Introduction 1. Woman's Place in Man's Life Cycle 2. Images of Relationship 3. Concepts of Self and Morality 4. Crisis and Transition 5. Women's Rights and Women's Judgment 6. Visions of Maturity References Index of Study Participants General Index

In a Different Voice. Psychological Theory and Women’s Development. Cambridge, MA (Harvard University Press) 1982.

In many applications, assumptions about the log-concavity of a probability distribution allow just enough special structure to yield a workable theory. This paper catalogs a series of theorems relating log-concavity and/or log-convexity of probability density functions, distribution functions, reliability functions, and their integrals. We list a large number of commonly-used probability distributions and report the log-concavity or log-convexity of their density functions and their integrals. We also discuss a variety of applications of log-concavity that have appeared in the literature.

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Log-concave probability and its applications

Principal-agent models have been the basis for an extensive set of studies relating bureaucracy to elected officials. Yet despite the outpouring of research, there has been little attempt to test the basic assumptions of the principal-agent model. The model makes two assumptions: that goal conflict exists between principals and agents and that agents have more information than their principals, which results in an information asymmetry between them. But how valid are these assumptions? Can instances be found in which these assumptions do not hold? What happens when we vary these assumptions? In this article, we present both a critique of the traditional principal-agent model and a presentation of a broader theoretical framework for conceptualizing bureaucratic politics. Principal-agent models, derived from such disparate disciplines as law, finance, accounting, and economics, have become the basis for an extensive set of studies relating bureaucracy to elected officials (see Mitnick 1973, 1975, and 1980; Moe 1982, 1984, and 1985; Wood 1988; Wood and Waterman 1991, 1993, and 1994; Scholz and Wei 1986). Such models also have been extended to presidents' decisions to use force (Downs and Rocke 1994) and to the Supreme Court and its relationship to lower courts (Songer, Segal, and Cameron 1994). Despite this outpouring of research, few studies have directly examined the basic terminology and assumptions of the principalagent model. In this article our objectives are to examine principal-agent theory critically, to relax some of its restrictive assumptions, and in the process to present a more general theory of relationships between the bureaucracy and its political environment. Although our critique may be relevant to other uses of the principal-agent model, we limit our assessment to its use as a J-PART 8(1998):2:173-202 theory of bureaucracy. 173/ Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory Principal-Agent Models: An Expansion? THE PRINCIPAL-AGENT MODEL Despite the widespread referencing of the principal-agent model, only in rare instances does a researcher actually discuss the model and how its assumptions fit the problem to be studied. For this reason it is useful to review the model in its various incarnations and to examine its basic assumptions. The principalagent model, as applied in such disciplines as sociology, political science, and public administration, is in essence a theory about contractual relationships between buyers and sellers (see Ross 1973; Pratt and Zeckhauser 1985). As described by Charles Perrow: In its simplest form, agency theory assumes that social life is a series of contracts. Conventionally, one member, the 'buyer' of goods or services is designated the 'principal,' and the other, who provides the goods or service is the 'agent'—hence the term 'agency theory.' The principal-agent relationship is governed by a contract specifying what the agent should do and what the principal must do in return. (1986, 224) A common application in economics is the market for professional services, say between a patient—the principal—and a physician—the agent (Evans 1980). Assuming that both are rational utility maximizers, a patient and a physician are likely to have different goals. The patient would like to be made healthy but pay as little as possible. The physician would be interested in income so, therefore, faces the temptation to provide more medical services than are necessary or to charge a higher price than is warranted. In this exchange, patients are at a disadvantage because they cannot directly evaluate the services provided by the physician. In short, an information asymmetry exists, with an advantage to the physician. Principals seek to manipulate and mold the behavior of agents so that they will act in a manner consistent with the principals' preferences. The contractual arrangement is one tool for accomplishing this goal. The contractual arrangement played an important role in Mitnick's (1973 and 1975) formulation of an institutional or regulatory principal-agent model. Rather than focus on buyers and sellers in an exchange, Mitnick examined the relationship between agents in the regulatory bureaucracy and their political principals (e.g., legislators and interest groups). Mitnick's (1980, 146) framework included \"a typology of agency relationships generated from such dimensions as the level of consent between agent and principal regarding the agent's actions (e.g., whether or not a contract exists, a contract which may be formal or informal), the source of specification of the agent's acts . . . . and the level of discretion possessed by the agent.