Cutback Management in the Netherlands

In this article cutback management is defined as the effort of cabinet ministers to facilitate budgetary cutback decisions through institutional change. Institutions are conceived as formal and informal rules for budgetary decision making. The article presents a sketch of the ways in which successive Dutch cabinets over the 1975–98 period attempted to cut back the expenditures of central government by institutional change and outlines the results that were achieved. The article focuses on three institutions: (1) macrobudgetary norms, (2) rules of budgetary discipline, and (3) procedures for the preparation of cutback decisions. The article identifies two kinds of effective resistance against cutbacks: (1) political resistance emanating from cabinet ministers and (2) bureaucratic resistance emanating from the administrators of executive agencies. It analyzes how the various forms of institutional change affect these forms of resistance and evaluates the results of the cutback effort.     

Is Trafficking Slavery? Anti-Slavery International in the Twenty-first Century

Why was Anti-Slavery International (ASI) so effective at changing norms slavery and even mobilizing the support that ended the transatlantic slave trade at the end of the nineteenth century, and why has that success not continued on into subsequent eras? This article claims that ASI's organizational structure is the key to understanding why its accomplishments in earlier eras have yet to be replicated, and why today it struggles to make modern forms of slavery, such as human trafficking, salient political issues. Organizational structure is defined by how an NGO distributes power over agenda-setting (proposal and enforcement power) and its implementation. Those NGOs that centralize agenda-setting and decentralize the implementation of that agenda will be most effective at changing international norms. This paper demonstrates the tractability of that claim with a comparative analysis of ASI past and present to show that changes in organizational structure have led to differences in their effect on international norms, in spite of the fact that slavery in its modern forms persists as a political and social problem.     

UDHR and Modern Slavery: Exploring the Challenges of Fulfilling the Universal Promise to End Slavery in All Its Forms

This article reflects on the prohibition of slavery set out in article 4 of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, and analyses efforts undertaken in the years since to fulfil this commitment. It first addresses the evolution in the prohibition from historic forms of slavery to contemporary forms of slavery and human trafficking. Second, the article examines the Modern Slavery Act 2015 and the National Referral Mechanism to appreciate the UK's efforts to implement various international commitments to prohibit slavery, noting that the current focus towards criminalisation and the meagre support offered as victim protection does not constitute a sufficiently comprehensive strategy towards effective prohibition. Third, areas for reform are identified that could reorient government strategy toward more effective victim protection and support, starting with better identification of victims. And finally, the article argues in favour of actions that seek to prevent modern slavery crimes and abuse, including with a more robust regulatory framework that engages private sector actors to recognise the risks of slavery and exclude forced labour from supply chains.     

Performance Management in Australia's Public Mental Health Service: A State Based Perspective

This article investigates the implementation of key performance indicators (KPIs) in Western Australia's public mental health system. A nationally agreed performance measurement framework forms part of the much needed reform now taking place within Australia. However, progress in the effective monitoring and reporting of KPIs is slow in most states, including Western Australia. The authors report on the results of a selective case study involving semi‐structured interviews with mental health administrators and offer a more nuanced insight into the intricacies and difficulties involved in performance measurement reform. The principal finding is that effective performance measurement and reporting can be internally problematic, particularly within a fragmented and networked system. This tends to give rise to a conformance‐only approach to performance measurement.     

Providing Public Servants What They Need: Revealing the “Unseen” through Data Visualization

Electronic media has enabled new forms of communication with the potential to provide more effective means of conveying evidence to public servants. This article explores what is known about the use of these new capacities in public affairs to visualize the results of research. The authors first explore the value of visual engagement for increasing comprehension. Then, they examine what is known of studies of the effectiveness of visualization and offer basic design principles that underpin effective visualization. Finally, two original public affairs examples are presented to illustrate what is possible.     

