Reviews

Books reviewed in this article:
Camilla Stivers (ed.), Democracy, bureaucracy and the study of administration
Jonathan S. Davies, Partnerships and regimes: the politics of urban regeneration in the UK
Simon James and Virginia Preston (eds.), British politics since 1945. The dynamics of historical change
Jenny Fleming and Ian Holland (eds.), Motivating ministers to morality
David Richards and Martin J. Smith, Governance and public policy in the UK
Mark Bovens, Paul 't Hart and B. Guy Peters (eds.), Success and failure in public governance: a comparative analysis
Alistair Cole and Peter John, Local governance in England and France     

Reviews

Books reviewed:
C. Hood, C. Scott, O. Jones, G. Jones and T. Travers, Regulationinside government
J. Pierre (ed.), Debating governance
R. Pyper, and L. Robins (eds), United Kingdom governance
G. Stoker (ed.), The new management of British local governance
G. Stoker (ed.), The new politics of British local governance
Prue Chamberlayne, Andrew Cooper, Richard Freeman and Michael Rustin (eds.), Welfare And Culture In Europe: Towards A New Paradigm In Social Policy
OECD Report, Trust In Government. Ethics Measures In OECD Countries
Anthony R. Zito, Creating Environmental Policy In The European Union     

Reviews

Books Reviewed: Keith Hoggart and Terry Nichols Clark (eds), Citizen responsive government Howard Elcock, Political leadership Michael Th. Greven and Louis W. Pauly (eds), Democracy beyond the state? The European dilemma and the emerging global order Roy Gregory and Philip Giddings (eds), Righting wrongs; the ombudsman in six continents Hans A.G.M. Bekke and Frits M. van der Meer (eds), Civil service systems in Western Europe J. Steven Ott (ed.), The nature of the nonprofit sector: an overview Jon Pierre and B. Guy Peters, Governance, politics and the state Tamas M. Horvath (ed.), Decentralization: experiments and reforms. Local governments in Central and Eastern Europe Gerry Stoker (ed.), The new politics of local governance Robert Leach and Janie Percy–Smith, Local governance in Britain     

Reviews

David McKay, Designing Europe – comparative lessons from the federal experience Hellmut Wollmann and Eckhard Schröter (eds), Comparing public sector reform in Britain and Germany: key traditions and trends in modernisation Christopher Pollitt and Geert Bouckaert, Public management reform – a comparative analysis Michael Moran, Governing the healthcare state: a comparative study of the United Kingdom, the United States and Germany Robert Hazell (ed.), The state and the nations: the first year of devolution in the United Kingdom Luc Rouban (ed.), Citizens and the new governance: beyond new public management Neal D. Finkelstein (ed.), Transparency in public policy: Great Britain and the United States Graeme A. Hodge, Privatization: an international review of performance John Stewart, The nature of British local government Richard A. Chapman (ed.), Ethics in the public service for the new millennium Clive Gray, The politics of the arts in Britain Kenneth Dyson, The politics of the Euro‐Zone: stability or breakdown? Roger Levy, Implementing European Union public policy     

The Lost Legitimacy: Property, Business Power and the Constitution

After nearly a quarter of a century of business friendly government in Britain, the business community nevertheless finds itself more unpopular than for three decades and is increasingly beset by demands for regulation. The sources of its problems lie in the regulatory structures historically created for the business community. These structures have been unable to cope with regulation in the world of large-scale privatization, global economic competition and the demands of democratic politics for public accountability. Business is therefore struggling to create new sources of legitimacy.     

The Lost Legitimacy: Property,Business Power and the Constitution

After nearly a quarter of a century of business friendly government in Britain, the business community nevertheless finds itself more unpopular than for three decades and is increasingly beset by demands for regulation. The sources of its problems lie in the regulatory structures historically created for the business community. These structures have been unable to cope with regulation in the world of large‐scale privatization, global economic competition and the demands of democratic politics for public accountability. Business is therefore struggling to create new sources of legitimacy.     

Risk,Reflexivity and Sub-politics: Environmental Politics in Hong Kong

Increasing attention has been drawn to the risk posed by air pollution, a risk that has wide-ranging effects (on the environment, health, the economy, culture, urban design and politics). New environmental movements and political agendas have emerged in the past 10 years. A growing number of social groups have been formed to express their concerns and challenge established laws and rules. This paper will borrow Ulrich Beck's concepts of risk, reflexivity and sub-politics to analyse the new social movement that addresses air quality in Hong Kong. While previous environmental problems were considered manageable, air pollution is a risk that seems to defy solution. As a result of the institutional failure to deal with this risk, there has been a new alignment of interests and the emergence of a new form of politics—a sub-politics that leads to a sharing of power between established and informal politics, and the government and society. Although established political institutions have been receptive, altering the rules and increasing public participation, the extent of sub-politicization is still limited. This is due, in part, to the overall absence of reflexive self-regulation among individuals in the society, which might lead to a state of ‘disorganized irresponsibility’.     

