The overloaded state

The conditions that produced Israel's strong state and the implications of that state are not likely to be replicated elsewhere, exactly. However, Israel's case offers some general lessons that ought to be considered by advocates of a strong bureaucratic state, as suggested by the New Public Administration of the 1968 Min-nowbrook Conference. These include: poor management of public enterprises and social services; high inflation; politicization of public sector employment; a plethora of centrally defined rules, many of which are evaded in the interests of flexible administration; lack of moderation in policy demands; and perpetuation of the state's dominance of the economy as it becomes the first resort of groups in distress.

This essay explores conditions in Israel for a movement in the academic profession of public administration whose roots and principal focus have been in the United States.

The self-proclaimed New Public Administration in the United States began with the Minnowbrook Conference in New York in September 1968. The mood of many conferees was antagonistic to the political establishment that seemed more intent on pursuing an unpopular war and maintaining law and order than in responding to demands for domestic social services. Several papers and much of the discussion stressed the need for public administrators to take upon themselves the articulation of, and response to, demands that had not found effective representation among the elective legislators and chief executive.⁽¹⁾

Here the concern is with those aspects of the Minnowbrook perspective that imply both more responsibility and more power for government bureaucrats.

Israel has what may be the most powerful bureaucracy in all of the democracies. Israel's special history and circumstances make its details unlikely to be replicated elsewhere. Nonetheless, it suggests lessons for those who would strengthen the bureaucracies of other countries.

There are positive and negative features of a powerful state. In a society that is relatively homogeneous, feels beselt by outsiders, and whose cultural and religious values shape the character of public policy, as in the Israeli case, the balance of a powerful state may be positive. Even in such a case, however, there are negative features of the strong state. Those who do not feel themselves in tune with the majority of the moment may pay a great price in the sacrifice of what they feel are their legitimate rights. In a heterogeneous country that is divided by a great plurality of world views, and where a individualistic, free-market tradition is prominent, as in the American case, the consequences of a powerful state may be severe.⁽²⁾

There may be no lessons in the Israeli case that are simple and direct. Yet the weight of the more general warnings may justify this exercise.     

The Limits of the German Minority Project in Post-communist Poland: Scale,Space and Democratic Deliberation

This paper explores the development of the German minority community in postcommunist Poland, focusing specifically upon the Opole Silesia voivodship. I argue that the minority's successful engagement within democratic fora at all spatial scales allowed the minority to voice its concerns and secure funds to develop its community infrastructure. However, as the 1990s progressed, the minority's ability to manipulate a politics of scale declined as the policy objectives of key allies were achieved or reformulated. Furthermore, the changing contours of the minority–majority relationship within Poland have exposed significant cleavages within the minority, bringing into question the continued relevance of the German minority political party for the constituency it claims to represent. Introduction The emergence in Europe of a new minority rights regime, adhered to by Poland as part of its desire to “return to Europe” and join the European Union, has created a legislative framework that aims to ensure that members of national minority populations can enjoy substantively the same rights as the majority. The most significant legislation in this area is the Council of Europe's Framework Convention for the Protection of National Minorities (1995), ratified by Poland in December 2000. The “guarantees” of this new regime, in order to be substantiated, require minorities to be able to mobilise sufficient political capital in order to have their rights (social, cultural, economic) taken into account, both within and without democratic fora. In Poland the most successful minority has been the German minority, which, during the late 1980s and early 1990s, was able to forge up-scale links with powerful allies such as the German government, the Union of Expellees and the Association of Compatriots. As the 1990s unfolded, these links weakened, in part because of the substantial progress made by the minority in gaining the recognition they had been aiming for, but also owing to the changing policies of allies as their own goals were achieved or reformulated.     

Dependency,the state and class in the neoliberal transition of Taiwan

The remarkable economic growth in Taiwan has served as a model of the developmental state as well as a source of scepticism about neoliberal policy for many less developed countries. However, since the mid-1980s Taiwan has gravitated from its previous statist model to the universally embraced 'market-orientated' restructuring. This study seeks to explain this neoliberal transition. A disaggregated approach is employed to break neoliberalism down into three distinct dimensions: market openness, fiscal austerity, and privatisation of public sector enterprises. The analysis results confirm that: (1) Taiwan's trade dependency on the USA constituted a decisive factor in the state opening its domestic market; (2) distributional politics was forged in a new but weak democracy to incorporate more interest groups in the fiscal expansion of the post-authoritarian era; and (3) the slow but increasingly steady progress of privatisation plans was influenced not by a 'back-to-the-market' idea but by the statist legacy with which bureaucrats attempted to manage public sector enterprises even after they became de jure private firms. The theoretical implications of this transition are discussed in the conclusion.     