Regulatory disempowerment: How enabling and controlling forms of power obstruct citizen-based regulation

Regulatory studies assume that citizens can act as regulators to complement or correct failing state and market forms of regulation. Yet, there is a growing literature that shows that in reality citizens may fail to be effective regulators. This paper systematically analyses how power inequalities obstruct citizens in their regulatory roles. It compares four case studies with highly different social and political contexts but with similar outcomes of citizens failing to regulate risk. The case studies are analyzed by operationalizing sociological and political science ideas about manifestations of enabling and controlling forms of power in order to understand the way power inequalities obstruct citizens in their regulatory roles across diverse contexts. The article shows how citizens, from farmers and manual workers in both authoritarian developing and democratic developed contexts to even highly trained medical professionals from the US, have limited agency and are disempowered to act as regulators. Our analysis reveals that five patterns of disempowerment play a crucial role in obstructing successful society-based regulation: (i) dependency, (ii) capacity, (iii) social hierarchy, (iv) discursive framing, and (v) perverse effects of legal rights.     

Effective Practices for Interagency Data Sharing: Insights from Collaborative Research in a Regional Intervention

Data sharing adds considerable value to interagency programs that seek to tackle complex social problems. Yet data sharing is not easily enacted either technically or as a governance practice, especially considering the multiple forms of risk involved. This article presents insights from a successful data sharing project in a major region in east coast Australia involving a federally funded research partnership between two universities and a number of human services agencies. The Spatial Data Analysis Project sought to establish a community of practice for devising data sharing protocols and embedding data sharing into agency practices. Close dialogue between the project partners and mobilizing the authority of extant regulatory and legal frameworks proved effective in confronting risks and barriers. The article reveals effective practices for data sharing and derives lessons for other policy and governance contexts.     

Interactivity and Branding: Public Political Communication as a Marketing Tool

Online platforms are increasingly used as a means to present brand characteristics to key target groups. Within a political context, websites can act as a shop front from which parties or candidates can advertise their policies and personnel. The increasing use of more interactive forms of communication informs visitors about the overall brand character of the host. This article explores the impact on branding of interactivity by analyzing the online activities undertaken by UK parties and their members elected to the House of Commons during the period 2007 to 2010. Through a process of creating narratives for each of the brands analyzed, based upon a content analysis of the websites and other online presences, this article identifies what characteristics the online shop front is designed to project. This article finds overall that interactivity within online environments is becoming one aspect of the branding of parties, though this is in limited forms and linked more to a marketing communication strategy than seeking to involve or understand site visitors. Members of Parliament who use social networking sites or weblogs, in contrast, have a developed i-branding strategy that enables them to present a strongly interactive brand personality to visitors to their online presences, offering impressions of them as accessible and effective representatives.     

Lessons learned from a small native American community

The decision not to build Orme Dam was a great political victory for residents of the Fort McDowell Indian Reservation in central Arizona. This article examines the conditions that gave rise to what most considered an unlikely outcome, and the lessons it suggests for understanding the politics of large water projects. These lessons include the importance of understanding that rationality takes multiple forms; that how value is expressed can be as significant as what, and how much, something is valued; that identity politics which elaborates and celebrates cultural differences can be an effective means for challenging even powerful bureaucracies; and that law can be an important mediating structure in the politics of bureaucratic decision‐making. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Disentangling governance: a synoptic view of regulation by government, business and civil society

Governance became a catch-all concept for various forms of steering by state and non-state actors. While it pays tribute to the complexities of steering in poly-centred, globalised societies, its fuzziness makes it difficult to oversee who actually steers whom and with what means. By focussing mainly on actor constellations, the article disentangles governance into seven basic types of regulation, four of them representing public policies with varying degrees of government involvement and three depending solely on civil society (civil regulation), on businesses (industry or business self-regulation) or on both (civil co-regulation). Although each of the seven types is well known and extensively researched, they are rarely joined in a synoptic view, making it difficult to grasp the totality of contemporary governance. After introducing the seven basic types of regulation and co-regulation, the article addresses the interactions between them and it adds the widely used concepts of hybrid regulation and meta-governance in distinct ways. The synoptic view provided here helps to comprehend how governmental deregulation has been accompanied by soft governmental regulation as well as “societal re-regulation”. The concluding discussion emphasises that this “regulatory reconfiguration” is the cumulative product of countless, more or less spontaneous initiatives that coincide with forceful global trends. It also stresses that the various forms of regulation by civil society and business actors are not simply alternatives or complements to but often key prerequisites for effective public policies. Although the essentials of the typology developed here can be applied universally to a variety of policy issues, I focus it on how businesses are steered towards sustainable development and Corporate Social Responsibility.     

