High Public Expectations Research Articles

Late Eighteenth-Century Public Reading, with Particular Attention to Sheridan's Strictures on Reading the Church Service (1789)

Late Eighteenth-Century Public Reading, with Particular Attention to Sheridan's Strictures on Reading the Church Service (1789) Madeleine Forell Marshall (bio) Sheridan's Strictures on Reading the Church-Service; with the notes, regularly annexed, and proper references is an ugly little book, written by the utterly unknown Rev. W. Faulkner, A.B. According to the card catalogue at the Huntington Library, Faulkner was "Rector of St. Andrew's, Worcester," but he seems to have left no other trace. Indeed, he does not even get credit for his own book: the infelicitous title must explain why the National Union Catalogue credits Thomas Sheridan as the author, even though Sheridan's work seems always to have been respectably sponsored, properly published and elegantly presented. The online English Short Title Catalogue contains no notice at all of Faulkner's text, printed in Worcester in 1789. The Dictionary of National Biography records no such W. Faulkner. Despite its manifest humility the little book intended nothing less than to reform the evidently atrocious parish reading of the Church of England liturgy. Picking up where the eloquent "Dublin Orator," Sheridan, had left off in his distinguished Lectures, Faulkner details how the liturgy was commonly read and suggests how it should be read.1 In the following pages I shall maintain that the Strictures are usefully examined for the copious information they provide on educated public speech as "reading" in the late eighteenth century; particularly liturgical and Bible reading but also, according to Sheridan, other public reading. This is arguably [End Page 35] no small matter. In a day of nearly universal attendance at worship, public reading of the liturgy and Biblical texts generally was the most obvious and widely shared experience of the English language read aloud. This was true across Britain and in English-speaking colonies, where clergy trained in England followed common practice. To the extent that prayers were said at home and in the workplace, church and chapel reading presumably modeled domestic and other non-professional performance of the printed word. Liturgical emphases and cadences of the Psalms and the Lord's Prayer, for example, were presumably repeated at table and in the closet. Clergymen were not only liturgists, of course, but also tutors, educators, mentors, advisors, preachers and community leaders. (We may charitably presume that the satiric representations of unworthy clergymen in eighteenth-century plays and novels only reinforced the generally high public expectations.) They had great influence in matters of education and the common life. In the age of revivals and surging Methodism, the clergy were also expected to fend off Methodist predators. Sheridan had argued that when the clergy failed properly to consider the sense of the texts they read, when they used a strained, artificial, rote delivery, they set their flock up for the evils of Methodism. Beyond the practice of liturgists and the dangers of passionate Methodism a certain passage in the history of orality and of literacy seems to be at issue here, an episode with implications for the rise of fiction and periodical journalism, for the interest in ballads, Ossian and folk literature. Sheridan had pointed out that illiterate speakers never emphasize the wrong words or rush over the important points when speaking. Bad reading is an acquired, or a learned, distortion of language. If educated men spoke as poorly as Sheridan and Faulkner indicated, by training and by affectation, certainly the rise of a more popular, democratic, "authentic" mode of speech was inevitable. Did "folk" poetry proceeding from the oral tradition (or poetry claiming to do so), verse "dictated" by a muse, or novels read aloud in social settings or popular conversational journalism challenge the artifice of learned discourse? We might even ask whether women, excluded from official higher education, were somehow spared the awkwardness and artificiality of nonsensical learned reading. If indeed their reading was less contrived, we might anticipate the rise of feminist and democratic sentiment, the speech of Wollstonecraft and Paine. When they read scripture or prayers or poetry or fiction aloud at home, did women read like the clergy or did they read more justly? If more justly, the voice of the people is arguably feminized.2 Accordingly we may...

Federal Government Challenges in the 21st Century

Increasingly high public expectations and changes in the environment of government are creating substantial challenges for government and its policy makers. Critical among these challenges are budget issues, a human capital crisis, the use of a complex set of policy tools, and the use of nonfederal actors to deliver public policy. To address the needs created by these challenges, schools of public affairs should expose students to principles and case studies of leadership, provide multidisciplinary training, foster understanding of operations in multiple sectors, ensure knowledge of financial management, ground students in ethical challenges of public service, and ensure skill in the development and use of performance measurement.

