Between the Welfare State and Local Government Autonomy

Upon what objectives and ideological considerations have the Norwegian parliament developed its policies vis-à-vis local government during the second half of the twentieth century? Have the reforms and decisions made in parliament contributed to increased central control of local policy-making, or have local political authorities been given more powers and autonomy in deciding on local affairs? To what extent have ideological differences between political parties made any impression on the policies adopted? These are the major issues to be addressed in this study of debates and decisions over local government affairs in the Norwegian parliament since the late 1940s. It is observed that the parliament's policies have become increasingly centralised in terms of putting restrictions on the discretion of local decision-makers in acting according to their own preferences. The study also reveals rather clear and stable ideological divisions across the major political parties as far as policies towards local government are concerned.     

Authoritarian constitutionalism in Putin's Russia: A pragmatic constitutional court in a dual state

This article analyzes the successful adaptation of the Russian Constitutional Court (RCC) to an increasingly authoritarian regime under President Vladimir Putin. It argues that the key to its success lay in its pragmatic approach, whereby the Court decides cases that matter to the regime in a politically expedient way, while giving priority to legal and constitutional considerations in other cases, thereby recognizing the reality of a dual state. Over the years the RCC has taken a pragmatic approach in its reaction to changes in the rules of its operations, in its personnel, and in the policies of the popular political leader, including reducing the country's subordination of European legal norms. In so doing, the Court and its skillful chairman Valerii Zorkin achieved considerable autonomy in pursuing its own legal vision on many issues and even improved the implementation of its decisions by other judges and political bodies alike (previously a big problem). In short, the RCC developed its own version of “authoritarian constitutionalism”, which may serve as a model for constitutional judicial bodies in other authoritarian states.     

Facilitative Mayors in Complex Environments: Why Political Will Matters

Under certain circumstances the style of leadership of mayors can be the result of their context perceptions and their sense of political autonomy and efficacy. This assessment indicates that the political action of the mayor discloses a particular style of leadership that derives from his/her political will. This article suggests an analysis of political will that intends to explain why local leaders adopt facilitative styles of leadership. In this formulation, the leadership facilitative style is a consequence of the political will to act accordingly, and this is explained by three main determinants: the leaders’ awareness of their complex and networked context, their independent sense of autonomy and their belief about their own political efficacy. Results from case studies, with extensive interviews with mayors, conducted in Portuguese municipalities, will be presented to reinforce and explore these hypotheses and to discuss the feasibility of this framework.     

The Political Economy of Performance Standards: Automotive Industrial Policy in Comparative Historical Perspective

A substantial body of literature holds that industrial policies work best when their beneficiaries are subject to demanding performance standards. By conditioning access to their low-cost loans and lucrative markets on foreign sales and local content, for example, East Asian officials forced their manufacturers to improve quality, cut costs, and develop linkages to allied industries – that generated jobs and foreign exchange revenues of their own – in the so-called miracle years. But the politics of performance standards are themselves unclear. Why are they more common in some countries than others? Are they more likely to be imposed by autocratic than democratic regimes? And, if so, why? I address these questions by examining cross-national data on export and local content requirements in the auto industry in 1980; find that they all but presupposed autocracy in labour-surplus – but not labour-scarce – countries; explore the interactions of political regimes, productive assets, and performance standards in South Korea in particular; and discuss their theoretical and methodological implications. The results not only imply that efforts to build new comparative advantages over the long run by means of performance standards that put existing comparative advantages at risk in the short run are unlikely to succeed in labour-surplus democracies but, in so doing, speak to the merits of ‘middle-N’ methods and typologies that try to reconcile the at times competing goals of generality and historical detail in cross-national research.     

Double-Edged Swords: Expert-Stakeholders as (Slightly) Unreliable Instruments for Control and Autonomy of Executive Agencies

Establishing executive agencies at arms's length of parent departments has caused widespread concern regarding their autonomy. In the Netherlands, ministries have established different types of boards to monitor agencies. Also, agencies have established an independent review commission. The different boards and the review commission can be looked at as expert stakeholders. This article poses the question whether and how expert stakeholders contribute to either the ministries' control on agencies or the autonomy of agencies. The article is based on qualitative research on six of the largest executive agencies. The article concludes that expert stakeholders act as double-edged swords: they contribute to control on agencies but also to their autonomy. Expert stakeholders improve the monitoring capacity of ministries and thus contribute to control. Conversely, they also strengthen agencies, as they provide political multiplicity and boost reputational uniqueness. The question of which of these prevails is mainly influenced by time, capture, and policy crises.     

