systems has grown over the last decade as national commitments to welfare state ideals have wavered in the continuing atmosphere of fiscal conservatism that has permeated through western democracies. New Zealand provides an excellent example of a health care system in which private hospitals have survived (and recently flourished) alongside those provided by the state. Following a brief survey of the evolution of the New Zealand hospital system, variations in the ‘mix’ of public and private hospitals are described at the (regional) Hospital Board District level. It is noted that competition for patients and funding between the public and private sectors occurs almost exclusively in the larger, urban hospital districts, and is invariably to the detriment of public hospitals. Districts with a substantial private hospital presence are found to have fewer resources in the public sector (relative to their population) than those which have few or no private hospitals. The welfare implications of this situation are explored. It is proposed that the maintenance of a dual hospital system in New Zealand has provided, in some parts of the country at least, a ‘choice’ for those able to afford private hospital charges or insurance coverage, but at the expense of those dependent solely upon a (shrinking) public sector.

Privatization of health care services in Canada: Reform or regress?

The emergence of the privatization of health care services as one of the dominant health policy issues in many western industrialized countries is no doubt related to a number of factors, including rising health care costs, fiscal crisis in the form of budgetary deficits, charges of public waste and mismanagement and underfunding, the onset of a new era of political and fiscal conservatism, and professional and corporate antipathy to certain aspects of publicly financed health insurance schemes.

The Growth of the Federal Deficit and the Role of Public Attitudes

How can the recent explosion in the fiscal deficit of the United States be reconciled with the well-known support of the American public for fiscal conservatism? It is first shown that the reputation for fiscal conservatism is fully supported by public opinion polls dating back over a period of four decades. Solid majorities have consistently opposed tax reductions that might produce an unbalanced budget. Recently, however, the public has also shown strong opposition to increases in taxes to close the fiscal gap, which might appear to imply a new acquiescence to the deficit. But this opposition, too, is shown to have persisted for a long time and to be not logically inconsistent with rejecting tax cuts resulting in deficit. Another fashionable explanation for the deficit holds that the budget process in a democratic society is biased toward deficit because the cost of higher taxes is immediate while the cost of deficit is delayed. But it is inconsistent with the fiscal history of the United States over the last 100 years, which reveals no systematic bias toward deficits, at least until recent years. The major explanation that emerges is that the administration succeeded in misleading the public (and perhaps even itself) into believing that the tax cut would not result in deficit thanks to supply and Laffer curve effects.

Public finance, public administration and spatial policy: Recent developments in urban systems and policy responses in the USA, UK and FRG

This paper analyses the relations between fiscal, administrative and policy systems in the context of changing environments created by forces of economic change and restructuring. The analysis is developed within the context of urban systems within three countries: the USA, UK and Germany. The administrative, fiscal and policy systems of these three countries are described and the recent development of fiscal structures is assessed. Fiscal imbalances are argued generally to have increased within the urban system of each country. The consequences of economic change for fiscal structures are then analysed and factors underlying recent changes are examined. The argument of the paper is that fiscal and administrative structures can be assessed only within the context of the political and constitutional assignment of fiscal and other functions. Within this context recent changes in fiscal balance at local government level are argued to be mainly the result of changed priorities of central (or federal-state) level govern- ments towards forms of ‘fiscal conservatism’.