Brexit: A Cliff Edge or a Small Bump in the Road?

It is becoming increasingly accepted, not least by the Prime Minister and opposition leadership, that the negotiation of a comprehensive trade relationship with the EU is necessary to prevent the UK economy falling off a ‘cliff edge’. This concern is shaping the UK's strategy towards negotiations with the EU and has provided at least part of the motivation for the UK to consider requesting a transition period to facilitate the Brexit process. But how accurate are these fears? What evidence is there for the existence of a ‘cliff edge’? How disastrous would it be for the UK to revert to trading with the EU on the same basis as most other countries in the world, namely according to World Trade Organisation rules? This article seeks to address these issues and it highlights a number of implications for policy makers which flow from understanding the available evidence a little more clearly.     

价值共创:公共服务合作生产的新趋势

合作生产是一种重要的公共服务生产模式,在提高公共部门回应性和推动公共服务创新方面发挥了重要作用。面对解决"棘手问题"的挑战,复杂的外部治理环境催生了对公共行政价值问题的反思,合作生产不仅要关注行政效率的提升,也要重视以公民为中心的多元价值创造。在此情境下,公共服务合作生产向价值共创转变。本文梳理了不同时期的公共行政理论对合作生产的影响,对合作生产概念的演变与发展进行了探讨,阐释了从合作生产发展为价值共创的内在逻辑。在此基础上,本文分析了理解价值共创的三种理论路径,并结合我国公共服务发展的现实背景,讨论了公共服务价值共创的启示。     

Innovation Agents in the Public Sector: Applying Champion and Promotor Theory to Explore Innovation in the Australian Public Service

Innovation is critical to organisational success and is a process steered, and potentially thwarted, by individuals. However, despite the importance of public sector innovation given the complexity of policy issues faced and the sector's specific contextual features, our understanding of innovation processes in government requires expansion. This study, using in‐depth case analyses of three Australian Public Service agencies, focuses on understanding the ‘human component’ of the innovation process by drawing on both innovation champion and promotor theories to explore, through the lens of organisational power, how multiple human agents progress public sector innovations. The results highlight the key, and often tandem, roles of individuals at multiple organisational levels who work to inspire and motivate others to progress an innovation (champions) and those with specific power bases who help overcome organisational barriers to innovation (promotors).     

新时代深化群团改革的实践载体研究——以天津经济技术开发区群团组织“三基地一中心”为例

天津经济技术开发区总工会(团委、妇联)牢牢把握群团改革要求,主动服务于党政工作大局,以职工群众为中心,创新建设了“三基地一中心”综合服务阵地。“三基地一中心”具有政策宣传、孵化培育、职工服务、创新创业、企业服务等功能,在思想引领、组织拓展、助力发展、维护和谐、普惠服务五个方面取得了显著成效。调研结果显示,“三基地一中心”契合职工群众需求,有助于提高职工对工会的认可度,并受到企业管理人员的好评。其今后的运维应在宣传力度、精准服务、运行机制、形式内容、资源整合、沟通反馈等方面持续发力,让职工群众拥有更多幸福感、获得感、安全感,助力经济社会高质量发展。     

Past as global trade governance prelude: reconfiguring debate about reform of the multilateral trading system

This paper peers backwards into the history of the multilateral trading system and its development over the past half century as a means of considering what may lie beyond the horizon for the future of global trade governance. Its purpose is to underscore the necessity and urgency for root-and-branch reform of the multilateral trading system. It achieves this by comparing and contrasting the global trading system of 50 years ago with its modern-day equivalent and its likely future counterpart half-a-century hence. In so doing, the paper throws into sharp relief not only the inadequacies of global trade governance today but also the damaging consequences of not fundamentally reforming the system in the near future, with a particular emphasis on the past, present and future development of the world’s poorest and most marginalised countries.     