‘State of exception’ or ‘state in exile’? The fallacy of appropriating Agamben on Palestinian refugee camps

To refer to Palestinian refugee camps as states of exception, appropriating the paradigm of Giorgio Agamben, is definitely tempting. Agamben argues that in times of crisis, individual rights of citizens are diminished and entire categories of people kept outside the political system. Nevertheless, there are flaws in applying Agamben’s perspective on Palestinian camps. It acquits the camp residents from the autonomy over their own political agency. Historically, in Lebanon, camp residents experienced an almost limitless access to free political organisation. But this access has not been converted into the development of representative, legitimate political structures.     

ONE‐STOP SHOPS FOR SOCIAL WELFARE: THE ADAPTATION OF AN ORGANIZATIONAL FORM IN THREE COUNTRIES

In recent years welfare services in Western Europe have been criticized for poor coordination. In response, ‘seamlessness’ has emerged as a vision for public administration with ‘one‐stop shops' viewed as means to reach this. This article conceptualizes the one‐stop shop and presents a three country case study to examine its drivers and its adaptation. In all countries the reforms meant mergers driven by hopes for a single entrance to services as well as proximity to citizens. However, the analysis of task portfolios, participant structure, instruments and autonomy reveal important variations in the adaptations. The specific configurations of one‐stop shops that emerged were partially a product of compromises and negotiations influenced by the political and performance priorities of central government. The classical trade‐off between specialization and coordination persists, but by offering users ICT‐based services one can to some extent maintain specialization behind the frontline and still provide services that are coordinated from a user perspective.     

Mobilization of Artists and Understanding of the Political Field: Struggles Around the Contract Work System

For the last 20 years, many mobilizations related to the contract work system that is subsidized by the general unemployment insurance system have occurred in various French artistic fields, mainly in the performing arts. They are characterized by an intense politicization which can be explained by the role of the state in these fields. On the one hand, state intervention suspends the rules of the market economy. On the other hand, the state is one of the main users of the unemployment insurance system which externalizes labor costs. Politicization is also based on the limited resources of the mobilized groups. Thus, these groups promote permanent media coverage of their fights in order to force the political leaders to speak out in their support. Politicization has also led these groups to try to destroy the political capital of some Ministers of Culture. In conclusion, the present work emphasizes that the artists’ demand for the state, which relies on the will to increase aesthetic autonomy, may eventually lead to the opposite situation, the artists becoming dependent on political constraints they do not master.     

Central coercion or local autonomy? A comparative analysis of policy instrument choice in refugee settlement policies

Although existing literature on central–local governance includes comprehensive studies on how constitutional and financial frameworks regulate local government autonomy, this study seeks explanations for the introduction or absence of central coercion within these frameworks. The analysis studies six processes of policy instrument choice with different outcomes in Norway, Denmark and Sweden in the field of refugee settlement. It finds that a uniform perception of crisis and political compromises make political parties abandon their political–ideological standpoints relating to central–local governance. Additionally, the success and failure of political strategies of obfuscation and of dividing the opposition help to explain the different outcomes. The study reveals differences in the political salience of central–local governance in three countries that have systematically been categorised in the same groups in central–local studies. Consequently, more studies on how and why local autonomy is regulated within national frameworks are necessary to understand the actual autonomy that local governments enjoy.     

The Civil Servant as Legislator: Law Making in British Administration

How are government policy commitments converted into legislation and what happens in the conversion? The role of civil servants in preparing legislation is far more important than is generally assumed. By looking at the work of four recent bill  teams in Britain – teams of civil servants given the task of developing Acts of Parliament – their crucial roles in initiating policies, placing them on the political agenda (even helping secure their place in a party manifesto), developing them, making sure they pass through parliament and enacting them once they have reached the statute books are assessed. The article explores the composition and working methods of bill teams. These teams work with considerable autonomy in developing legislation, but it cannot be assumed that they operate outside ministerial control. Teams see themselves as reflecting the priorities of the government in general and their ministers in particular. Yet ministers typically know relatively little about the law they are bringing in until they receive the submissions and briefings from their officials. Perhaps the biggest danger for democracy is not a civil service putting forward proposals which a minister feels forced to accept, but rather that ministers do not notice or fully appreciate what is being proposed in their name despite having the political authority to change it and a civil service which bends over backwards to consult and accommodate them.     

