Politicized policy access: The effect of politicization on interest group access to advisory councils

Current scholarship often concludes that technical expertise is one of the most important commodities for interest groups wishing to gain access to political-administrative venues. Less attention has been given to politicization and the scope of societal support that interest groups bring to bear. Specifically, I hypothesize that the capacity of interest groups to supply broad societal support is decisive for gaining access in highly politicized policy domains. To test this expectation, the article combines a mapping of interest group membership in 616 Belgian advisory councils with survey data from more than 400 organized interests. The empirical analyses demonstrate that interest groups with broad support are more likely to gain access to advisory councils in highly politicized policy domains, but this effect is negatively moderated when interest groups involve their constituencies intensely in advocacy processes.     

No miracles here: Trade policy,fiscal policy and economic growth

In this paper we consider whether the rate of growth following trade liberalisation differs significantly from growth in other developing countries. We find that it does not. Given this result we explore whether these growth effects are offset by changes in other policy variables, namely changes in fiscal policy. Governments increase welfare spending as a response to greater exposure to international trade. We find evidence that countries that liberalise their trade regimes increase their spending on welfare but not other forms of expenditure. However, once we control for the effects of fiscal policy, trade liberalisation still has no growth effects.     

Public administrators and policy legitimization: Policy analysis,politics and power

This article discusses the factors public administration faculty should incorporate into the curriculum in order to equip students to engage in the policy legitimization process. In order to produce leaders, public administration programs should emphasize the nature of the political system, an understanding of the legitimacy of subgovernments, the importance of coalition building and the psychological factors associated with policy choices.

Integration of policy analysis into the public administration curriculum requires that students be equipped with an in-depth understanding of both the political environment and the political process. This is true because public administrators are deeply involved in the stages of policy development, adoption, and implementation; activities which reach beyond the narrow confines of program management and into the realm of politics. Consequently, public administrators serve in a variety of capacities: as policy advocates, program champions, or as defenders of client interests. It is in these roles that public administrators move into the political arena. Policy analysis activities provide the discipline with the opportunity to move beyond an emphasis on a narrow concern with simply “managing” government and into the realm of policy choice, policy advocacy, political power and the exercise of leadership.

Public administration as a discipline, and teaching faculty in particular, face the challenge of increasing the relevance of the master's degree to policy leadership. Astrid Merget, past president of the National Association of Schools of Public Affairs and Administration, expressed this need for increased emphasis on policy leadership training quite eloquently in 1991:

“Our vision of the holder of a master's degree in our field is that of a leader, not merely a manager or an analyst. But we have not been marketing that vision.”⁽¹⁾

Merget attributes partial responsibility for the low public esteem of government service to the attitudes, teaching, and research activities of public administration faculty who have failed to link the “lofty” activities of government (environmental protection, health care, the promotion of citizen equality) with public administration. Accordingly, the academic standard of “neutrality” governing teaching and research acts as an obstacle to teaching the fundamentals of the goals of public policy. This professional commitment to neutrality places an emphasis on administrative efficiency at the expense of policy advocacy. The need, according to Merget, is to reestablish the linkage between policy formulation and policy management. Such a teaching strategy will enhance the purposefulness of public administration as a career. Failure to do so will relegate public administration programs to the continued production of governmental managers, not administrative leaders.

The integration of policy analysis into the public administration curriculum affords the discipline with the opportunity to focus on policy leadership and escape the limitation associated with an emphasis on program management. Teaching policy analysis skills cannot, and should not, be divorced from the study of politics and the exercise of political power. This is true because politics involves the struggle over the allocation of resources, and public policy is a manifestation of the outcome of that political struggle. Public policy choices reflect, to some degree, the political power of the “winners” and the relative lack of power by “losers.” The study of public policy involves the study of conflict and the exercise of power.

Teaching public administration students about the exercise of power cannot be limited to a discussion of partisan political activities. Public administrators serve in an environment steeped in the exercise of partisan and bureaucratic power.⁽²⁾ It is practitioners of public administration who formulate, modify and implement public policy choices. Such bureaucratic activity is appropriate, provided that it is legitimated by the political system. Legitimacy can be provided to public administrators only by political institutions through the political process.

Teaching public administration students about policy analysis and policy advocacy necessitates an understanding of the complexities associated with the concepts of policy legitimacy and policy legitimization.     

Legitimising liberal militarism: politics,law and war in the Arms Trade Treaty

Post-cold war efforts to knit together human rights and international humanitarian law in pursuit of tougher arms transfer control reached their apogee in the UN Arms Trade Treaty (ATT). In contrast to dominant accounts based on human security norms, I argue that a key effect of the ATT is to legitimise liberal forms of militarism. During negotiations the US and UK governments justified their arms export practices in terms of morality, responsibility and legitimacy. More broadly their arms transfer practices are explained away by reference to national regulatory regimes that exceed the standards set out in the ATT. Arms transfers to Egypt and intra-Western transfers illustrate the way these justifications and regimes serve to shield US–UK weapons transfers and use from scrutiny and accountability. Rather than signalling the victory of human security, the ATT is better understood as facilitating the mobilisation of legitimacy for contemporary liberal forms of war fighting and war preparation.     