Look at Detroit: The United Auto Workers and the Battle to Organize Volkswagen in Chattanooga

ABSTRACT

On February 14, 2014, workers at Volkswagen’s new plant in Chattanooga, Tennessee, voted 712 to 626 against being represented by the United Automobile Workers of America (UAW). The result capped one of the most high-profile organizing campaigns of recent years, with most media accounts anticipating a UAW victory, especially as VW had declared that it would not oppose the union. The VW election is also now attracting scholarly interest, with accounts stressing the role of external opposition – especially from conservative politicians and lobby groups – along with the UAW’s over-reliance on partnerships with German actors. Providing a detailed analysis of the campaign, this article recognizes the importance of these factors, but also argues that an important role was played by the UAW’s strong association with the domestic automakers, and especially with Detroit, their historic base. Citing the fact that foreign automakers had expanded since the 1980s while the domestics had contracted, opponents effectively linked the UAW with economic decline. These arguments swayed many workers. Placing the VW story within the broader struggle of the UAW to organize a foreign-owned auto plant, the article also stresses structural obstacles, especially the location of Greenfield plants in areas of low union density.     

三种服务型政府观比较

当下中国学界与政界主要存在着三种服务型政府观,即基于政府价值理念的内涵定位和适应后工业社会治理要求的服务型政府观;基于政府价值理念的内涵定位和主要借鉴工业社会治理经验的服务型政府观;基于政府职能结构的内涵定位和主要借鉴工业社会治理经验的服务型政府观。它们在服务型政府的本质内涵、主要特征、兴起动因、理论基础等方面的阐释与定位都不尽相同。就目前所产生的实际效果而言,第一种服务型政府观理论目标相当宏大高远,但实践响应比较困难;第二种服务型政府观理论契合学界主流观点,但实践响应比较一般;第三种服务型政府观理论契合政界近期工作,且实践响应也较明显。梳理和比较这些不同的服务型政府观应当是推进和深化服务型政府研究的必要环节和重要任务。     

我国社会组织参与社会管理的现实性探析

改革开放后,我国社会结构发生变化,国家社会由一体化向二重化发展,社会呈现多样化,政府在社会管理中覆盖面窄、手段僵硬、效率低下的特点已不能适应现代社会的发展,急需转变社会管理方式。新时期下的社会组织获得蓬勃发展,它自主、自律、民间、灵活、高效、贴近基层的特点能够弥补市场和政府在公共领域的不足,符合我国政府职能转变的要求,将社会组织引入社会管理,能够实现政府和社会资源配置的最优化,最大程度地保障公民权益。     

A nexus between labour movement and labour movement: the Knights of Labor and the financial side of global labour history

The rise of global and transnational labour history has revolutionised the study of working-class movements and individuals and the global forces that shaped them. Some of the more mundane considerations of these movements, however, have so far been neglected in this rapidly growing field. One of the most important of these considerations was money, or in other words the financial affairs of transnational movements such as trade unions and political parties. This article is a call to write the financial side of global labour history. It focuses on a global working-class movement that is itself often neglected in the historical literature, the Knights of Labor, and their outposts in Britain and Ireland. It examines the history of the British and Irish Knights through the prism of their financial history, so far as we can reconstruct it from the scanty sources that are available. This article argues that their financial ties with the United States and a series of embezzlement cases became major causes of their decline and, ultimately, their dissolution. Finally, this article draws conclusions from the financial misadventures of the British and Irish Knights of Labor that are relevant to the study of other international working-class movements and to the writing of global labour history in general.     

Trade Unions and Political Parties in Italy (1946–2014): Ideological Positions and Critical Junctures

The paper investigates party-union relationships in Italy (1946–2014) by hand-coding parties’ parliamentary speeches and trade unions’ congress motions. In line with the cartel party thesis, a time series analysis shows that the ideological closeness between the left-wing Italian General Confederation of Labour and left-wing parties deteriorated when the Italian Socialist Party (1980) and the heirs of the Italian Communist Party (1998) converged toward the centre of the ideological spectrum. Conversely, the closeness between the Catholic-inspired Italian Confederation of Workers’ Unions and the heirs of Christian Democracy increased after 1994, when the former party’s leftist factions became the major part of the Italian Popular Party.