Must Nations Become States?

A world in which every nation has become a state, that is, a world in which cultural and political units coincide, would be a very different world from the one we know. There are now close to 200 political units recognized as states in the international system. Nations, understood as cultural units, are not as easily identified. Taking only language as a defining criterion, one could count some 6,000 linguistically defined groups. Many of these groups number so few speakers and are so close to extinction that their future can be discounted.2 If one turns to other cultural markers, however, from religion (or church) and ethnicity, in the sense of common origins, to “a shared style of expression,” the number of cultural groups may well be almost unlimited. Many such groups would call themselves “nations” as a dignified form of selfdesignation. The claim that cultural nations must become political states thus presumes strongly on present-day reality and has deep implications for the future. An international system consisting of many hundreds, possibly even thousands, of state units would function along different lines from the one we know. Granted that such an outcome is not likely to be realized integrally, the general theoretical proposition underlying this vision receives a respectful hearing. Though resisted by many jurists and other scholars, the thesis that nationhood, understood in a cultural sense, must-both in the sense of “should” and in the sense of “will necessarily”—entail political statehood continues to advance in public consciousness. After the end of decolonization, where state creation was dictated by unique considerations, we have continued to witness a rise in the number of recognized states and, even more so, in the number of struggling independence movements. Debate focuses on procedural issues, such as modes of separation from existing states, rather than on the fundamental premises underlying and legitimizing the acquisition of statehood. In this paper I propose first to examine three sorts of arguments invoked to justify the claim that cultural nations must—in the different senses of that term—become political states. These are arguments that can be described as definitional, causal or functional, and moral. The definitional argument makes a case based on linguistic coherence in the use of terms. The causal or functional argument founds itself on a sociology of modernity which posits the interdependence of culture and politics. The moral argument is rooted in an ethics of autonomy and self-rule, recognition and identity.     

Les Ninja,les Cobra et les Zoulou crèvent l’écran à Brazzaville: le rôle les médias et la construction des identités de violence politique

In his recently published studies, the author analyzed the development and use of militia groups in the political conflicts that shook Congo-Brazzaville in the 1990s. After briefly reviewing these events, he points up the change in recruiting militiamen that occurred in the last phase of these conflicts. His text is primarily concerned with the role of Western mass culture in shaping the bodies and identities of these militiamen and the militiamen’s sense of identity. From the late 1950s (here the author draws on the research of Georges Balandier) to the late 1990s, the young men of Brazzaville were inspired in constructing a modernity of their own bodies by certain Western action films. The graphic violence in these films, perpetrated by characters whom the young men adopted as their heroes, legitimated their own use of violence.     

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.     

THE IDEA BROKERS: THE IMPACT OF THINK TANKS ON BRITISH GOVERNMENT

Although there are few think tanks in Britain they have been credited with considerable influence on government policies since the late 1970s. This article charts their recent history, distinguishing between larger, 'establishment' bodies like the Policy Studies Institute and smaller, more politically partisan bodies such as the Centre for Policy Studies; generally the latter have enjoyed greater influence. It identifies the distinctive characteristics of these bodies–their ideological orientation, their concentration on élite opinion formers, their short to medium-term horizons, their emphasis on originality and publicity. Think tanks face tactical dilemmas when pressing their views on Britain's comparatively closed system of government, in particular their choice between insider and outsider forms of persuasion; the tension between proximity to ministers and intellectual autonomy; and their advantages to politicians as deniable sources that can float new ideas, which can be counter-balanced by politicians' fluctuating appetite for radical ideas. As a case study the article examines the relations enjoyed by the Institute of Economic Affairs and the Centre for Policy Studies with Mrs Thatcher's government, and particularly the evolution of a potent network of influence embracing ministers, special advisers and backbenchers. Finally it considers the dangers of an overemphasis on novelty at the expense of feasibility, and the danger of burnout in the smaller think tanks dangers mitigated by the continuous turnover that operates in the world of think tanks.     

How the WTO Matters to Industry: The Case of Scotch Whisky

Although the World Trade Organization (WTO) has spawned a considerable academic literature, as yet research on this organization has rarely been problematized around clear theories of the relationship between law, economics, and politics. Building upon institutionalist premises and concepts drawn from political sociology and industrial economics, this article suggests a means of filling this gap by grasping the "political work" involved in the regulation of specific industries. Illustrated through the case of Scotch whisky, a focus is developed on how the WTO matters to contemporary industry. This reveals that the most powerful actors in industries such as Scotch have developed resources which legitimize their simultaneous engagement in a range of decision-making arenas. These include, but are not necessarily dominated by, the WTO.     

