Administrative Innovations and Accountability Failures: The Termination of the Spanish Telecommunications Agency

We discuss how far accountability practices may be relevant to the success of independent regulators in countries without a tradition of administrative autonomy. We develop a conceptualisation of agency accountability failures and develop an analytical framework to examine the life and termination of the Spanish regulatory agency for telecommunications, CMT (Comisión del Mercado de las Telecomunicaciones - Telecommunications Market Commission). We argue that the CMT’s termination was related, among other reasons, to accountability failures in its institutional design. The paper relies on a variety of sources, including legislation, literature, media coverage, and semistructured interviews with agency officials and several stakeholders.     

Calling Attention to the Importance of Assisting Male Survivors of Sexual Victimization

ABSTRACT

Most of the research focusing on sexual victimization on college campuses has focused on females as victims. This attention is warranted given that studies have consistently found that females are at more risk of experiencing victimization compared to males. However, a drawback of this emphasis is that laypersons may incorrectly believe that men cannot be victims too. This belief is directly challenged by various findings that indicate college men are also sexually assaulted. In order to draw attention to this under researched topic, we used data from a recent climate survey conducted at a mid-sized rural institution of higher education. The results of this study indicated that males, in addition to females, experienced various types of sexual victimization in this setting.     

‘The beneficent and legal godfather’: a history of the guardianship of unaccompanied immigrant and refugee children in Australia, 1946–1975

Abstract

In Australia in 1946, the Immigration (Guardianship of Children) Act was passed. This Act was intended to support the postwar migration to Australia of British children, unaccompanied by their parents, and provided them a guardian in Australia: the Immigration Minister. This key provision of the Act continues into the present, covering all unaccompanied child migrants, including refugees. Starting with the parliamentary debates which occurred at the formation of the Act in 1946, this article traces a history of the Act until its first High Court challenge in 1975. In doing so, a focus is placed on a series of key questions raised by its production of categories: How does the Act construct ideas of migranthood? What do the discussions it has provoked have to say about notions of parenthood and the ideal family? And, finally, what concepts of the child have been produced through this legislative and legal history? Through an examination of archival materials, parliamentary debates, court records, and newspaper coverage, this article explores the discursive productions of the Act, following the understanding that ideas of the family, of parenthood, of guardianship, of migrant status, and of the child are not natural, but instead are historically created and produced, here through racialized techniques of governmentality.     

EU agencies' involvement in transboundary crisis response: Supporting efforts or leading coordination?

EU agencies have emerged as entities offering technical coordination to member states and support to the European Commission in different policy areas. Their expertise may play a role in responding to unexpected crises. Against this backdrop, we examine under which circumstances EU agencies, through their specialized expertise, are involved in transboundary crisis responses, and when they acquire a leading position in coordinating those responses. To do so, we study four agencies which faced crises: the EBA and the 2012 banking crisis; the ECDC and the 2014 Ebola outbreak; EFSA and the 2011 E. coli outbreak; and Frontex and the 2015 refugee crisis. Our findings discuss to what extent agencies' involvement in transboundary crises is related to functional (sector characteristics) and institutional (delegation of authority) variables. We also identify that under certain political conditions EU agencies' coordination capacity is activated, allowing them to emerge as leading institutions in transboundary crisis resolution.     

When do autonomous banking regulators promote stability?

Can autonomous banking regulatory agencies reduce the odds that a country will suffer a crippling banking crisis? We investigate the impact that agencies charged with banking regulation and prudential supervision can have on financial stability in the banking sector. We argue that the potential benefits of autonomy are hard to realise because banking regulators face incentives to shirk in their mandate to secure banking stability. These incentives are strongest in political systems with high numbers of veto players, where the autonomy of a banking agency is difficult to undo even if the agency is derelict in promoting banking sector stability. We test an implication of this argument, namely, that the probability of bank crisis onset should diminish with the level of autonomy of the banking agency, but only in polities with low numbers of veto points. We base our analysis of this conditional hypothesis on an original dataset of 79 countries observed between 1971 and 2009 that captures the degree of autonomy of banking agencies from political principals. Our findings confirm that the impact of banking agency autonomy on the risk of bank crisis onset is conditional on the political structure in which the agency is embedded.     

Are regulatory agencies independent in practice? Evidence from board members in Spain

Are the board members of regulatory agencies (regulators), taken as a particular cluster within the public sphere, independent of elected politicians and tenured bureaucrats? How can we assess their independence in practice, beyond formal rules? To address these questions, this paper delves into two key dimensions: board members' social connections and their security of tenure in office. Firstly, we focus on regulators' identity as policy adjudicators and examine their political and administrative relations. In doing so, we expect to understand better how regulators' social and political situations may influence their behavior. Secondly, we assess their political vulnerability through political cycles in order to measure their de facto independence over time. Additionally, variations in these two dimensions are compared with respect to the effect of different de jure appointment rules. We contrast these expectations with the empirical evaluation of board members of regulatory agencies in Spain (1979–2010). Thus, we confirm that regulators who have an administrative profile are more vulnerable to political changes than those with political ties, while appointment rules have an influence on their political vulnerability.     

“Because we all love our country”: Refugee and Asylum‐Seeking Children,Australian Policy‐Makers,and the Building of National Sentiment

In this article I look at Australian political discourse from 2013 to 2016 to examine two twinned schemas: the ways in which the category of the child refugee or asylum‐seeker is produced, and the ways in which ideas of the Australian nation are produced, through emotional discourses, or economies of emotion. I am interested here in asking what emotional work these narratives about child refugees do in the national imagination, and to create an idea of “Australia”. Both the category of the child refugee/asylum‐seeker, and that of the nation, are not natural: they are historical productions, built through multivalent, multilingual discourses and practices. They are forms of creating difference amongst populations in society. Through a focus on these discourses, languages, and grammars — as enunciated by politicians, NGO workers, lawyers, activists, and policy‐makers — I will explore the specific ways in which the emotional economies function, and work to understand and historicise the systems of ideas and relations that they produce.