A Response to Fiscal Stress: Public Sector Employment Reduction across States during a Budget Crisis

This paper incorporates measurements of the four financial condition dimensions of cash, budget, long-run, and service solvency to explore the link between financial condition and public sector employment among states in the context of the Great Recession of 2008–2009. The finding is that the severity of this economic recession led states to reduce public workers as one type of fiscal response to cope with budget shortfalls. The results suggest that not all dimensions of state financial condition affect public sector employment.     

Intimate Encounters with the State in Post-War Luanda,Angola

Abstract

Since the end of the war in 2002, Luanda has become an iconic site of urban transformation in the context of a particularly entrenched oligarchic regime. In practice however, urban dwellers are often confronted with a ‘deregulated system’ that fails to advance a coherent developmental agenda. The paper narrates the trajectory of a family forcibly removed from the old city to the periphery. It shows how city-dwellers experience the control of the party-state through a series of encounters with authority across the city. Questioning the intentionality of a state that appears at the same time omnipotent and elusive, openly violent and subtly hegemonic, the paper reveals the fine mechanisms through which consent is fabricated in the intimacy of the family.     

An Evaluation of Leadership as a Response to Agency Failure in the Public Sector

An alternative to contractual solutions to agency problems is suggested in the literature on leadership in which leaders are often claimed to be able to steer historical processes in the direction they intend through the distinctive influence they have on the intrinsic motivation of their followers. We evaluate Casson's (1991) agency–theoretic model of leadership as 'moral manipulation' which under certain conditions can be exercised at lower agency cost than monitoring. We then make a case for conceiving leadership as the development of culture of passion to advance the leader's quest through the engagement of followers in 'interaction rituals' in which their passion is either recharged or their lack of passion exposed. The impact the emergence of such cultures can have on the policy–making community is examined using the British and New Zealand experiences and a case is made for the preservation of a counter–culture of 'public interest' in the policy advisory ranks of the civil service.     

Here We Are: A Response to Ayaan Hirsi Ali

The drama between the secularist legacy of Ataturk and the popular surge of Islamist‐rooted politics continues in Turkey, centered on the debate over the headscarf. Is it a sign of religious reaction, or a sign of non‐Western modernization that will ensure higher education for Muslim women? We represent here all sides of the debate. Elsewhere in the Muslim world are the reformers and critics listening to each other, or impeding progress with a blame game? Europe's most controversial figures in this debate—Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Tariq Ramadan—engage here.     

Russia as a New Immigration Country: Policy Response and Public Debate

Both the Russian public and its elites were taken by surprise by the fact that Russia has become an immigration country. It has resulted in widespread anti-immigrant sentiments and inconsistency in government actions. Russian immigration politics, as well as immigration politics in liberal democracies of the West, are characterised by a wavering between protectionist and liberal laissez faire approaches. This leads to a mismatch between public rhetoric and legal decisions. However, two features seem to make the Russian situation specific: open borders with most of the countries of the former Soviet Union and omnipresent corruption. Corruption results in a discrepancy between formal (legal) decisions and informal (illegal) practices.     

Emerging Challenges to the Public Capacity in the Era of Evolving Public Administration: Toward Collaborative Public Management

New paradigms of public administration have been introduced in government in order to cure administrative ills around the world. Various trajectories of public sector reforms have been actively introduced in many countries and the benefit of shifting to new paradigms of public administration has been well documented. However, the cost or the consequence of public sector reforms remains understudied. Accordingly, the purpose of this article is to deal with the consequences of the paradigm change of public administration and government reform because the author sees that the public capacity has declined or at least not improved in recent years while a wide range of innovations have been carried out by many governments under the New Public Management and governance perspectives. This article first looks at the evolution of public administration and its implication, followed by a discussion on government reform and its unintended consequences, and governance change in South Korea. Then various issues on new challenges such as the lack of the public capacity, and new tasks such as capacity building and calls for curriculum development, will be elaborated, followed by conclusions.     

Evaluating and Theorising Committee Scrutiny: A UK Comparative Perspective

This article addresses committee scrutiny undertaken through the three main UK devolved institutions (the Scottish Parliament, the National Assembly for Wales and the Northern Ireland Assembly). This is undertaken using a framework derived from scholarship about House of Commons select committees and a substantive comparative literature. Devolved committee scrutiny is thus compared and contrasted in relation to a three-phase analysis in terms of selection, evaluative and output elements.

The findings are also discussed in relation to core elements of institutional theory – institutional path dependency, ideational path dependency, the logic of appropriateness and the logic of consequence. This connection is used to develop several testable theoretical propositions concerning committee scrutiny. Findings about UK devolved committee scrutiny (and also scrutiny undertaken through House of Commons select committees) are also related to scholarship about local government scrutiny in Britain and contrasts and similarities specified. Furthermore, some testable theoretical propositions are applied to British local scrutiny.     

Public organizations: A value-conflict view

That values are at the core of public administration is a notion that has gained popularity and credibility in recent years. From this perspective, public administrators have become inextricably involved in both adjusting to and promoting institutionalized values. Certain values shaping public organizations may, however, be distinctive in quality and magnitude from those of private organizations. Our purpose in this essay is to suggest criteria for identifying the distinctive values of public organizations, to propose and define three such values, to briefly examine the dynamics of change engendered by value conflicts and dilemmas, and to speculate on the theoretical and practical implications of our proposed values framework. In the process an inchoate perspective is outlined in which values occupy the centerpiece of inquiry in public administration.     

又踏层峰望眼开——中共中央政治局常委、中央政法委书记周永康访问印度侧记

六十年前,中印正式建交,两国相互信任、相互支持的巨手越过喜马拉雅山脉紧紧相握,成就一段患难见真情的历史佳话,六十年过去,中印关系走过“不惑”与“半百”,如今喜迎“甲子”,在风云激荡的国际舞台上更显自信与成熟。站在新的历史起点,面临国际政治经济格局大变革大调整大发展的时代新机遇,中印作为世界上最大的发展中国家和新兴经济体,如何在后金融危机时代趋利避害走稳强国之路,加强合作实现共同发展,携手并进共创世界和平与繁荣,是两国共同面临的问题。