Implementation: Making Hard Work of Something Simple

Early in 2012 the Rural Property Addressing Project in South Australia announced that it had substantially met its outcomes, and that the whole of the project was soon to be completed. In 2003, one of the recommendations to cabinet from the South Australian Premier's Bushfire Summit was to endorse the development of a standard property addressing system for rural properties across the state. This was formally endorsed by cabinet, and was a direct response to the fact that essential services such as ambulance, medical and social care were hindered in providing services to the residents of Eyre Peninsula during and after the bushfires. Overall, this was not a controversial decision, nor was it a huge implementation challenge, yet it took nine years to come into effect. This is a classic case of the tyranny of small decisions. This article outlines some of the implementation challenges faced by this apparently simple project, and provides some thoughts for implementation challenges of the future. The take‐away message is that if something so comparatively simple was made so complex, how can we adapt our public services to the cross‐cutting challenges of the future?     

Social Identity and Social Capital: The Collective Self at Work

Organizational scholars and institutional theorists have shown a great deal of interest in the concept of social capital. To a large extent, this interest has been fueled by accumulating evidence that social capital plays a vital role in the development of more cooperative, productive, and stable relationships within organizations and institutions. Recognizing these benefits, a major focus of recent theoretical efforts has been explicating the antecedents of social capital. Drawing on concepts from social identity theory and related theories of the self, this paper develops a framework for conceptualizing how individuals' psychological identification with a collective enhances their willingness to engage in behaviors that contribute to the creation and maintenance of social capital. The paper reviews empirical evidence in favor of the framework and draws out some of its theoretical and applied implications.     

民主的思想谱系及其有效运行的分析框架

民主的思想谱系聚焦于观念史的视角,探究民主话语在不同时期的兴衰演进,从柏拉图到托克维尔皆以谨慎的姿态看待民主,究其原因在于对"多数人暴政"的担忧,不受法治约束的民主会导向"极权式的民主"。民主的运转需要法治来维护,这体现了治理能力发展的内在要求。民主思想的历史光谱为理解民主制度建设提供了可资参考的镜像,注重法治与效率的国家能力建设,维护公众权利,回应公众诉求,促进公共性的有机成长构成深入推进民主有效运行的基本框架。     

社会资本视阈下的社会工作

社会工作是一种福利性和公益性服务,它的正常运转需要整合社会资源,协调社会关系,而社会资本就具有这种功能。可以说,社会工作就是社会资本的社会支持功能的具体展示。目前,我国社会工作取得了一定成绩,但仍面临着社会认同度较低、职业化和专业化程度不高、激励保障机制缺失等发展困境。这主要是由于社会工作管理体制和运行机制不够健全,社会工作理念和意识不够普及,社会工作人才评价体系不够完善造成的。为此,要端正价值取向,加大政府支持力度,健全职业体系,开发社工岗位,加强教育培训和激励保障,以利于积累社会资本,推进社会工作发展。     

Better Government with Older Citizens: A Test of Democracy

Better Government for Older People: this ambitious project to involve older citizens in the improvement of policies affecting them, celebrated its tenth anniversary in 2008. Then the Government decided to close it down, setting up an Advisory Forum as an alternative. BGOP's considerable achievements were widely recognised (and acknowledged in the DWP review by John Elbourne) but there were real shortcomings. BGOP's previous history is summarised, with special reference to its work with the Older People's Advisory Group. Some activists and observers believe BGOP's weaknesses could and should have been remedied, but the Government decided to start again. There are strongly opposed interpretations of why this happened. Former BGOP staff and OPAG members have since set up ChangeAGEnts, a Co-operative charity, to continue their work. The specific issue is intrinsically and demographically important, but it also throws light on consultation in many other policy areas.     

Voter Turnout in Norway: Time, Space, and Causality

This article focuses on diachronic and synchronic variation in Norwegian electoral turnout from 1945 to 1991. The model contains aggregate data divided into two-year intervals with regions as cross-sections. The impact of both socio-economic and political variables is tested. The two-dimensional view on turnout variation makes it possible to distinguish between short-term and long-term effects, as well as between national versus local factors. In contrast to related studies, this analysis actually tests for causality relationships between different political variables. The empirical results indicate that an increase in either national unemployment or regional income contributes to an increase in turnout rates. Electoral participation is also positively related to Labour support, industrial employment and strike activity.     

