The Impact of the Australian Government Job Network Contracting on Not‐for‐Profit Service Providers

This article examines the impact of Australian government contracting for the provision of Job Network services on not‐for‐profit organisations ¹ . The term not‐for‐profit is used to categorise organisations which are variously described as non‐government, non‐profit, community and third sector organisations ( Lyons 2001 ).     

David Cameron's ‘Problem’ with Women: Representing Women in the Coalition Government

Prior to the election in 2010 David Cameron pledged that his first cabinet would comprise one‐third women and would be the most family friendly ever. Since forming the Coalition Government, he appears to have a ‘problem’ with women. We argue that this problem stems from: the weak representation of women in cabinet and across government; the diminishing resources available to government actors to support gender equality policy; and women's exclusion from the key Coalition networks, both formal and informal, that determine government policy.     

The Banking Crisis: Grid,Group and the State of the Debate

The banking crisis and the recession it induced provide a salient backdrop to domestic and international politics. ² The International Monetary Fund (IMF 2010) estimates that total banking losses between 2008 and 2010 exceeded US$2.3 trillion. This article uses grid‐group theory to review the existing literature on the causes of the banking crisis and, in doing so, distinguishes between hierarchical, individualist, egalitarian and fatalist accounts of what went wrong and of what needs to be done to prevent another crisis from occurring. It is argued that the existing reform agenda is underpinned by a hierarchical analysis of the causes of the crisis and that this risks narrowing the support base for the reform process.     

Treasury and Economic Policy – Beyond the Dismal Science

‘Treasury advises and assists the Treasurer, and through him the Government, in the discharge of his and its responsibilities in relation to economic, fiscal and monetary matters. The Department's main responsibilities lie in the field of general economic management’, Treasury, Annual Report 1983. ‘The Treasury's mission is to improve the wellbeing of the Australian people by providing sound and timely advice to the Government, based on objective and thorough analysis of options, and by assisting Treasury ministers in the administration of their responsibilities and the implementation of government decisions’, Treasury, Annual Report 2010a . ‘You can't really evaluate the performance of Treasury in terms of “outputs and outcomes” in any formal or public way because most of the time we are dissuading Treasurers and governments from doing stupid things’, Senior Treasury Official 2000. ‘We once had a “Treasury line”, but now we are more pluralistic’, Senior Treasury Official 2010. ‘Treasury's executive board hunts as a pack, they trust each other and they’ve known each other for long times’, Senior Treasury Official 2010.     

A Lib Dem Perspective on Centre‐Left Politics Post‐2015

This article analyses the political crisis faced by the centre‐left, not just in the UK but throughout the Western world, with few exceptions (Canada). The Liberal Democrat party has been a victim of that crisis, though there are encouraging signs of recovery and there is scope for a wider realignment on the centre‐left.     

How mass media attract political elites’ attention

Political agenda‐setting research has shown that policy makers are responsive vis‐à‐vis media priorities. However, the mechanisms behind this effect have remained understudied so far. In particular, agenda‐setting scholars have difficulties determining to what extent politicians react to media coverage purely because of the information it contains (information effect), and to what extent the effect is driven not by what the media say but by the fact that certain information is in the media (media channel effect), which is valued for its own sake – for instance, because media coverage is considered to be a reflection of public opinion. By means of a survey‐embedded experiment with Belgian, Canadian and Israeli political elites (N = 410), this study tests whether the mere fact that an issue is covered by the news media causes politicians to pay attention to this issue. It shows that a piece of information gets more attention from politicians when it comes via the media rather than an identical piece of information coming via a personal e‐mail. This effect occurs largely across the board: it is not dependent on individual politician characteristics.     

The Changing Nature … and Costs … of Election Administration

Changes during the last decade have significantly altered the nature of election administration and driven up its costs. Interviews with practitioner representatives from the elections community reveal a number of issues that continue to influence this field. Expense data from two counties illustrate how policy changes affect election costs. Scheduled ending of federal funding threatens a “perfect storm” in election finance that may undermine hard‐won advances from 2000 to 2010. Possible cost reduction measures as well as critical challenges facing election administration are forecast for 2010 and the years ahead.     

International Organizations ICTs Policies: E‐Democracy and E‐Government for Political Development

New technologies provide new channels of access to political information and participation in decision‐making processes. This assumption is clearly important in the action plans and policies of International Organizations (World Bank, Organisation for Economic Co‐operation and Development, United Nations), which have assumed a leadership role in the reform of political institutions. Starting from an analysis of the reasons that have brought the state and processes of institution building back into focus, this paper will reconstruct the International Organizations' vision of the transformative potential of new information technologies and their activity in this field. Particular attention will be devoted to e‐democracy and e‐government as policies to build democracy in developing countries.     

