North Korea Will Disarm in Two Years

"A promise to five powers — especially since China is involved — is more likely to be kept than a promise to one. At the end of the day, the North Koreans will come around and disarm. I believe they will agree to disarm within two years. Their economy is so weak they can't hold out much longer."     

A Premonition of Obama: La Raza Cosmica in America

Ryszard Kapuscinski, who died in 2007, was one of the 20th century's greatest literary journalists. He personally witnessed the dramatic post-World War II upheavals of decolonization and revolution across what we used to call "the Third World" and set down his reflections in such best-selling books as The Emperor , about the fall of Haile Selassie of Ethiopia, and Shah of Shahs , about the 1979 Islamic revolution in Iran. He served on NPQ 's editorial board until his death.
When I last saw Kapuscinski for coffee at the Hotel Bristol in Warsaw in the summer of 2005 he was busy preparing a lecture on Herodotus, the ancient Greek traveler and historian regarded as "the father of journalism."
In 1987, NPQ brought Kapuscinski to Los Angeles to roam around and observe North America's largest "Third World city." He stayed at the New Seoul Hotel in the heart of Koreatown, venturing from there all the way down to Disneyland, Hispanic East L.A. and the wealthy Westside. At the end of each day, we sat down to gather his impressions.
Kapuscinski saw the United States as the place where the idea of "la raza cosmica"—the cosmic race—would be realized. For him, America was a premonition of the plural, racially mixed, culturally hybrid civilization the whole world would one day become. In a way, his insight was also a premonition of the presidency of Barack Obama, a self-described cultural and racial "mutt." In a world where the contamination of globalization has sparked troubling yearnings for a return to purity, being a nation of mutts, Kapuscinski understood, is America's competitive advantage.     

BUREAUCRATIC MALAISE IN THE MODERN SPY NOVEL: DEIGHTON, GREENE, AND LECARRE

Modern espionage novels and particularly those of Deighton, Greene, and LeCarre provide exceptional insights into bureaucratic politics. As well as offering a wealth of material about bureaucratic structure and behaviour, their works speak to the negative consequences and effects of bureaucratic pressures and ideologies on the human spirit. Specifically, these novelists posit that in a bureaucratic world heroism is flawed: that principles no longer flow from moral purpose, and that the evil which needs to be conquered can no longer be identified solely with an externalized enemy. The conclusion drawn is that the bureaucratic state, which substitutes technique for purpose and principle, and bureaucratic personality for individual initiative and motivation, is largely responsible for this malaise. The world which remains reflects, paradoxically, both order and disorder — the image is that of a universal clock winding its way down to an uncertain, yet organizationally dominated future.     

The Governance Narrative: Key Findings and Lessons from the Erc's Whitehall Programme

This article provides a personal interpretation of the key findings of the Economic and Social Research Council's Whitehall Programme. I tell the distinctive story of 'governance'— of fragmentation, networks, unintended consequences and diplomacy — challenging the dominant, managerial account of change in British govern-ment since 1979. I present a view of the world in which networks rival markets and bureaucracy as ways of allocating resources and co-ordinating policy and its implementation.     

PUBLIC EXPENDITURE AND POLICY IMPLEMENTATION: THE CASE OF COMMUNITY CARE

This article explores the contention that the conventions of public expenditure accounting conceal, rather than reveal, the real nature and implications of resource trends. A benchmark — a constant level of service output — is established as a basis for examining the relationship between trends in expenditure inputs and service outputs. Changes in unit costs are identified as the major source of deviation between expenditure and output trends. The impact of resource constraint on policy and policy-implementation is then examined in relation to one, essentially stable, area of policy in the personal social services: community care.
The meaning of the term'policy' is far from straightforward and community care is best understood as the interaction of relatively independent streams of policy, towards service outputs and resource inputs, extant in both central and local government. Mechanisms by which policy streams could be reconciled are of particular interest and an innovative example — joint finance — is examined in some detail.     

Globalization and Prison Privatization: Why Are Most of the World's For-Profit Adult Prisons to Be Found in the American South?