Reviews

Books Reviewed: Stephen P. Osborne (ed.), Public–private partnerships. Theory and practice in international perspective Neill Nugent, The European Commission Anne Stevens with Handley Stevens, Brussels bureaucrats? The administration of the European Union Michelle Egan, Constructing a European market – standards, regulation and governance R.A.W. Rhodes, Control and power in central–local government relations Steve Ludlam and Martin J. Smith (eds), New Labour in government Huw T.O. Davies, Sandra M. Nutley and Peter C. Smith (eds), What works? Evidence–based policy and practice in public services     

Municipality size,political efficacy and political participation: a systematic review

ABSTRACT

It is an old adage that local government is a training ground for democracy. Its human scale means that political amateurs can contribute effectively and meaningfully to the politics of a state. But in a political climate seemingly driven to consolidate local government into ever larger units, can a not so local local government still elicit an efficacious and participatory citizenry? This paper explores the effect of municipality population size on two important aspects of democratic culture: political efficacy and political participation. Via a two-part systematic review, the paper examines how extant empirical literature bears on the relationship between size and both of these aspects, hypothesising that political efficacy plays a mediating role between size and participation. The findings are unequivocal: citizens of smaller municipalities feel a greater sense of political efficacy and participate to a greater degree in local politics.     

Generalists and specialists in executive politics: Why ambitious meta‐policies so often fail

This article contributes to the politics of policy‐making in executive government. It introduces the analytical distinction between generalists and specialists as antagonistic players in executive politics and develops the claim that policy specialists are in a structurally advantaged position to succeed in executive politics and to fend off attempts by generalists to influence policy choices through cross‐cutting reform measures. Contrary to traditional textbook public administration, we explain the views of generalists and specialists not through their training but their positions within an organization. We combine established approaches from public policy and organization theory to substantiate this claim and to define the dilemma that generalists face when developing government‐wide reform policies (‘meta‐policies’) as well as strategies to address this problem. The article suggests that the conceptual distinction between generalists and specialists allows for a more precise analysis of the challenges for policy‐making across government organizations than established approaches.     

Reforming government with information technology in South Korea

The South Korean government recently launched 11 major e‐government services after a long period of inter‐ and intra‐ministry politics concerning the allocation of jurisdiction over various e‐government services. This article analyses the politics of e‐government efforts in South Korea. It begins by describing the development of e‐government policy in South Korea for the past two decades, and identifies its four major features as comprehensiveness, fragmentation, the orientation toward operational efficiency and citizen services, and the inclination toward new technological solutions. The article concludes that these features can be attributed to the heavy involvement of the macro political system, its high susceptibility to inputs from experts, and the institutional design of the informatisation subsystem.     

Determinants of Performance in Government: Focusing on the Effect of Organizational Politics and Conflicts in Organizations

Conflicts and politics in organizations are common in both the public and private sectors. However, there are few comprehensive studies regarding the relationship between politics, conflicts, and outcomes in the public sector. Therefore, this study sought to empirically explore the relationships between organizational performance, organizational conflicts, and organizational politics in the public sector. To analyze the effects of organizational politics and conflicts on performance in government organizations, hierarchical multiple regression analyses were performed. The results indicated that organizational politics and relationship conflicts negatively affect organizational performance.     

Extraordinary politics in the Polish transition

Among the arguments for rapid economic reform in transitions to the market in Central and Eastern Europe, scholars have argued that rapid reformers could better take advantage of the period of `extraordinary politics' at the beginning of the transition. Regime transitions provide a unique opportunity for politicians to implement economic reform since the public is more likely to grant the government room to reform. If the public is more likely to give politicians this window of opportunity, politicians should implement far-reaching reforms during that period. I test two propositions in this paper: (1) politicians in office during a period of liberalization will get high positive ratings at the polls which will gradually deplete over time; and (2) at the beginning of the transition, views of the current economic situation will not predict views of politics. I find that approval of the Polish government was unusually high in the first one and one-half to two years of the Polish transition. In the same period, assessments of the current economic situation only weakly affected assessments of politics. After the period of extraordinary politics comes to an end, the relationship between political and economic assessments is much stronger. Thus, in a country with a harsh economic reform program and six contentious national elections within eight years, there is strong evidence that politicians benefited from a period of extraordinary politics at the beginning of the regime.     

