Which Networks Matter in Education Governance? A Reply to Ball's 'New Philanthropy, New Networks and New Governance in Education'

Stephen Ball's recent article offers an intriguing perspective on the education policy process by engaging with the political science literature on policy networks and governance. Ball opens up the possibility of a fruitful dialogue between political scientists and education researchers by introducing some challenging interpretations of recent developments in the governance of education. In this reply, I suggest that a sustained focus on understanding power in the governance process could help to build on Ball's work. I argue that understanding power is crucial to deciding which networks matter and to building explanations of the effects of networks on policy outcomes. Without a focus on power, I claim, policy studies risk conflating the existence of networks with the existence of network governance.     

Gender equality without democracy? Higher education expansion and authoritarian values

How does social policy affect authoritarian values? Leveraging exogenous variation, I evaluate how higher education expansion as a social policy program in China has influenced authoritarian support and traditional gender attitudes. I use an instrumental variable approach and regression analyses with marginal effects to assess multiple waves of Chinese national representative surveys coupled with regional statistics. The study differentiates between two types of authoritarian support: specific support (authoritarian support based on evaluation of recent policies) and diffuse support (long-term authoritarian traits independent of recent policies). I find that education expansion has significantly decreased specific authoritarian support; however, it has not influenced diffuse authoritarian support. Moreover, a decrease in traditional gender attitudes is driven by a cohort effect rather than an education expansion effect. The findings have broader implications for understanding the effects of social policy on attitudinal change in an authoritarian context.     

Funding the Welfare State: Globalization and the Taxation of Business in Advanced Market Economies

Theorists assert that international capital mobility creates substantial pressure for all democratically elected governments to decrease tax burdens on business. I explicate and critique the general version of this theory and offer an alternative view. Empirically, I explore whether or not the globalization of capital markets has resulted in decreases in business social security, payroll, and profit taxes. I also investigate whether or not capital mobility has intensified government responsiveness to domestic investment and profitability. Evidence suggests that business tax burdens have not been reduced in the face of rises in capital mobility nor is tax responsiveness to profitability and domestic investment intensified by more open capital markets. To the contrary, analyses indicate that business taxation has become subject to new 'market conforming' policy rules that developed in tandem with liberalization of markets. These new policy orientations reduce the economic management roles of business taxation while leaving the revenue-generating roles intact. In conclusion, I discuss the implications of the findings for questions concerning the structural power of internationally mobile capital, redistributive policies, and the autonomy of democratically elected governments in a global economy.     

Measuring How Administration Shapes Citizenship: A Policy Feedback Perspective on Performance Management

Governments increasingly require administrators to develop outcome measurements that reflect a program's impact on society. But standard approaches to performance measurement have neglected the impact on citizenship outcomes—the individual civic capacities and dispositions and social bonds of civic reciprocity and trust. The concept is adapted from the growing policy feedback literature in political science, which offers strong empirical evidence that certain policies have measurable effects on citizenship outcomes such as political participation, social capital, a sense of civic belonging, and self-worth as a citizen. Using the Program Assessment Rating Tool as an example, the authors demonstrate the failure of performance assessments to consider the civic implications of public policies. They argue that performance management systems should focus on citizenship outcomes and offer a series of suggestions on how to measure such outcomes.     

Testing the Policy Capacities of Budgetary Agencies: Lessons from Finance

The Commonwealth Department of Finance, together with the Treasury from which it was hived off in 1976, constitutes the central budgetary agency at the Australian federal level. For the purposes of this article, I identify Finance as a convenient working model of central budgetary agencies, at least in their traditional Australian incarnation. I accept that Finance is unlikely to be fully representative of all such Australian agencies, and I acknowledge that the federal government's annual budget is officially introduced into parliament by the Treasurer, and that the Treasury is deservedly regarded as the core budgetary agency. But my focus here is on Finance's special responsibility for the public management framework, and Finance's role in providing policy advice to government organisations on how to make the best use of budget funding. This article then presents the findings of a recent evaluation of selected policy-advising activities with the department.     

Deliberative multiculturalism in New Labour's Britain

The aim of this paper is to examine the principles that New Labour has employed in its citizenship and multicultural policies in Britain, and to clarify theoretical locations as well as philosophical rationales of those principles. By deliberative multiculturalism, I mean a set of policies and discourses of New Labour about citizenship and multicultural issues, which emphasizes rational dialogue and mutual respect with firmly guaranteed political rights especially for minorities. New Labour tries to go beyond liberal and republican citizenship practice through enhancing deliberation, the origin of which goes back to the British tradition of parliamentary sovereignty. It also attempts to achieve a one-nation out of cultural cleavages, shifting its focus from redistribution with social rights to multicultural deliberation with political rights. I organize my discussion with a focus on the difference between two theoretical concepts: the relationship between cultural rights and individual equality, and the relationship between national boundaries and global belonging. In the concluding section, I explain three positive developments of New Labour's approach and also four limitations it has faced.     