A call for papers on physician well-being

Managed care, advances in medical technology, higher public expectations for health, and political debates about the equitable distribution of health care resources are all placing new demands on physicians. The pressures to achieve better outcomes in health care, contain costs, maintain productivity, master an expanding knowledge base, and relate to patients with compassion and presence tax the ability of many physicians to cope. Their risk of job dissatisfaction, burn-out, family problems, and more serious impairment is enormous.1,2,3 The challenges of this era are superimposed on the personal vulnerabilities of physicians.4 The qualities that allow physicians to succeed in training and practice are often maladaptive in their personal lives. Many physicians have a compulsive style that is reinforced in their training and leads to chronic doubt, guilt, and an excessive sense of responsibility accompanied by the feeling that “my work is never done.”5,6 Sir William Osler addressed this occupational hazard in a talk to medical students in 1899: “Engrossed late and soon in professional cares—you may so lay waste that you may find, too late, with hearts given way, that there is no place in your habit-stricken souls for those gentler influences which make life worth living.”7 In the face of these challenges, more physicians are seeking ways to uphold the ideals that brought them into medicine while balancing their other interests and values. The search for this balance is a lifelong challenge, from medical school to retirement.8 Health care institutions are developing a strong interest in physicians' well-being. Managed care organizations are beginning to see a relationship between physicians and patient, or customer, satisfaction and are more willing to attend to the well-being of physicians. Group practices spend about $150,000 on average to replace a physician who leaves the practice due to professional dissatisfaction. More practices are looking for specific ways to enhance the well-being of their physicians, such as reviewing the incentives for work. Malpractice insurers view professional burn-out as increased risk, and disability insurance companies are concerned about the increase in disability claims being filed by physicians, a trend that may reflect an erosion of professional well-being and satisfaction. Promoting satisfaction and well-being among health care professionals not only enhances the work environment but is good for the financial health of the corporation. In this respect, medicine as a business is beginning to emulate the success of other businesses that are worker friendly.9 The Western Journal of Medicine is devoting an entire issue to the subject of physician well-being. We are interested in articles that address the components of personal well-being, the organizational and workplace factors that promote or erode well-being, specific practices that physicians use to promote their well-being and satisfaction, the political dimensions of physician well-being, and cultural factors (inside and outside of medicine) that affect physicians' wellness. We are looking for Op-Eds, original research, letters, review articles, and personal stories or essays. Topics of special interest include: Well-being throughout the physician's life cycle The well-being of physicians' relationships and families Personal practices that promote well-being Well-being in the workplace Gender issues in physician well-being The role of personal philosophy and spirituality in well-being Descriptions of specific programs that promote physicians' well-being Training physicians to lead healthy lives Political action to promote physicians' well-being Models of excellence (both personal and organizational) in which well-being is manifest Research into the factors that lead to happy, satisfied physicians In addition to scholarly pieces, we also welcome artistic expressions related to physicians' well-being, including poems, photographs, and cartoons. All manuscripts submitted to wjm will go through a peer review process. The deadline for submission is August 1, 2000.

Leadership Image‐Building: After Clinton and Watergate

Leadership images are built collectively by leaders and their relevantconstituencies—elected officials, the news media, and the public. The process of buildingleadership image rests on prior expectations about the leader, policy outputs, the course ofevents, and the disposition of political resources. In building images of leadership, each of thethree constituencies puts more weight on some aspects of image‐building than on others: Thepublic sees the president primarily in terms of his previous behavior, the media view thepresident through the lens of immediate events, and other elected officials focus on politicalresources. One of the president's most important resources is his public image. It can helphim to maintain the loyalty of other officials, which in turn contributes to balanced newscoverage, even in times of crisis. President Clinton was able to preserve his public image throughthe impeachment debacle in large part because of low public expectations about his personalmoral behavior and satisfaction with his economic leadership. Conversely, President Nixon wasforced to resign because of high public expectations about his personal probity anddisappointment with his management of the economy.

