Blockchain Papers

T B Deen

No abstract is available for this record.

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No abstract is available for this record.

Kenneth Bowen

No abstract is available for this record.

R. Lawson Veasey, Wesley Moody

When the Reagan Administration took office in 1981, it concentrated its domestic efforts upon national government spending, deficits, and inflation. Its major proposed remedies have consisted of "supply-side" economics, cuts in the rates of federal spending on non-military programs and a return to greater state/local responsibility for public policy initiatives and financing. It is with this last aspect of the Reagan proposals that the present work is concerned: the impact and policy implications of federal decentralization on Arkansas. The option of a state tax increase is explored as Arkansas' response.

Jim Leslie Gelbman

This study sought to examine and analyze the implementation of public policies by District 12's Community School Boards (CSB) and superintendents under the Decentralization Law of 1969. The Law did not give communities total control over the schools. It did, however, grant decentralized districts significant powers including the hiring of superintendents, principals, teachers, and school aides. With respect to curricula, the Boards in District 12 were empowered to implement and evaluate their own programs under the Elementary and Secondary Education Act (ESEA, 1965). There were, however, forces outside the schools that influenced the CSB's and the superintendents. District 12, especially the Charlotte Street area, had the highest concentration of poor people in New York City in 1970. Illiteracy, welfare, drug abuse, gang activity, fires and crime naturally had an impact on the schools. Federal and State policies, as well as Board of Education By-Laws, allowed community groups greater participation in the educational process. As a result, several community organizations financed through the Office of Economic Opportunity, demanded their share of community control over the resources allocated for the schools. The CSB, then, was not an independent entity, and, as District 12's policies clearly indicated, the improvement of the schools was incidental to the Boards' other priorities. Policy-implementation in District 12 changed through the 1970's as the Boards changed. The issue of patronage made it clear that politics, not education, dominated District 12's later School Boards. In examining the issues, the main focus was to determine the extent of community participation and control. In view of the Boards' interaction with different forces from without the schools, did the concept of decentralization allow the superintendents and the Boards in District 12 to formulate their policies for the improvement of schools? The data strongly indicated that decentralization provided District 12's residents the opportunity of participating in the educational establishment. There were no data, however, that showed any of the programs implemented by District 12's Boards significantly improved the schools. On the other hand, decentralization gave hundreds of residents jobs and gave parents the right to elect and confront their own CSB members.

Joel N. Morse

No abstract is available for this record.

Kiyoko HAGIHARA

During the periods of high economic growth, outmigration from agricultural and mountain villages to urban areas increased rapidly. As a result overpopulation in the urban areas and depopulation in rural areas have become social problems.The rural areas play a very important role particularly in supplying food, conserving national land, cultivating the head sources of a stream and conserving the natural environment. However, it has become difficult to manage the community and these areas have not been able to play the abovementioned roles in depopulated areas. Therefore, the Japanese government has taken a number of measures to promote rural areas and alleviate some of the problems. In this paper the depopulation problem is considered from the viewpoint of local finance. Attention is paid particularly to the role of intergovernmental grants.Firstly, using a concept of local public goods, the inefficiency which results from free migration is considered. If in moving from one region to another a migrant does not account for the effect of his moving on the tax price of the public good of residents in the region he leaves or enters, Tiebout type of decentralized free market equilibria may not be Pareto-efficient. And if this externality is not internalized by centralized decision-making, the one region may be overpopulated and the other underpopulated. In the framework of a simple model the source of inefficiency of resource allocation is shown. Using the same model the analysis is extended to consider the role for intergovernmental grants in the face of such inefficiencies. And it is suggested that the central government may be justified in using a system of intergovernmental grants to overcome these inefficiencies.In order to explore the role of intergovernmental grants, the model is applied to Agatsuma district of Gunma Prefecture, a district which includes a number of the depopulated towns and villages. Firstly, settled accounts of revenue and expenditure from 1965 F. Y. to 1982 F. Y. are investigated. The percentage of transfer payments including grants from both the Japanese government and the government of Gunma Prefecture has become very large since the laws of the depopulated areas enforced. Secondly, principal expenditures are determined for each town and village. In each town expenditure on education and promotion for agriculture and construction account for a very large percentage of total expenditure. Finally, the level of components which constitutes residents' utility is examined. There is still a difference between the levels of many components in this district and those in the other region.From the above results it is shown that the situation is going to a desired direction by various measures, particularly intergovernmental grants. However, in some areas there is still a possibility of the situation deteriorating. Therefore, it is necessary to allocate intergovernmental grants carefully as well as encouraging each local government to work autonomously.

