Public Intellectuals and Think Tanks: A Free Market in Ideas?

The paper critically evaluates the thesis of the interchangeability between the think-tank public intellectual and the academic public intellectual. It suggests that this thesis, while endorsing the rise of the think-tank public intellectual, pronounces the salience of the intellectual-social critic and undermines the authority of academic public intellectuals. It is argued that the think-tank expert doubling as the public intellectuals could limit the political relevance of the academic public intellectual and that the think-tank expert’s monopolization of the public forum could present a threat to the quality of public debates. While recognizing that there are many contradictions inherent in the role of intellectual and that there are now numerous factors that hinder the abilities of academics to act as public intellectuals, the paper emphasizes public academic intellectuals’ contribution to the dynamics of public opinion and the quality of democratic standards. In today’s context, with the omnipresent of media, the new conditions of knowledge production, the neo-liberal ethos and the social prominence of think-tank experts, the sources of the academic public intellectual authority are in a continuous need for reinvestment.     

Intellectuals and the Politics of Style

This article addresses the characteristic styles and modes of self-presentation used by such Victorian public moralists and intellectuals as William Morris, John Ruskin and Matthew Arnold in both their writing and in their appearances as public lecturers: these were all interventions that were aimed at provoking an audience into intellectual consideration and self-reflection. The article examines how questions about the style of these figures have shaped the response to their work both at the time and in the years since their deaths; thinking about why, in Raymond Williams’s words, they have produced ‘mixed feelings of respect and suspicion’. It considers how their versions of the combination of intellectual and public life could be thought about in our post-financial crisis present, at a moment when late nineteenth century debates about ‘the elites and the masses’ are re-emerging, but where also the figure of the intellectual is taking on a renewed interest as one possible point of encounter between these forces.     

Justifying Coproduced Policeability: Restrained Creativity and New Modalities of (Dis)Agreements in the Swedish Police

This article investigates the justification of coproduced policeability using the “order-of-worth” framework suggested by Boltanski and Thevénot. Building on previous research describing how tensions limit the legitimacy of public services, the analysis illustrates how persistent tensions shape the justification of coproduced policing. Drawing on both fostering and responsive modalities, reluctant adaptability allows police to cope with tense value logics and justify new coproduced solutions as legitimate means of maintaining policing practices. The analysis is based on documents and semi-structured interviews. Results imply that coproduction can result in persistent tensions that public authorities have to handle.     

Religious Intellectuals, the “Woman Question,” and the Struggle for the Creation of a Democratic Public Sphere in Iran

The ideas of the new generation of religious intellectuals in Iran have been the main engine for the call for reform. These intellectuals have attempted to locate their views about the way women are and should be treated in Islamic societies in their much broader—and to them more significant—attempt to offer a modernist religious understanding and a more democratic reading of the role of religion in modern polity. Iranian feminists, on the other hand, have begun to insist that the particular situation of women in Iran is in need of more attention. Religious intellectuals have responded by engaging in reluctant analysis of the way the woman question poses itself in the Iranian context. So far, their analyses fail to take into account the gender implications of the struggle against absolutism and traditional authority. However, the dynamic interaction of the reform project with demands and aspirations of various sectors of Iranian public life will not allow the issue to rest here. Religious intellectuals, in their attempt to recreate essential religious truth in the form of new intellectual concepts and systems, will increasingly have to deal with systemic gender inequalities in a more systematic manner.     

Producing Knowledge,Producing Credibility: British Think-Tank Researchers and the Construction of Policy Reports

Think-tanks and their researchers are located within an interstitial and ill-defined ‘space between fields’; a space both constituted and divided by the worlds of academia, politics, journalism and business. This liminal position can be problematic for a think-tank researcher’s intellectual credibility as they lack the recognised cultural and symbolic capital derived from being located within an established profession’s jurisdiction. The question arises, how do think-tanks gain intellectual credibility? Drawing on interviews with think-tank researchers, this paper explores how these interstitial intellectuals produce policy reports. In following this process, we find that credibility emerges from a complex web of relationships across established fields/professions. Think-tank researchers must engage in a complex ‘dance’ of positioning the symbols, capitals and interests of a number of professions. To maintain their integrity, researchers must try to keep in step with competing interests from different professions; at times aligning them, at other times blocking or obscuring them from one another.     

HOW TRADITIONAL ARE THE AMERICAN,FRENCH AND GERMAN TRADITIONS OF PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION? A RESEARCH AGENDA

Consistent with the notion of tradition, public administration scholars usually interpret and compare administrative developments in the US, France, and Germany as inheritance, assuming continuity. However, administrative traditions have thus far not been an object of systematic research. The present research agenda aims to address this research gap by introducing the transfer‐of‐ideas approach as a means to examine the empirical substance of national traditions. We claim that for current research, the benefits of this approach are twofold. First, the transfer‐of‐ideas approach contributes to comparative public administration since it reveals in how far intellectual traditions are hybrid instead of distinctively American, French or German developments. Second, the approach may help to address the polysemous meanings of and terminological difficulties within administrative concepts that prevail in Public Administration on both sides of the Atlantic.     