The Presidency as a Learning Organization

The purpose of this article is to explain the process of large-scale policy development in a presidential administration by using an analytical tool presidency scholars have tended to neglect--organizational learning, a branch of organization theory.(1) Given the nature of the presidency in the political system, with its contracted time horizons, unsurpassed media attention, and high public expectations for success, both the individual occupying the office and those who serve at his pleasure (i.e., staff and most political appointees) are in the position of having to as you go. That is to say that they are not often afforded the luxury of systematically studying the methods by which a task is approached and disposed of, making informed decisions as to its efficacy, and prescribing carefully constructed alternatives for achieving that same task again. These methods are available to other organization inhabitants but often are denied presidents and their administrations. Indeed, one analyst of presidential policymaking, in offering suggestions for coping with what he calls a no-win presidency, argues explicitly that must wait.(2) Presidents do learn, but it often is on an ad hoc basis, with policy and political consequences of change uncertain and sometimes risky. A central task for research on presidential organization is to understand the conditions and processes conducive to learning, be they systematic or ad hoc, and to explain the consequences of learning or the failure to learn. This article examines organizational learning in President Jimmy Carter's administration to evaluate the usefulness of a learning perspective for understanding presidential organization and its role in the policy process. A collateral interest is to explain Carter's development of a comprehensive energy program from an organizational perspective. The structure of this article is as follows. First, I briefly review the arguments for analyzing the presidency as an organization. The fact that the presidency is occupied by individuals, each with varying approaches to the office, does not mean that it lacks continuity in important areas, particularly staff structures and functions. Next, I propose an analytic framework for understanding policymaking, drawing on insights from the organizational learning literature. I then argue that this framework is useful for studying presidential policy choices, focusing specifically on information acquisition and use, integrating policy and political imperatives. Next, I employ this framework to describe Carter's choice to drastically alter his mode of policymaking when developing his comprehensive energy program. Because this is an example of a president explicitly changing his approach to developing policy in midstream, I derive lessons for analyzing presidential decisions. In the final sections, I assess the applicability of organizational learning to presidential administrations and suggest refinements to be used in future research. Thus, this article constitutes a modest effort to advance our understanding of the way in which Carter was able to learn on the job, to help us understand what lessons the Carter experience might hold for subsequent presidents, and (most important) to refine and adapt organizational learning theory to the study of the presidency.(3) Presidency as Organization To promote the proposition that organization theory can advance our understanding of the presidency is to beg the question of whether the presidency itself is an organization. If it is not, then the application of a framework derived from organization theory is useless. But if the presidency can be rightly conceptualized as possessing entities or traits that continue from one administration to the next, then it can be argued that it exhibits characteristics of an organization and can be studied as such.(4) Certain aspects of the presidency, particularly several organizational entities, have become institutionalized over time. …

The strategic presidency: hitting the ground running

Perfectly timed to anticipate possible election of a new president in 1996, second edition of James Pfiffner's Strategic Presidency provides most complete and authoritative volume on presidential transitions from JFK to Bill Clinton. First published in 1988, it is now more valuable than ever with addition of new chapters on Bush and Clinton transitions and numerous other revisions that greatly update volume. When book first appeared eight years ago, it was hailed by American Political Science Review as an important new work following in the path that Richard Neustadt long ago blazed in his classic book, Presidential Power. Immediately recognized for its contributions to scholarship, it also popularized a new phrase, the strategic presidency, which has since become an essential part of lexicon in presidential studies. As this book makes clear, to accomplish his policy objectives, a new president must always first get control of government. Thus White House must organize itself; establish a cabinet; recruit presidential appointees; confront entrenched career bureaucracy; and formulate a legislative agenda. The supreme challenge of this transitional period, Pfiffner argues, is that all of this must be done in a very compressed time frame and under extreme pressure of press scrutiny and unrealistically high public expectations. Even so, he also shows that systematic preparation during this period can maximize a president's opportunity at beginning of a term. Contrary to much conventional advice, Pfiffner contends that a newly elected president's best opportunity for achieving policy goals is at beginning of term. Even if a honeymoon atmosphere does not prevail, Congress is likely to be more receptive to presidential initiatives in early months of a term, and public opinion is likely to decline after several months in office. That's why it's so important for presidents to hit ground running. Like first edition, new one provides a concise guide for scholars and presidential aides and will be widely adopted for courses on modern presidency. With its fine blend of insider perspective, illuminating anecdotes, and user-friendly political analysis, it will also appeal to general readers.

The End of Japan's "Non-Decision" Politics

Japanese politics is in total confusion, and has been since the conservative Liberal Democratic Party (LDP) lost power in July 1993 after 38 years of stable rule. Within a year, the country had seen four prime ministers, and it is widely believed that the current government will fall sooner rather than later. Morihiro Hosokawa, who came into power with both political and economic reforms as his top agenda, enjoyed unusually strong popular support. After four decades of LDP rule, filled with scandal and corruption, the Japanese public had become quite cynical about politics, but the advent of Hosokawa's new reform government had raised expectations that long-overdue and serious changes would finally be made. Yet, despite his enormous popularity and high public expectations, the Hosokawa government collapsed after only eight months. The irony is that the selfproclaimed reformer was forced to resign because of financial improprieties; this, in turn, has deepened popular cynicism about Japanese politics. A successor government was difficult to form. After long and laborious negotiations, the coalition parties worked out a consensus on key policies. The new Hata government, however, was even more fragile than its predecessor, as the Japan Socialist Party (JSP) bolted from the coalition despite a thorough policy discussion before its formation. The Socialists' dissatisfaction did not stem from differences over policy but simply from factional strife within the coalition. The minority government did not last long. Shortly after the Diet passed the budget bill, the LDP, not surprisingly, tried to regain power. The surprise came when the Socialists and the Liberal Democrats, who had been arch-rivals in postwar Japanese politics, now agreed to form a

Commercial, environmental and legislative factors that influence the implementation of fuel cells

