Europäische Integration,Modernisierung und Konvergenz

Modernisierung und Konvergenz ihrer Mitgliedsländer ist das sozio?konomische Zwillingsziel der Europäischen Union. Doch inwieweit kann die EU diese Prozesse überhaupt steuern? Dies wird in diesem Artikel für den Zeitraum 1970 bis 2000 empirisch untersucht und mit der Frage nach Mechanismen und Grenzen einer EU-induzierten Angleichung verbunden. Die EU-Gesellschaften sind durch einen Großtrend der Modernisierung aller Mitgliedsländer und einen Subtrend der nachholenden Modernisierung der leistungsschwächeren Länder gekennzeichnet. Es überwiegt die Konvergenz, bei vereinzelten Divergenzen und ?neuen Unterschieden“ im Zuge neuartiger Anpassungsprobleme. In weiten Teilen folgen Modernisierung und Konvergenz einer eigenen, integrationsunabhängigen Logik, doch werden beide durch die europäische Integration unterstützt. Die EU-Mitgliedschaft wirkt über die Mechanismen Ressourcendistribution, Konkurrenz, Regulation und Imitation vor allem für die Nachzügler modernisierungsfördernd und verstärkt dadurch die Konvergenz. Zugleich gibt es Grenzen einer EU-induzierten Angleichung.     

Policy and power: A conceptual framework between the ‘old’ and ‘new’ policy idioms

During the last few decades, both policy practices and policy idioms have drastically changed. Concepts such as interactive planning, network management, stakeholder dialogue, deliberative democracy, policy discourses, governance, etc. have replaced older ones such as public administration, policy programmes, interest groups, institutions, power, and the like. Although we recognise the relevance and importance of this shift in vocabulary, we also regret related ‘losses’. We particularly regret that the concept of power has – in our view – become an ‘endangered species’ in the field of public policy analysis. We therefore will develop a framework to analyse power – being a multi-layered concept – in policy practices in this article. We will do so on the basis of the so-called policy arrangement approach, which combines elements of the old and new policy vocabularies. In addition, we draw upon different power theories in developing our argument and model. As a result, we hope to combine the best of two worlds, of the ‘old’ and the ‘new’ idioms in policy studies, and to achieve our two aims: to bring back in the concept of power in current policy analysis and to expand the policy arrangement approach from a power perspective.     

Finland

European Journal of Political Research -     

Attitudes towards German Immigration in South Australia in the post-Second World War Period, 1947-60

Considering the reaction against Germans in Australia during and after the First World War, it is surprising that German immigration to Australia was permitted again soon after the Second World War and even subsidised by the Australian government. Just seven years after the second war fought with Germany within a generation, Australia signed a five-year agreement to permit Germans to immigrate. This article examines the extent of the Australian public's acceptance of this policy during the period from 1947 to 1960. It concentrates on the state of South Australia where some of the earliest settlers in the colony had been of German origin, where their behaviour and achievements had been praised in historical writings about the colony, and where German immigrants may, therefore, have been viewed more positively. Yet there was some suspicion towards and discrimination against Germans in South Australia after 1945. Negative stereotypes of Germans were apparent in comments made by politicians and in press reports. However, these fears were minor and faded even further when more Germans arrived in Australia.     

Structural reform histories and perceptions of organizational autonomy: Do senior managers perceive less strategic policy autonomy when faced with frequent and intense restructuring?

Through recurrent structural reform programmes governments are on a quest to design public organizations that will stand the test of their environment. One of the approaches to uncertain or sensitive issues has been to create various forms of (semi‐)autonomous organizations with substantial strategic discretion. However, while governments repeatedly experiment with designs, one might simultaneously expect that such interference through repeated structural change may limit the degree of strategic policy autonomy perceived by senior managers. More specifically, we propose that intense structural reforms may inadvertently reduce strategic policy autonomy perceptions through two mechanisms. First, intense sequences of structural reforms may lead to perceptions of relatively controlling political principals. Second, they may reduce an organization's ability to accrue resources beneficial to autonomy, such as a strong internal culture, network embeddedness and expertise. Results indicate that strategic policy autonomy perceptions will indeed be detrimentally affected for organizations that experience intense sequences of structural reform.     

Zwischen Herrschaftskontrolle und Verschwörungstheorie

Public and academic debates often lament a “crisis of trust” endangering democratic stability. In contrast, this article seeks to demonstrate the value of distrust in political relations, a certain form of which should be considered, such as trust, a prerequisite of democracies. To underline this thesis, this contribution discusses categories that clarify the relationality of the concept of distrust (its directedness and modalities) and that allow for a discussion of the relation of trust and distrust, which are introduced as an asymmetrical pair of opposites – with far-reaching consequences for the common discourse on trust. After presenting several historical and current arguments in favor of the value of political distrust, this article will end with a deeper look on those forms of distrust that should indeed be considered dysfunctional and dangerous for democratic orders.     

African farmer-led irrigation development: re-framing agricultural policy and investment?

The past decade has witnessed an intensifying focus on the development of irrigation in sub-Saharan Africa. It follows a 20-year hiatus in the wake of disappointing irrigation performance during the 1970s and 1980s. Persistent low productivity in African agriculture and vulnerability of African food supplies to increasing instability in international commodity markets are driving pan-African agricultural investment initiatives, such as the Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP), that identify as a priority the improvement in reliability of water control for agriculture. The paper argues that, for such initiatives to be effective, there needs to be a re-appraisal of current dynamics of irrigation development in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly with respect to the role of small-scale producers’ initiatives in expanding irrigation. The paper reviews the principal forms such initiatives take and argues that official narratives and statistics on African irrigation often underestimate the extent of such activities. The paper identifies five key characteristics which, it argues, contradict widely held assumptions that inform irrigation policy in Africa. The paper concludes by offering a definition of ‘farmer-led irrigation’ that embraces a range of interaction between producers and commercial, government and non-government agencies, and identifies priority areas for research on the growth potential and impact of such interactions and strategies for their future development.     

Why Do Autonomous Public Agencies Use Performance Management Techniques? Revisiting the Role of Basic Organizational Characteristics

This study investigates to what extent the use of different performance management techniques within (semi-) autonomous public sector organizations, also called public agencies, can be explained by the defining organizational features of such organizations. Using multi-country survey data of over 400 public agencies, the effect of these features—internal performance target setting and monitoring, multi-year planning, as well as the internal performance-based allocation of resources—upon three performance management techniques has been studied. This set-up recognizes differences among management techniques, as well as recurring factors, allowing us to make more general statements. Analyses illustrate that external result control by the minister and parent ministry positively affects the use of all performance management techniques examined in public agencies. However, each performance management technique is affected differently by specific organizational variables.