Armgard von Reden

CLOSED closed doors many closed meetings few roll calls little lobbying INDEPENDENT, BIPARTISAN bipartisan, unpredictable voting drafts its own legislation relies on own bureaucracies majority controls policy process but not policy substance strong on information weak on consensus weak on collective accountability DEPENDENT, PARTISAN partisan, predictable voting relies on administration relies on administration majority controls policy substance but not policy process weak on information strong on consensus strong on collective accountability DECENTRALIZED, CHAOTIC organization like market and clan allocation of values through exchange and seniority many unwritten rules pluralistic trust CENTRALIZED, DISCIPLINED democratic organization with elected authority allocation of values through elections with minority rights many written rules corporatistic distrust

Gérard Pelissionnier, Jacky Perreur

A study of the process of administrative decentralization in the period of 1950 - 1983 is the subject of the present article. The substantial part of the discussion is devoted to presentation of actions undertaken after 1981, i.e. in the course of changes brought about by presidential and parliamentary elections. As far as the period to 1931 is concerned, the authors view its organizational moves as a manifestation of deconcentration of power tendencies, rather that a genuine decentralization. Legal acts enacted after 1981 prove a real will of the legislator to carry out a decentralization process. The article discusses in detail all acts and decrees regulating a new competence division between local communities and the state, changes in executive powers in regions and departments, new functions of regions,, new role of state representatives in communities, principles of financing and control a posteriori, possibilities of communities intervention in economic and social matters. All that results in eliminating the state's tutelage on local communities in the respect of administration and financing. The period which has passed since 1981 is too short to allow drawing any far reaching conclusions. It is therefore advised to undertake an attempt at resuming that new stage of decentralization after a certain time.

Jacques Le Cacheux

Some important aspects of the current French decentralization are enlightened by the recent changes in US public finance. Proceeding from very different premises, the « New Federalism » and the French decentralization share in common a context of general economic slowdown and fiscal tightness. The problems that arise and their solutions are therefore often similar, in spite of conspicuous differences in the institutional frameworks. Such similarities are in broad agreement with the economic theory of decentralized governments. The case-study of the US local public finance clearly reveals the effects of the recession. After several decades of continuing growth in local budgets, the 1981-1982 recession, closely following the « Tax Revolt » movement, caused a reversal in these trends. Both the increase in needs and the decline in revenues have been aggravated by the transfer of competences and finan- cial responsabilities from the federal government to the states. An increase in state and local taxes could not be avoided. And, in so far as some existing public services are given a high priority, other outlays had to be reduced : thus public employment shrank and public investment sharply declined.

J. Norman Reid, Reid, J. Norman

Governmental capacity consists of three major components. First, institutions at all levels, central, local, public, and private, must have sufficient authority to undertake their assigned roles. Second, adequate financing is necessary to implement governmental responsibilities. Third, good leadership is needed to assure that authority and resources are used wisely. Governments seeking to decentralize must consider many fundamental issues regarding allocations of authority and finances, the strength of local leadership, and the structuring of central institutions.

