It Is a G‐Zero,Not a G‐20, World

The G‐20 supplanted the G‐8 as the executive committee of globalization as the emerging and advanced economies came together in the wake of the Wall Street crash to stave off depression. Now, each country is going its own way. In this section we examine whether the G‐20 can be saved, and what the countries within it must do to bring the global economy into balance.     

Digital Games,African Development,and Gender Equality: a Comparative Analysis of <Emphasis Type="Italic">Family Values</Emphasis> and <Emphasis Type="Italic">Moraba</Emphasis>

Digital Development Games (DDGs) have been designed to tackle a variety of international development issues, including gender inequality. This study uses critical textual analysis and a political economic approach to highlight how the development goals embedded in two games, Family Values and Moraba, both aimed at gender equality in Africa, were shaped by the large donor organizations that funded them. Understanding the relationship between game developers and funders is necessary in order to understand how and why DDGs work to reinforce established, and often problematic, development narratives. As smaller nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and independent game developers look to large development institutions to support the production of DDGs, research on the ways in which the ideologies of funding organizations get mapped onto games becomes increasingly important. Further, the findings of this study provide a contemporary example of the ways in which development networks are able to incorporate new technologies and discourses into their work without fundamentally changing their worldviews or their approach to creating change.     

THE CENTRE STRIKES BACK: META‐GOVERNANCE,DELEGATION, AND THE CORE EXECUTIVE IN THE UNITED KINGDOM, 2010–14

A growing literature on ‘agencification’, ‘quangocratization’, and the ‘autonomization’ of the state has highlighted a coordination dilemma in contemporary public governance whereby governments rely on delegated governance but are frustrated by the lack of control that arises from such structures. In the run‐up to the 2010 General Election in the United Kingdom this coordination dilemma was prominent as the capacity of the Cabinet Office to exert control over arm's‐length bodies, either directly or indirectly, received intense criticism. This article presents the findings of the first detailed research project to examine the subsequent Coalition Government's approach to this dilemma. It argues that in relation to the governance of public bodies, the role and capacity of the Cabinet Office has been transformed. In mapping this development the article explores the implications of the centre striking back in the context of ‘post‐New Public Management’ reforms.     

NUDGING,SHOVING, AND BUDGING: BEHAVIOURAL ECONOMIC‐INFORMED POLICY

In recent years, behavioural economics has gained considerable traction in the policy discourse, with a particular conceptual framework called libertarian paternalism, which informs nudge policy, dominating. Libertarian paternalism requires policies to protect individual liberty, to be focused specifically upon improving the welfare of those towards whom the intervention is targeted, and to be informed by the findings of behavioural economics. In practice, however, many of the interventions that are being advocated as nudges do not meet all of these criteria. Moreover, libertarian paternalism is not the only framework in which behavioural economics can inform policy. Coercive paternalism and behavioural regulation, frameworks that respectively underpin shove and budge policies, both use behavioural economics to inform public policy, and both face their own set of limitations. This article attempts to bring a degree of intellectual clarity to the potentially important contribution that behavioural economics can make to public policy.     

Paris Sciences Po IPS Conference, October 26–27, 2007

The joint IPS conference that took place last October 26–27, 2007 at CERI-Sciences Po (Paris) was organized in the broader scope of the launching of International Political Sociology (IPS) in Europe. The conference also aimed at launching an innovative research dynamic among international researchers who are members of the International Political Sociology editorial board and members of the COST network. It was the occasion to discuss the theoretical and empirical innovation in the field of international relations IPS would like to encourage as well as the editorial orientations the journal may take, and cross visions.     

Performance Management,Evaluation and Learning in ‘Modern’ Local Government

Public sector reforms throughout OECD member states are producing a new model of ‘public governance’ embodying a more modest role for the state and a strong emphasis on performance management. In the UK, the development of performance management in the context of the ‘new public management’ has been primarily ‘top‐down’ with a dominant concern for enhancing control and ‘upwards account‐ability’ rather than promoting learning and improvement. The development of performance management and evaluation in local government in the UK has been conditioned by external pressures, especially reforms imposed by central government, which have encouraged an ‘instrumental–managerial’ focus on performance measurement. The new Labour government's programme of ‘modernizing local government’ places considerable emphasis on performance review and evaluation as a driver of continuous improvement in promoting Best Value. However, recent research has indicated that the capacity for evaluation in local government is uneven and many obstacles to evaluation exist in organizational cultures. Local authorities need to go beyond the development of review systems and processes to ensure that the capacity for evaluation and learning is embedded as an attribute of ‘culture’ in order to achieve the purpose of Best Value.     

A Response to SaraEllen Strongman’s “Feeling Black Feminism,Otherwise: a Review of Jennifer Nash’s Black Feminism Reimagined: After Intersectionality (Durham,NC: Duke University Press, 2019)”

International Journal of Politics, Culture, and Society -