The European Community: A Balancing Act

The European Community has traditionally been analyzed usingtheories and concepts drawn from international relations ratherthan from federalism. This article emphasizes the balance betweenthe representation of territorial and nonterritorial interestsin the Community and argues that concepts drawn from federalismcan be useful in analytically understanding the Community aslong as the American model of federalism is not viewed as thenecessary federal referent. It describes the relative importanceof the territorial dimension within the major Community institutions—theCommission, the Council of Ministers, the European Council,the European Parliament, and the European Court of Justice.The Court of Justice, it is argued, is particularly importantin giving the Community a "federal" contour. However, its methodof operation differentiates it in important ways from the Americanjudiciary. The role of territorial politics within the Communityis such that the Community's policymaking process, while unique,is certainly recognizable to students of comparative federalism.     

公共政策私用现象探析

公共性作为公共政策的基本属性,在实践中面临诸多被背离的风险,公共政策私用现象便是对公共政策之公共性的严重侵蚀,需引起理论和实务界的关注与研究.公共政策之所以被私用,有源自政策主体、政策客体和政策环境方面的综合性诱因,其不良后果体现为浪费社会公共资源、折损政策主体公信力、破坏市场机制运行以及政策法规作用的发挥.要治理公共政策私用,需重视公共选择的作用,拓宽公众参与渠道;加快政治体制改革,协调权利关系;设置专门的政策监督机构等.     

Legitimacy and Coercion in Peacebuilding: A Balancing Act

ABSTRACT

Despite the tendency of the power literature to analyse legitimacy and coercion in isolation, both theoretical and empirical evidence suggest that coercion and legitimacy are not parallel lines but can interact in different ways, supporting or undermining each other. A methodical exploration of the relationship between legitimacy and coercion is important not only for improving the theoretical literatures on power and legitimacy but also in the light of the increasing interest in the power of legitimacy in statebuilding and peacebuilding. This article first analyses the overall interaction between coercion and legitimacy, and then explores the question that emerges from the interaction analysis; what level of coercion is permitted or required in order for a mission’s local legitimacy to be sustained? Finally, for the practice of peacebuilding, the article shows that an operation needs to understand its initial legitimacy standing with the local population, as this determines how much coercive force it can employ without undermining its overall legitimacy.     

Public versus Private Managers: How Public and Private Managers Differ in Leadership Behavior

This article aims to find out whether there are behavioral differences between public and private sector managers. Two groups of public managers (managers of social insurance agencies and public school principals) and a group of private managers (two samples) are investigated. Behavioral dimensions are investigated including leadership style (task, relationship, and change orientation), decision‐making style (the functions of sensing, intuition, thinking, and feeling), and motivation profile (achievement, affiliation, and power motivation). An analysis of data from 459 managers in four organizations in Sweden reveal significant differences in behavior between public and private managers. However, no significant differences in leadership behavior are discovered among public managers. Possible explanations for such differences and similarities are explored.     

The Politicization of Marriage in Contemporary American Public Policy: The Defense of Marriage Act and the Personal Responsibility Act

The sexuality politics terrain in the United States is currently marked by a complex and contradictory set of developments‐non-traditional family structures are becoming more common, popular opinion is moving in a more tolerant direction, and the lesbian and gay rights movement has enjoyed some victories, but conservative family values and patriarchal heterosexual marriage have been vigorously promoted by influential right-wing social movements and more deeply institutionalized through important public policy initiatives and court decisions. This article considers the theoretical implications of these developments with respect to the conceptual approaches to citizenship and sexuality. It then analyses two major pieces of federal legislation in depth: the Defense of Marriage Act (DOMA) and the Personal Responsibility Act (PRA). DOMA effectively encourages the states to ban same-sex marriages. The PRA is generally considered as a welfare 'reform' law that imposes compulsory 'workfare' schemes and time limits for benefit recipients. It nevertheless has a significant sexual regulation dimension. Both the religious right's campaign against same-sex marriage and the welfare reformers' attack on the rights of single mothers contribute to a reactionary politicization of marriage. In conclusion, the article contends that it is only insofar as lesbian and gay rights issues are understood more broadly as but one aspect of sexual regulation and citizenship rights struggles that we can develop more effective ways of advancing the sexual liberation movement as a whole.     