Dangerised youth: the politics of security and development in Timor-Leste

International organisations, the national government and civil society alike have identified youth as a potential threat to the stability of the young state of Timor-Leste over the last decade. In this article, I ask how these actors define the danger of youth and what reasons they identify for the potential threat of young citizens for the society and state. Guided by a theoretical framework of Critical Security and Development Studies, I argue that while political manipulation as reason for youth violence was a prominent part of the security discourse in the years after the crisis in 2006, the discourse on the danger of youth in very recent international and national documents has been depoliticised. Despite decreasing numbers of youth-related violence, the threat construction has not vanished; rather, the language on youth has been adapted to the existing international discourse on violent youth as a threat to successful development. In this way, international and national actors have sustained the image of a society in need of management.     

Service Domains – The New Communities: A Case Study of Peterlee Sure Start,UK

In this paper, a Sure Start programme is used to explain an emergent ‘Service Domain’ model, built around innovative and creative service integration and complementary multi-professional partnerships for pre-school children and their families in disadvantaged communities. Sure Start, the cornerstone of the government's ambitious policy to eradicate child poverty in the UK by 2020, and a major departure from traditional single agency service delivery, emulates the Head Start initiative in the USA where funding came directly from federal government and by-passed state legislatures. The Sure Start funding mechanism had a pre-requisite to establish multi-agency partnerships with equal parent representation, as a result of central government's frustration with the failure of mainstream agencies to unite strategically and operationally to deliver integrated services. The Sure Start initiative represented a nationally coordinated attempt by central government to address previously disjointed approaches to children's services integration.     

Status and emotions in Russian foreign policy

The importance of status concerns on Russia's foreign policy agenda has been increasingly observed. This preoccupation with status is particularly visible in Russia's relations with the West. Although strong claims about status in Russian foreign policy are frequently made in public and private by researchers, journalists, politicians, diplomats and other commentators, such claims often lack any closer theoretical or empirical justification. The aim of this introductory article is, therefore, to outline the basic components that form the research agenda on status. Status, if properly examined, helps us understand not only Russian foreign policy, put also present-day international politics and its transformation in a broader sense.In a first part, we identify the theoretical voids concerning the study of international status. In a second part we outline the drivers and logic of status concerns, considering in particular identity theories, psychological approaches and existing research regarding emotions. The presented research agenda on status, derived from International Relations and related theories, provides a well-structured tool-box for investigating the link between status, identity and emotions in Russian foreign policy vis-à-vis the West. In a third part we present the key questions rose by the contributors to this Special Issue and summarize their main findings.     

The economic perspective on public administration

Public administration as a body of thought and field of study is changing from a paradigm dominated by political science to an eclectic array of theoretical contributions from all of the social sciences, particularly economics. Basic education and training in economics is essential to an effective contemporary public administration. Without a fundamental understanding of economics the “do-it-yourself-economics” which is practiced in policy-making contributes to basic errors in policy.

As the size and significance of the public sector has grown, increased attention has been paid to the discipline of public administration. What began as a structured way of describing the operation and structure of public management and public organizations has evolved into a discipline that has a much broader scope—the analysis of policy making in the public and not-for-profit sectors. In addition, employment in the public administration profession is more likely to be viewed as a vocation rather than as an avocation, in contrast to the past.

Once the repository of generalists in the areas of public management and organizational behavior, public administration has become a hodgepodge of individuals with varied backgrounds and training. This has resulted in a discipline that has notable strengths and weaknesses. A major weakness, and source of criticism from outsiders, is the discipline's lack of a paradigm—there is no easily identifiable intellectual structure. Its strength lies in the diverse theoretical, conceptual, and methodological contributions borrowed from other disciplines.

The most prominent contributor has been political science, where the discipline of public administration had its origins. Political science's influence on public administration still is evident: numerous public administration programs are located in political science departments; a large number of faculty in public administration programs are political scientists by training; and public administration professional societies and publications are dominated by political scientists.

Economics has made forays into public administration and established garrisons in some of the larger and more prominent programs. But, economics has failed to have a distinct impact on everyday public policy making. This is evident in many policy decisions that lack much semblance of basic economic understanding on the part of decision makers. Recent examples include the handling of the federal deficit, solutions to airway and airport congestion, the war on poverty, housing programs, dealings with international trading partners, proposed solutions to the third world debt crisis, resolution of the acid rain problem, and so forth.