Delimiting Democratic Accountability

This article discusses the concept of accountability in relation to those holding public office in democratic states. It argues that the concept of accountability requires careful specification and that it is frequently distorted when put to the service of theoretical models and normative principles. The article develops a definition of accountability and a range of distinctions between forms of accountability, asks what forms of accountability might be appropriate to modern democratic systems and argues that some combinations of democracy and accountability can have serious negative consequences for politics. The article concludes by discussing the types of accountability that are pertinent to recent claims that international institutions should be made more democratically accountable. In each case, the common tendency to inflate the concept of accountability is associated with demands for accountability that threaten both democratic consolidation and the distinctive character of accountability itself.     

The performance framework: a systems approach to understanding performance management

The article presents a framework for better understanding the nature of performance in organisations involved in the provision of overseas development assistance (ODA). It uses a case study to illustrate the three main features of the framework which are: goals, performance assessment and performance management. It is asserted that a vibrant performance culture is one which links these features together to form an organisation capable of continual improvement through producing effective learning. Organisational culture determines the nature of linkages between the three sub‐systems. The article stresses how the notion of performance may extend beyond various forms of evaluation and scrutiny to being part of a sentient learning system rooted in an organisation's culture and structure. The article concludes with consideration of key issues associated with the generation of a reflexive learning organisation operating in the ODA sector. These are concerned with understanding the role and nature of systems, organisational vision, the embracing of diversity, training and accountability. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Networked Governance or Just Networks? Local Governance of the Knowledge Economy in Limerick (Ireland) and Karlskrona (Sweden)

The emergence of networked governance of knowledge activities is portrayed as one component of a more general shift from government to governance. This article suggests that a distinction can be drawn between networks and networked governance and provides some insights into the indicators that might help distinguish networked governance from networks. The distinction is applied empirically to emerging forms of local networks in ICT in Limerick and Karlskrona. Differences between the two regions can be conceptualised with reference to the governance role of local networks in steering, setting directions and influencing behaviour. The article identifies the characteristics of network arrangements that appear to be necessary for governance objectives to be satisfied; these are density, breadth and association with values such as trust, mutuality and shared identity. The article shows that there is a need to approach generalised theories of emerging models of governance with sensitivity to cross-regional variations around these characteristics. Claims regarding the emergence of new forms of governance in local spaces may be exaggerated if all types of network arrangements are taken as evidence of a transformation from government to governance.     

The weakness of strong policies and the strength of weak policies: Law,experimentalist governance,and supporting coalitions in European Union health care policy

The experience of European Union (EU) health care services policy shows the importance of supporting coalitions in any effort to effect policy change and the extent to which the presence or absence of such coalitions can qualify generalizations about policymaking. EU health care services law is substantively liberalizing and procedurally driven by the courts, with little legislative input. But the European Court of Justice (ECJ) has been much better at establishing an EU competency in law than in causing policy development in the EU or member states. Literature on courts helps to explain why: courts are most effective when they enjoy supporting coalitions and the ECJ does not have a significant supporting coalition for its liberalizing health care services policy. Based on interview data, this article argues that the hard law of health care services deregulation and the newer forms of health care governance, such as the Open Method of Coordination and the networks on rare diseases, depend on supporting coalitions in member states that are willing to litigate, lobby, budget, decide cases, and otherwise implement EU law and policy. Given the resistance that the Court has met in health care sectors, its overarching deregulatory approach might produce smaller effects than expected, and forms of experimentalist governance that are easy to deride might turn out to have supporting coalitions that make them unexpectedly effective.     

