Thinking about order without thought: the lifetime contributions of Gordon Tullock

Philosophers tend to think of them as “conventions.” Economists and some biologists conceive of them as “spontaneous orders,” a concept discussed at some length in other papers in this issue. Perhaps the most general conception is “systems” theory, with roots in many disciplines. Many scholars in the sciences have tried to advance their research agendas by bringing systems theory to the study of human civilization. Gordon Tullock, a scholar who in the future will be recognized as someone well ahead of his own time, traveled the reverse path, in many cases being the first to suggest that the path even exists.     

Images of Coordination: How Implementing Organizations Perceive Coordination Arrangements

A crucial challenge for the coordination of horizontal policy programs—those designed to tackle crosscutting issues—is how to motivate government organizations to contribute to such programs. Hence, it is crucial to study how practitioners in implementing organizations view and appreciate the coordination of such programs. Assisted by Q-methodology, this inductive study reveals three significantly different “images”: central frame setting, networking via boundary spanners, and coordination beyond window dressing. Most surprisingly, different images show up among respondents within the same organizations and horizontal programs. The authors find that the images reflect elements of the literature: the resistance to hierarchical central control, the need for local differentiation and increased incentives, and a collaboration-oriented culture. Most importantly, practitioners of implementing organizations perceive top-down mechanisms as ineffective to achieve coordination and ask for adaptive arrangements, involvement, and deliberative processes when designing coordination arrangements and during the collaboration.     

Who controls the machine,revisited: command and control in the United Nations reform effort

Revisiting an analysis done ten years ago during one of the periodic efforts to reform the United Nations, the article suggests that the problem of control and accountability of the programming and budgeting process of the United Nations has not yet been resolved. Noting that the existing process does not allow for major changes in programmes and priorities and that it does not give the Secretary-General or the Member States a means for determining the organization's effectiveness, it argues for a new approach to command and control based on a service-delivery approach and adjustment of existing institutions. © 1997 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Expanding the scope and content of morality policy research: lessons from Moral Foundations Theory

Scholars have not precisely defined morality policy, and Smith (Policy Stud J 30(3):379–395, 2002) urged an empirical taxonomy be used to identify those policies. We argue that Moral Foundations Theory offers a methodology for empirically identifying issues with moral content. We inventory 15 issues in parliamentary studies of “conscience” voting, 14 morality policies in western democracies compiled by Studlar (in: Mooney (ed) The public clash of private values: the politics of morality policy, Chatham House Publishers, New York, 2001), and then survey MFT empirical studies to identify 22 issues with moral content. Based on this universe of 37 issues, three journals are content analyzed to determine the coverage given them and to outline productive lines for future research.     

Coordination in Youth Affairs: The Politics of Non-Decision-Making

One of the components associated with the widely heralded shift to 'new managerialism' in the public sector has been an increased emphasis on coordination between government departments as a means to enhance effective service provision. This article examines the capacity for coordination to fulfil this objective. Drawing upon a case study of coordination in youth affairs in Western Australia, the article examines the process by which the coordination mechanisms become enveloped in the 'politics of non-decision-making'. By this is meant that a set of power relationships create tensions at a number of levels — between commonwealth and state government agencies; between state government agencies and within individual agencies — which act to prevent effective decisions from being taken. The implications of this case study for the capacity of 'new managerialism' to produce effective policy outcomes in complex social policy areas is highlighted. Evidence from this study suggests that, in an era of restricted resources and heightened competition within the public sector, agencies are pushed to more clearly define their boundaries.     

The scope of political jurisdictions and violence: theory and evidence from Africa

Public Choice - Is there more violence in areas with many small countries or only a single large one? I build on Bernholz (The international game of power: past, present and future 1985) to create...     

The Problems of Policy Coordination: The New Zealand Experience

The problems of coordinating the development and implementation of public policy are legion. While such problems are most commonly associated with large federal systems, they can arise with equal force and complexity in small, highly centralized, unitary states such as New Zealand. This article has four main purposes. First, it briefly surveys some of the recent literature on the nature of coordination and the mechanisms for enhancing policy coordination in government. Second, it outlines the nature and causes of the coordination difficulties that have been encountered in recent years in New Zealand. Third, it explores the various attempts which the Labour government (1984–90) and the National government (1990–present) have made to overcome these difficulties. Finally, the article considers some of the lessons which emerge from New Zealand's recent experience.     

War without end: the domestic economic fallout of empire

While the effects of the Bush doctrine on our relations in the world and our civil liberties at home have received widespread scrutiny, there has been relatively little attention paid to its effects on our domestic economy. This is surprising in light of Paul Kennedy's thesis that empires tend to overextend themselves militarily, depleting their revenue‐generating and productive capacities at home and making them vulnerable to decline in relation to nations whose economies are rising. This article brings together many threads of a discussion about the economic impacts of war that have been scattered across disciplines, buried in government documents and in the reports of government watchdogs groups, or are just beginning to emerge in the press, and suggests some areas for investigation that are being ignored. Far from “protecting our American way of life,” the garrison state the Bush administration is building may in fact be leading to our political and economic decline.     