\" Mitnick noted 174/J-PART, April 1998 Principal-Agent Models: An Expansion? that agents could be motivated by the public interest or by their own narrow self-interest. Since agents enjoy information advantages over their political principals, he added, \"The regulators are thus seen as agents to be policed to adherence to the 'public interest* goals of some principal 'public.'\" But \"such policing is not costless. . . . Principals must pay specification costs to identify acts of the agent that would satisfy the principal's preferences, and policing costs in monitoring and enforcing compliance\" (p. 150). Given the existence of these costs, Mitnick concluded (p. 151), \"The rational principal attempts policing only if he expects a net return . . . We suggest that because of bounded rationality and information costs, not to speak of fundamental problems in valuation, the return to the given public interest criteria may be more difficult to measure and predict than certain obvious indicators wrongly assumed to be correlated with return to that interest.\" In other words, in the principal-agent relationship there is an \"inevitability of control loss\" phenomenon (p. 17). The idea that costs are involved in monitoring an agent, and that principals rationally can decide not to monitor their agents' behavior, explains why the public interest is so often made subservient to private interests in the regulatory arena (one of the main concerns of the regulatory literature). It also raises an important distinction between the economic and the institutional or regulatory principal-agent models. In the institutional model, if a political principal such as the legislature decides that it is not in its rational self-interest to police or monitor its bureaucratic agents, that principal is unlikely to directly bear any cost incurred by the agent's continued shirking. Instead, the bulk of that cost is passed along to the general public, which in a democracy is the legislative branch's political principal. Legislators would pay only a direct cost for their lax oversight of the bureaucracy if the public became aware of it (e.g., if there were a scandal) and sought retribution against legislators at the polls. On the other hand, in the economic model, if the buyer did not adequately monitor the agent's behavior, then the buyer (i.e., the principal) would directly bear the cost, for example, by paying higher fees for services rendered. Likewise, as Mitnick notes, the nature of the contractual arrangement in the regulatory arena can be either formal or informal, whereas formal contracts would be more likely to be adopted in the market-place setting. As these examples demonstrate, important differences emerge once we begin to apply the principal-agent model from market place transactions to the regulatory arena. When political scientists first applied principal-agent theory to bureaucratic settings, further differences emerged from the 175/ J-PART, April 1998 Principal-Agent Models: An Expansion? economic model. In its new formulation, as with buyers and sellers, it is assumed that politicians (principals) and bureaucrats (agents) do not necessarily share similar goals, or to use Mitnick's (1986, 4) terminology, \"have potentially differing preferences. . . .\" If we assume that they are rational utility maximizers (politicians maximizing reelection chances and bureaucrats maximizing budgets), politicians have an interest in policies that benefit their constituents but have no interest in paying excessively for them. Because politicians and political coalitions change over time and bureaucracies develop separate interests through institutionalization and changing external relationships, a potential conflict occurs when the goals and objectives of principals and agents are at odds. Over time politicians may seek to alter established policy toward their preferred objectives, which may or may not be the same as those of the original legislation or political coalition. Bureaucratic interests also diverge from the original policy through time as politicians develop expertise about how the policy should be implemented or gain support from constituencies that favor different approaches. Even if no policy disagreement exists, principal-agent theory suggests that bureaucrats are likely to shirk, to produce outputs at a higher than needed cost, or to produce a level of outputs that is lower than desired. Agency theory posits a dynamic process of interaction between principals and agents, which develops through time. In this process, bureaucrats are assumed to have distinct informational and expertise advantages over politicians. They better understand the policy and the organizational procedures that are required to implement it. They have both the opportunity and the incentive to manipulate politicians and processes for political gain (see Niskanen 1971; Miller and Moe 1983). For some policies, especially those of a technical nature, bureaucracies are more knowledgeable about organizational needs than politicians are, so politicians are reluctant to intervene. Therefore, the key question for agency theory is, How can politicians vested with contemporaneous legitimacy overcome these uncertainties and the bureaucracy's inherent tendency to shirk? (See Wood and Waterman 19

Principal-Agent Models: An Expansion?