For a generation, students of comparative public policy and international politics have argued that global market discipline and the increasing mobility of international "best practices" have given rise to policy convergence at the global level. This paper uses the American case to investigate some of the forces thought to have given rise to the spread of private prisons. It finds that while there are prisons in a number of countries, the evidence of convergence is thin and seems to suggest that the core of the prison privatization is in the American South. It then examines several theories—the political economy of the prison boom and overcrowding, globalization theory, the politics of the new right and the idea of a "prison-industrial complex"—that have been used to explain prison privatization and the extent to which they are consistent with the empirical pattern. Each takes us some way to understanding that pattern, but none can provide a clear theoretical mapping.     

'Management by Contract': A Study of Programmatic and Technological Aspects

The practice of 'Management by Contract' can — as with any practice — be characterized by programmatic and technological dimensions. These dimensions contain concepts and ideas at the programmatic level, which shape the mission of the practice (concrete tasks and routines) at the technological level. Thus, the former attach the practice to the broader conceptual dimension. In this paper both of these dimensions will be analysed. The aim is to study how quality issues have been managed by contract. The first part presents some of the conceptual arguments of 'Management by Contract'. The arguments of a structure generally used (the Purchaser/Provider split) and a method often used (competitive tendering) will be discussed. The second part presents some technological effects through empirical findings. The paper concludes with an analysis of the interaction or non-interaction between these two dimensions.     

RAYNERISM IN PRACTICE: ANATOMY OF A RAYNER SCRUTINY

Rayner scrutinies have become a regular feature of life in government departments. It takes only a few months to conduct a scrutiny but implementation is a far longer process which can absorb much ministerial and official time. This paper describes one of the first Rayner scrutinies — on arrangements for paying social security benefits — from inception to implementation. It relates the scrutiny team's reports to the social security system it was in part reviewing and then traces the way that ministers and officials handled the controversy that the scrutiny team's proposals caused when leaked in an inaccurate form. It concludes by speculating about some wider lessons that might be drawn about the validity of the scrutiny technique; the value of the Rayner label on reviews; the need for independent reviews in bureaucratic organizations; civil service responsiveness to reviews: the political dimension to management issues: public debate and open government considerations, and the indirect consequences of scrutinies.     

Realising Justice

In the recent past the Western-dominated global institutional order has come to be challenged by the bloc of rising powers. The question of whether brics has the ability to reshape global governance is an important one and carries significance for the global South, which has been adversely affected by global institutions. Yet the reliance on the capacity, or the will, of rising powers to speak for the global South, or to prioritise the concerns of their own people might be misplaced. Conceivably the only way both global institutions and governments can be compelled to heed the voices of the poorest of the poor is through sustained activism in civil society. In a globalised world, civil society activism has to be global in scope. Civil society might not be the best solution to the problems of the world, but in a disenchanted post-revolutionary world, it is the only option on offer.     

THE OMBUDSMAN IN BRITAIN: A QUALIFIED SUCCESS IN GOVERNMENT REFORM

The Parliamentary Commissioner for Administration has not been the dismal failure forecast by critics at the time the office was established in 1967. One alleged defect — not criticizing the substance of administrators' discretionary decisions — is characteristic to a large degree of other admired ombudsmen. Recruiting the Commissioner and his investigators from the civil service has not had expected harmful effects. On the other hand, the office has fallen short of the performance of other ombudsmen with regard to the public's access to the Commissioner (the MP filter), the efficiency of his investigative methods, and certain limitations on his jurisdiction. Failure so far to remove these defects appears to be the result of inadequate comparative research and analysis in support of reformers' proposals, the overly cautious and consensual style of civil service policy formulation, and opposition from members of existing institutions (MPS and the officers of civil service unions) who mistakenly believe that their complaint handling activities are threatened by proposed changes.     

Analysis of Changes in External Accountability and Accounting in Privatized Industries: A Case Study of British Gas

This study investigates the consequences of regulation for organizational and accounting change in privatized industries by means of a case study of the gas industry, with particular emphasis on issues of accountability and the role of accounting information. The paper extends Stewart and Ranson's (1988) discussion of the distinctive conditions which apply to public and private sector organizations by highlighting an important interim phase in relation to privatized industries, where public service obligations coexist to varying degrees with private sector objectives. The extension of their framework of public and private sector models to include a new 'commercial' model provides the basis for an analytical framework encompassing the three cultures — that is, public service, commercial and competition — which is used to understand organizational change in the gas industry.     

