Performance of Public–Private Partnerships and the Influence of Contractual Arrangements

This article seeks to answer two research questions: does public-private partnerships (ppp) live up to its promises to government? How do contractual arrangements affect ppp performance? We propose a conceptual framework to evaluate ppp performance by comparing actual project outcomes to government goals in initiating the partnerships, and to explore how a set of contractual arrangements affect the ppp performance on each identified goal. The framework is applied to a comparative case analysis of highway ppp experiences in the commonwealth of virginia (us) since the 1990s. The results show that these ppp cases were successful in accessing innovative finance, but their performance was mixed on reducing construction risk and transferring revenue risk. Generally improved over time with later projects, the ppp performance was affected not only by interaction among contractual arrangements –private partner selection, financial arrangements, role division, risk allocation, and project characteristics – but also by authorizing and supportive legislation in the policy domain.     

Dissent,Public Space and the Politics of Citizenship: Riots and the ‘Outside Agitator’

This paper presents an historical examination of a significant period in which state authority and citizenship came together around the question of dissent in the US. Drawing on congressional records, news accounts and legal documents—and deploying theories of citizenship and space—it presents an argument about how state power and geographical space came together around the question of the ‘race riots’ that swept American cities in the late 1960s. I focus in particular on how government officials and others constituted the figure of the ‘outside agitator’ as the cause of illegitimate dissent and the subject of state intervention. Such arguments about the geography of authority and dissent were themselves interventions in the politics of citizenship. More broadly, then, the paper argues for closer attention to issues of difference—and the geography of difference—in the constitution of state power.     

‘Intelligence,Public Confidence and Security’

Richard Gid Powers, Secrecy and Power: The Life of J. Edgar Hoover (New York: The Free Press, 1987). Pp. 624; $27.95.

Jeffrey Richelson, American Espionage and the Soviet Target (New York: William Morrow, 1987).

John Keegan, The Mask of Command (New York; Viking Penguin 1987). Pp. 368; $18.95.

Major General Rygor Slowikowski, In the Secret Service: The Lighting of the Torch (London: The Windrush Press, 1988). Pp. 285; £16.95.

Alexandre de Marenches and Christine Ockrent, The Evil Empire: The Third World War Now (London: Sidgwick &; Jackson, 1988), Pp. 224, £13.95

Robert Marshall, All the King's Men (London: Collins, 1988). Pp.314; £12.95. Brendan M. Murphy, Turncoat (New York: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1987). Pp. 301; $19.95.

Ray Godson (ed.), Comparing Foreign Intelligence: The U.S., the USSR, the U.K. and the Third World (New York: Pergamon Brasseys, 1988), Pp. 157; $18.95.

Stephen J. Cimbala (ed.). Intelligence and Intelligence Policy in a Democratic Society (Dobbs Ferry, New York: Transnational Publishers Inc., 1987). Pp. 262. $37.50.     

Rethinking the ‘Cold War’ in the Asia‐Pacific*

Abstract

Whereas the Yalta System collapsed and the Cold War ended in the Euro‐Atlantic context, the basic structure of the Cold War remains in the Asia‐Pacific region, and still provides potential sources for future conflicts. This paper reconsiders the regional Cold War and its implications for current international politics in the Asia‐Pacific region. It argues that the relaxation of tensions seen since the late 1980s resembles the 1970s’ détente in the Euro‐Atlantic region, i.e. recognition of a Cold War political status quo, rather than the ‘end of the Cold War’. Along with political and ideological confrontations, significant elements within the Cold War structure in the Asia‐Pacific are regional conflicts among its major players. Their historical correlation within the San Francisco System has been neglected in past studies. The paper suggests that re‐examining the disputes within a multilateral framework may provide a key to a breakthrough in understanding the current status quo.     

The ‘Sword and Shield of the Party’: how the Vietnamese People’s Public Security Forces portray themselves

This paper shows that since the beginning of the reform period in 1986 the regime in Hanoi has taken great pains to create the image of the state having legitimate and, indeed, heroic security organs that acted as the ‘saviors of the Vietnamese revolution’ and still serve as the ‘shield and sword’ of the Vietnamese Communist Party. I argue that while previously the socialist state used to regard the history of its security organs as top secret, over the last few years, a huge amount of resources have been mobilized to actively propagate a sacred and romanticized image of the security apparatus.     

From Promoting to De-emphasizing ‘Ethnicity’: Rethinking the Endless Supervision of Kosovo

International statebuilders’ strategy to achieve a peaceful and multi-ethnic Kosovo has shifted from the top-down institutionalization of a multi-ethnic society in the UNMIK period (1999-2008), to the neutral and technical administration of society, with a focus on the reduction of the ethnic divide (EULEX and ICO after 2008). However, despite this evolution in the understanding of statebuilding, this article identifies a dominant sentiment among practitioners of both periods, shared also by academic scholars: further international assistance is key to building a truly inclusive peace. It is argued that this shared assumption rests on the belief that the problems in Kosovo are caused by ethnic thinking—a psychosocial dysfunction. This psychosocial framing of the problem—no matter whether the solution is a process of promoting or de-emphasizing ‘ethnic’ differences—involves a constant and endless international management of Kosovo.     