Introduction

ABSTRACT

This article argues for the analysis of the flow of ideological discourse through society within and across three distinct but interrelated levels: (1) the canonically defined, or macro level, (2) the intermediate or meso level of competitive political appeals, political relevant public discourse and cultural criticism, and (3) the everyday or micro level of conceptual use by non-experts. This differentiation among levels of ideological action and influence helps us to clarify the objects and appropriate methods of ideological analysis. Methods applied in specific cases must facilitate an effective focus on phenomena on one of these levels while still allowing recognition of the complex forms of direct and indirect conceptual influence and connection between the levels. The article also serves as an introduction to the volume, giving a brief account of the analysis and argument of each contribution.     

Rapid rural appraisal: Rationale and repertoire

Decision makers need the right information at the right time but in rural development much information generated is too costly and inappropriate. Rapid rural appraisal forms part of the attempt to learn about rural conditions in a cost effective way. Such appraisal involves avoiding the traps of quick and dirty or long and dirty methods and using instead methods that are more cost effective. To do this means ignoring inappropriate professional standards and instead applying a new rigour based on the two principles of optimal ignorance—knowing what it is not worth knowing—and proportionate accuracy—recognising the degree of accuracy required. The article reviews a range of approaches and techniques for rapid rural appraisal that are less rigid and exhaustive than many traditional methods and yet more rigorous in relation to cost and use. Time is emphasized as a critical factor in effective appraisal and rapid rural appraisal methods increase the chance of reducing the bias against the poorer rural people in the promotion of rural development.     

Was erklärt politische Patronage in den Ländern Westeuropas? Defizite des politischen Wettbewerbs oder historisch-formative Phasen der Massendemokratisierung

Every major paradigm in the social sciences since the 1950s has offered its own explanation for the varying incidence of party patronage and political clientelism in modern democracies. Today the two main contenders are (RC-based) positive political economy and historical institutionalism. Positive political economy emphasizes the crucial importance of effective political competition as a control device against the ever present temptation for politicians to use ‘improper political practices’ like patronage or clientelism. Historical institutionalism highlights the importance of formative moments in the history of democratic mass mobilization and party formation. The article argues that both approaches suffer from considerable weaknesses. The article proposes a modified historical-institutionalist explanation, which emphasizes the importance of state formation rather than party formation and which explains varying degrees and different forms of political patronage in Europe with different paths of modern state-building.     

Civic Networks, Legitimacy and the Policy Process

In ethnically divided developing countries, avenues permitting popular participation in the policy process seem essential if the state is to be viewed as legitimate. Frequently, however, mechanisms intended to build legitimacy by providing for popular participation fail to achieve this target. This article analyzes the policy process in Mauritius, and argues that it combines characteristics of both policy networks and civil society. We term this form of popular consultation on policy a "civic network," and we present research which suggests that it has been successful in building legitimacy. By comparing this civic network with other forms of popular participation, we are able to identify the characteristics which seem to make it more effective. The effects of popular participation on the policy capacity of a state are more mixed, but in the case of Mauritius, we conclude that by increasing legitimacy, the civic network also increased state policy capacity.     

Inequalities in Non-institutionalised Forms of Political Participation: A Multi-level Analysis of 25 countries

Various studies suggest that while institutionalised and electoral forms of political participation are in decline in Western societies, non-institutionalised forms of participation (like demonstrating, political consumerism or signing petitions) are on the rise. However, this expansion of the political action repertoire of citizens also entails the question of equal participation opportunities. It can be argued that contemporary ideals of democratic participation assume an equal representation of citizens' interests. In this article we analyse the equality of participation patterns using comparative data from the 2004 ISSP survey. Our results suggest that non-institutionalised forms of participation increase patterns of inequality due to education but strongly reduce or even reverse gender and age inequalities. As such, both institutionalised and non-institutionalised forms of participation have specific (dis)advantages from the perspective of preserving equal access to democratic decision-making procedures.