The Australian Public Service and Policy Advising: Meeting the Challenges of 21st Century Governance

This concluding article summarises the case study findings comprising the Special Issue on ‘Advising Australian Federal Governments: Assessing the Evolving Capacity and Role of the Australian Public Service’, identifies and discusses cross‐cutting issues, and considers strategic implications for future practice and research. It reviews key findings from six case studies – Treasury, Prime Minister and Cabinet, Intergovernmental Relations, Housing, the BER Stimulus program, and Defence – and assesses the policy advising capacity of the Australian Public Service, with a focus on the policy‐political interface between governments and officials. Putting recent experience in historical context, it considers the performance of the Commonwealth's policy advisory system, the impact of prime ministers and centralisation, the link between advising and analytic capacities, the system's resilience and readiness, whether recent dissatisfaction over APS advising reflect lack of capacity or a culture clash, and the responsibility for ensuring high‐quality policy advice. It recommends developing a more systematic approach to assessing policy advising capability, building on recent APS reforms.     

二十一世纪的中俄外交

进入二十一世纪以来,中俄高层互访不断,两国间协作日益密切,经贸合作逐步扩大,确立了一种新型的国际外交模式,两国关系处于历史上的最好时期。但通过深层透视可以看出,中俄外交也存在一些值得注意的问题。展望未来,机遇和挑战并存。为此,要在中俄两国人民的共同努力下,不断深化政治互信,规范贸易秩序,完善贸易服务体系,调整贸易结构;广泛开展两国的文化交流,促进民间往来,使中俄战略协作伙伴关系健康持续地向前发展。     

The Tiebout Hypothesis 50 Years Later: Lessons and Lingering Challenges for Metropolitan Governance in the 21st Century

More than five decades have passed since Charles Tiebout wrote his seminal 1956 paper, often cited as the classic apologetic for locally based systems of metropolitan governance. This essay traces the impact of Tiebout's work and subsequent scholarship in public choice, identifying important lessons and lingering issues. Although public choice has demonstrated that polycentric systems are adept and flexible in producing and providing municipal services and a variety of interlocal agreements, the presence of municipal boundaries gives rise to a host of spillover problems, such as urban sprawl and segregation. These spillovers are particularly nefarious because, unlike the natural cooperation that seems to occur in service provision, municipalities tend to assert narrow self-interest in the face of these types of externalities. The essay proposes that, commensurate with the growing salience of equity among the pillars of public administration, interjurisdictional spillovers and their attendant equity impacts will be the central challenge for thinkers studying metropolitan governance in the 21st century.     

In Modernism's Wake: Public Administration and Policy in the 21st Century

Hugh T. Miller, Postmodern Public Policy
Goktug Morcol, A New Mind for Policy Analysis: Toward a Post-Newtonian and Postpositivist Epistemology and Methodology
Michael W. Spicer, Public Administration and the State: A Postmodern Perspective     

Competing Policy Windows in Biotechnology: The FDA,the 21st Century Cures Act,and Laboratory‐Developed Tests

In 2014, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) proposed taking a more active role in the regulation of laboratory‐developed tests (LDTs). Meanwhile, the U.S. House of Representatives embarked upon the 21st Century Cures initiative to develop legislation to expedite the development of new biotechnology innovations. During that initiative and in the public comments responding to the draft guidance, there was significant disagreement as to whether the increased FDA regulation of LDTs was beneficial or detrimental to biotechnology. Both the FDA guidance document and the 21st Century Cures Act came about due to the opening of a window of opportunity created by the convergence of circumstances. The question is whether the windows of opportunity are competing and how to resolve this competition. This study will investigate these questions through a qualitative case study. It will also provide recommendations for resolving policy disputes involving wicked problems like biotechnology policy.     

关于21世纪警察素质构架的研究

21世纪警察素质是知识、能力和敬业三个层次的综合体.其中知识是警察素质的基础,能力是表现形式,而敬业精神在知识向能力转化的过程中和能力在实际工作的运用中起主导作用.因此在提高警察素质的过程中,既要重视知识的积累,更要重视知识向能力的转化,不能把知识的掌握作为提高素质的唯一途径.     

21世纪马克思主义的发展逻辑

21世纪马克思主义的发展蕴含了特定的时代逻辑、实践逻辑、理论逻辑和价值逻辑。21世纪马克思主义积极应对世界百年未有之大变局,着眼于中华民族伟大复兴战略全局,在统筹国际国内两个大局中推动中华民族伟大复兴,促进人类共同进步。21世纪马克思主义直面时代发展的现实问题和实践需要,剖析困扰当今国际社会的和平赤字、发展赤字、治理赤字、文明赤字、制度霸权等问题,在探索新时代中国特色社会主义道路的实践中焕发出强大生机活力。21世纪马克思主义的主要理论形态是当代中国马克思主义,以习近平新时代中国特色社会主义思想为标志性成果,其他世界马克思主义思潮也对其作出了有益探索。21世纪马克思主义致力于化解当下各种矛盾分歧,凝聚人类价值共识,为世界和平、发展、治理、文明和制度提供方案,构建人类命运共同体。     

State‐Building and the European Union's Fight against Corruption in the Southern Caucasus: Why Legitimacy Matters

This article asks under which conditions the state‐building efforts of external actors in areas of limited statehood are likely to be effective. We argue that the legitimacy of the specific norms promoted by external actors among local actors is crucial for their success in strengthening state capacities. International efforts need to resonate with prevalent social norms. To substantiate this argument, we focus on the European Union's (EU) anticorruption programs and their implementation in one of the most corrupt regions in the world, the Southern Caucasus. We show that legitimacy can explain why the EU's fight against corruption helped reduce corruption in Georgia but not in Armenia. In both countries, political elites could selectively use anticorruption programs as an instrument against political opponents, using enhanced state capacities to stabilize the incumbent regime. Only in Georgia, however, was the fight against corruption facilitated by sustained domestic mobilization for anticorruption policies that added pressure on political elites “from below.”     

Climate Change and Marx in the 21st Century,Part I

This paper comes in two parts. Part I begins with an examination of the relationship between Marx’s characterization of the centrality of commodity production to capitalism as a system, its destructive results on Nature, and the global scale of the climate crisis confronting the 21st century. It then moves on to critically examine three models of political economy (Hayekism, Keynesianism and State Socialism). Part II takes the argument forward by critically examining a fourth model, Green Keynesianism, currently being manufactured in response to the crisis of climate change, in order to show the inability of all four models to resolve the existential threat posed to humanity in the 21st century and beyond. We then proceed to posit, as a thought experiment, a fifth model of political economy, Green Socialism, as something now needed in the 21st century and discuss the important building blocks of the future evolution of a coherent system. The paper concludes with a brief mention of both the ends and means that need deliberation if Green Socialism is to be realized.