Crowding Out Meritocracy? – Cultural Constraints in Chinese Public Human Resource Management

This paper seeks cultural explanations of the pervasive norm violations against the principle of meritocracy in Chinese public human resource management especially at local levels. It reveals that a bureaucratic culture of patrimonial individualism, including favouritism, nepotism, localism, and factionalism prevailing within Chinese officialdom as the ethos, value, psychological disposition, and behavioural orientation of civil servants, has undermined the development in China of a modern meritocracy‐based civil service system. With 14 case studies, this research demonstrates that the Chinese civil service institutions, derived from an opposite culture of hierarchical collectivism, failed to address the cultural constraints over the implementation of the meritocracy principle. The conceptual framework, as well as the case findings, points to legislative and policy reforms in China that would address the problems derived from the unique Chinese bureaucratic culture through further institutional design and capacity building.     

Corporatism and the ‘privileged position’ of business

This article examines the contradictions between Lindblom's thesis of the ‘privileged position of business’ and the corporatist views of writers such as Schmitter and Lehmbruch. The implications of the two theories are analysed in the context of the exchanges between the capital and labour in corporatist systems. The analysis focuses on the kinds of exchange business may enter into, with special attention to the question of capital mobility, for that gives important insights into the stability of corporatist systems. Case studies of Sweden and Norway show that the kinds of bargain struck under corporatism may have serious consequences for corporatism, both as an analytical device and as a working system.     

Ararat and the politics of ‘preserving’ denial

ABSTRACT

Daldal analyses Atom Egoyan's film Ararat (2002) in terms of its ‘truth claims’ and its ostensible critique of the politics of denial of the Turkish authorities. Her essay is not an apologia for Turkish attitudes but claims that, while searching for the ‘truth’ amid denial and deception, the film creates its own ‘official history’, which is presented as the history, mostly based on nostalgia and ‘post-memory’. The Armenian diaspora still relies heavily on the genocide in order to build consciousness and cohesion, and Ararat contributes further to the need for sacred codes, sacred lands and sacred myths. Although the Turkish denial of the genocide is unacceptable, by demonizing the Turks and Turkey, the film contributes to the preservation of that denial, which has been helpful in the creation of diasporic Armenian identity.     

‘Empty,Swept and Garnished’: the Public Finance Initiative case of Throckley Middle School

As spaces of complex layering of multiple relations, each with their own space–time dynamics and reach, policies of urban governance and their tangible outcomes can be materially experienced as conjunctions of multiple meshworks of assemblages with different scopes and different systems of values. This paper investigates a case example of a Private Finance Initiative for the construction of Throckley Middle School in Newcastle upon Tyne. Completed in 2003, Throckley school closed in 2005. A Deleuzean-inspired tracing of several Throckley assemblages is presented and the paper concludes by discussing the challenges of adopting a Deleuzean perspective for analysis of urban governance and infrastructure development.     

‘Ritual slaughter’ and the protection of animals

French courts produced contradictory judgments in similar cases involving daily newspapers accused of incitement to racial hatred.     

The rise of the ‘new agenda’ and the decline of partisanship

Has the rise of so‐called new social movements contributed to an undermining of parties in Western nations? This study reviews the arguments alleging this to be the case, and then summarises the results of 229 public opinion surveys from 17 nations. The surveys indicate that those who hold ‘post‐materialist’ values are stronger partisans than those with ‘materialist’ values. The analysis concludes that much of the literature has overstated the contrasts between movements and parties, that the mass public does not differentiate itself into ‘party’ and ‘movement’ categories, and that parties have been resourceful in protecting themselves against the depradations that movements might cause.     

Keeping the ‘Ism’ in ‘cosmopolitanism’ – Wieland and the origins of cosmopolitan discourse

ABSTRACT

After having been dormant for much of the 20th century, the concept of cosmopolitanism has regained some of its former rhetorical power in current academic and political debates. Taking Kwame Anthony Appiah and Robert Fine as key interlocutors, the article argues that a historically informed analysis of the linguistic context, in which the language of cosmopolitanism first emerged, can help us understand better the political and ideological underpinnings of the concept. In the first part of the article, I discuss the emergence of cosmopolitanism in the context of what I shall refer to as the ‘ismatization’ of political language in the late 18th and early 19th centuries. In the second part, I turn to what I consider to be a key text for understanding the paradoxes of cosmopolitanism: the essay Das Geheimnis des Kosmopolitenordens (‘The Secret of the Order of the Cosmopolitans’), published by the German novelist, poet and publicist Christoph Martin Wieland in the journal Teutscher Merkur in 1788. At the end of the 18th century, I argue, Wieland makes a similar observation to Fine, namely that the ‘ism’ connotes something doctrinal, even sectarian, and steeped in secrecy and conspiracy.     

