Bill Gates’ Guru: “I'm Not Impressed With Silicon Valley.” “I Don't Have a Cell Phone.” “I Never Blog.”

Bill Gates often invokes VACLAV SMIL as his “favorite thinker.” Indeed, Smil is one of the deeper, more original and independent big minds out there today. His book titles range from The Bad Earth and The Cycles of Life to Harvesting the Biosphere.     

‘Hardware,Software or Network Connection?’ Theorizing Crisis in the UK Next Steps Agencies?

This paper explores the literature theorizing institutional crises by examining the policy problems faced by the UK's Child Support Agency and Prison Service Agency in the mid 1990s. In both these cases the 'hardware' (delivery through agencies), and the 'software' (policy saliency) were linked to their difficulties. However, these policy areas can be contrasted with the Benefits Agency, another highly salient policy area where no crisis occurred. This paper argues that it was neither the 'hardware' nor the 'software' but the way in which the bureaucratic networks surrounding these agencies operated that explains why the policy process was difficult. In concluding, the relevance of the network concept to the crisis literature is examined, illuminating the role that networks play in promoting or preventing institutional crisis as well as the research questions that arise if network relations are considered alongside a broader understanding of the dynamics of institutional crisis.     

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.     

The “Expectation Revolution” Is Rattling Chile,Turkey and Brazil

The great story of the last decade has been the “rise of the rest”—emerging economies such as China, Brazil, Turkey and India—to a position rivaling that of the established, advanced economies. As the aftershocks of the financial crisis of 2008–2009 continue to ripple through the global system, will the rising rest stay or track or be derailed? Some of the world's top economists examine this question in the following section.