Negotiating justice: legal pluralism and gender-based violence in Liberia

The plural legal system in post-conflict Liberia expresses tensions between modern and customary institutions. This article seeks to understand how Liberians navigate choices in the plural legal system to address gender-based violence cases. By asking how and why people make the choices they do, we highlight how Liberians solve tensions between institutions, by creating flexible categories that allow them to pursue a course of action that does not compromise their ability to access social networks and resources.     

The place of corporate ownership and management in local government anti‐poverty strategy in Britain

Since devolution in 1999, the Welsh Government has developed a distinctive approach to the management of local government policy. Alongside an emphasis on welfarism and partnership, local authorities have been exhorted to put the citizen at the centre of public service delivery. Drawing on the notion of assemblage, developed in the governmentality literature, this paper identifies two different rationalities running through Welsh Government policy documents. On the basis of a series of interviews with government officials and their counterparts in the Welsh Local Government Association we find evidence of important tensions in the Welsh approach. While the emphasis on the citizen has worked in building a ‘political rationality’, the evidence from our interviews suggests that it works less well as a ‘government technology’.     

From a cosmopolitan to a fascist land: Adriatic irredentism in motion

This article explores Adriatic irredentism, a complex political, cultural, and social movement, by specifically analyzing the unique role it played in the legitimization of Italian territorial claims over “language frontiers” such as Trieste and its hinterland. Through a close reading of first-hand sources, it examines how Italian irredentist intellectuals, public press, and associations purposefully utilized anti-Slav and anti-German arguments to shape public perception of both the Italian nation as well as Trieste’s Italian identity or “Italianità.” Although recent historiographical interpretations have emphasized continuities in local understandings of “Italianità,” this article examines the discontinuities in the debate over its identity. It suggests that although Italian identity was first conceived as an expression of cultural and linguistic autonomy within the broader intellectual framework of Adriatic multi-nationalism, this idea gradually vanished amidst the structural crisis triggered by the Ausgleich or Compromise of 1867 and then inexorably faded on the eve of the Great War. Thus, notions of Italian national identity took an exclusionary and sometimes xenophobic meaning that was publicly used by a wide set of political actors to justify the territorial reincorporation of the “unredeemed” land within the borders of the new Italian state. The fascist regime, especially, utilized Italianness to further its aggressive and chauvinist agenda toward the Adriatic borderland. Consequently, Italian language and culture became instruments as well as symbols of repression and imperialism that were used to fulfill the regime’s ambitions of “fascistization” of the Slavic population living in the region.     

Navigating tensions in co‐production: A missing link in leadership for public value

New forms of public leadership are needed to design and implement co‐production of public value. We draw on narrative analysis to explore the barriers to developing the capacity for co‐production of public value in disadvantaged and vulnerable Indigenous communities and find that existing norms not only crowd out efforts at reform, but can work against them. In particular, we find that upward accountability and a focus on expert knowledge are the most problematic for co‐production of public value. We focus on how more traditional practices of public administration mediated the achievements of public leaders in their co‐production efforts when Australian governments introduced strategies for partnership with Indigenous communities for services design and delivery. The analysis suggests that creating a broader enabling environment of supportive logics would allow public leaders to engage more productively with inherent tensions between old and new ways of working.     

PUBLIC MANAGEMENT IN POLITICAL INSTITUTIONS: EXPLAINING PERCEPTIONS OF WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF INFLUENCE

The notion that public managers influence organizational performance is common in public administration research. However, less is known about why some managers are better at influencing organizational performance than others. Furthermore, relatively few studies have systematically examined managerial influence and scholars have yet to investigate either quantitatively or systematically managerial influence in the White House. Utilizing original survey data collected from former White House officials who served in the Reagan, George H.W. Bush, and Clinton administrations, this study applies empirical public management theory to examine for the first time the key determinants that shape perceptions of chief of staff managerial influence. The findings demonstrate how several core concepts in public management theory help explain the dynamics that drive perceptions of managerial influence, thereby providing a new contribution to the literature on public management.     

Precautionary and Proactionary as the New Right and the New Left of the Twenty-First Century Ideological Spectrum

Despite its specific origin in the seating arrangement of the French National Assembly after the revolution of 1789, the right–left divide of the ideological spectrum has proved remarkably resilient in anchoring public intellectual life for over two centuries. In this article, I argue that we are witnessing a 90° rotation of this ideological axis, resulting in a new set of poles, each of which combines elements of the old right–left divide. The ‘precautionary’ pole brings together the conservationist side of the right and the communitarian side of the left, whereas the ‘proactionary’ pole unites the libertarian side of the right and the technocratic side of the left. I prepare the ground for discussing these new alternatives with a consideration of the political theology of the old right–left divide, which ultimately turns on alternative visions of how the past determines the future. This ‘left’ basically holds that what is possible significantly exceeds what is probable, with liberals adopting an ‘antirealist’ and socialists a ‘realist’ stance towards the prospect of an optimal social order. Both the precautionary and proactionary poles of the new ideological spectrum are fixated on our attitude towards a future in which the ontological constitution of the polity (i.e. its ‘humanity’) is among the issue under contestation. In this emerging ideological conflict, more of which is transpiring in video than in print, the precautionaries are marked as more ‘risk-averse’ and the proactionaries more ‘risk-seeking’ than had been presumed to be the normal attitude in the modern welfare state.     

