Die Wiederherstellung des Marktsubjekts

The UK is generally considered a laboratory for styles of governance influenced by New Public Management: outsourcing, internal markets, targets, auditing. The shifts in governance style, and the new instruments that have accompanied them, were once synonymous with “Thatcherism” but have since been adopted and refined by New Labour. Early critical social scientific analyses deployed the Gramscian notion of hegemony to analyse this shift. This was followed by Foucault inspired analyses of “governmentality”. The latter focused more explicitly on the micro-level of conduct. This article follows that lead, but seeks to address the central puzzles thrown up by this experiment through Max Weber’s conception of a “bureaucratic revolution” and Karl Polanyi’s analysis of the constitution of a “market subject” via a “double movement”: a simultaneous loosening and tightening of control. The Weber-Polanyi approach allows us, we argue, to make the link more explicit between micro-level changes in the “conduct of life” (Lebensführung) and the meso-level instruments designed to bring about such a re-orientation of conduct. The article makes the case with reference to empirical material from a number of public services, notably education and health. Overall, the decisive factor is not a weakening of the state, but a change in its capacities and instruments.     

Effects of Institutional Reforms on Women's Representation in Colombia, 1960–2014

Starting in the 1990s, reforms aimed at addressing the underrepresentation of women have been implemented in Colombia. However, research on the consequences of these reforms has been inconclusive. This article analyzes the influence of institutional variables on the proportion of nominated and elected women in Colombia between 1962 and 2014, at both the national and local levels of government, in three different institutional environments. Results confirm the influence of institutional change, indicating that decentralizing reforms and the introduction of the gender quota have had a positive impact on the proportion of women's candidacies and elections, but that the adoption of the open list negatively affected the percentage of elected women.     

Hacia un proyecto “democrático-expansivo” de transparencia

This work explores the paradox of normative and institutional improvements vis-à-vis political and practical deficiencies through the analytical lens of an increasing clash among three different and opposing projects of transparency: the “bureaucratic”, the “public-relation,” and the “democratic-expanding” approaches. Mexico’s failure to fulfill the promises of its institutional reforms is due to the preeminence of the first two approaches. Mexico, as well as other countries in a similar situation, needs to transcend such superficial, one-sided approaches to fully embrace a project aimed at deepening and expanding democracy itself.     

Reforming Local Government in Germany: Institutional Changes and Performance Impacts

The article analyses trajectories and impacts of local government reforms in Germany. It scrutinises four major approaches of reform that have affected the local authorities since the beginning of the 1990s: decentralisation, privatisation, administrative reforms (‘New Steering Model’) and the direct election of mayors. The objective of the article is to encompass the multifaceted elements and effects of local government reform in Germany. Firstly, the author examines the institutional changes that have occurred in the local councils. Secondly, the broader effects and impacts of the institutional transformations are dealt with, analysing how the latter has enhanced performance, steering capacity and political accountability. Finally, the author evaluates the extent to which the reforms have put their mark on the inherited and historic tradition of the German local government system.     

Institutional Abuse: A Long History

ABSTRACT

This article explores the long history of institutions for children in Australia and of the existence of abuse within them. By examining the function that such institutions were designed to perform, and the forms and structures that were devised to best achieve such purposes, the article argues that abuse was all too often not simply inherent in, but essential to, institutional operation. It pays particular attention to the classification of children deemed to be in need of institutional “care” and shows how, through a process of “othering”, their institutionalisation too often rendered them vulnerable to abuse.     

New Public Management and Public Sector Reform in Victoria and New Zealand: Policy Transfer,Elite Networks and Legislative Copying*

In the early 1990s, Victoria reformed its state sector along New Public Management (NPM) lines. Drawing on interviews with key policy‐makers of the time, including chief executives, ministers and key officials from both jurisdictions, and using archival material and secondary sources, this article shows that New Zealand developments were a key source for Victoria's reforms — even down to seemingly copying passages of legislation. Policy transfer took place within a supporting framework of an Anglo‐American diffusion of NPM rhetoric and neoliberal ideas. But New Zealand's experiences gave content, form and legitimation to Victoria's reforms, while providing a platform and experience for learning and divergence, and a group of transferable experts. We underline the importance of the Australia‐New Zealand relationship and trans‐Tasman elite networks in understanding the governance of both countries.     

Senkt New Public Management die Verwaltungsausgaben in den Schweizer Kantonen? Eine empirische Analyse über zwei Dekaden

In light of the growing public spending in many regions of the world, this study scrutinizes relevant determinants of core public administration expenditure at the cantonal level in Switzerland, focusing particularly on New Public Management (NPM) reforms. The empirical study comprises all 26 cantons in the period from 1993 through 2014 and uses both cross‐sectional and longitudinal analytical methods. In addition to NPM, we control for various variables related to political parties, institutions, socioeconomics and culture. The results show no clear relationship between NPM reforms and expenditure, although such reforms were often intended to cut costs. Our explanation for this finding is that NPM as a concept is rather inconsistent. Various control variables are either positively or negatively related with expenditure. All in all, our findings suggest that public expenditure is still mostly determined by politics and can only be influenced by administrative reforms within certain narrow limits.     