The Political Economy of Growth: Democracy and Human Capital

Democracy is more than just another brake or booster for the economy. We argue that there are significant indirect effects of democracy on growth through public health and education. Where economists use life expectancy and education as proxies for human capital, we expect democracy will be an important determinant of the level of public services manifested in these indicators. In addition to whatever direct effect democracy may have on growth, we predict an important indirect effect through public policies that condition the level of human capital in different societies. We conduct statistical investigations into the direct and indirect effects of democracy on growth using a data set consisting of a 30-year panel of 128 countries. We find that democracy has no statistically significant direct effect on growth. Rather, we discover that the effect of democracy is largely indirect through increased life expectancy in poor countries and increased secondary education in non poor countries.     

社会资本与社会组织运转——以甘东用水协会为例

促进人们之间相互合作有三种机制——科层、市场和自组织.三种机制在官僚成本、交易成本与结社成本低的情况下都能很好地促进民众之间的合作,但是在缺少社会资本的地方,随着三种成本的上升,合作机制可能都会导致不合作行为的发生.根据对中国目前唯一的整体实行参与式灌溉管理改革并取得成功的中型灌区——甘东用水协会进行实地调研,从协会在现实中所遇到的用水户合作困境出发,针对甘东用水协会内用水户为什么不积极参与和自己利益密切相关的社会组织的建设这个问题,从科层影子、扭曲市场和公民社会缺乏三个方面对甘东用水协会困境进行了分析.得出:政府或者其他外部机构在社会资本缺乏、市场机制难以奏效的地方建立用水协会这类社会组织,要想实现其可持续发展,必须使其脱离科层控制;而且政府或者外部机构在投资方向上也要更加侧重于促进地方社会资本增加的项目,而不是用时髦的、现代的、复杂的组织或者设备来简单代替原来的基础设施.     

Citizen Expectations and Satisfaction in a Young Democracy: A Test of the Expectancy‐Disconfirmation Model

Citizen satisfaction with public services has been shown to depend on citizens’ expectations and their perceptions of performance. If performance exceeds expectations, satisfaction is likely; if performance falls short of expectations, dissatisfaction is likely. The existing evidence on this process covers the United States and the United Kingdom. The authors generalize the idea of expectation‐driven citizen satisfaction (the “expectancy‐disconfirmation model”) theoretically and empirically to an institutional context of limited accountability and widespread citizen distrust. Using a survey of a broad cross‐section of the general adult population in Guadalajara, Mexico, in 2014, this article finds support for the expectancy‐disconfirmation model in this very different context. The authors also test for an effect of the type of expectation using an embedded, randomized experiment but do not find evidence of a difference between normative and empirical expectations. Findings support the usefulness of the expectancy‐disconfirmation model in a wide range of contexts.     

Guaranteed Rotation in Office: A ‘New’ Model Of Democracy

Although once a classic democratic ideal, rotation in office is nowadays seen more as a natural consequence of competitive elections than a goal in its own right. But this article proposes that a strict rota, with each group taking a turn in office, might be preferable to ordinary electoral democracy in certain sorts of countries: nascent democracies, divided societies with persistent minorities and failed one‐party democracies. Ways are suggested of combining intraparty democracy with interparty rotation.     

Growth and the Welfare State in the EU: A Causality Analysis

In this paper, we test for causality between GDP growth andsocial protection expenditure in the European Union. To that end,we apply Hsiao's (1981) sequential procedure to data for twelveEU countries along the 1970–1994 period. Our results suggestthat, for Belgium, Germany, Ireland, Luxembourg, the Netherlands,Portugal, and Spain, causality runs only from social protectiongrowth to GDP growth, while for Denmark, France, Greece, Italy,and the United Kingdom, no causality is found between socialprotection growth and GDP growth.