THE BIOTECHNOLOGY OF SEX PRESELECTION: SOCIAL ISSUES IN A PUBLIC POLICY CONTEXT

Sex preselection is the ability to select the sex of one's offspring prior to conception. After a discussion of the potential methods of sex preselection, this paper explores the possible diffusion of sex preselection biotechnologies within sociopolitical systems. Ethical aspects are discussed w i t h i n the context of broad social issues, family considerations, social class effects, crime, religion, and medical services. The article concludes with an examination of the public policy choices that might confront decision makers should sex preselection become a reality.     

THE INTERNATIONALIZATION OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION AND PUBLIC POLICY: IMPLICATIONS FOR TEACHING

Increasingly, the nations of the world are becoming more interdependent among themselves. This is true not only in an economic sense, but in a political sense as well. The field of public administration has become internationalized, presenting a new challenge to both teachers and students of the discipline. The article argues that special attention should be given to teaching students how to manage policy interdependency. Furthermore, the interdisciplinary approach is advocated as a method of broadening students' perspectives in public administration. In concluding the article, the author offers several recommendations for improving public administration programs.     

STATE LEGISLATORS AND ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT: UNIVERSITY-INDUSTRY RELATIONSHIPS AND THE ROLE OF GOVERNMENT IN BIOTECHNOLOGY

This article presents a detailed examination of some key political dimen- sions underlying cooperative research in agricultural biotechnology among state land-grant universities, state legislatures, and biotechnology corpora- tions. Factor analysis and path analysis methods are employed to assess differences in the perceptions of university administrators, biotechnology corporation researchers, and state legislators, using national and state survey data. Two attitudinal dimensions, one regarding cooperation among university and corporate researchers, and the other regarding barriers to joint research, are extracted. Generally similar attitudes are shared by university and legislative respondents, who are concerned over the prospects of market-oriented university research. In contrast, corporate respondents are more concerned with reducing barriers to cooperative research and the need for more open communication between academia and industry, and with issues of patent rights. Extensions of this work to other states and to other high-technology industries are considered.     

SCIENCE, RISK AND HEALTH POLICY: THE CHANGING OPERATIONAL RELATIONSHIP

Abstract: Scientific research is usually regarded as an impartial contributor to the public policy-making process. However, increasingly, such research in health matters to do with industrial processes, medical intervention and drug therapy is perceived to pose risks and thus produce uncertainty in government and anxiety among consumers of health services. This when the scientific research agenda is about to take increasingly dramatic steps with important implications for applied science. Five select issues intended to depict a lack of research consensus and resulting in perceptions of societal risk-taking are used to illustrate this phenomenon. The growing influence of the "Green" environmental and consumer movement promises increasing resistance to science-based societal risk-taking. Scientists have acknowledged problems and advocate a variety of responses including the adoption of radically different aims and methods in science. The quality of some medical statistics and the dominance of the research methods agenda by epidemiologists is also a cause for concern. The major dilemma, however, is that while both refutation and uncertainty are integral to the Popperian model of puzzle-solving in science, they are factors which pose serious political risks in decision-making for ministers and their advisers.     

SCIENCE IMPACT ASSESSMENT AND PUBLIC POLICY

In recent years a number of important science policy issues have rentered on questions about the social utility of science. The field of knowledge systems accounting has evolved as a special form of social impact assessment to observe and measure the impact of science on society. A system of social impacts of science (SIS) indicators has been developed as an attempt to represent these complex patterns and relationships. In the final analysis, the causal relevance of science to social performance depends on our capacity to link the complex knowledge system of modern science to the achievement of social goals.     

SOCIAL SCIENCE DISCIPLINES AND POLICY RESEARCH: THE CASE OF POLITICAL SCIENCE

It has been argued that social science disciplines influence their members policy research via theoretical focus, methods, norms, and system maintenance mechanisms and that these forces inhibit the usefulness of policy research for policy-making. Political science is found to influence substantially its members policy research output and to decrease its policy usefulness, primarily by promoting explanations of policy, although the extent of influence and lack of usefulness are less than studies of other disciplines suggest. Whereas highly useful outcome analyses are produced less frequently than many advocates of policy research would hope, a sub-stantial body of policy research undertakes objectives that when satisfied, particularly in the area of problem definition, provide moderately useful output to decision makers. In addition, policy research output is remarkably diverse substantively, but less so in terms of the purposes it serves.     