Die Schweizer Gemeinden im Wandel: Konvergenz oder Divergenz?

Switzerland is currently going through a phase of political restructuring. The numerous reform activities at the beginning of the twenty‐first century leave almost no area of political life untouched. The reforms are particularly abundant in the 2′867 municipalities, spanning from amalgamations, intermunicipal co‐operation, New Public Management, to reforms of the political systems. Accounting for the fact that there are big socio‐economic differences between the municipalities as well as their political systems, we investigate whether the municipalities are headed for divergence or convergence as a result of these reforms. The empirical results are derived from three surveys of the local authorities conducted in 1988, 1994, and 1998. The results indicate that the communes do convergence in regard to their administrative and political structure. However, the convergence appears to be limited to the single cantons and observable only among certain types of municipalities.     

Discredited Fascism: the New Guard after 1932*

In large part Australian interwar fascism has been studied in isolation. The present article compares and contrasts the New Guard with kindred movements in Europe during the 1930s. Using the conceptual model of “generic fascism” developed by Roger Griffin, its principal concern is to explain why, in the “era of fascism”, with many factors encouraging the growth of authoritarian movements to replace parliamentary democracy, the New Guard proved to be so manifestly unsuccessful.     

Der Monopolmechanismus in der Wissenschaft. Auf den Schultern von Robert K. Merton

Quality assurance has become the guiding principle of governing research in the wake of the global diffusion of New Public Management. In this respect, the “High Impact Journal” occupies a central place. It is shown that the production of a hierarchy of disciplinary journals furthers the monopoly mechanism in science through processes of the material production of market power and symbolically constructed exclusivity. These processes and the rule of the Shanghai ranking enable an exclusive class of globally dominant universities to ensure the circular accumulation of economic and symbolic capital. The competition among researchers for recognition by the scientific community in terms of their contributions to the advancement of knowledge is being displaced by the competition among entrepreneurial universities for researchers, students and funds as profit generating resources. The resulting tendencies of halting the evolution of knowledge can be counteracted by measures which further the plurality of authorities for quality assurance, the building of opposing power to existing power in a system of checks and balances and by providing space for methodological anarchy.     

Mechanismen institutionellen Wandels im deutschen Kapitalismus

In the debate on the convergence of Rhenish capitalism towards the Anglo-Saxon model there is a growing consensus on the emergence of hybrid institutional configurations which combine elements of both systems. Our paper traces the mechanisms and driving forces leading to varying degrees of convergence with Anglo-Saxon standards and institutions by comparing the changes in two areas of German corporate governance regulation, namely internal corporate governance and accounting. Whereas existing institutions were coupled with Anglo-Saxon elements in the case of internal corporate governance (?layering“), traditional standards and institutions were substituted for new ones in the case of accounting (?displacement“). We argue that the varying degree of convergence can be explained by the different preferences of key national actors, such as companies and trade unions, in the two cases and the varying exogenous pressures for reforms. Our study highlights the importance of a meso-level analysis of causal mechanisms for the explanation of institutional change in modern capitalism.     

Institutional Change and Ethnic Parties in South America

The central question of this article is why indigenous social movements formed electorally viable political parties in Latin America in the 1990s. This development represents a new phenomenon in Latin America, where ethnic parties have been both rare and unpopular among voters. Institutional reforms in six South American countries are examined to see if the creation and success of these parties can be correlated with changes in electoral systems, political party registration requirements, or the administrative structure of the state. The study concludes that institutional change is likely to be a necessary but not sufficient condition for the emergence and electoral viability of ethnic parties.     

New Public Management in Latvia: Variations in openness to customer requests in public agencies

Abstract

The transformation of public administration in Latvia represents a commitment to continuous modernization. New Public Management (NPM) has under different names, such as “reinventing government” been proffered as an improvement of productivity and quality in relation to traditional public administration characterized by bureaucracy. In addition to adopting managerial systems from business, advocates of NPM include promises to alter the relationship between public services and the individual. Commitments to transparency and service declarations customarily follow in the wake of new forms of governance marked by privatization and contracting out of public services. This article reports on an empirical investigation of responsiveness to customer requests in a sample of Latvian public agencies at the national and local level. The survey included requests for basic information about the agency regarding the budget, expenditures, staffing, information services, and complaint procedures. In analyzing the findings, it is hypothesized that variation in service levels will correlate with agency type and the language spoken by the client.     

The Institutional Design of Referendums: Bottom‐Up and Binding

Democratic theorists generally ignore that the institutional design of popular vote processes varies in important ways. However, these differences in design influence the kind of role that these processes play in and their impact on democratic systems. We intend to remedy this situation by launching a normative discussion about the institutional design of popular vote processes in the Debate “Do Referendums Enhance or Threaten Democracy?” In this introductory essay, we first insist on the necessity to adopt a differentiated conception of popular vote processes. We then highlight some aspects of our normative approach to the institutional design of popular vote processes. We finally argue that referendum processes can positively contribute to democratic systems when they are 1) launched bottom‐up and 2) legally binding.     