Daniel D. Corkill, Victor Lesser

Distributed problem solving networks provide an interesting application area for high-level network coordination through the use of organizational structuring. We describe a decentralized approach to the coordination of these networks that relies on each node making sophisticated local activity decisions. Each node is guided by a high-level strategic plan for cooperation among nodes in the network and must balance its own perceptions of appropriate problems solving activity with activities deemed important by other nodes. The high-level strategic plan, which is a form of meta-level control, is represented as a network organizational structure specifying in a general way the information and control relationships among the nodes. In addition to its application to Distributed Artificial Intelligence, this research has implications for organizing and controlling complex knowledge-based systems that involve semi-autonomous problem solving agents.

R. A. Tomlinson, Mark Addleson, Fih Pretorius

No abstract is available for this record.

Robert E. Lucas

No abstract is available for this record.

Bruce Miroff, Michael Turner

During the telephone conversation in which he was offered the vice-presidency, Nelson A. Rockefeller recalled Gerald R. Ford saying: I want you on the domestic and Henry [Kissinger] on the foreign side and then we can move on these things (p. 52). At that time, Kissinger was both the secretary of state and the national security adviser. With this model in mind, Rockefeller, who had twice previously declined the vice-presidential nomination when he was governor of New York, accepted Ford's offer. He hoped that during the period of post-Watergate healing he could assume a domestic policymaking role in that office that would transcend the vice-presidency's traditional inconsequentiality. In the end, Michael Turner concludes, Rockefeller failed. There was ambiguity in Ford's initial commitment, ambiguity Rockefeller failed to clarify because it opened the door to one last slim shot at his lifetime ambition, the presidency. However, the long delay caused by the vice-presidential confirmation hearings kept Rockefeller from the scene while Ford's domestic White House was being structured in a decentralized way and while roles were being carved out by key aides. In addition, as New York's former four-term governor and a serious presidential contender for a decade and a half, Rockefeller as vicepresident could not function on a level of equality with other advisers. Such a role was uncomfortable for him and for the others around President Ford, especially Donald Rumsfeld, who himself harbored presidential ambitions. Two major attempts by Rockefeller to have an impact on Ford's domestic policy were his effort, after being appointed as vice chairman of the Domestic Policy Council, to define a comprehensive framework for the administration's 1976 legislative agenda and his proposal to meet energy financing needs through the creation of the proposed massive Energy Research and Finance Corporation (ERFCO). The first of these was shortcircuited when Ford announced a spending ceiling in October 1975 of $395 billion, thus severely limiting resources for any new domestic programs. The second survived major intra-administration infighting, only to languish in a Congress that knew the measure's prime mover, Rockefeller, was a lame duck vice-president, and suspected that the administration was not wholeheartedly behind it. Turner's treatment, based on a large number of interviews with high-level presidential and vice-presidential aides of the Ford era, offers excellent insight into peak executive decision-making processes. The author's understanding of Rockefeller's role would have been enhanced, however, by greater familiarity with his record as governor of New York. No one knowledgeable about that era, for example, can read of the Energy Research and Development Administration (ERDA) proposal without thinking of its similarity in scope and concept to the numerous public authorities created by Rockefeller in the state. Such issues as the effect on the ERDA proposal of the fact that it was offered in the midst of the New York fiscal crisis (which was triggered by the default of one of these authorities, the Urban Development Corporation) are given insufficient attention by the author. The Rockefeller experience demonstrated that the vice-president is likely to be more effective as a minister without portfolio than as an on-line policy adviser. It also demonstrated, once again, that the vice-presidency can be only what the president wished it to

Martin Thomas Ivers, George F. Timson, Hans von Blankensee, Gary Whitfield · 6 authors

The United States Veterans Administration provides a medical care delivery system comprising more than 170 hospitals, clinics and domicilliaries. Historically, these institutions have been relatively autonomous in their day-to-day operations and consequently efforts at computerization have been difficult to adequately coordinate. A recent undertaking of the VA has been to establish decentralized coordination of planning and implementation for hospital computer systems. This presents a unique opportunity to promote standard, portable and well-designed solutions to meet the widely variable needs of a large and diverse health care delivery organization. Although computer systems for each hospital will vary with the needs of the hospital, functional program packages can be delivered and maintained in a cost-effective and manpower-efficient manner. Additionally, because all systems will be based on a common data dictionary it will be possible to gracefully expand systems as needed and to study clinical care and delivery methodologies across many institutions.