日本政治的未来发展趋势——从各政治主体相互关系的视角

目前,在日本政治中,选民与政党的关系因利益集团的衰退而尚未固定下来,政府与社会的关系更是由于行政改革处在较大的变化之中,决策过程中的议员与官僚的关系甚至有些紧张,世界政治经济格局尚未成型下的外交方向不确定选择也影响到国内政治的变化。因此,持续的政界分化组合引起的政权更替使日本政治乃至政局在一段时间内难以稳定下来。未来的日本政治体制将仍以一个较大的政党为中心组建政权,选民通过政策取向决定自己手中的选票,政党主导决策过程的趋势加强,市民组织型社会也有所发展,但日本在国际舞台上的影响力将逐渐减弱。     

TRADITIONS OF LOCAL GOVERNMENT

This article explores local government traditions in the UK. This task is an important one for scholars who wish to understand and appreciate the rich cultural complexity of local government organizations. In local government settings, traditions can be used in the study and evaluation of political and managerial practices. They provide lenses through which the routines, structures and processes of management and politics may be viewed. The delineation of multiple traditions heightens the sense that local government is not a unified homogeneous organizational entity, but rather a melange of voices, interests and assumptions about how to organize, prioritize and mobilize action. They can be used to engage practitioners with the idea that different traditions inform political and managerial practices and processes in local councils. The approach embraces the significance of participants' constitutive stories about local government rather than the search for essential truths about the politics and management of the public sector.     

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.     

Imperial Incompetence and Guatemalan Militarism, 1931–1966

Drawing of Guatemalan and US sources, this paper complicates the instrumentalist argument that US assistance and intervention explain the Guatemalan military's repeated intervention in politics, and the rise of a military government in 1963. This study contends that the US government had little to do with giving Guatemalan officers the capacity and motive to intervene in politics. However, the US did contribute to their opportunity to intervene through its opposition to regimes it opposed, as was the case in the infamous 1954 coup, and also by inadvertently weakening regimes it backed.     

Auckland,New Zealand – fair game for central party politics

This paper explores the influence of central party politics in Auckland local government, in New Zealand’s largest city, following the 2010 amalgamation. Political parties have been an accepted and dominant presence in European representative democratic local government, throughout the 20^th century. Not so, however, in New Zealand and Australia, where citizens have ‘flocked to the banner “Keep Politics out of Local Government”. Our analysis of the self-declared party accreditation status of candidates and elected members demonstrates that political affiliation, at least in the main centre Auckland, is on the rise, counter to assumptions that New Zealand local government is largely removed from central politics.     

Regenerating the coalfields: Local authorities,the European community and the coalfields community campaign

Abstract

A key feature of the rise of neoliberal politics and policy has been the progressive shift of risk from corporations and national states to the local government, individuals and households. In this article, we argue that, in the UK, ‘great risk shift’ has not only been intensified by recession and austerity but has also been marked by the unevenness of the redistribution of risk and insecurity across scales and places, and between different types of household. In order to capture the differentiated nature of experiences and impacts of recession, risk and insecurity, this article first considers the spatial and temporal dynamics of recession and the great risk shift. It then goes on to localise and embed these dynamics within the city regions and local authorities of Bristol and Liverpool, drawing on a quantitative survey of 1,013 households, across a range of different household types. The survey was segmented geographically and by ten different household types using Ipsos-MORI’s (ACORN) classification of residential neighbourhoods. Whilst the evolving crisis and subsequent austerity measure have been a ‘moving target’ for cities, the local government and households, the household survey was undertaken in the two city regions in the winter of 2011 and explored experiences and impacts since 2008. It will seek to demonstrate the nature, impact and ‘lived experience’ of the ‘risk shift’ during this period and consider the ongoing and broader implications for households, and national and local policymakers.     

Reformation of a Terrorist Group: Hezbollah as a Lebanese Political Party

Despite the classification of Hezbollah as a terrorist group by several states, Hezbollah is recognized as a legitimate political party within Lebanon. The purpose of this article is to probe at the reasons why Hezbollah was able to achieve its current status in the Lebanese government while it still maintains a powerful, well armed military branch that has used force recently to influence Lebanese politics. An examination of Hezbollah's life cycle suggests that two major factors were decisive: 1) Hezbollah's political leverage over the majority government, and 2) choices by Hezbollah's leaders to moderate their objectives to achieve domestic political goals.