Spies,files and lies: explaining the failure of access to Securitate files

Transitional justice in post-communist Romania has made little progress since the Council for the Study of Securitate Archives was set up in early 2000. This article discusses several factors that might explain the failure of giving citizens access to the files compiled by the communist-era secret political police and of publicly identifying the former political police agents and informers.     

Reputation reform strategies in local government: investigating Denmark and Norway

This article investigates reputation reform in Norwegian and Danish local government and whether they have the same strategy content depending on the degree of administrative involvement and municipality size. Political and administrative actors are likely to cultivate different types of reputation strategies (place or organisational reputation), which explicitly embrace the potentially diverging interests cultivated by the two types of actors. We use a comparative design and quantitative method with an empirical ambition to explore local government reputation strategies in two national contexts. We find that local government responses to reputation reform depend on the size of the municipality and the type of actors involved; the larger the municipality, the more the administration is involved. And the more that administrative actors are involved, the more the strategies target organisational reputation. The country-specific factors do not appear to be the most important determinants for reputation reform strategies.     

Conversationalism,constitutional economics,and bicameralism strategies for political reform in Hong Kong

Hong Kong has at long last regained the economic momentum lost in the wake of the Asian financial crisis and the collapse of the local property market. However, political friction and uncertainty have escalated rather than subsided, because of deep‐rooted divisions over the pace of democratic reform. There are no simple remedies for the constitutional deadlock that has emerged. Nevertheless, it might be possible to improve the overall political climate and both the form and substance of the dialog regarding fundamental institutional reform by borrowing some ideas from constitutional economics.     

Conflicts of preferences and domestic constraints: understanding reform failure in liberal state-building and democracy promotion

This paper challenges the common explanations that failures of external state-building and democracy promotion are the result of a lack of domestic capacity or a lack of domestic willingness against an externally set liberal agenda of state-building and democratisation. Studying political decision-making on a micro-level, we argue that both explanations fail to capture the multi-faceted motivations and interests of domestic actors that go beyond mere ‘resistance’ against externally induced liberal reforms. Rather, criticism of reforms might be rooted in ideas of social justice and claims to socio-economic security. Furthermore, these explanations tend to overlook the need for domestic elites to bargain with various domestic stakeholders. A case study of Croatian public administration reform illustrates that failure of externally promoted reforms remain an option when significant international resources are available for liberal state-building and the target of reform is a relatively mature bureaucracy.     

Ideas,interests and practical authority in reform politics: decentralization reform in South Korea in the 2000s

This paper explains the reason why the hitherto statist country, Korea, has carried out significant decentralization since the 2000s. In explaining the motivation for decentralization, extant literature has focused on the role of parties, bureaucratic politics, democratization, or territorial interests. Yet there is still limited explanation of how the decentralization laws in Korea could be successfully passed in the 2000s, while cental stakeholders still persisted. By tracing the process of decentralization reform in the 2000s, this article demonstrates how structural factors created favourable circumstances and discursive background for institutional change, and how the idea of decentralization, through the idea diffusion mechanism, gave directions for central decision makers to produce a specific path of reform strategies. It also pays attention to the formation of ‘practical authority’ for reform politicians that made it possible to overcome obdurate resistance from central bureaucrats and politicians.     

Privatization, Chinese-style: economic reform and the state-owned enterprises

This article reviews 'corporatization' and 'marketization', shorthands for privatization, in the Chinese economy. In particular it concentrates upon the most recent round of state-owned enterprise reforms, the Modern Enterprise System and Group Company System, aimed at transforming China's largest state-owned enterprises into internationally competitive corporations. This represents a partial privatization, given that the state will retain majority ownership, while acquiring domestic and foreign capital via sharelistings and foreign and domestic joint ventures.
Drawing upon interview material from a five-year study of state-owned enterprises, the authors will indicate that such part privatization has been pragmatic and relatively slow. It has been constrained and circumscribed by broader economic and social reform programmes and accompanied by political decentralization and reforms. Ultimately, the reform and pace of reform is shaped by the desire to avoid political and social unrest which could, potentially, threaten the harmony of the Chinese central state apparatus.     

