How Much Responsiveness is Too Much or Too Little?

This article analyses the main principles underlying public service responsiveness, illustrating them with examples drawn largely from recent experience in the Australian Commonwealth government. The final section attempts to identify some general international trends which are placing new strains on the relationships between politicians and public servants.     

Too Many or Too Few? The Increase in Federal Ministerial Advisers 1972–1999

This paper examines recently published figures that show the increase in ministerial staff between 1972 and 1996 (Dunn 1997). A careful examination of the table in Dunn's book reveals it gives a misleading impression of the number of ministerial staff; the number of advisory staff to ministers; and the growth in advisory resources over the Hawke–Keating period. By re-analysing the figures the paper reveals the reality of the growth in advisory staff to ministers in 1972–1999. It provides an account of the number of staff providing policy and political advice to ministers in ministerial offices, rather than total staff numbers. It reveals advisory resources to ministers have grown significantly since the introduction of ministerial advisers in 1972. However, the growth in adviser numbers over the Hawke–Keating period was more modest than is suggested by Dunn's table. The paper provides the base data needed for a discussion of the increase in ministerial staff and whether there are too few or too many federal ministerial advisers.     

How Close is Too Close?: The 2012 Election in the Electoral College

While it is too soon to predict the 2012 presidential winner, it is not too early to know that the general election is likely to be a fiercely competitive contest that will, assuming no major unexpected events occur (e.g., another recession), come down to a few thousand votes in a few swing states, most probably including Ohio. When a presidential election is this close, there exists the possibility that the popular vote winner and the electoral vote winner will differ, which has happened four times before (1824, 1876, 1888, and 2000), but continues to be controversial. More ominously, there is also a small, but real chance of an electoral vote tie between the candidates, which would then place the selection of the president in the House of Representatives and the vice president in the Senate. Even though congressional selection is the constitutionally prescribed remedy and has historical precedents (1800, 1824), it seems unlikely that the Electoral College would long survive what would surely be a spirited public debate over who should choose the president. Thus, the 2012 election results may be too close to sustain the legitimacy of the presidential selection method.     

Do White In-group Processes Matter,Too? White Racial Identity and Support for Black Political Candidates

Scholars find that negative evaluations of Blacks lead Whites to vote against Black political candidates. However, can an in-group psychological process have the same effect? We consider White racial identity to be a strong candidate for such a process. We argue that the mere presence of a Black candidate cues the identity, reducing support for these candidates among Whites. We test this hypothesis on vote choice in seven instances. Five of them involve simple vote choice models: the 2008 and 2012 Presidential elections, and three elections in 2010: The Massachusetts Gubernatorial election, Black candidates for the US House, and Black candidates for the US Senate. The other two are tests of the notion that White racial identity reduced President Obama’s approval, thus reducing support for all Democratic Congressional candidates in the 2010 Midterm and 2012 Congressional elections. We find support for these notions in all seven cases, across these seven elections, using four different survey research datasets, and four different measures of White identity. Comparisons with other presidential elections show that White identity did not significantly affect mono-racial elections. Furthermore, we find the White identity and racial resentment results to be very similar in terms of their robustness and apparent effect sizes. This indicates in-group evaluations, and those that focus on out-groups, operate independently of one another.     

Can We Plan Too Much? – The Case of the 2010 Metropolitan Strategy for Adelaide

With a Labor government in power in South Australia since 2002, a series of interlocking plans for the state have been developed of which the most important are the strategic plan for the state, the strategic infrastructure plan for the state and the metropolitan strategy for Greater Adelaide. The metropolitan strategy of 2010 reflected the ambitious population and employment targets of the state strategic plan and provided a liberal supply of residential land for urban expansion together with ambitions for a more compact city with higher densities. There are inconsistencies in these objectives which have not been resolved and reflect the optimistic forecasts of the state strategic plan and the nature of the metropolitan planning process with strong input from the development industry. Preliminary evidence is that the plan is not tracking as proposed and more attention needs to be paid to short‐ and medium‐term prospects, and community involvement particularly in strategic localities.