Rational choice theory,public policy and the liberal state

Liberalism requires a high order of responsible behaviour from its citizens in order to be sustainable. Yet when the modern liberal state makes policy, it is the stereotyped economic man, driven by self-interest and influenced only by carrots and sticks, who occupies center stage. This regulatory approach to public policy can be shown theoretically to give rise to a paradox — the greater the need for regulation, the less likely, because of compliance problems, it is to succeed. It is contended that an alternative approach which explicitly focuses on a broader behavioral understanding of citizens' attitudes and motivations provides a rationale for the use of a much wider range of policy instruments than does the regulatory framework, and is also more in keeping with those values necessary to the sustainability of the liberal state.     

Bureaucracy,Network, or Enterprise? Comparing Models of Governance in Australia,Britain, the Netherlands,and New Zealand

Theories of democratic government traditionally have relied on a model of organization in which officials act impartially, accept clear lines of accountability and supervision, and define their day–to–day activities through rules, procedures, and confined discretion. In the past 10 years, however, a serious challenge to this ideal has been mounted by critics and reformers who favor market, network, or "mixed–economy" models. We assess the extent to which these new models have influenced the work orientations of frontline staff using three alternative service types—corporate, market, and network—to that proposed by the traditional, procedural model of public bureaucracy. Using surveys of frontline officials in four countries where the revolution in ideas has been accompanied by a revolution in methods for organizing government services, we measure the degree to which the new models are operating as service–delivery norms. A new corporate–market hybrid (called "enterprise governance") and a new network type have become significant models for the organization of frontline work in public programs.     

Change Management—Strategy and Values in Six Agencies from the Australian Public Service

Change is a ubiquitous theme in management literature, but empirical studies that seek to draw lessons from the experience of managing change are rare. By investigating patterns of change management in six Australian federal agencies, we elicit a number of factors contributing to success—though "success" is itself not a clear-cut concept in this area. We found support for a number of broad themes already apparent in the literature and suggest that change processes that have the support of the workforce require good leadership, an appropriate model of change, some room for negotiation and compromise, and well-planned communication.     

Gender and Vernaculars in Digital Humanities and World Literature

Abstract

This article discusses the large-scale and world-encompassing aspirations of digital humanities and world literature and their methodological accordance with the analysis of literature in smaller languages and of texts understood in social, transnational, and gendered contexts. Are Digital Humanities and World Literature establishing themselves as fields utilizing analytical tools that are at odds with the aims and perspectives of feminist literary history and reception history as a part of literary history? We argue that gender research and theory is insufficiently developed in both computational literary history and World Literature. An unproblematic understanding of translations, canonization, English as a global language, and the use of large-scale computational methods and formalized interpretive models is in many cases not beneficial for the understanding of texts by women writers or from feminist perspectives. Drawing on feminist criticism of computational methods and arguments for specialized rather than generalized knowledge about literary history, we propose that digitization in some form, be it a bibliographical database or digitization of a corpus of texts, may be thought of as part of the research process in projects oriented towards gender and cultural exchange.     

Safe-guarding the colonial present: game farms on the frontier in KwaZulu-Natal's ‘Battlefields Route’

Drawing on Alistair Fraser's concept of the ‘colonial present’, I show how private game farms are both conceptualised and deployed to maintain ideas of boundaries and belonging that sustain colonial ideals and identities. This article is located on the banks of the Mzinyathi River in KwaZulu-Natal, a river that has functioned as a boundary between various groups for almost two hundred years. The game farms located in this area conserve the idea of the river as a frontier space for ‘white’ South Africa and a boundary with ‘black’ South Africa, as well as entrenching their own boundaries through the imagination and realisation of an idealised space. I argue that the game farms safeguard and perpetuate a colonial present whilst obscuring opportunities for other ways of interpreting and using the space of the farm. Ultimately, how the game farms are now imagined and the way they operate is counterproductive to social transformation in the rural landscape.     

Value Conflict and Policy Change

The analysis of policy change has produced a number of contrasting theoretical approaches, each offering a lens through which to view policy phenomena. This article suggests that the existing menu of approaches for understanding change can be usefully complemented by an understanding of the role played by value conflict. Using institutionalist analysis, I argue that the need to make value‐choices in a nondisruptive way shapes large areas of government activity, particularly in Westminster systems, and explains many observed patterns of stability and change. Building on work by Thacher and Rein, I describe and characterize six types of response to value conflict, giving examples of the role and implications of each. It is not claimed that all policy change can be understood in this way—simply that some types of change reflect the value‐based nature of public policy itself, and the fact that political and bureaucratic systems must evolve mechanisms for dealing simultaneously with thousands of competing and conflicting policy values.     

Cognitive processes in criminal profile construction: a preliminary study

This study undertook an empirically based examination of the cognitive processes associated with the accurate construction of a criminal psychological profile. This was accomplished by comparing the abilities of profilers and nonprofilers in two simulated profiling exercises that measured both profile accuracy and an individual's performance on various tests of memory and comprehension related to the case materials presented in each exercise. The results of these experiments suggest that an incremental relationship exists between comprehension of the case materials and accuracy of the profiles generated. In addition, the findings provide some tentative indications that the comprehension of case material in a narrative (i.e., written) format is an integral cognitive function to proficient profiling.