MARKETS OR POLITICS? THE DETERMINANTS OF LABOUR RELATIONS IN A NATIONALIZED INDUSTRY

This article examines 'market' and 'political' explanations for the nature of nationalized industry labour relations, using British Rail as a case study. The market perspective suggests that market insulation generated 'cosy' industrial relations since it allowed managers to acquiesce in restrictive practices. More robust labour management recently is the result of greater exposure to market forces. This explanation is rejected because BR was exposed to competitive pressures before the Thatcher era, and because there is no simple relationship between market forces and managerial actions. Instead political uncertainty is the primary determinant of the state of industrial relations. In the 1970s British Rail management and unions formed a 'tacit alliance' to limit the potential damage of government interventions. This alliance has broken down in the 1980s not primarily because of market pressures but because government interventions have become more explicitly concerned with industrial relations.     

REFORM OF INTERGOVERNMENTAL RELATIONS IN AUSTRALIA: THE POLITICS OF FEDERALISM AND THE NON-POLITICS OF MANAGERIALISM

A remarkable process of reform of intergovernmental arrangements was initiated in Australia in 1990 designed, according to its proponents, 'to improve our national efficiency and international competitiveness and to improve the delivery and quality of services governments provide'. Unlike previous 'new federalisms' in Australia (and elsewhere) the reform process on this occasion was neither totally unilateral, nor top-down in design and implementation. Rather, while reflecting the commonwealth (federal) government's frustrations at the limits imposed by the federal system on its political power and administrative capacity, the process intentionally was cooperative, incorporating all state and temtory government leaders, and including representatives of local government. In the context of a review of the origins, nature and objectives of the reform initiative, this article points both to the valuable innovations embodied in its processes, and to the risks of reduced political access and citizen participation created by its attempts to apply 'single-government' managerialist principles to the redesign of intergovernmental arrangements in federal systems. Political and bureaucratic objectives, combined with a lack of adequate appreciation of federal principles, led, in our view, to an attempt to supplant participatory politics with relatively less accessible and responsive managerial structures.     

REPRESENTING CUSTOMERS’INTERESTS: THE CASE OF THE PRIVATIZED WATER INDUSTRY IN ENGLAND AND WALES

Privatization has been one of the most important and controversial policy initiatives to emerge in the UK over the last decade. However, to date there has been little attempt to assess the impact of privatization on customers, despite the fact that much of the justification for the privatization of the public utilities was couched in terms of the benefits it would bring for customers. In the case of the water industry opportunities for competition are virtually non-existent, and the ten regional water authorities were privatized with their monopoly position intact. Consequently customers’interests have been represented and protected through new regulatory arrangements operated by the Office of Water Services. The purpose of this article is to offer some provisional assessment of the effectiveness of these new regulatory arrangements. In doing so, the article regards the model of private sector consumer sovereignty as inappropriate given the continued absence of competitive arrangements for the representation of customers’interests against some of the criteria currently being discussed in the development of more consumer-oriented approaches to the delivery of public services.     

ORGANIZATIONAL STATUS A PERFORMANCE: SUMMARY OF THE FINDINGS

Hypotheses derived from the public choice and other literatures on the relationship between ownership and performance were tested on ten UK organizations which had undergone status change, within the public sector or between the public and private sectors, in the last twenty years. Results on tests of performance in productivity, employment, and financial ratios against change in status, competition and internal management failed in most cases to support the thesis that change in ownership improves enterprise performance, even in its more sophisticated form where ownership change is assumed to be accompanied by increased competition and improved managerial incentives.     

