What Ministers Do

Having been a minister in three different departments for a period of over nine years (1999–2008), during the Blair and, briefly, the Brown governments, I thought it might be useful to reflect on what ministers actually do, their functions and how they spend their days. In thinking about what I did as a minister, I have avoided going back to some of the classic constitutional texts on what ministers supposedly do, how they are accountable and such like. I am sure there is good literature on this from political scientists and constitutionalists, but I have avoided influencing my own views and approach by consulting these texts.     

Local Economic Development: What is Proposed, What is Done, and What Difference Does it Make?

This paper assesses the comparative policy insights gained from the articles in the symposium in terms of three dimensions: policies proposed, actions taken, and impacts scored. Local economic development interventions are classified in terms of a five-way categorization in terms of geographic breadth of action and reliance on complementary private action as a prerequisite to lasting impact. The nine symposium cases are then examined for their evidence on development efforts' accountability to the public and lessons about efficient use of public funds. The paper concludes that the cases demonstrate that most development efforts have wasted public funds, offering at best the limited success resulting from efforts to beggar neighboring local economics with which competition for development continues.     

何为公共治理？

治理理论自上世纪末兴起于西方发达国家。它首先在国际经济领域兴起,并在英美的“新公共管理运动”中实践,在理论渊源上它以新自由主义为后盾。公共治理应该成为公共行政领域中“治理”一词的主要含义,而在自组织治理的基础上,政府必须介入到自组织治理中,并起到“元治理”作用,以防止治理失灵。公共治理与统治和新公共管理存在着明显的区别。     

What work makes policy?

The mainstream policy literature identifies a number of activities as part of ‘policy-making’: ‘policy analysis’, ‘policy advice’, ‘decision-making’, and perhaps also ‘implementation’ and ‘evaluation’. Describing policy in these terms is compatible with the Western cultural account, and these terms tend to be applied to positions, organisational segments and official procedures. But policy practitioners tend to find that on the one hand, their experience of their work bears little resemblance to the assumptions in this policy-making model, and on the other, that policy outcomes seem to reflect much broader processes than the work of specialist functionaries. On closer examination, we find that our thinking about policy activity draws on several distinct and potentially conflicting perspectives, and that what is seen as ‘policy work’ depends on the conceptualisation of the policy process. Framing the question in this way helps to understand the apparent differences between mainstream (American) accounts of policy activity and policy practice in other political systems.     

What liberals should tolerate internationally

ABSTRACT

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on what liberal states should tolerate outside their borders. This requires definitions of `liberalism,´ `toleration,´ and `state.´ In the first section of this paper, I briefly indicate how I use those and other terms necessary to the discussion and introduce the normative principle I take liberals to be committed to. In the second section, I continue clearing the path for the rest of my discussion. In the rest of the paper, I draw conclusions about what liberals should tolerate outside their state that I believe follow from the proffered definitions and principles. I limit myself to interference aimed at providing humanitarian aid, but do so in a way that is meant to provide resources for thinking about other sorts of interventions. In the third section, I consider humanitarian interventions done with the permission of the other state and will point toward a toleration-based view; here we are really talking about non-toleration of suffering. In the fourth section, I consider humanitarian interventions done without the permission of the other state; here we are talking about non-toleration of a state that harms its residents. I consider an objection in section five.     

What Stops the Torture?

States whose agents engage in torture in a given year have a 93% chance of continuing to torture in the following year. What leads governments to stop the use of torture? We focus on the principal–agent relationship between the executive and the individuals responsible for supervising and interrogating state prisoners. We argue that some liberal democratic institutions change the probability that leaders support the creation of institutions that discourage jailers and interrogators from engaging in torture, thus increasing the probability of a state terminating its use of torture. These relationships are strongly conditioned by the presence of violent dissent; states rarely terminate the use of torture when they face a threat. Once campaigns of violent dissent stop, however, states with popular suffrage and a free press are considerably more likely to terminate their use of torture. Also given the end of violent dissent, the greater the number of veto points in government, the lower the likelihood that a state terminates its use of torture.     

What if inflation returns?

She is codirector of the Gender Studies Program and a member of the Hesburgh School of Public Service at Notre Dame. Her work is widely published in the social-research periodical literature.