Know-Where: Geographies of Knowledge of World Politics

The problem of "foundations" is a crucial one for any field, particularly perhaps one with as varied a possible repertoire of elementary sources as the study of world politics. In this paper, I draw attention to how some different ways of thinking about where knowledge is produced and how it circulates can be used to inform understanding about geographies of knowledge of world politics. Such geographies, however, are not ends in themselves. The point is to understand the ontological bases of knowing from perspectives that do not privilege a singular history of knowledge associated with a specific world region or of conceptions of knowledge that implicitly or explicitly presume their self-evident universality. In other words, we need to move beyond the all-too-conventional repertoires of relativism and positivism in understanding the bases to knowing about world politics/international relations. The paper suggests some ways forward, which should now be the subject of vigorous debate.     

Regulation in an Episodic Policy-Making Environment: The Water Industry in England and Wales

This article describes and analyses the evolving regulatory game in the post-privatized water industry. It highlights a regulatory environment that is more complex than that which existed under public ownership, and an industry which is subject to heavier regulation in the private sector than it was in the public sector. There has been erosion of the strict public/private divide following privatization. The article highlights an episodic and seemingly incongruous policy-making environment that defies consistent characterization: sometimes private consensus is the main feature and sometimes it is public conflict. It also illustrates that while there are two broad-based constituencies of interest active in the water sector — cost and environmental — the composition of these coalitions mutates depending on the issue being considered. Indeed, there are occasions when core constituency participants 'defect' and join the 'opposing side'.     

EU fta Negotiations with sadc and Mercosur: integration into the world economy or market access for EU firms?

The EU claims that its free trade agreements with regional organisations of developing countries can promote the respective regions' integration into the world economy. Taking as case studies EU negotiations with the Southern African Development Community and Mercosur, the paper argues that the EU and its partners have different conceptions of integration into the world economy. For the EU the latter simply means multilateral trade liberalisation under the wto, while, for its partners, it involves increasing industrial production and exports of manufactured products. If the latter notion is accepted, an fta with the EU should increase European foreign direct investment into the region or at least increase their trade surpluses, thus increasing the resources available for support of local firms. The paper argues that an fta with the EU will not be likely to produce these results; thus the fta will simply be an instrument to promote market access for EU firms.     

"Global Civil Society" and the Political Depoliticization of Global Governance

Activists, officials, and academics alike have often linked observations about an emerging global civil society to an incipient democratization of world politics. Global civil society is assumed to bring public scrutiny and "bottom-up" politics to international decision making "from outside" formal political institutions. Based on an analysis of uses of the concept of global civil society in 1990s global governance discourse (especially related to the major UN world conferences), this paper argues that the presumed democratization of world politics is better understood in terms of a double movement: on the one hand, "global civil society" depoliticizes global governance through the promotion of "human security" and "social development"; on the other hand, the emerging international public sphere (in the UN context) operates as a subsystem of world politics rather than opposing the system from outside. Practices of depoliticization are thus part of the political logic of (neo-)liberal global governance. The argument draws on Luhmann's systems theory and Foucault's analysis of governmentality.     

MANAGEMENT AUDIT IN THE MINISTRY OF DEFENCE

In 1981 the Ministry of Defence brought together the capabilities of staff inspection, internal audit and central management services under a Director General of Management Audit (DGMA) with the objectives of achieving greater co-ordination of these functions and of developing the concept of management audit, i.e. the bringing to bear of a'total audit' approach on selected departmental organizations or activities. This article comments on the progress made so far in developing this concept and describes changes which have taken place in the conduct of the individual disciplines which have had the effect of concentrating their attention on wider questions of efficiency, economy and effectiveness. The article goes on to describe the parallel development in the Ministry of Defence of new resource management machinery — responsibility budgets, a new management information system for ministers and top management (MINIS), management principles and, most recently, a re-organization of the Ministry itself — and the place which the management audit capability occupies within this.     