Social Democrats and Neo-Liberalism: A Case Study of the Australian Labor Party

Social democratic parties have been agents in the neo-liberal transformation of public policy in recent decades. There has been debate about the reasons why social democrats have embraced market policies, with particular emphasis given to ideological trends, globalisation and electoral factors. This paper aims to shed further light on this debate by examining the case of the Australian Labor Party (ALP), which was a prominent social democratic exponent of neo-liberalism during its time in office in the 1980s and 1990s. In Labor's case, the primary cause of the shift from pledging social reform and interventionist government to neo-liberalism was the lower levels of economic growth that followed the end of the post-war boom in the 1970s. Social democrats rely on strong economic growth to fund redistributive policies. Thus when recession occurred in the 1970s it eroded the economic base to Labor's programme. While this paper focuses on the story of the ALP, it may provide some answers as to why social democrats elsewhere have adopted neo-liberalism.     

“What have you done for me lately?” Re-thinking local representation

Scholars have studied the influence that constituents exert on elected representatives’ action in national parliaments at length. Still, academic pundits have usually confined local representation to distributive policies and casework, and limited local legislators’ focus to a territorial perspective. In this study, I try and propose a more nuanced theory of local representation, and I use automated text analysis to capture elected representatives’ propensity to serve functional as well as territorial interests. In an effort to provide empirical backing to my theoretical argumentation, I present an analysis of Italian legislators’ behavior which shows that deputies are willing to divert public spending to their district but also to favor the interests of specific economic sectors. Scholars have already acknowledged the multidimensional character of political representation at the national level, my analysis offers theoretical justification and empirical evidence to support doing so at the local level as well.     

政策性城市新移民社会资本对个体健康的影响研究--基于成都市的调查

基于社会资本理论,系统分析成都市政策性城市新移民与城市本地居民的健康相关社会资本现状。结果表明,政策性城市新移民的总体社会资本得分和单项社会资本得分均低于城市本地居民,且差异有统计学意义(P<0.05)。在此基础上,通过开展政策性城市新移民的社会资本对健康的影响因素分析,构建社会资本影响健康的作用路径模型,提出了提升政策性城市新移民健康相关社会资本的建议,为制定提高政策性城市新移民健康水平的政策提供参考依据。     

UK corporate governance: To what end a new regulatory state?

This article questions the importance of recent changes in the regulation of UK corporate governance. Michael Moran has observed that a new regulatory state is emerging. In the case presented here new authority was created but little changed substantively. Under Labour and Conservative ministers, governance policy was reactive and cautious. For all the new institutional capacity, governance problems and policies were conceived within existing structures of power and advantage. Any ambitions to social control that threatened the political-economic status quo were ruled out. While this may be no surprise, it suggests regulatory reorganisation need not herald dramatic change, even when politicised.     

Macro Measures and Mechanics of Social Capital

Interest in social capital has grown as it has become apparentthat it is an important predictor of collective well-being.Recently, attention has shifted to how levels of social capitalhave changed over time. But better measures are required totest even basic hypotheses such as establishing the directionof causality between the two components of social capital. Inthe following analysis, I develop macro measures of social capitalthrough the development of longitudinal measures of civic engagementand interpersonal trust. I use these measures to test basicassumptions about social capital. The result is not only thefirst over time measures of social capital, but also an increasein our understanding of social capital as a macro process withcomplex causes and effects.     

Theory to Practice: Policy Recommendations for Fostering Economic Development through Social Capital

Proponents of social capital theory have long argued not only that it is in the best interest of civic life to build social capital but also that social capital is vital for the economic health of communities. This has been confirmed by recent research showing that social capital, especially in its bridging form, is positively associated with job creation at the metropolitan statistical area level. At the same time, social capital is often viewed as something either inherent or absent within a community. This article takes on that assumption by presenting a policy‐based approach to developing social capital. It provides two theoretical explanations for how social capital affects economic development and identifies four lessons for economic development practitioners to use to enhance social capital. These research‐based recommendations for economic development practitioners and policy makers seek to improve the social capital and, consequently, the economic development of their community.     

Social Value and the Management of Community Infrastructure*

The management of community infrastructure by local governments has emerged as a significant policy issue in Australia as evidence mounts of a funding shortfall to maintain ageing physical assets. In 2003 the Victorian government introduced a new infrastructure management policy to focus local government decision‐making on service potential and financial sustainability rather than political interests or community preference. However, the policy relies on a model of local government as a service provider that is inattentive to new interests in community building and governance and takes limited account of the wider social value of community facilities. This article backgrounds debates over infrastructure, particularly at local level, and critically analyses the new policy direction set by the Victorian government.     

Investigating the influence of social costs and benefits of environmental policies through social capital theory

The level of effectiveness of an environmental policy depends to a significant degree on the level of acceptance and cooperation of citizens. The relevant literature indicates that social capital may significantly influence environmentally responsible behaviour connected with the implementation of an environmental policy. In this context, the present article aims to further explore this field by introducing the issue of non-economic social costs and benefits imposed from environmental policies. In particular, it is supported, both theoretically and empirically, that social costs and benefits may influence the decision of individuals to cooperate and comply with an environmental policy and thus may be a significant indicator for environmental behaviour. Furthermore, these social costs and benefits may differ among individuals and are influenced by social capital elements. Consequently, through the article the need of exploring social capital prior to environmental policy implementation is underlined along with the need of creating social capital assessment techniques.     

