The Political Economy of the Provos: Inside the Finances of the Provisional IRA—A Revision

Few academically rigorous accounts exist of the financial activities that sustained the rise of the Provisional Irish Republican Army (PIRA) during the Northern Ireland Troubles. Through a sustained methodology this study seeks to challenge some popular preconceptions and address omissions in the limited historical record. The article explores the organization's evolving financial sophistication by analyzing PIRA's acquisition of capital rather than its arms dealings. Using a new quantitative evaluation, this investigation confronts the prevailing understanding that Irish-American funds were of unrivaled significance to PIRA. It points to an array of domestic fund-raisers that collectively provided the overwhelming bulk of revenue. The study reveals also how PIRA developed an extensive reliance on criminal gangs for its expertise in illegal fund-raising, suggesting that moneymaking schemes were perceived as a necessary but unpopular by-product of the greater political objective. Finally, this article briefly explores how the British authorities sought to interdict PIRA's funding. While the general perception is that little was done to counteract PIRA's financing initiatives in the early phases of its violent campaign, this study, nevertheless, reveals that a subtle counterfinance initiative did take place in Belfast across the 1970s. Overall, the analysis enables a more rounded comprehension of the group's financial resilience.     

The New Governance of French Education?

This article contributes to ongoing debates in comparative public administration through exploring the governance paradigm in the unfavourable empirical terrain of French education. After identifying potentially relevant features of governance, we investigate changing patterns of policy-making in French education at macro, meso and micro levels. Extrapolating research findings from extensive interviews and participant observation at ministerial meetings, we conclude the existence of a French-style governance that operates within distinctive ideational and institutional environments and interest structures. The article emphasizes the importance of historical and institutional traditions in framing the available pathways of governance.     

Education Policy and Philanthropy—The Changing Landscape of English Educational Governance

This article explores some hitherto neglected but nonetheless important aspects of the changing landscape of education policy and governance in England. It sketches some particular features of the increasingly complex and “congested” terrain of the education state and traces some of the primary discourses that currently inform and drive education policy (and, indeed, social policy more generally) both in relation to governance and substance. The article draws on an Economic and Social Research Council (ESRC–-funded study (RES–000–22–2682), “Philanthropy and Education Policy.” This research involved three sets of activities; extensive and exhaustive Internet searches around particular (corporate) philanthropies, philanthropists, and philanthropically funded programs; interviews with some key “new” philanthropists and foundations interested and involved in education; and the use of these searches and interviews to construct “policy networks.” Together these constitute a “method” of “network ethnography.”     

The measurement of development effort—A suggestion

A notable shortcoming of development economics has been a failure to design an objective indicator allowing for an evaluation of the effort made in particular developing countries. Own‐country effort has been noted in the literature to be an important ingredient in the illusive recipe of development‐success; and so the above problem is of considerable interest, both theoretical and practical. This paper analyses the interrelationships between three groups of commonly used ‘effort‐indicators’ ; and in addition studies the relationships between each and growth of per capita income of a sample of developing countries. The findings suggest that at the present time, effective development efforts tend to lie less in the area of belt‐tightening and mobilisation of domestic savings, and more in the area of explicit export promotion.     

The 1950s—the triumph of the Soviet economy

The frequent assertions in both Russian and Western economic literature and the broader press that the command economy is not viable are based on data showing the inefficient use of material and labour resources in the pre-war period and the continuous decline in the rate of economic growth and the efficiency of resource use in the 1960s–1980s. Yet it is a long way from observing these facts to confirming the failure of the command economy. Before the political system of the USSR began to collapse in 1990–91 there had been no prolonged absolute fall in GDP nor, in the post-war period, in the standard of living of the population, nor had technical progress come to a halt as it did, for example, in the 1990s after the rejection of the command economy. Compared with the latter period it is justifiable to talk of the indisputable advantages of the command over the market economy in Russian conditions, if of course we do not consider (for which there are some grounds) the enormous difficulties of the Russian economy in the 1990s to be consequences of a protracted transformation crisis. I would like to draw attention to the fact that these advantages are evident even in comparison with the degenerate mid-1980s version of the command economy, which was very different from the classical model.     

The Middle East: A region without regionalism or the end of exceptionalism?

In terms of regionalisation the Middle East appears to exemplify the region's status of being the 'exceptional' case, eternally out of step with history and immune to the trends affecting other parts of the world. This article will analyse whether recent trends of economic liberalisation might give an impulse to regionalisation. This is done by focusing on the 'double assignment' of the bourgeoisie: curbing state autonomy and acting as the 'championing social class' whose specific interests coincide with the prospect of a larger unified market. The article concludes that we can not expect Arab regional economic integration to be spurred on.     

Governance of Education in the United Kingdom: Convergence or Divergence?

Abstract

This article considers how structures and processes of governance in education have changed in England, Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland over recent years, setting this discussion within the context of debates about the nature of governance and governing in public services more generally. It is argued, firstly, that governance needs to be considered as a comprehensive concept that encompasses both the role of the state and the range of other actors and processes through which educational provision is steered; and secondly, that governance is essentially about power: its distribution and its use. The article draws on these key ideas to explore the similarities and differences between the experiences of the four constituent jurisdictions of the United Kingdom over recent years. It considers whether the approaches in the jurisdictions are converging or diverging, the reasons underlying this, and prospects for the future. It is concluded that, while national histories and cultures have served to maintain very distinctive governance identities among the jurisdictions, international trends, and the ways in which governments respond to these, are putting these identities under considerable pressure.     

Building the Education Revolution: Another Case of Australian Government Failure?

Since the 2007 federal election, the Australian government has implemented a plethora of new programs, many with dual economic and social objectives. A significant number of these initiatives have not only proved unsuccessful, but have also been criticized for their implementation and subsequent administration. This paper examines the Building Education Revolution Program, which commenced in 2009 with the objective of stimulating employment growth and improving school infrastructure, through the analytical prism of the government failure paradigm as well as the literature on “hollowing out” and decentralization. It is argued that the BER Program represents a “case study” of how governments should not pursue large-scale public expenditure programs.     

Improving organisational performance—some thoughts on the role of management development

This article addresses the issue of local citizenship in the context of shifting urban structures. Drawing on the literature on modes of responses to local public policy based on Hirschman's (1970) model of Exit, Voice and Loyalty, the study offers the concept of urban civic worlds as an explanatory concept for local citizenship behavioural manifestations. The hypotheses regarding urban civic worlds are tested in a survey in the city of Tel Aviv. Eight types of urban civic worlds are examined. The implications of the multiplicity of urban civic world on the governance in localities is discussed.     

The New World Order: A Deconstruction of the Nation-State and a Disaggregation of the “Mixed Political Economy”

The structure of the New World Order and its corresponding functions are becoming apparent. First, there will be a deconstruction of the nation-state. It will be bisected as power shifts to higher “macro-regional” levels on the one hand and lower “micro-regional” levels on the other. Second, there will be a disaggregation of the mixed political economy. It will be bifurcated as socialism is used at upper levels of human aggregation to alleviate pollution and as capitalism is used at lower levels to alleviate poverty.