LOCAL ENTERPRISE BOARDS: THE SHORT HISTORY OF A RADICAL INITIATIVE

Local enterprise boards were first developed as radical initiatives For economic intervention in the early 1980s. Despite the closeness of their dates of birth, however, and the apparent similarity of the organizational forms (and titles) which they adopted, the differences between the boards were as significant as their shared features. The ambitions of each of the five first-wave boards were quite distinct. Some were more radical than others: some were concerned to challenge the market, whilst others were more concerned to work with it. But the experience of market-based intervention through the last decade as well as the legislative and financial constraints imposed by central government have encouraged a degree of convergence, particularly as grander ambitions have been modified. Partnership with the private sector (including the financial sector) became increasingly important for all of them, to the extent that legislation to restrict the operation of local authority based companies of this sort seems misplaced, at least if it is intended to undermine local socialism. The enterprise boards now seem to offer a better model for the involvement of business in regional and local government, than they do as trojan horses for the local authority left.     

PRIVATE INITIATIVE AND COMMUNITY RESPONSIBILITY: A STRATEGY FOR THE BLACK COMMUNITY

In Britain black leaders are generally less well integrated into community agencies and local administration than their counterparts in the United States. This is partly explained by reference to the American 'arms length' approach to funding community development which, in contrast to the more centralized British approach, enables black leaders to work 'within the system' apparently without sacrificing too much of their political independence. In this context the paper views the activities and funding of the US community action and development agencies and British community relations councils.     

THE THATCHER GOVERNMENT, THE FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT INITIATIVE, AND THE 'NEW CML SERVICE'

The Thatcher era has been a traumatic one for the career Civil Service, so much so that one leading civil servant has suggested that the order of change is such that a 'new Civil Service' is emerging. This paper examines, first, interpretations of what has happened to the Civil Service under the Thatcher government; next, it reviews the developments relating to the economy programme and the Financial Management Initiative; then it considers the current state of the Civil Service pay and promotion system; finally, it concludes that thus far at least, essentially, the 'old Civil Service' has survived.     

POLICY-MAKING WITH A DIFFERENCE? THE TECHNICAL AND VOCATIONAL EDUCATION INITIATIVE

In this study we focus on the emergence of the technical and vocational education initiative. The formulation of the policy is found to differ from that of the conventional British policy style, in that it was announced without prior consultation with the education policy community. Further, overall responsibility for the initiative lies outside the traditional sphere of education — with the Manpower Services Commission. However, in the subsequent processing and implementation stages of the initiative, the established educational interests (local and national) are seen to move from the auditorium back to centre stage. The reasons for the original departure from the conventional policy style, those for the return to normality, and some implications, are examined.     

DEMOCRACY, PARTICIPATION AND RESPONSIVENESS: A CASE STUDY OF RELATIONS BETWEEN THE IVORIAN COMMUNES AND THEIR CITIZENS

This study of the new Ivorian communes created in 1985 investigates the hypothesis that democratization of local government will lead to an improvement in governmental performance, particularly in its'responsiveness'dimension. It was found that although electoral participation had increased since 1985, other forms of popular engagement with the communes were low, and relationships of accountability and consultation between elected representatives and their electorates were also poorly developed. Responsiveness, defined as congruence between popular preferences and the actual policies and outputs of the communes, was generally low. It is concluded that whilst increased participation enhanced the capacity to be responsive, its impact was mediated through institutional and societal factors such as the role of the mayor, the electoral system, public expectations, continued financial and fiscal centralization and the inevitable limits on the resources and functions of the communes.     

THE ARCHITECTURE OF THE BRITISH CENTRAL STATE. PART II: EMPIRICAL FINDINGS

Part I of this paper (autumn issue) explained the need to improve existing research into the British central state, outlined the bureau-shaping model, and tackled a number of methodological issues involved in applying this framework. Part II demonstrates that the bureau-shaping model is highly effective in systematizing and extending our knowledge of how Whitehall and directly attached agencies are structured. The main types of organizations identified share many similarities, so that the model's categories have a clear intuitive meaning. As a result the bureau-shaping model can effectively cope with analytic problems that have constrained previous 'bureaumetric' research, such as the extreme variations in the size of central state agencies. The model also illuminates both the distribution of bureau-types across policy sectors, and the effects of different patterns of administration on public expenditure trends under the Thatcher government.     