A psycho‐political profile of party activists and left‐wing and right‐wing extremists

Previous studies comparing ideological groups have been restricted to tests of between‐group differences in the means of relevant political psychological variables, thereby neglecting group differences in the variances, meanings and nomological networks of the tested variables. A first exploratory study used data from the European Social Survey (N = 7,314) comparing groups of political party members on the basis of their scores on a self‐placement left–right scale. The second study (N = 69) constituted an in‐depth test for the presence of differences between samples of political activists of moderate parties, communists, anarchists and right‐wing extremists. The results revealed that there is a fair amount of heterogeneity within left‐wing and right‐wing extremists, indicating a substantial amount of within‐group variance of social attitudes, values and prejudice. Moreover, the extremist ideologies are best approached as distinct ideologies that cannot be reduced to extreme versions of moderate ideology, and differences in the meanings and nomological networks of the various extremist ideologies were also obtained. It is erroneous to consider members of extremist groups as being ‘all alike’. The findings obtained from samples of political moderates are not a particularly solid basis for theories about extremism.     

Connecting deliberative mini‐publics to representative decision making

Despite some prominent critics, deliberative democrats tend to be optimistic about the potential of deliberative mini‐publics. However, the problem with current practices is that mini‐publics are typically used by officials on an ad hoc basis and that their policy impacts remain vague. Mini‐publics seem especially hard to integrate into representative decision making. There are a number of reasons for this, especially prevailing ideas of representation and accountability as well as the contestatory character of representative politics. This article argues that deliberative mini‐publics should be regarded as one possible way of improving the epistemic quality of representative decision making and explores different institutional designs through which deliberative mini‐publics could be better integrated into representative institutions. The article considers arrangements which institutionalise the use of mini‐publics; involve representatives in deliberations; motivate public interactions between mini‐publics and representatives; and provide opportunities to ex post scrutiny or suspensive veto powers for mini‐publics. The article analyses prospects and problems of these measures, and considers their applicability in different contexts of representative politics.     

Evidence‐Based Policy‐Making: The Elusive Search for Rational Public Administration

Evidence‐based policy making has been criticised as a revival of the ‘rationality project’ in which democratic politics is regarded as rent‐seeking and a deadweight loss to society. In response, the evidence‐based policy movement has failed to articulate a defence in which the rationality animating the policy process is situational and contextual rather than unique and authoritative. This article traces the movement's motto –‘what works?’– to the American pragmatist movement, whose influence on Harold Lasswell and New Labour in the UK was substantial. This article argues that the ambition for evidence‐based policy‐making should be seen in terms of the transition from a single, unique and universal rationality toward multiple rationalities that vary according to different policy making contexts. Interpreted in such terms, evidence‐based policy making can avoid several of the main criticisms, and offer strong potential to contribute to solving policy problems.     

Network Governance and Public Participation in Policy‐Making: Federal Community Cabinets in Australia

The Australian Labor Party's (ALP) 2007 Policy Platform asserted ‘Labor will pursue new and innovative measures designed to foster greater participation and engagement of the Australian population in the political process’ ( Manwaring 2010 ). As such they seemed to have a clear commitment to a more participatory form of democracy. This commitment appeared to be reflected in two initiatives they introduced in power: the 2020 Summit (on this see Fawcett, Manwaring and Marsh 2011 ) and federal community cabinets. More broadly it could be argued that Labor were following a trend identified internationally as a move from government to governance, more specifically to ‘network governance’ (Rhodes 1997) in which governments encouraged greater participation in policy‐making, recognising that governments could at best steer, not row. Indeed, as Marinetto contends ( 2003 : 593), this idea has taken on a ‘semblance of orthodoxy’ in discussions of public policy.     

Accounting for coalition‐building in the European Union: Budget negotiations and the south

Which parameters affect coalition building in budgetary negotiations? In this article, three distinct levels of analysis are identified to account for coalition building patterns, associated with domestic politics, domestic socioeconomic structures and EU politics. At the level of domestic politics, ideology points to cross‐governmental affinity of a partisan nature; at the level of socioeconomic structures, similarity of policy interests, generated by cross‐national socioeconomic convergence with EU policy standards, informs coalition formation patterns; at the EU politics level, the intergovernmental power balance influences the political aspirations of each Member State in the integration process and coalition‐building decisions. Two sets of parameters affect the evolution of EU coalition patterns, corresponding to the integration impact on the EU (new cleavages) and on the Member States (the impact of Europeanisation). This analytical framework is used to examine the southern coalition (Spain, Greece, Portugal) in the four multi‐annual financial frameworks (1988, 1992, 1999 and 2005).     

Representation as a median mandate: Taking cross‐national differences seriously

The extent and ways in which popular preferences influence government policy are absolutely central to our understanding of modern democracy. Paul Warwick's discussion of these in the European Journal of Political Research in 2010 puts itself at the heart of the debate with its critique of the median mandate theory of McDonald and Budge, proposing an alternative ‘bilateralist’ concept of representation. This article questions whether this concept has much to add to our theoretical understanding of representational processes. However, Warwick's further conceptual points deserve serious consideration. These concern the time horizons within which representative processes work, and the status of the median position given multi‐motivated voting. At the evidential level, Warwick argues that survey‐based measures of voter and party left–right positions fail to produce the correspondence between median and government policy positions that median mandate theory would have us expect. However, survey‐based measures of median voter and party placements obscure important cross‐national variation. Using the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems ( CSES 2007 ), as Warwick does, this article shows that survey respondents norm their own and their country's party positions to their national context. The consequence is to make the political centre in all nations appear similar. Allowing for the relevant cross‐national differences brings the relationship between the median voter and government position back in line with expectations.     