Modern China Emerged Before Its Encounter with the West

In the minds of its leaders and intellectuals, China is more than just another successful emerging economy and a rising regional power. For them, what is going on today might be considered a renaissance that will bring a neo‐Confucian sensibility to a post‐American world. In this section NPQ editor Nathan Gardels reports on his recent visit to Shanghai. Wang Hui, China's leading new left intellectual and author of The Rise of Modem Chinese Thought, offers his, views on subjects ranging from modernity to Tibet.     

A Challenging State of Affairs: Public Administration in the Republic of Lebanon

ABSTRACT

This article highlights Lebanon’s administrative challenges and reform efforts, since the end of its Civil War (1975–1990). In recent years, Lebanon and international donors have worked to improve transparency, promote modern management techniques, and encourage the use of information technology throughout the public sector. Despite these efforts, Lebanon’s public institutions remain constrained by the centralization of power, corruption, outdated bureaucratic structures, and deficiencies in administrative knowledge. The success of future reform efforts will depend on whether the Lebanese bureaucracy can overcome the challenges created by regional political tensions, its Syrian refugee crisis, and an increasingly indifferent Lebanese public.     

ENCOURAGING COMMUNITY DIALOG: APPROACH,PROMISE, AND TENSIONS

There has been growing interest in recent years in what might be termed “community dialogs,” or techniques for engaging broad-based discussions of issues within particular communities. The purpose of this article is to survey and assess this movement based on prior research. We first contrast traditional citizen involvement in public planning as a method of pursing community dialogs with the newer, collaborative public decision making approaches. The article then examines the benefits of community dialogs and the tensions which arise from their pursuit. We conclude by offering an assessment of how we might think about these techniques in the future.     

Post‐Olympic Powershift: The Return of the Middle Kingdom in a Post‐American World

In the minds of its leaders and intellectuals, China is more than just another successful emerging economy and a rising regional power. For them, what is going on today might be considered a renaissance that will bring a neo‐Confucian sensibility to a post‐American world. In this section NPQ editor Nathan Gardels reports on his recent visit to Shanghai. Wang Hui, China's leading new left intellectual and author of The Rise of Modem Chinese Thought, offers his, views on subjects ranging from modernity to Tibet.     

The Role of Public Sociology in the Development of Cultural Policies in Chile: a Transformation of Cultural Expertise

This paper seeks to analyze the policies on the cultural field implemented in Chile in recent years, explaining how expertise became fundamental and, more specifically, how this expertise evolved from that of an expert intellectual to that of an expert professional. The paper is based on the general hypothesis that the cultural field needs to be viewed in the context of a growing differentiation and autonomization of Chilean society, but that there are some interesting nuances to its evolution, particularly with regard to the transformation of expertise. This article argues that the expert in culture has a twofold nature, which is illustrated through drawing a timeline from the 1980s to the present, marking certain milestones in Chile’s national and cultural history. This timeline incorporates the intellectual work of two of Chile’s most important contemporary sociologists and experts in culture and cultural policies, Manuel Antonio Garretón and José Joaquín Brunner. A sample of their publications is analyzed and then contrasted to documents on cultural policy since the approval of the country’s institutional framework for culture in 2003, when the National Council for Culture and the Arts was created, gauging the influence of the expert intellectual on this new institutional framework and the thrust of public policies on culture. The paper concludes that the figure of the expert in culture has shifted from the “expert intellectual” to the expert of a professional kind, although the theoretical work of the former has continued to influence the debate around cultural policies to this day.     

Afro-Porteños at the end of the nineteenth century: discussing the nation

Argentina is a country that, even today, identifies itself as a modern, white, and European nation. This representation began to be projected in the last decades of the nineteenth century, framed in the state-consolidation and nation-building processes, which will be the historical context for this paper. It was also the time when a certain notion became broadly accepted: that Afro-Argentines, the descendants of formerly enslaved African people, had ‘disappeared’. By contrast, in that same period, Afro-Porteños (Porteños are citizens of Buenos Aires, capital of Argentina) had not disappeared but constituted an important community, which produced numerous newspapers. Through the analysis of Afro-Porteño newspapers, their self-representations and discourses, some of the ways they negotiated with the ideology of modernity and Europeanism (that implied whiteness) will be discussed. The agency of Afro-Porteños will be examined as we analyze how Afro-Porteño intellectuals promoted state values to their group and at the same time defended their community against discrimination.