BEYOND GAPS AND IMBALANCES: RE‐STRUCTURING THE DEBATE ON INTERGOVERNMENTAL FISCAL RELATIONS

How do we know whether a country suffers from vertical fiscal imbalance (VFI)? What should be done about it? Academic appreciation of these issues in general, and the nature of political behaviour in particular, both have major implications for the way federations are fiscally structured. While the latter clearly is a problem of political negotiations, our focus is on the former, that is, conceptual clarity, which precedes meaningful negotiations. Thus, the paper aims to clarify the multiple usages of the symbolically loaded terms VFI and VFG (vertical fiscal gap) by critically engaging the fundamental assumptions and premises underlying these ostensibly similar notions. It proposes an alternative conceptual framework and introduces the concepts of vertical fiscal asymmetry (VFA) and vertical fiscal difference (VFD) that have the potential to better structure public debate on issues of vertical fiscal relations and stimulate a sensible appreciation of the problem and possible remedies.     

THE FUTURE OF NETWORK GOVERNANCE RESEARCH: STRENGTH IN DIVERSITY AND SYNTHESIS

The popularity and scope of network governance research and practice continues to expand from its divergent foundations, assumptions and methodological positions. This paper introduces a symposium of papers on this substantial sub‐field by first summarizing the sprawling research endeavour that comprises it. The main theoretical and empirical approaches that have been used to guide it to date are then briefly described, emphasizing recent debates about interpretivism and decentring. Next, it suggests that a robust and interesting future for network governance requires diversity, rather than adherence to a single approach. It is argued that more sophisticated approaches for examining network governance are fashioned through a synthesis of ideas and methods to create an analysis of networks as networks. This is especially the case where some formal analysis of network structure is used in concert with an interpretive examination of action and process. Finally, the papers in the symposium are introduced.     

EVALUATION UNDER CONTRACT: GOVERNMENT PRESSURE AND THE PRODUCTION OF POLICY RESEARCH

Do governments lean on researchers who evaluate their policies to try to get them to produce politically useful results? Do researchers buckle under such pressure? This article, based on a survey of 205 academics who have recently completed commissioned research for government, looks at the degree to which British government departments seek to produce research that is designed to provide ‘political ammunition’, above all making them ‘look good’ or minimizing criticism of their policies. Looking at different stages in the research process – from deciding which policies to evaluate, shaping the nature and conduct of inquiry, and writing the results – the article finds evidence of government sponsors making significant efforts to produce politically congenial results. For the most part, researchers appear to resist these efforts, though the evidence base (researchers' own accounts of their work) suggests that this conclusion be treated with some caution.     

LONDON DOCKLANDS: AN ANALYSIS OF POWER RELATIONS BETWEEN UDCs AND LOCAL GOVERNMENT

This article sets up a framework for examining the differences and relations between Urban Development Corporations and local government. It analyses the interest to which the two sorts of body are responsive, the organizational structures which condition their relationship and the styles of decision-making through which they operate. This framework is used to analyse the London docklands experience with the objective of distinguishing the special aspects of this case from those which are likely to be generally applicable.     

THE EUROPEAN UNION ‘MODEL’ AND ADMINISTRATIVE CO‐OPERATION: THE CASE OF NORTHERN IRELAND AND THE REPUBLIC OF IRELAND

This article examines the relevance of the European Union (EU) model of governance in explaining the innovative administrative arrangements established by the 1998 Good Friday Agreement, the North‐South Ministerial Council (NSMC), and in particular its joint secretariat. The first section of the article sets out five models of the EU that may be applied to the NSMC. The second section provides an overview of the cross‐border relationship until 1998 and the third section examines the administrative relationship since 1998. In conclusion, the similarities between the NSMC secretariat and the open coordination model of the EU are highlighted.