PRIVATE POLICING: A VIEW FROM THE MALL

In many Western democratic societies the primacy of the police has begun to diminish with a proliferation of alternative service providers, particularly within the private security sector. This raises questions about how such bodies can best be mobilized and integrated within policing. This paper reports findings from three ethnographic case studies of private security teams operating within areas of semi‐public space, to advance understanding of their nature and operations. It shows how the character of security work is determined by vastly differing structural arrangements to those of the police, but by a similar heterogeneity of function. While private security is seen to have a valid place within the ‘extended police family’, it is depicted as a low status sector whose authority in undertaking policing derives from the autonomy of other more powerful players. Future ethnographies, it is therefore argued, need to focus on the corporate users that govern its activities.     

Supply or Demand? Migration and Political Manipulation in Mexico

Collective remittances are the money flows sent by hometown associations (HTAs) of migrants from the USA to their communities of origin. In Mexico, the 3?×?1 Program for Migrants matches by three the amounts that HTAs send back to their localities to invest in public projects. In previous research, we found that municipalities ruled by the party of the federal government were more likely to participate in the Program. The political bias in participation and fund allocation may stem from two possible mechanisms: HTAs?? decisions to invest in some municipalities but not in others may reflect migrants?? political preferences (a demand-driven bias). Alternatively, government officials may use the Program to finance their own political objectives (a supply-driven bias). To determine which of these two mechanisms is at work, we studied a 2?×?2 matrix of statistically selected cases of high-migration municipalities in the Mexican state of Guanajuato. We carried out over 60 semistructured interviews with state and municipal Program administrators, local politicians, and migrant leaders from these municipalities. Our qualitative study indicates that migrant leaders are clearly pragmatic and that the political bias found is driven by elected officials strategically using the Program. The bias in favor of political strongholds is reinforced by the Program??s requirements for cooperation among different levels of government. This study casts doubt about the effectiveness of public?Cprivate partnerships as valid formulas to reduce political manipulation. It also questions the ability of matching grant programs to reach the areas where public resources are most needed.     

Coping with Complex Leadership Roles: The Problematic Redefinition of Government-owned Enterprises

Inspired by New Public Management, many countries have changed their central public apparatus from an integrated to a more segregated structural model. A central element in this process is structural devolution and the establishment of new or reorganized state-owned companies with increased business autonomy and new formal control systems. This paper focuses on how this development, as exemplified by the case of Norway, is affecting the role of central executive political and administrative leaders. The study, based on elite interviews, shows that corporatization has made the role of central leaders more complex and ambiguous and undermined traditional political control. We interpret this development from a transformative perspective, underlining how structural devolution is filtered through the dynamic context of environmental pressure and internal structural and cultural factors; in addition, experiences from New Zealand are used to contrast the Norwegian case.     

Sustainability,technology and corporate interest: Resource strategies in India's modern dairy sector

This article reviews aspects of India's Operation Flood dairy programme which reflect the extension of the internal and external linkages of India's co‐operative dairy sector. This discussion of the institutional linkages of Operation Flood leads to a broader debate about the dairy sector and development, particularly issues of corporatism, relative autonomy and dependence. Operation Flood institutions have embedded themselves securely within the political centre, enabling them to effectively intervene in policy‐making for the overall dairy sector, despite the programme's own limited performance in milk production and procurement. Foreign aid has facilitated this positioning, resulting in a subtle interplay of dependence and autonomy between the donors, the Indian state, local actors and Operation Flood as an autonomous interest.     

When hybridity breeds contempt: negative hybrid peace in Cambodia

Algeria's third plural presidential election caught the imagination of the Algerian electorate like no one has done before. Previously, the results were known in advance and elections served only to confer legitimacy on decisions made elsewhere, invariably by the military. This 2004 election seems to be more open. At least in theory, for the first time in Algeria's history, the winner of this election is not going to be the explicit choice of the military. In addition to the neutrality of the army, the autonomy of the former ruling party, the FLN and the unprecedented criticism of the President, the ingredients for an open and exciting election were in place. While most candidates engaged in negative campaigning, sometimes even at the expense of their political manifestos, the incumbent president stressed his achievements, particularly on the security front. ‘National reconciliation’, the way towards the establishment of further peace, dominated his political campaign and turned the election to a referendum on stability.