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This article examines the mandate reputation of the Endangered Species Act in its implementation context. Federal wildlife funding programs and laws are treated as messages to state wildlife agencies, and variety among state environmental conditions and agency management decisions shape the interpretation of federal messages. Innovations in planning for habitat protection in state, coastal zone, and county land use are treated as adaptations to the difficulties of conventional implementation. The Endangered Species Act's significance as a federal mandate is found to be questionable. The federal role as a regulator of endangered species protection is argued to be legitimate, but flexibility and collaboration with state and local interests in wildlife planning are also called for.

This paper investigates the financial risk factors associated with fiscal distress in local governments. We hypothesize that fiscal distress is positively correlated with revenue concentration and debt usage, while negatively correlated with administrative costs and entity resources. The regression model results in a prediction of the likelihood of fiscal distress, which correctly classifies up to 91% of the sample as fiscally distressed or not. The model also allows for an analysis of the impact of a change in a risk factor on the likelihood of fiscal distress. A decrease in intergovernmental revenues as a percent of total revenues and an increase in administrative expenditures as a percent of total expenditures have the biggest influences on reducing the likelihood of fiscal distress.

School leaders in small to mid-size urban districts face shifting policy environments, increased accountability, fiscal austerity, and unfunded mandates, as they work to improve student learning and close achievement gaps. This chapter focuses on one aspect of school reform: the role of families in supporting students’ success. Given shifting demographics nationwide, recommendations for two-way partnerships with Latino families will be proffered in light of renewed definitions and an increasingly robust research base.

This chapter presents results of a survey conducted over the summer of 2009 to 1485 libraries that serve populations of 25,000–100,000 in the United States about Internet connected public access computers and e-government. The methodology used was a mixed-methods questionnaire using 33 closed ended and three qualitative questions. The main finding was that public library staff do not have enough training in e-government and government documents to help patrons with their questions on these topics. Another aspect of the survey was to find out whether public libraries plan, fund, and allocate monies for computer hardware and software in their budgets.

The limitation of the research was the size of the libraries and the results can only be generalized to this group of libraries. There could be a bias by size of library and the way the questions were worded. The practical implications of the research indicate that future librarians in library and information science programs are unaware of the need to take either government information or e-government courses. Recent emerging roles for the public library includes being the freely available place to access e-government information in lieu of the actual federal, state, or local agencies.

Closing the achievement gap between white and minority students is a proposed goal of the federal 2001 No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB). We discuss equity in assess to quality education since most students attend public schools; and should enjoy educational equity under the Equal Protection Clause under the 14th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution. We examine the academic achievement gap between the races; and the responsibility of educators and students to close this gap; and the NCLB connection to closing this gap. We also examine the intended and unintended effects of NCLB on minority students and educators.

The impact of fiscal decentralization on equalization between regions has received significant attention but there has been much less research of the impact of decentralization on equalization within regions. Theory suggests that the tradeoff between local fiscal autonomy and equalization ought to be most pronounced at the sub-region level where rural-urban disparities in the level of development are substantial. This paper is an empirical analysis of the impact of fiscal decentralization on equalization within one Russian region, Leningrad (State). We show that the regional government uses a mixture of fiscal instruments to strike a balance between giving more budgetary autonomy to local governments and eliminating the disparities among them. We also develop a method for studying this tradeoff between decentralization and equalization when only limited data are available. Finally, we argue and demonstrate that without a detailed understanding of the institutional arrangement for intergovernmental fiscal relations, one cannot evaluate the equalization or decentralization implications.

This chapter analyzes the ways national, international, and library professional policies address Internet access as a human right. This includes documenting the ways rural libraries fulfill their patrons’ human right to the Internet and demonstrating how Mathiesen’s (2014) framework can be used by library professionals and policymakers to ensure that people have physical, intellectual, and social access to the Web. The author’s intention is to help facilitate a more meaningful definition of access that goes beyond just providing hardware access to bridge the digital divide, but instead asserts the need for librarian assistance and technology training if we wish to allow all members of a society, without exception, to fully enjoy their human rights.

The author analyzes existing national and international policies pertaining to providing information and Internet access in rural and otherwise underserved areas, as well as precedents involving the deployment of previous information and communication technologies (ICTs) in rural areas. This segues into an analysis of barriers to rural Internet access using facets and determinants developed by Mathiesen, leading to the argument that rural librarians’ ability to help underserved populations use the Internet is essential to making Web access meaningful.