Fuel cells and other advanced electric-generation technologies have not experienced a record of successful commercialization efforts. To lower costs for these technologies, it requires substantial production volumes with a significant investment in manufacturing facilities, all dependent on developer confidence in the ultimate market. Yet, market acceptance by buyers requires an adequate demonstration of technical performance and an assurance that these lower costs can be reached. In addition to this fundamental commercialization challenge, there are significant external factors that are greatly influencing the market's (utility's) future implementation of new alternative energy-generating technologies. The factor that has possibly the greatest impact today is the public demand for environmentally benign and renewable resource technologies. There is a growing trend of involvement by consumers, regulators and intervenors in the business and utility industry that is shifting the economic playing field by which industries make resource decisions. Concerns over air pollution, global warming, acid precipitation, depletion of the ozone layer and the hazards of electromagnetic fields (EMF) from power lines, have all led to more stringent regulations and environmental mandates. The utility business environment itself is rapidly changing. Higher public expectations from energy providers and increasing competition are leading to major changes in the American utility sector. Competitive requirements to reduce the cost of utility serivce is leading to business decisions that provide both opportunities and problems for increased use of alternative energy-generating technologies, like fuel cells, and/or renewables, such as wind and solar photovoltaics. Briging new energy technologies to market is very expensive and this financial burden cannot be shouldered by the market, manufacturers or federal government alone. Further, for the market to assume a key position in early commercialization, the technology must offer a strategic and competitive advantage to early buyers. In order to break this problematic cycle of investments depending on market assurance and of market reluctance until cost goals are met, fresh approaches must be sought to address the unique challenges of each commercialization effort. Market-driven collaborations in which potential buyers, such as electric utilities, work together to define and implement a commercialization program that meets the market's requirements, with one or more suppliers, and with the federal government as a catalyst, provide perhaps the best opportunity for further commercialization of renewable energy and energy-efficient technologies. The key is that the market  not government agencies  determines the objectives and manages the resulting program. Two examples of such collaborations, the Fuel Cell Commercialization Group (FCCG) and the Utility PhotoVoltaic Group (UPVG), have so far proven to be successful in their new technology commercialization attempts.

Hispanic perception of police performance: An empirical assessment

This exploratory study examines relationships between the police and Hispanics in Texas. Specifically, data were collected on Hispanic evaluations of police performance, expectations of police performance, and overall satisfaction with the police. A sample of 500 Hispanics throughout the state of Texas were surveyed on their experienced and perceived relationships with three levels of police agencies: local (municipal) police, sheriff's officers, and the state's Department of Public Safety. Findings are reported based upon overall ratings of the police, victim-related data, and data from individuals who had any form of contact with the police. Significant findings show that any form of contact with the police appeared to lower the rating of police performance. This appears to be a product of the interaction between high public expectations and qualitatively poor police performance. Further findings indicate that an increase in the fear of crime among Hispanics lowered evaluations of local police. Similarly, victimization lowered the evaluation of local police, the county sheriff, and the Department of Public Safety. Hispanics also perceived that officers have a “bad attitude,” that the police need to patrol and investigate more, that response time should be improved, and that there should be less discrimination against Hispanics. These findings appear to be largely influenced by ineffective communication (both symbolic and linguistic) and cultural conflict.

The Use of Intensive Care: New Research Initiatives and Their Implications for National Health Policy

national wealth going for medical care, discussion is growing about whether and how to stop or at least slow the growth of expenditures. Previous analyses identified many potential culprits: unrealistically high public expectations of medicine; the rapid introduction of new, large capital-cost technologies and surgical procedures (National Center for Health Care Technology, Technology Assessment Forum 1981; Abrams and McNeil 1978); the increasing use of small technologies such as laboratory tests (Scitovsky 1979); a medical-legal atmosphere prone to litigation; the lack of cost-control incentives in hospital care (Newhouse 1978); and a greater reliance on hospital care as part of the dying process, combined with an aggressive approach to many chronic diseases (Zook and Moore 1980; Schroeder, Showstack, and Roberts 1979). Together, these studies form a strong argument that medical care costs in the United States are too high because American citizens do not benefit from much of the medical care they currently receive. The Zook and Moore (1980) and Schroeder, Showstack, and Roberts (1979) studies highlight how much of our investment in medical care is going to a few patients who frequently do not benefit from these

Frontiers of social policy in Europe and America

The cumulative growth of social programs and public income distribution is leading to a grave need for policy harmonization, i.e., efforts to take into account interdependencies across formerly distinct areas of public and private activity. This need is particularly severe with regard to income support programs, labor market relations and taxation systems. While any fundamental backlash against the welfare state is unlikely, so too is any comprehensive solution through negative income taxation or other abstract forms of economic planning. Prospects for coping with problems of policy harmonization differ among nations, but all countries face the challenge of building consensus around noneconomic values lying at the heart of social policy. Without this cushion of legitimacy, increased policy complexity and higher public expectations threaten to overwhelm democratic political systems.