Although other explanations can be offered for the absence of good economic reasoning in many policy decisions, a lot of the blame lies with public administration's failure to adequately integrate economics. Economics does not wield substantial influence in either the discipline's curricular matter or administrative structure. This failure partially can be attributed to a lack of understanding of what economics has to offer the discipline and partially can be attributed to the insolent demeanor of many economists.

This paper proposes to discuss what role economics can and should play in public administration. First, the relationship between public administration and economics is discussed. Second, deficiencies within the economics discipline that keep it from becoming an integral component of everyday policy making are discussed. Finally, ways to better blend economics into public policy making are proposed.     

Reproductive health policy‐makers: Comparing the influences of international and domestic institutions on abortion policy

Do policies protecting women's rights correspond with norm change at the state level or the level of international institutions? We examine this question, comparing domestic and international institutional activity in correlation with reproductive health policy change, specifically, abortion access policy. At the domestic level, we examine female legislators and policies set to encourage gender equality, namely, electoral gender quotas. In the international arena, our theory distinguishes regional from international inter‐governmental bodies. Original data with measurement innovations introduced here—including the Comparative Abortion Policy Index (CAPI1 and CAPI2)—are analysed for over 150 countries for close to two decades. We find a heretofore‐overlooked relationship between international entities and reproductive health. Gender quotas, however, do not correspond with the general association between female representation and pro‐women policy. When researchers and policy‐makers consider gender quotas to promote women's rights, they may be advised to encourage female political participation through more organic means.     

National security and domestic policy-making: the similarities and the critical differences

This analysis focuses on the discussion of whether (and how) national security and domestic policy-making processes are similar and/or different. Though many similarities are evident, it is the contention of this article that there are critical differences between national security and domestic policy-making that fundamentally affect the output from each of them. In addition, it is essential that public administrators develop a fuller understanding of national security policy-making processes since these processes do have theoretical, practical, and organizational impacts on institutional effectiveness, democratic processes, and governmental productivity. Let's remember that in the immediate post-Vietnam period many of us in the public management sectors--federal, state, and local-- dreamed of vast amounts of money being mainstreamed into the domestic coffers. Today that expectation is called the “peace dividend”. Little did we understand how much policy-making sophistication was embedded in the DOD. Therefore, as we move into the 1990s, this analysis reminds public administrators of their responsibilities to understand the national security arena in order to detect both the unique features as well as the broader generalizations attending this microcosm of public policy-making. All of us in public administration must make certain that this fertile laboratory of public policy is researched and investigated so as to ensure that the proper policy trade-offs are made in the 1990s.     

Public administration and public policy: old perspectives,new directions

Public administration has rather studiously avoided serious consideration of its ties to public policy throughout most of this century. The politics/administration dichotomy leaves a lasting legacy. Policy has a central place in the ongoing effort to explain what public administration is and how it functions. Policy defines the purpose of agencies, stipulates much of the detail about their organization, provides authority and legitimacy, and makes them important -- probably the most important--instruments of policy effectuation and evaluation. Public administration has traditionally displayed an interest in management; it has been studied, taught, and practiced as method, “how to.” This instrumentalist orientation has addressed successively different perspectives, all subsumed within the rubric of public administration. The first of these emphasized administrative reform, followed by an interest in scientific management. These left a legacy that largely treated administration as an end in itself, divorced from matters of policy. Further developments during the depression and post-war years gave prominence to human relations and decisionmaking. These newer orientations emphasized public administration's non-involvement with policy, although decisionmaking proved less inward-oriented and contributed some methodological insights for better understanding policy's ties to public administration. Decisionmaking's preoccupation with unifunctional organizations accountable to a single power center has proved a formidable obstacle to empirical investigations of policy/administration ties, however. This dilemma calls for new perspectives from which to study these ties; one promising perspective is the examination of administrative involvement in successive stages of the policy process.     

Private administration of a public function: The news election service

The United States government has no elections office and does not attempt to administer congressional and presidential elections. The responsibility for the administration of elections and certification of winners in the United States national elections rests with the states. The states divide election administration responsibilities between state and local election officials, whose objective is an efficiently administered honest election, with the ballots correctly tabulated. The formal structure of election administration in the United States is not capable of providing tirely results of the presidential and congressional election. Similar structural difficulties in other policy areas often result in ad hoc operating agreements or informal cooperation among agencies at different levels of the federal system. In the case of election administration, however, the public officials have abdicated responsibility for election night aqgregation of the national Vote totals to a private organization, News Election Service, which is owned by five major news organizations. This private organization performs without a contract, without public compensation, and without supervision by public officials. It makes decisions concerning its duties according to its own criteria. The questions of responsibility and accountability have not arisen in part because of the private organization's performance record and in part because the responsibility was assumed gradually over a lengthy period without ever being evaluated as an item on the public agenda.     