Governance through civil society? An Anglo-Italian comparison of democratic renewal and local regeneration

Abstract

The UK has become a prime case for the implementation of the ‘new governance’ of partnership between central government and civil society. This perspective has become central to New Labour policies for both local socio-economic regeneration and democratic renewal in the United Kingdom. However, limitations in its redistribution of power, its transparency in the policy-making process, including the representativeness of civil society participants, and, in the effectiveness of its outcomes have all been alleged by academic critics. These issues are explored by contrasting a robust, British case of local, participatory governance in Bristol with a quite different, and more conventional approach to democratic renewal in the Italian city of Naples. Despite similar problems of socio-economic dereliction and similar schemes of regeneration in the two cases, the Italian approach emphasized the exclusive role of a renewed constitutional democracy, while in Bristol central government agencies promoted an accentuation of local trends to participation by local civil society organizations. Applying an analytical framework composed of national policies and regulations, institutional rules and norms, and the collective ‘identity’ factors identified by social capital theory, governance changes are here treated as ‘exogenous shocks’ and/or as opportunities for choice. However, over and above differences in these institutional frameworks the key factors are shown to be the longer-standing political cultures influencing local actors and their own repertoires of action; with repertoires influenced by objective validations of previous policy choices, or economic or electoral successes. The study finds that the achievements of the ‘inclusive’, participative governance approach do not significantly exceed those of an exclusivist, ‘neo-constitutionalism’, as practised by a more autonomous local government in Naples. Thus, on this evidence, enhanced civil society engagement still requires greater freedom from central government direction.     

The World Bank and social capital: Lessons from ten rural development projects in the Philippines and Mexico

Social capital is widely recognized as one of the few sources of capital available to the poor, yet the processes by which development policies affect the accumulation of that social capital are not well understood. The World Bank, through its funding of development projects, affects the institutional environments for the accumulation of such social capital. The question is how to determine whether that institutional context is enabling, and to what degree. This paper compares ten recent World Bank-funded rural development projects in Mexico and the Philippines to explore how the processes of project design and implementation influence the institutional environments for the accumulation of horizontal, vertical, and intersectoral forms of pro-poor social capital. The findings have conceptual and policy implications for understanding the political dynamics of creating enabling environments for social capital accumulation by the poor.     

Mobile Capital, Democratic Institutions, and the Public Economy in Advanced Industrial Societies

This article addresses the following questions. Is international capital mobility systematically related to reductions in the size of the public economy, as globalization theory suggests? Alternatively, do democratic institutions and processes shape the ways in which internationalization affects national policies? Specifically, I argue that the effects of capital mobility on the scope of the public economy should be conditioned by the institutional forms of societal interest representation and the formal organization of decision-making authority within the polity. Utilizing econometric analysis of 1964–1993 data from 16 nations, I find that international capital mobility has few direct effects on the scope of the public economy. However, configurations of democratic institutions fundamentally shape the domestic policy impacts of capital mobility. Where social corporatism and inclusive electoral institutions are strong and where decision-making authority within the polity is concentrated, international capital mobility is either unrelated to the scope of the public economy or positively associated with total public spending, social transfers, and public consumption. In institutional contexts of pluralist interest and exclusive electoral representation, and in polities where decision-making is dispersed, rises in capital mobility are systematically associated with rollbacks of the public sector.     

Exploring Social Capital: as Concept and Practice in Australian Public Health Policies and Programs

Over the past twenty years interest has grown in the concept of social capital in international and Australian public policy. We explore how social capital is understood as a concept and used in practice for guiding policy development and program delivery in South Australian public health programs. The empirical research compared policy makers’ and practitioners’ understandings of social capital and how theories about social capital and health inequality were translated into practice in three case study projects. It found that there are shifting discourses between social capital and related concepts, including community capacity building, and social inclusion/exclusion. Policy makers reported less use of the concept of social capital in favour of social inclusion/exclusion reflecting changing political and policy environments where terms come into favour and then go out of fashion. In this transition period the two terms are often used interchangeably although there are some conceptual points of difference.     

Comment on John T. Metzger's “planned abandonment: The neighborhood life‐cycle theory and national urban policy”

Abstract

I take strong exception to the idea that theories of neighborhood change, in and of themselves, caused the decline of inner cities. Rather, the demographic, social, and economic forces that existed in the postwar years caused some inner‐city neighborhoods to decline. The replacement of working‐class and middle‐income households by households with much lower incomes, on average, was the single biggest cause of neighborhood decline. Metzger ignores this fact as an alternative explanation for why some neighborhoods declined. It is highly implausible that my theories and those of other urban experts had such a strong impact on the public policy, building, and finance communities. Because people were responding to real conditions, it is likely that the same events would have occurred even if my model of neighborhood change had never been developed.