Strategic Thinking,Shared Meaning‐Making and the Interpretive Turn in Policy ‐ A Case Study

Governments' demands for results in a complex and rapidly changing policy environment call for more strategic and nuanced ways of approaching policy. Drawing on the work of the British interpretive ‘turn’, evidenced in the network governance literature and the differentiated polity critique of Westminster narratives, and of Liedkta on strategy as design, this paper suggests that shared strategic narratives, more consciously applied to policy development and implementation, could deliver better results; that consensus from shared meaning‐making may have depth, and that it could emphasise the transformative over the conservative forces of individuals' traditions and beliefs. Data for the paper came from a micro‐study on the implementation of SmartGate automated border processing system in New Zealand.     

Looking for Sustainability in Not‐for‐Profit Program Delivery: An Experiment in Providing Post‐Bushfire Recovery Programs

This article examines an experiment in delivering services and programs in communities that were affected by the 2009 Victorian bushfires. Three not‐for‐profit agencies received funding to develop and deliver programs over a period of three years with the aim of achieving sustainability for the programs thus created. They were not constrained by the requirements of normal government funding, which is short term, subject to competitive tendering and targeted at specific programs and client groups. The nature of the funding allowed the three agencies to introduce innovative programs tailored to the needs of the community and with the aim of building community capacity. However the question of whether the programs are sustainable when existing funding runs out remains open.     

Central‐local relations in the people's Republic of China: Trends,processes and impacts for policy implementation

Central–local relations are a matter of great importance to developmentalists because they highlight an intriguing puzzle in public administration especially in large states: how policies decided at higher echelons of the formal system can possibly be implemented by the multitude of intermediary and local actors across the system. In the case of China—the most populous nation in the world, the contrast between the authoritarian façade of the Chinese regime and yet the proliferation of implementation gaps over many policy arenas adds additional complexity to the puzzle. This article reviews changes in central–local relations in the 60 years of history of People's Republic of China (PRC) as the outcome of four co‐evolving processes, and clarifies the roles of each process: state building and national integration, development efficiency, career advancement and external influences. It points out the continuous pre‐dominance of administrative decentralization from 1950s to present time, and the new emphasis on institutionalized power sharing in the context of new state‐market boundaries since 1980s. In conclusion, the article suggests going beyond the traditional reliance on the compliance model to understand central–local interactions and the abundant implementation gaps in a context of central–local co‐agency, thereby improving policy implementation. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Home Insulation Program: An Example of Australian Government Failure

The public concern surrounding the Australian Government Home Insulation Program (HIP) continues despite the abrupt termination of the program in the light of its deleterious safety consequences and fiscally wasteful management. This enduring unease has been reflected in a variety of official inquiries and reports including the Hawke Review (2010) , an inquiry by the Senate Environment, Communications and the Arts References Committee (2010), a performance audit by the Commonwealth Auditor‐General (2010) and two Departmental annual reports (DCCEE 2010; DEWHA 2010). Taking into account this body of evidence, we argue that the HIP represents an example of government failure, which, in turn, led to a range of unintended ‘human costs’ including the tragic deaths of four young installation workers. Moreover it is also argued that, in future, programs like the HIP are best administered by state/territory and local governments which are often best placed to deliver ‘on the ground’ services.     

Effects of Financial Incentives on Saving Outcomes and Material Well‐Being: Evidence From a Randomized Controlled Trial in Uganda

The use of savings products to promote financial inclusion has increasingly become a policy priority across sub‐Saharan Africa, yet little is known about how families respond to varying levels of savings incentives and whether the promotion of incentivized savings in low‐resource settings may encourage households to restrict expenditures on basic needs. Using data from a randomized controlled trial in Uganda, we examine: (1) whether low‐income households enrolled in an economic‐empowerment intervention consisting of matched savings, workshops, and mentorship reduced spending on basic needs and (2) how varied levels of matching contributions affected household savings and consumption behavior. We compared primary school‐attending AIDS‐affected children (N = 1,383) randomized to a control condition with two intervention arms with differing savings‐match incentives: 1:1 (Bridges) and 1:2 (Bridges PLUS). We found that: (1) 24 months post‐intervention initiation, children in Bridges and Bridges PLUS were more likely to have accumulated savings than children in the control condition; (2) higher match incentives (Bridges PLUS) led to higher deposit frequency but not higher savings in the bank; (3) intervention participation did not result in material hardship; and (4) in both intervention arms, participating families were more likely to start a family business and diversify their assets.