Towards pluralism and partnership in management development in local government

'Joined-up government' has been a policy thrust characterising much of the first term of the Labour government. The last four years have seen a flourish of area-based and local partnership initiatives. Information and IT are seen as crucial to facilitate joined-up government and improved service delivery at both central and local level. Ambitious targets are thus set to make all dealings with government deliverable electronically by 2005. This article examines data sharing in a local partnership, using as an example the preparation of the Children's Service Plan 2000-2003 in the city of Sheffield, setting out the national policy background, with particular reference to children's services plans; introducing the project; discussing the results obtained in the data collection exercise, and concluding that the organisational and cultural change necessary to share information effectively require time, and above all a period of relative stability to mature and take hold.     

Transfer payments,mothers' income and child health in ecuador

We evaluate the impact of the Bono Solidario, a transfer payment scheme in Ecuador, on children's nutritional status. In addition to testing for pure income effects, because the programme transferred money to mothers of young children, we test whether mother's income has a stronger effect on children's heights and weights than ordinary household income. We draw two main conclusions: that the Bono Solidario transfer payment scheme has had a statistically significant but quite modest impact on children's nutritional status, and that this impact is no different than any other income effect on height and weight. In particular, the fact that the Bono is transferred to mothers has not made it more efficacious at reducing malnutrition than other household income.     

Evaluating Nashi's Sustainability: Autonomy,Agency and Activism

This article explores the development of the Russian youth movement Nashi and its relationship with the state with the purpose of assessing the movement's long-term sustainability. Establishing a link between activists' political autonomy and their potential ability to sustain the movement without state support, this article examines the validity of the assumption that Nashi is simply an extension of the state, which the state can unilaterally direct as it sees fit. It contends that despite the movement's allegiance to the incumbent regime and its utilisation of state resources, Nashi activists have become increasingly politically autonomous and therefore capable of sustaining the movement in their own right.     

Democracy,bureaucracy, and state capacity in Taiwan

Taiwan has long had a reputation for effective policy-making based on a highly skilled and educated bureaucracy. In addition, this capacity for technocratic leadership has not resulted in a huge, inefficient bureaucracy since the size of government remains comparatively small. This paper explores the implications of Taiwan's recent democratization for the effectiveness of the country's public administration. On the one hand, democratization reduced the power of regime conservatives, thereby expanding the role of technocrats in the government; on the other burgeoning corruption and policy gridlock have clearly undercut effective policy-making. Thus, the most fundamental challenge for public administration in Taiwan appears to be re-establishing the bureaucratic integrity of technocratic government.     

Forming community councils East Kilbride

The principle of directly elected mayors forms a key part of the Labour government's strategy to modernise local democracy and strengthen accountability. First applied to London, the government has sought to extend the institution, allowing local referendums to determine whether the public favours the principle or not. This article examines the state of public opinion regarding elected mayors before reporting on the outcome of referendums held since the 2001 general election. We then consider the results of mayoral elections, specifically addressing issues of electoral participation, legitimation and partisan support. In conclusion, we consider whether its experience with both referendums and mayoral elections may have affected the government's enthusiasm for further expansion of this institution across the local government system.     

The Legislative Process in Republican China: The 1930 Nationalist Family Law and the Controversy over Surnames for Married Women

Abstract

This article investigates the legislative process that produced the 1930 Nationalist Family Law Book of the Republican Civil Code, focusing in particular on the debate over married women's surnames. In the accompanying discussion, Guomindang (GMD) lawmakers, legal experts, educators, women's rights advocates, and others grappled in a remarkably open manner over how best to address the surname question in light of their concerns with Party consolidation, legal modernisation, gender equality, social stability, and individual identity. Although the outcome of the legislative process affirmed customary surname practices (albeit with progressive overtones), the process itself was uniquely radical, with participants thoroughly reevaluating one of the oldest and most fundamental patriarchal institutions in Chinese society. The legislative and post-legislative debate over surnames illuminates the Nanjing Decade as a singular transitional period in the history of Chinese law and gender during which law was subject to revision and amendment rather than orthodoxy, and GMD policy toward women was subject to deliberation rather than dictated by ideology.     