ADVANCES IN THE STUDY OF AUSTRALIAN PUBLIC POLICY

Comparative State Policies. Edited by B. GALLIGAN (Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1988, 303pp).
From Fraser to Hawke: Australian Public Policy in the 1980s. Edited by B. HEAD and A. PATIENCE (Melbourne: Longman Cheshire, 1989, 525pp).
Hawke and Australian Public Policy: Consensus and Restructuring. Edited by E. JENNETT and R. STEWART (Melbourne: Macmillan, 1990, 422PP).     

AUSTRALIAN PUBLIC POLICY AND THE PROBLEM OF FRAGMENTATION

Abstract: Politics matters in policy. In particular, the way in which a society organises its structures for bargaining affects the extent to which it is able to solve the general problem of "externalities" resulting from private choice. Two "ideal type" societies, the corporatist and the pluralist, are contrasted. It is suggested that the apparently superior economic performance of corporatist societies may be due to the fact that they have more efficient means of making collective choices than do pluralist societies. It is argued that, as a society which is best described as fragmented rather than pluralist or corporatist, Australia may be missing out on the advantages offered by well-structured bargaining. In particular, it may be possible significantly to improve decision-making practices by means of an Accord between business and government which promotes policy-related trade-offs within an agreed general framework.     

FEDERAL POLICY IN LOCAL CONTEXT:PUZZLING THROUGH THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF PARADIGMATIC POLICY REFORM

Although comprehensive reform programs (CRPs) have been influenced by theories of government failure, they pose some puzzles for these theorists. My purpose is to address puzzles that relate to observed characteristics of the timing, radicalism, implementation, rhetoric and democratic consequences of reforms. The long period of paradigm stability which typically precede them is explained in terms of the institutional and political risks associated with radical policy reform while the reforms themselves are explained in terms of factors that generated opportunities for new sources of policy leadership. This leadership was collectively supplied by a network that sought to break the hold of a fragmented structure of policy communities over the policy process.     

FEDERAL-STATE RELATIONS IN THE IMPLEMENTATION OF SURFACE MINING POLICY

The federal Surface Mining Control and Reclamation Act of 1977 not only established national performance standards and permitting procedures for the coal industry, but also provided for stateprimacy. The principle of state primary is both simple and intuitively appealing: Because states do not have adequate resources to develop effective regulatory programs, the federal government would set up comprehensive procedures and criteria to guide the states in preparing their own plans. The obvious advantage of state primacy is that i t provides for flexibility in implementation.
Ultimately, state primacy is an experiment in cooperative federalism, a sharing of authority and responsibility between the states and the federal government to insure both the general welfare and sensitivity to local conditions. The history of surface mining regulation is instructive because i t points out the pitfalls and promise of cooperative federalism as well as the critical role of the courts in making state primacy work.     

THE FLUORIDATION CONTROVERSY IN VICTORIA: PUBLIC POLICY AND GROUP POLITICS

Abstract: Fluoridation of public water supplies has been a political issue which generates a high level of public controversy. Opposition has been relatively effective, especially at the local level where the initiative for fluoridation usually originates. Authorities responsible for the decision have often been unwilling to adopt a firm policy in the belief that public opinion is seriously divided on the issue. The reasons for the success of the opposition, and for the indecision of the authorities, are examined in relation to the history of the fluoridation issue in Victoria, where the State government eventually decided in favour of compulsory fluoridation after considering the question for twenty years. The paper concludes by drawing some implications from this case for students of policy formation in areas of controversy.     

THE ROLE OF THE PUBLIC SERVICE IN A CHANGING ENVIRONMENT*

I was invited to give an address on the topic “The Changing Role of the Public Service”. With the agreement of the organizers I have changed my title to “The Role of the Public Service in a Changing Environment”. That is a small change—but it is a significant one. Our role has not really changed. It is easy in the public service, as elsewhere, to be preoccupied with contemporary challenges, and to imagine that these are new and different. But that says more about the way memory discounts the past than anything else—the latest problem or challenge is always the worst. When I joined the Treasury in 1952 the economy had just come through the Korean War boom and was in the process of adjusting to Fadden's so-called “horror” budget. The world financial system was in disarray owing to the “shortage” of US dollars. The Arbitration Court in the two or three previous years had made some awards of great concern as to their inflationary consequences. I found the Treasury was a hive of frantic activity. Looking back from the perspective of today I merely note, as the French put it, that the more things change the more things stay the same.