• The United Nations (UN) has supported arguments that people have a right to information access and the technologies that support this, suggesting that Internet access is a human right.

• The U.S. government has a history of facilitating access to ICTs in rural areas that dates back to 1934 and continues through the present.

• Funding mechanisms that facilitate Web access in the United States focus primarily on making broadband connections, hardware, and software accessible, leaving out the essential training and assistance components that are essential to making many rural residents and other underserved persons able to actually use the Internet.

The United Nations (UN) has supported arguments that people have a right to information access and the technologies that support this, suggesting that Internet access is a human right.

The U.S. government has a history of facilitating access to ICTs in rural areas that dates back to 1934 and continues through the present.

Funding mechanisms that facilitate Web access in the United States focus primarily on making broadband connections, hardware, and software accessible, leaving out the essential training and assistance components that are essential to making many rural residents and other underserved persons able to actually use the Internet.

Scholarship on rural libraries, including some of the research in this volume, has argued that rural public libraries provide an invaluable service by offering both access to and guidance in using the Internet. While these publications commonly discuss the socioeconomic benefits of providing this access, they often treat the motivation for providing such services as self-evident. This chapter analyzes policies and legal precedents to argue that Internet access for rural residents, through public libraries and other means, is not merely a privilege that will benefit people if funded, but instead a human right that cannot be ignored.

The purpose of this paper is to establish the mediating role of local government delivery system (here after delivery system) in the relationship between local governance (hereafter, governance) and financial distress of local governments in Uganda.

This study is correlational and cross-sectional. It uses a questionnaire survey on a sample of 109 local governments (districts) of Uganda. The data are analysed using SPSS, partial least squares structural equation modelling and Jose’s MedGraph.

Results indicate that government delivery system mediates the relationship between governance and financial distress. Delivery system in terms of capacity development and community participation causes positive variances in local government’s financial distress. Also, governance in terms of political clientelism significantly contributes to financial distress more than oversight mechanisms and audit quality. The study finds that delivery system causes more variance in financial distress than governance.

This study applies the new public management and network governance theory and tests the efficacy of delivery system and governance on financial distress in one-go and succeeded in explaining financial distress of local government using Uganda as the setting; the authors join previous scholars that root for multi-theoretical approaches. Also, this study’s design has allowed for the consideration of more than simply the main effects of governance and delivery systems by exploring the mediating role of delivery systems in the link between governance and financial distress. As such, the authors may now have a more accurate and detailed description of the relationships between governance, delivery system and local government financial distress.

This chapter addresses the accountability standards expressed in the 2001 No Child Left Behind Act (NCLB) and the legislative history of this federal statute on education. The author states that the Act recognized that many students are “left behind” and some “way behind” and analyses how this Act will reduce the academic deficit for those students left behind? This review makes it clear that the fiscal equity movement never got off the ground or close to becoming a major part to the legislation. Legal challenges to NCLB is extensively reviewed which raises the question as the amount of support for this legislation. The chapter closes with the note that NCLB is an under-funded mandate placing the fiscal responsibility on the budget-strapped states.

This case study highlights state-logic influence on hybrid organizations and institutionally complex environments through acts of regulation (and deregulation).

This study presents a 30-year narrative case focused on the significant social achievements of the Bonneville Power Administration within the Northwest United States. It combines the analysis of historical documentation, annual reports issued by the organization and interviews with firm management to observe the wax and wane of regulatory influence through time.

The presented case suggests two ways regulation projects state-logic influence onto hybrid organizations. First, it imposes a “floor” level of baseline social activity that must be met despite pressure from market logic stakeholders. Second, it imposes formal administrative procedures that require interaction with, and often approval from, key social stakeholders. Administrative procedures provide a series of public forums used to promote additional social resource allocation in excess of baseline regulatory mandates.

A narrative case covering a 30-year period will by necessity have to prioritize breadth of analysis over depth. This is a limitation of the analysis presented, but it also provides an opportunity to observe the oscillating impact of state and market-logic influence through time.

The study findings have several implications for the growing accounting literature on institutional complexity and hybrid organization. First, the authors highlight the ways regulation shapes institutionally complex spaces and, as a result, the hybrid organizations formed within those environments. Second, the exogenous nature of regulatory mandates indicate hybrid firms could emerge as both a voluntary and an involuntary adaptation to institutionally complex environments. Finally, this study highlights opportunities to further one’s understanding how state logics influence hybrid organizations through the study of state-owned enterprises (SOEs).