互补与协同:中国劳资冲突的多元化解

社会转型期,我国社会劳资冲突呈现多发态势.究其原因在于利益表达渠道不畅与权利意识增强的矛盾、劳资双方权力和信息不对称、政府管理中存在的两难困境以及社会公众对政府的高依赖、低信任等.在当前劳资冲突的管理中,政府应该立足于加强有关法律和制度的建设,平衡劳资双方的关系,规范劳资双方的行为,为劳资关系双方能够顺利进行协商与谈判创造制度环境和条件.     

A Capacity for Central Coordination: The Case of the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet

For the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C) the year 1987 can now be seen as pivotal in marking a clear end to a period of transition in coordinating structures in the Australian Public Service (APS) that had lasted roughly 20 years. The abolition in 1987 of the Public Service Board, formerly a powerful coordinating agency, is the most obvious marker of the change. The PSB's departure left the Secretary of PM&C with a role that is now often described as ‘head of the public service’. More broadly, the 1987 changes to the machinery of government both formalised and enabled a sea‐change in PM&C's role. Before 1987 a large policy initiation and development project would usually have been considered as beyond PM&C's scope. Since then, extensive and direct policy development work by PM&C has become common. The continuing debates have been over whether PM&C actually delivers in these roles (an empirical question) and how far it should play them (a normative issue). In this article we itemise the capacity, both continuing and developing, which PM&C has to support policy development. Traditional coordination mechanisms are an important part of this armoury and PM&C has long experience of most of them. However policy initiation and development calls for other tools which PM&C has had to develop over the past few decades. There is scope for conflict between the coordination and initiation/development roles. Understanding how a central agency like PM&C carries out each of them and balances the two can potentially contribute to debates on organisational design. We also address the normative issue: whether the growth of prime ministerial impact is a result of an increase in public service support or a cause of its increase ( Walter and Strangio 2007 ) and whether it should be restrained. We accept that the new developments give prime ministers the capacity to oversee policy arenas where once they could not, but regard this as a consequence as much of demand from above as of ambition within the department.     

Reaching for the Philosopher's Stone: Contingent Coordination and the Military's Response to Hurricane Katrina

When Hurricane Katrina made landfall on the Mississippi Gulf Coast in August 2005, it immediately overwhelmed the abilities of local and state emergency management officials to respond to the ensuing disaster. Although the U.S. Coast Guard and some military units were on scene shortly after the passage of the storm, there seemed to be interminable delays before the military forces began to arrive in numbers to both provide humanitarian relief and secure the affected areas. This article analyzes the response of the National Guard, active-duty military, and Coast Guard forces through the lens of coordination. We find evidence of the successful use of both traditional hierarchical and network-based coordination; we also find support for Donald Kettl's idea of "contingent coordination."     

论德治秩序的重建

德治思想作为我国儒家文化的政治理想,与儒家文化本身一样,有着其历史上的进步意义.在社会主义中国的今天,它仍有存在的价值,用全新的视野审视它,它与当前的现代化进程并不相违背,追求民主政治并不妨碍我们对自身素质的要求,反而能使我们用更清醒的头脑反思自己的行为.面对转型时期不可避免的种种危机,我们更加需要对整个的思维模式和文化氛围做出必要而强有力的整合,新文化体系的构建势在必然.文化维新无疑是德治重建所期许的文化支持之道.     

协调多元利益关系:构建和谐社会的重要前提

在改革进程中协调多元利益关系,是构建“社会主义和谐社会”的一个重要前提。在利益整合中维护社会公正,在效率和公平的平衡中继续推进改革和发展,确保社会各阶层都能从改革和发展中实现收入和福利的增进,是妥善协调各方面的利益关系的关键。     

坚守、互动、协同:企业社会责任的三个向度

企业社会责任意识不强造成了我国企业社会责任建设的滞后。面向强制规则和社会意识坚守社会责任、面向自我认知和消费群体形成互动、面向责任认知和自身发展寻求协同,这三个方面应成为我国企业社会责任建设的三个向度。在此基础上,尊重内在统一性、明确坚守责任的基础性地位、明确多方互动是推进管道、明确内外协同是推行保障,从而系统地推动我国企业社会责任的实现。     

The elusiveness of regional order: Leifer,the English school and Southeast Asia

Abstract

‘Regional order’ was Michael Leifer's yardstick of choice to assess the international relations of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). Leifer's recurrent theme was how elusive, and at times how illusory, regional order was for Southeast Asia. The elusiveness of regional order is attributed to ASEAN's lack of a set of genuinely shared assumptions about their interrelationships with each other and external states. This article challenges Leifer's portrait of a Southeast Asia devoid of regional order. I argue that Leifer's notion of order is theoretically underdeveloped and methodologically imprecise, allowing the analyst to see disorder in every minor perturbation in the region. I propose replacing ‘regional order’ with ‘peace and stability’, the preferred terms of the discourse by ASEAN's policy elites. By the latter criteria, ASEAN and the Asia-Pacific, contrary to the skeptics, have made impressive progress in the last forty years.