Any theory of the manner in which governmental policies get formulated and implemented, as well as the effects of those actions on the world, requires an understanding of the behavior of major types of governmental institutions (legislatures, courts, administrative agencies, chief executives), as well as the behavior of interest groups, the general public, and the media. The dominant paradigm of the policy process, the stages heuristic popularized by Jones (1970), Anderson (1975), and Peters (1986), has outlived its usefulness and must be replaced, in large part because it is not a causal theory. In the course of their empirical work, policy scholars have highlighted a number of phenomena that need to be incorporated into theories of the policy process. The development of such theories requires an integration ‘of both political scientists’ knowledge of specific institutions and behavior and policy scholars' attention to policy communities, substantive policy information, etc.Innovations by Policy Scholars in Understanding the Policy ProcessAt least since World War II, most political scientists have tended to focus on either a specific type of institution (legislatures, the presidency, courts, interest groups, administrative agencies, local governments, political parties) or on specific types of political behavior outside those institutions (public opinion, voting, political socialization). These have become the standard subfields within the discipline.In contrast, scholars interested in public policy have not been able to stay within these subfields because the policy process spans all of them. In the course of empirical work, policy scholars have highlighted a number of phenomena often neglected by political scientists without a policy focus:a) The importance of policy communities/networks/subsystems involving actors from numerous public and private institutions and from multiple levels of government;b) The importance of substantive policy information;c) The critical role of policy elites vis-a-vis the general public;d) The desirability of longitudinal studies of a decade or more;e) Differences in political behavior across policy types.

Toward Better Theories of the Policy Process

FACTS An officer in Midvale, Utah was doing some paperwork in his patrol car when he was approached by man, later identified as Nitokalisi Fonua (hereinafter, “Nick”). Nick “looked suspicious,” mainly because he was “jittery, looking around and appeared to be very nervous.” Nick’s suspicion rating jumped dramatically when, for no apparent reason, he informed the officer he had stolen a white GMC Blazer, which he had parked nearby. Naturally, the officer asked Nick if he would show him the Blazer, and Nick said sure. When they located the Blazer, the officer walked over and looked inside. The first thing he saw was a sawed-off shotgun on the back seat. Then he noticed some markings on the shotgun, “markings that looked gang-related.” Nick told the officer that the key to the Blazer was inside his motel room at the Days Inn. Also in the room, he said, were his “cousins,” meaning “people he knows from the streets.” The officer asked Nick “if we could obtain the keys to the vehicle so we could turn those back over to the owner.” Nick said the keys “were in the room somewhere” and that he “didn’t care” if the officer went in and retrieved them. Nick also gave the officer his key to the room. When backup arrived at the motel, officers knocked on the door which was opened by a man named Vake. There were two other occupants: a woman and Kimoana, the defendant. By this time, the officers were aware that Kimoana—not Nick—had rented the room. The first thing the officers saw as the door opened was the woman pointing “an unidentified black object” at the wall. Concerned for their safety, they ordered the occupants to “show their hands.” Then they pat searched them. Finding no weapons (the “unidentified black object” was a television remote control), they holstered their guns. Although the officers already had Nick’s consent to search the room, they sought and obtained consent from Vake. During the search, they found a “long-barreled revolver” under a mattress. As the result, Kimoana was convicted of being a felon in possession of a firearm.

United States V. _____

Decision Making on the U.S. Courts of Appeals

We argue that given finite resources to review the large number of lower court decisions, Supreme Court justices should primarily be interested in aggregate responses to their precedents. W...

The Aggregate Dynamics of Lower Court Responses to the US Supreme Court

While there have been a number of previous studies examining the similarities and differences in the voting behavior of male versus female judges, few have attempted cross-national comparisons. Since the early 1980s, the Supreme Courts of both the United States and Canada have had at least one female justice sitting at all times. The first female justice in the United States and the first female justice in Canada are on record as having very different beliefs about the practical effect of gender diversification of appellate courts. The present study is the first analysis to explore which of those perceptions about the consequences of such diversification is consistent with the actual patterns of voting by the justices on both courts. We find that in Canada, there are substantial gender differences on many of the significant policy areas that produce divisions on the Court. However, in the United States, gender differences disappear when one controls for the political party of the justice.

Judge Gender and the Voting Behavior of Justices on Two North American Supreme Courts

The View from the Bench and Chambers

An enduring legacy for any president is achieved by appointing judges with similar policy preferences who then maintain those policy preferences during their tenure on the bench and long after leaving office. This process provides one of the few democratic checks on the judiciary. Some authors demonstrate that in the areas of social and economic policy, Supreme Court justices’ policy votes are concordant with their appointing presidents over time. We explore whether presidents are as successful at the courts of appeals level and find that they are. We also explore the influences on presidential success in nominating judges to these courts who then vote in concordance with their policy preferences; we find that the presence of a home-state senator of the president’s party substantially constrains presidential success. However, neither presidents’ appointment strategies, presidential popularity, nor the party composition of the Senate affected the degree of concordance between presidential policy preference...

Donald R. Songer

Papers

Decision Making on the U.S. Courts of Appeals

The Aggregate Dynamics of Lower Court Responses to the US Supreme Court

Judge Gender and the Voting Behavior of Justices on Two North American Supreme Courts

The View from the Bench and Chambers

Presidential success through appointments to the United States courts of appeals