Robert Β. Kent

In the lapse of the last twenty-five years, municipal development institutions have be- come common components in the governmental structure of many Latin American nations. Municipal development institutions function inBrazil, Venezuela, the Dominican Republic, Guatemala, Costa Rica, Paraguay, Bolivia, Honduras, and Peru (Gall, 1976: 28,30).Generally these institutions are charged with financing the construction of urban infra- structure through loans to municipalities and in some cases to other community groups or governmental agencies.A secondary emphasis is normally given to promoting municipal autonomy and the training of municipal em- ployees through a combination of direct tech- nical assistance to specific municipalities and indirect technical assistance to a wide range of municipal governments through the preparation of manuals or guides and short train- ing courses.Bolivia's municipal development institution, the Servicio Nacional de Desarrollo Urbano (SENDLn, was legally established in 1972 as a decentralized and semi-autonomous agency

Daniel D. Corkill, Victor Lesser

Distributed problem solving networks provide an interesting application area for meta-level control through the use of organizational structuring. We describe a decentralized approach to network coordination that relies on each node making sophisticated local decisions that balance its own perceptions of appropriate problem solving activity with activities deemed important by other nodes. Each node is guided by a high-level strategic plan, which is a form of meta-level control, is represented as a network organizational structure that specifies in a general way the information and control relationships among the nodes. An implementation of these ideas is briefly described along with the results of preliminary experiments with various network problem solving strategies specified via organizational structuring. In addition to its application to Distributed Artificial Intelligence, this research has implications for organizing and controlling complex knowledge-based systems that involve semi-autonomous problem solving agents.

宜嗣 林, Yoshitsugu Hayashi

No abstract is available for this record.

Malcolm W. Norris

Abstract The establishment of an effective local government system has been imperative in the Sudan both on account of the vast scale of the country and the decentralization policies of successive governments. District councils were initially established in 1951 following the Marshall Report, but were by stages superseded as budgetary authorities, and reduced to unimportance by the People's Local Government System in 1971, which vested responsibility in Councils at the Provincial level. The subsequent difficulties experienced by this system indicate the value of the District, now renamed Area, as a level for a multipurpose local authority in the Sudan, and explain the reemphasis of this level in the 1981 Local Government Act. This article summarizes the experience leading up to the 1981 Act, and examines the extent to which the new legislation offers an effective structure. The finance of local government, a recurrent problem in the Sudan, emerges as a critical issue, together with the future role of the Provincial Commissioner.

Daniel Tarschys

No abstract is available for this record.

C K Orski

Urban transportation in America is undergoing a major appraisal and, emerging from these grassroots reappraisals, is a wealth of innovative ideas about the ways local transportation can be more effectively managed, provided, and paid for. These new approaches are divided into seven headings, and reviewed: (1) Developer involvement in transportation improvements; (2) Private-sector sponsorship of transportation services; (3) Transportation management associations; (4) Downtown transportation management; (5) Private operation of transit services; (6) Decentralizing service delivery; and (7) Private financing of transit infrastructure.

Abraham Pizam, Julianne Pokela

No abstract is available for this record.

David Cogan, Sean Williams

A survey of the 120 largest electric utilities reveals an industry-wide trend to incorporate conservation and load management, with 86 having adopted formal conservation programs and 81 with formal load-management programs. Utilities will be increasing their purchases from decentralized systems using renewable or cogenerated energy. This book reviews the survey results and presents profiles on the alternative energy programs and any innovative financing arrangements of each. Four appendices identify the utilities and summarize survey data. 1 figure, 3 tables. (DCK)