Seizing the moment: outcomes assessment,curriculum reform,and mpa education

This article reviews a recent exercise in developing an outcomes-based capstone course for the MPA program at the University of Baltimore. Chronicled is the way a reversible logic approach to designing that course led ineluctably into a full-scale, outcomes-based, strategic planning exercise for the program as a whole. In the process, the department was able to craft a performance-based curriculum that attacked an “entitlement ethic” among students, that made the faculty more accountable for its actions in the classroom, that streamlined course offerings and content in mission-related ways, and that introduced a “continuous process improvement” ethic driven by constant feedback from the capstone course.     

Management,markets and democracy: Australian local government reform in the 1990s

Australian local government has been subjected to extensive reform during the 1990s. This article considers the three main dimensions of the reforms — changes to management structures, the introduction of competition policy, and municipal consolidation. It reviews the evidence available about the nature of outcomes and examines the impact of the reforms on governance values. It is argued that, so far, economic considerations have been balanced by a commitment to community particpation. Recent political developments, however, may yet prove to be an emerging threat.     

One in 20: the G20, middle powers and global governance reform

There is a growing consensus that the international system needs to be reformed to reflect the changing distribution of power with the rise of the Brazil, Russia, India and China (BRICs). The Group of Twenty (G20) has been at the centre of these discussions. Within the G20, emphasis has been on great powers or rising powers and their capacity to drive reform. Less attention has been given to the preferences and strategies of middle powers in the G20 and their capacity to shape global governance reform. Drawing on interviews with G20 officials, this paper considers the role of Australia as president of the G20 in 2014. Australia’s presidency presents a unique opportunity to examine the behaviour of a middle power as it balances the competing global governance claims of the USA and the BRICs.     

Budgeting the work force: Influences,elements, disclosure strategies,and roles

Work force budgeting is a comprehensive view of allocating resources recognizing that expenses flow from the use and remuneration of organizational members. The purpose of this essay is to: examine the influences and elements of work force budgeting; enhance the disclosure of such choices; and, isolate the tension in fiscal oversight of personnel decisions. It is incumbent upon managers to acquire, deploy, and control human resources in the production of public goods and services. An humane and ethical bureaucracy has to meet tests of efficiency and effectiveness. This essay supports the proposition that service delivery goals should guide budget decisions instead of simply having decisions premised upon adding up the cost of existing staffing patterns.     

Technical training,sponsored mobility,and functional differentiation: Elite formation in China in the reform era

Elite formation in state socialism is a key issue in both comparative mobility research and political sociology. Several perspectives have been proposed to explain the relative role of political loyalty and education in political mobility: a dual career path model, a party-sponsored mobility hypothesis, and a technocracy thesis. I propose an alternative approach, emphasizing the role of functional differentiation and its effect on elite recruitment in China. Using a data set on top Chinese leaders (n = 1588), I find that effects of political loyalty and technical training on elite recruitment are patterned by institutional arrangements. Data analysis supports my explanation of elite selection in China.     

Learning from defeat: reform,revolution and the problem of organization in the first New Left

Within the contemporary anti-capitalist movement a debate concerning the most effective forms taken by political organizations has opened. However, few of the contributions to this debate include an adequate historical component: indeed, while many have labelled the anti-capitalist movement a new left, few draw any lessons from the first British New Left of 1956–62. This article addresses this lacuna through an analysis of the debate over the question of political organization as it was articulated within the first British New Left. It is argued that the New Left’s critique of Leninism was underpinned by the political reformism that many of its leading members inherited from the Communist Party, and suggested that this left-reformist strategy informed its collapse in the early sixties. It concludes that contemporary radicals should learn the dangers associated with both a too close relationship to the Labour Party, and from the New Left’s failure to begin the process of building a political organization that could have begun to act as an alternative to Labour.     

Negotiating sustainable trade: explaining the difference in social standards in US and EU preferential trade agreements

Since the early 2000s, both US and EU Preferential Trade Agreements (PTAs) include social standards that aim to protect workers and the environment. However, the US and the EU have chosen fundamental different approaches for the enforcement of these clauses. While the US pursues a sanction-based approach, the EU solely relies on dialogue and cooperation mechanisms. Hence, to the surprise of many, social standards in U.S PTAs appear to be stricter than the ones in EU PTAs. Why do the two biggest trade powers of the world handle social clauses in PTAs so differently? In this paper, I argue that disparities in domestic politics account for their different strategies towards social standards. Drawing on the principal-agent literature, the paper analyses the PTA negotiations of the US and the EU with Peru and Colombia.