Hungary and the European Union: The political implications of societal security promotion

Hungary's constitutional commitment to support kin-nationals beyond its borders (nation policy) has been a central feature of its post-1989 foreign policy and highlights a particularly important national security concern—the societal security of national identity, culture, language and tradition. This article examines Hungary's societal security concerns and the policy methods it utilises, including its EU membership and the promotion of minority rights at the European level, to help combat these concerns. It is suggested that Hungary has found it somewhat difficult to balance its societal security policy objective with internal economic demands on its welfare system and its external foreign policy objective to maintain good neighbourly relations. This article also notes that Hungary's attempts to Europeanise, or rather ‘EU-ise’, minority and ethnic rights issues as a means to enhance societal security for the Hungarian nation has certain political consequences for the EU. This suggests that societal security provision is an issue that cannot be overlooked when trying to understand the longer-term implications of EU eastern enlargement.     

Public administration in Marshall Dimock's textbooks

This article examines the relationship between Marshall Dimock's positive, broad-based concept of public administration and his approach to writing undergraduate textbooks. Analysis shows that both Dimock's American government and public administration textbooks provide a different slant on public agencies than that available in most current introductory volumes. In particular, his American government textbook is more positive in tone about agencies than are its modern counterparts. The public administration textbook has comparative material that rarely appears in introductory-level textbooks.

This article analyzes how Marshall Dimock's conception of public administration as an important area of study with links to policy and leadership anchored his textbook writing. In the 1950s Dimock co-authored two popular textbooks for basic undergraduate courses, one in American government and the other in public administration.⁽¹⁾

Scholars still debate what textbooks in either field should teach students about public agencies. Cigler and Neiswender argue that current American government textbooks portray administration in a negative light. All authors see bureaucracy as a problem of some sort, few explain the role administrators play in shaping policy and none discuss reasons to enter the public service.⁽²⁾ Cigler and Neiswender suggest that American government textbooks must change to aid accurate perceptions of the administrative role. In particular, they believe the texts must add material on the public service as a profession and compare American agencies with those in other nations.

Since public administration textbooks are a key way that majors in the field learn material, debate ensues on what material they should contain. Recent articles explore how textbooks define key terms such as policy and how they integrate the work of various theorists.⁽³⁾

While all widely-used textbooks deal with both the political environment and internal agency functions (e.g., personnel, finance), no consensus exists on how to allocate space between political and managerial concerns nor on exactly which subtopics should be covered. No consensus exists on how much space should be devoted to policy making and policy analysis with some textbooks covering this topic and others skimming it lightly.

One often cited problem with contemporary texts is the lack of a comparative focus and a concomitant need to internationalize the curriculum.⁽⁴⁾ The thrust of current proposals is that students need a more broad-based education to prepare them for global leadership.

Interestingly, Dimock's approach to public administration led him to write textbooks that in some ways surpass what is available today. While the majority of the topics he presents (and their ordering) are similar to current efforts, he offers unique emphases that deal with the above mentioned criticisms. Far from being an exercise in academic nostalgia, examining Dimock's textbooks is a useful way of giving current writers new insights.

To appreciate Dimock's approach to textbook construction we first have to identify the core concepts behind his approach to public administration education. Afterwards, we can analyze the treatment of public agencies in American Government in Action, relating it to Cigler and Neiswender's critique of contemporary textbooks, and -examine how various editions of Public Administration conceptualize the field.     

The Impact of Adult Mortality and Parental Deaths on Primary Schooling in North-Western Tanzania

Mortality of parents and other adults due to the African AIDS epidemic could reduce children's primary schooling by reducing households' ability to pay fees, raising the opportunity cost of children's time, and leaving orphaned children with guardians who care less about their education than would their parents. This study measures the impact of adult deaths and orphan status on primary school attendance and hours spent at school using a panel household survey from north-western Tanzania, an area hard-hit by the AIDS epidemic. Attendance was delayed for maternal orphans and children in poor households with a recent adult death; there was no evidence that children 7-14 dropped out of primary school due to orphan status or adult deaths. However, among children already attending, school hours were significantly lower in the months prior to an adult death in the household and seemed to recover following the death. In addition, girls sharply reduced their hours in school immediately after losing a parent. Improvements in school quality and better access to secondary education would improve outcomes for all children, including those affected by adult AIDS mortality. Beyond that, public policy needs to focus on the special schooling constraints faced by children affected by adult deaths, both in terms of increased opportunity costs of their time and the psychological impacts, with an eye to how they might be mitigated and at what cost.