What do buzzwords do for development policy? a critical look at ‘participation’, ‘empowerment’ and ‘poverty reduction’

In the fast-moving world of development policy, buzzwords play an important part in framing solutions. Today's development orthodoxies are captured in a seductive mix of such words, among which ‘participation’, ‘empowerment’ and ‘poverty reduction’ take a prominent place. This paper takes a critical look at how these three terms have come to be used in international development policy, exploring how different configurations of words frame and justify particular kinds of development interventions. It analyses their use in the context of two contemporary development policy instruments, the Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (prsps) and the Millennium Development Goals (mdgs). We show how words that once spoke of politics and power have come to be reconfigured in the service of today's one-size-fits-all development recipes, spun into an apoliticised form that everyone can agree with. As such, we contend, their use in development policy may offer little hope of the world free of poverty that they are used to evoke.     

The Poverty of Statistics and the Statistics of Poverty

This paper offers a critique of the picture of world growth and world inequality generally disseminated by international agencies. The positive view commonly presented depends on the widespread consensus that economic performance should be measured using ‘Purchasing Power Parity’ (PPP) statistics, instead of market exchange rates. Although originally conceived narrowly as a basis for comparing living standards, PPP indicators are now indiscriminately promoted as an unexceptionable standard for comparing and aggregating national income statistics. This article highlights the flaws in the PPP approach by accepting the claims made on their behalf at face value. It shows that, even on the basis of these claims, the wrong conclusions have been drawn. By comparing PPP and market exchange rate measures of inequality it shows that what really took place, at the end of the last century, was a systematic reduction in the prices of consumption goods in the Third World. PPP statistics have concealed this underlying and unsustainable trend, allowing it to be packaged as a stable reduction in poverty. Neither genuine growth, nor lasting poverty reduction was achieved over this period. The fall in the price of consumer goods masked a systematic failure to overcome the central problem of development—the high price of capital goods, which PPP statistics understate, and of intermediate goods, which they completely omit.     

The Civil Service Under Stress: The Fall in Civil Service Power and Authority

The failures of governments of both parties in the 1970s had prepared for radical changes in the nature of government under Margaret Thatcher. Among them were that ministers resumed greater power over their civil servants. While various aspects of the relationship between ministers and officials changed and despite the introduction of special advisers, close partnership — the Haldane relationship — was largely retained between them until the end of the 1980s. In the 1990s ministers began to operate less closely with the civil service, largely because they found they had less time for departmental work under the Major and the first Blair administrations. Many of the skills for which civil servants had been trained became less in demand because of the ending of the Cabinet style of government, the reduced importance of ministers appearing before parliament and the greater involvement of spin doctors and media handlers in preparing public documents. However, new skills were required: more rapid accessing of information and more skill in implementation and responsibility for it. The Wilson reforms of 1999 were in large part aimed to remedy these shortcomings. There remains a question whether enough of the Haldane relationship survives for government not to be driven towards greater definition of the rules in which civil servants operate.     

Implementing IFRS in Local Government: Institutional Isomorphism as NPM Goes Mad?

Abstract

The impact the International Financial Reporting Standards (IFRS) has on business has been considered by various authors, such as Jones and Higgins (2006 Jones, S. H. and Higgins, A. D. 2006. Australia's switch to international financial reporting standards: a perspective from account preparers'. Accounting and Finance, 46: 629–652. [Crossref], [Web of Science ®] , [Google Scholar]). However, there has not been the same research conducted with respect to local government. As Australia and New Zealand are leading the world by being the first to introduce IFRS into local government financial reporting, this study is timely in order todetermine the impact of compliance on local government. With the New Public Management (NPM) introduced in the late 1970s, accrual accounting and the desire to enhance transparency became embedded in financial reporting across the world. The paper adds to the growing literature on institutional theory with results of the study suggesting that a form of coercive isomorphism is present in regards to local government compliance with IFRS. It also suggests that the philosophy behind NPM – especially that espousing the benefits of public sector reporting in a private sector vein–may not be as relevant to Australian local government as the policy makers would have us believe. The thrust to implement IFRS may have finally pushed local government into a world they struggle to cope with. For example, findings indicate that there is now, more than ever, a perception in the community that the bottom line is an important indicator of a council's performance. Results reported here determined that the implementation process was time-consuming and costly with, in general, very little perceived benefit. Councils are conforming to the coercive pressure from legislative bodies, but they are not converging as part of the ‘transaction-neutral’ reporting regime.