Beyond royal politics: state transformation and foreign policy in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Saudi politics is commonly portrayed as reflecting a system of centralised personal rule in which decision-making power trickles down from the tightly knit power circles within the House of Saud. In contrast, this paper draws attention to the empowerment of quasi-autonomous state organisations in Saudi Arabia as a result of state transformation and regional integration. At its most extreme, state transformation in Saudi Arabia has created institutional and regulatory enclaves with vested interests and areas of competence that cross Saudi borders. This paper illustrates the foreign policy ramifications of transformed statehood in Saudi attempts to further Gulf regional integration in the context of the Gulf Monetary Union project.     

Spirit and being: interdisciplinary reflections on drugs across history and politics

Abstract

Few commodities are as global as drugs. Cannabis, opium, heroin, amphetamines, lysergic acid diethylamide (LSD), khat, psychedelic cacti and mushrooms as well as an interminable list of other natural or synthesised substances travel and are consumed around the globe for all possible reasons. Human migration, trade, cultural trends, medical practice, political repression: together they constitute the drug phenomenon today – and indeed in much of human history. In this, drugs are spirit-like commodities, their value resting upon a fundamental ambiguity made up of individual, psychological, social, cultural, economic and medical circumstances. Defining a drug is an attempt at defining a spirit on the edge, which metamorphoses in time and space. At the same time, drugs remain a fundamentally political object. They are substances controlled by states, through mechanisms of policing, legitimated by judicial and medical evaluation, condemned often on moral grounds. Situated between a fluid social existence and a static legal dimension, drugs can become inspiring hermeneutic objects of study.     

Maintaining disorder: the micropolitics of drugs policy in Iran

Abstract

This article analyses the ways in which the state ‘treats’ addiction among precarious drug (ab)users in Iran. While most Muslim-majority as well as some Western states have been reluctant to adopt harm reduction measures, the Islamic Republic of Iran has done so on a nationwide scale and through a sophisticated system of welfare intervention. Additionally, it has introduced devices of management of ‘addiction’ (the ‘camps’) that defy statist modes of punishment and private violence. What legal and ethical framework has this new situation engendered? And what does this new situation tell us about the governmentality of the state? Through a combination of historical analysis and ethnographic fieldwork, the article analyses the paradigm of government of the Iranian state with regard to disorder as embodied by the lives of poor drug (ab)users.     

Timber access in the Indian Himalaya: Rethinking social capital in public policy

Timber access in Himachal Pradesh (India) is formally regulated by state policy. However, actual access is determined through a complex network of informal social relations developed and maintained over time, which form a critical resource that allows particular forms of capital accumulation. This essay shows that the nature of policy execution in India necessitates the development and use of this type of social capital. However, existing social hierarchies compartmentalise social space and create differential opportunities for social agents to establish and nurture such networks. While supporting critiques of currently popular understandings of social capital that draw on Putnam and Coleman, this essay makes a case for the relevance of Bourdieu's conception of social capital in understanding the process of social differentiation.     

The politics of trade unions in transition: the case of the Congress of South African Trade Unions

This article explores changes in political allegiances within the South African labour movement, drawing on the findings of a nation-wide survey of members of the Congress of South African Trade Unions (COSATU). Recent research shows that the Tripartite Alliance between the ANC, COSATU and the South African Communist Party remains overwhelmingly popular amongst COSATU members. This article shows that this appears to be both a product of South Africa's recent past and a reflection of a lack of credible alternatives.     

US bureaucratic politics and the decision to invade Iraq

Why did the second Bush administration decide to invade Iraq in 2003? This article suggests that the question can usefully be addressed by looking at the ways in which regime change in Iraq became part of bureaucratic politics within the US government – under successive administrations – following the unsatisfactory termination of the first Gulf War in 1991. It is contended here that the limitations on bureaucratic politics within the second Bush administration were important in that the path toward a presidential decision for invasion was cleared by the failure of the higher echelons of the national security bureaucracy under Bush to work effectively in exercising core functions of challenge and debate.     

Go West: Georgia's European identity and its role in domestic politics and foreign policy objectives

This article sheds light on the Euro-Atlantic discourse in Georgia by situating it in a wider frame. It provides an analysis of its Euro-Atlantic orientation by presenting it as a continuation of past efforts to involve European powers in Georgian affairs and highlights changing trends in this aspect of contemporary foreign policy. Far from determining whether or not the Georgians are European, the different arguments that have been used to support Georgian “Europeanness” are evaluated to assess its role in the national identity construction process. Focusing primarily on the United National Movement government led by Mikheil Saakashvili, we demonstrate how the Euro-Atlantic discourse has been employed domestically by the political elite as a legitimacy management strategy and explore its function in seeking Western patronage, a key foreign policy goal.