Oklahoma Politics, Volume 5 (October 1996)

Simpson, Phillip “The Role of Partisanship in the Reform of the Oklahoma Judiciary”, pp. 1-16.

Oklahoma judicial reform in the late 1960s represented a clash between populist values of partisan democracy, reformist non-partisan ballots, and the Missouri plan of the legal reformers centering on commission selected judges.  Reform became inevitable when the Supreme Court bribery scandals hit.  The race between the legislature’s ‘mixed’ reform package and the more radical Missouri plan reform advocated by sponsors of an initiative referendum was won by the legislature.

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Herrick, Rebekah, Marie Miville, and Judith S. Kaufman “Explaining Oklahomans’ Support For Gay and Lesbian Issues: Affect, Cognition, and Prejudice”, pp. 17-30.

Prejudice and symbolic beliefs were expected to have a direct effect on Oklahoma’s support for gay and lesbian issues, while emotions and stereotypes concerning gays and lesbians were expected to have an indirect effect.  The model is tested and confirmed among students at Oklahoma State University.  Gender and ideology provide an independent effect on support for gay and lesbian policies.

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Garrett, Terence M. “The Art of Judgement: A Case Study Organizational Analysis of the Oklahoma City Fire Department, April 19, 1995”, pp. 31-44.

The author argues that stories told by managers, and the subsequent judgements they make when engaged in the actual work, are an effective way to communicate useful knowledge to students and practitioners of public administration.  The recent Oklahoma City bombing produced massive response by many government agencies.  The Oklahoma City Fire Department was on the scene early and had primary responsibility for safety and rescue.  The event produced a complex set of problems for administrators and required changes in rules and procedures that had not been taken into account planning.  Using a case study approach, the author argues that adaptation to a chaotic milieu requires an understanding and appreciation of the human capacity for innovation.  This is often not recognized as legitimate by traditional scientific analysis.

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Connelly, Michael, and Gregory Moss “The Deliberative Opinion Caucus: A New Mechanism for Democratic Input and Judgement”, pp. 45-60.

Local governments, including school districts, are faced with the same crisis of legitimacy and credibility confronting all democratic systems today.  To develop greater public input and confidence and to determine better actual “public judgement” on issues, one local school district created a ‘deliberative opinion caucus’ from models by Dahl, Fishkin, and others.  Although the ‘caucus’ failed to reach a statistically representative cross section of the community as planned, it instituted a mechanism enhancing participants’ perceived efficacy and policymakers’ knowledge of community desires.  Its success provides all local governments a means to improve public knowledge of and confidence in local policymaking.

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