The ‘Post-Holocaust Jew’ and the Instrumentalization of Philosemitism

Abstract

Altfelix attempts to examine and explain why xenophiles are politically prone to an ambivalent re-utilization of xenophobic images of the Other. In Germany both ‘the Jew’ and ‘the Ausländer’ have been instrumentalized xenophilically in their capacity as abstract notions by certain system actors and publics in a manner which appears to shed more light on the in-group than the Other. Xenophilia as a self-oriented, positive in-group evaluation may be identified as particularly evident in the post-war German political discourse on the Holocaust. In similar fashion to antisemitism, philosemitism represents an ‘allosemitic’ (Bauman) abstraction of ‘the Jew’, whose evocation is comparable to the idea of a ‘good foreigner’ as expressed in Ausländerfreundlichkeit (foreigner-friendliness). Xenophilia/philosemitism—like xenophobia/antisemitism—is dependent upon a relative opposition between ‘concretized Self’ and ‘abstracted Other’. Altfelix argues that this relationship emerges for two reasons. First, manifestations of xenophilia are generally preceded by bouts of xenophobia. Consequently, some publics may identify a need for creating a positive in-group focus. In this, the Other must not become too concrete for fear of distracting attention away from the xenophile's agenda. Second, the difference between Self and Other must be effectively maintained, since the xenophile's raison d'être depends upon it. Post-war German philosemitism appears to be a good exemplar for this definition of ‘xenophilia’. It demonstrates the dangers of moving within an allosemitic cycle in which difference becomes a method of keeping otherness at bay through abstraction. The fear of a misremembrance of the Holocaust resulting from an abstract memorialization seems to provide a very solid political basis for perpetuating a philosemitic identity construction of ‘the Jew’ as abstracted Other.     

The ‘I’ and the ‘we’ of citizenship in the age of waning democracy: Wolin and Balibar on citizenship,the political and dedemocratization

Despite drawing on different historical traditions and philosophical sources, Sheldon Wolin and Étienne Balibar have come to see citizenship and democracy in fundamentally similar ways. However, the work of one has not been considered alongside that of the other. In this paper, I examine some of their key texts and draw out three areas of common concern: the historical specificity of the political, citizenship as a dialectical process and dedemocratization. The significance of Wolin and Balibar’s writing on citizenship and democracy lies in a set of proposals for the eternal rebirth of the citizen as democratic agent between action and institution, hierarchy and equality, individual and community, difference and the universal. Their open-ended frameworks can be seen as an antidote to contemporary pessimism about the fate of democracy as either political order or normative ideal. I conclude by suggesting that contemporary Ecuadorean and Bolivian debates about how to combine relational ontologies and liberalism has opened a fertile domain for re-imagining the I and We of citizenship.     

Clinching the ‘Return to Europe’: The Referendums on EU Accession in Estonia and Latvia

There are two salient features of the referendums on EU membership in Estonia and Latvia. Firstly, the results with decisive pro-EU majorities went easily beyond expectations based on previous opinion poll trends, where these two Baltic states had shown less public enthusiasm for integration than other Central and East European countries. This fact owed much to convincing arguments about abandoning international isolation and about geopolitical choice, with strong historical overtones. The anti-accession cause in both countries suffered from various weaknesses even though, in Estonia though not in Latvia, Eurosceptical attitudes were in evidence. Secondly, there was much less support for EU entry among the strong Russian minorities in both countries. This difference was partly due to the higher incidence of economic circumstances in determining voting behaviour but also to the fact that pro-EU (hence, pro-West) arguments were implicitly and sometimes explicitly unfriendly to Russia. In turn, this also showed that the Soviet legacy was particular to these Baltic countries compared with other accession states from CEE.     

Economics and the ‘nonsense’ of law: the case of the Chicago antitrust revolution

Abstract

The Law and Economics movement that emerged in the University of Chicago through the 1940s and 1950s, around Ronald Coase's example, is a manifestation of the neo-liberal project of applying neo-classical economics to state sovereignty. In the 1970s and 1980s, Law and Economics ideas revolutionized the application of antitrust laws in the United States. However, this achievement came about not through a transformation in economic orthodoxy, but through persuading legal experts to recognize the inherent ‘nonsense’ at work in their own normative assumptions. The Chicago antitrust revolution is therefore symptomatic of trends that Foucault viewed as definitive of neo-liberalism more broadly.