Developing Bureaucracies for Environmental Governance: State Authority and World Bank Conditionality in Laos

This paper considers the on-going production of bureaucracies for environmental governance in developing countries and the ways in which donor engagement is reshaped through localised bureaucratic dynamics. In Laos, World Bank conditions associated with the Nam Theun 2 hydropower project saw the establishment of the Watershed Management and Protection Authority (WMPA). I examine internal dynamics at the WMPA headquarters in Nakai District, including formal institutions for forest management, informal institutions for recognising local authority and wealth redistribution and the personal aspirations of WMPA officials. In doing so, this piece contributes to current discussions about donor-driven institutional change, practices of state-making and the local “technocrats” who are personally confronted by the complex intersections of donor conditionality and state authority.     

Challenging Institutional Denial: Psychological Discourse,Therapeutic Culture and Public Inquiries

ABSTRACT

The damaging effects of abuse in childhood were repeatedly emphasised in public hearings and in media coverage of the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. Testimony from earlier Australian inquiries, which documented widespread experiences of child maltreatment, particularly in institutions, also underscored the ongoing and often intergenerational impact of abuse. Taking institutional child abuse inquiries as a case study, this article examines how psychological and therapeutic concepts have been mobilised politically. It argues that therapeutically oriented and psychologically informed cultural narratives of childhood trauma and its ongoing effects have provided a framework for making sense of long-term experiences of adversity and suffering and have enriched attention to “the question of justice” for survivors of historical institutional child abuse.     

Path Dependence as an Explanation of the Institutional Stability of the German Parliament

The theory of path dependence identifies sources of institutional stability and change. It emphasises the importance of early, contingent events and increasing returns over time to explain patterns of institutional persistence. Used to describe the evolution of the procedural practices of the German Bundestag, this theory points to the long-term importance of the consensus that developed early in the 1950s among the floor leaders of three dominant parties, which is in stark contrast to the absence of such inter-party consensus in the early years of the Reichstag of the Weimar Republic. Path dependence identifies factors endogenous to the institution to explain how the institution responds to external shocks, such as the entry of new parties. When the Greens and the PDS entered the Bundestag, the established parties responded by accepting their vigorous exercise of minority rights and they accepted the established practice of managing these rights by inter-party consensus.     

Challenges of globalization

In these comments on Kawamoto's paper, made during the first session of the conference on “Challenges of Globalization,” Dr. John Yeabsley of the New Zealand Institute of Economic Research draws on the experience of New Zealand to highlight some salient features of regulatory reform. He points out that the process can take a long time to complete, that the costs are complex, and that people find it hard to adjust to the idea of constant change. Dr. Yeabsley emphasizes that a redistribution of the important products of the economy and society—jobs, incomes, wealth, and prestige—is inevitable, and is a necessary part of the process, although the consequent social costs can be high and seem unfair. Intervention to mitigate the risks and social concern should not, however, be allowed to compromise the reforms.     

Soziale Mechanismen und mechanismische Erklärungen

Researchers in all fields dealing with reality wish to explain facts once they have described them. The prevailing account of explanation in the philosophical literature is the “covering law model”. According to this opinion, to explain a fact is to deduce the proposition(s) describing it from a theory together with the appropriate data, such as initial conditions. This is not how explanation is conceived of in the advanced factual sciences. In these, to explain a fact consists in unveiling the mechanism that makes the thing in question “tick”. In turn, a mechanism consists in the process(es) characteristic of the given thing. For example, metabolism is the central mechanism of living beings, learning is that of schools, and trade that of markets. I call mechanismic this kind of explanation. Therefore, anyone wishing to control a concrete system had better start by finding out its typical mechanisms, so as to maintain or alter them. This is what social control mechanisms, from cooperation and charity to legislation and violence, are supposed to accomplish. Typically, social mechanisms involve at least two levels, micro (individual) and macro (institutional). Consequently they can be neither understood nor designed on the basis of either individualism or holism. I argue that only systemism, the view that every thing is either a system or a component of one, can satisfactorily account for the centrality of mechanisms. Warning: Merton, Giddens and others often called “structure” what I call “mechanism”. Following mathematical usage, I define the structure of a system as the set of all the relations (in particular cohesive bonds) among the system component (endostructure), as well as the relations between the system components and things in the environment.     

Zwischen institutioneller Innovation und Reproduktion

This contribution addresses the question of whether the German corporate governance regime has changed towards the angloamerican corporate governance model in the 1990s. While most approaches within this field of research tend to exclusively focus on functionalist models, this article stresses the impact of power relations on processes of institutional change. Looking at an ambiguous and incremental transformation process, it becomes clear that the dichotomy between continuity and change is not well suited to depict the process adequately. Categories as ?hybridization“ or ?institutional layering“ seem more useful here. While market forces became more important for corporate governance in Germany, traditional mechanisms were — to some extent — reproduced simultaneously. The upshot is a hybrid corporate governance system which is located between coordinated and liberal market economies.