Public Allocation by Private Organizations: The Case of Finland*

Research on government-group relations has primarily concentrated on policy stages related to agenda-building, consultation and negotiation. However, interest organizations also play an increasingly important role in the final stage of allocation as they have in several instances been entrusted with the execution of state authority. This is especially true in the field of so-called indirect public administration. The paper reviews various forms of public allocation by private organizations in Finland and presents some empirical data indicating the growth of this form of allocation.     

The Job of Government: Interweaving Public Functions and Private Hands

Lively and sometimes raucous debate about the job of government has increasingly engulfed American politics. Much of that debate has swirled around government's size, with conservatives arguing the case for shrinking government and liberals fighting to grow it. In reality, however, neither of these debates engages the critical underlying trend: the increasing interweaving of governmental functions deeply into every fiber of the nongovernmental sectors. Many reforms have sought to rein in government's power, but none has engaged the fundamental interweaving of policy implementation, and, not surprisingly, most have failed. Indeed, many have eroded the public's trust in the governmental institutions on which they depend. This process raises fundamental challenges for defining government's core role, for building the capacity to govern effectively, and for enhancing the accountability of governmental programs. Many of government's administrative tools are a poor match for the governance problems they seek to solve.     

The Public/Private Cleavage in a Welfare State: Attitudes Toward Public Management Reform

This study contributes to the growing literature on differences in attitudes between public and private sector employees, particularly with respect to their receptivity or resistance to public management reforms. We begin by asking the question: to what degree does perceived self-interest play a role in accounting for attitudes toward public management reforms such as downsizing, privatization, and public spending? Using attitudinal data from Sweden, a social welfare state with a large public bureaucracy, a tension is observed both among public employees in different levels of government and between public and private sector employees. In the context of public management reforms, national government employees emerge as more right-leaning politically and more supportive of public management reforms than those working in local government. The analysis finds, particularly among national government employees, that while interest as measured here is strongly related to attitudes toward reform, status as a public employee and status as a public bureaucrat are not as significant as other components of interest in accounting for attitudes toward public management reform.     

The Rise of Professional Government: Evidence from Large-Scale Public Works Projects

Books reviewed:
Drew Fetherston, The Chunnel:The Amazing Story of the Undersea Crossing of the English Channel
Joanne Goldman, Abel.Building New York's Sewers: Developing Mechanisms of Urban Management
Stephen Halliday, The Great Stink of London: Sir Joseph Bazalgette and the Cleansing of the Victoria Metropolis     

The Public–Private Distinction: Insights for Public Administration from the State Action Doctrine

Public administration scholars continue to grapple with how and why public organizations differ from private organizations. The judiciary deals with similar questions in ruling on constitutional claims that apply exclusively to state actors. The authors consider similarities and differences between scholarly and judicial approaches, adding to the body of research attempting to capture the complexities of the public–private distinction. The application in this article includes the coding of seminal court decisions and qualitative comparative analysis (QCA) to find combinations of causal conditions that lead to state action rulings. The specifics revealed through QCA provide valuable lessons for extending public norms and preserving constitutional protections when outsourcing public services.     

The Conscientious Sovereign: Public and Private Rule in Thomas Hobbes's Early Discourses

In midcareer political treatises, Hobbes trades humanism for scientific method and minimizes distinctions between conquest and mutual covenant as grounds of sovereignty. From this, many conclude that arbitrary government is the goal, or the likeliest outcome of Hobbes's science of justice. Three early discourses, however, suggest that the perils of transition from the private rule of a conqueror to the public rule of a law-bound sovereign are of primary concern. Whether the change is taken as proof of the independent activity of natural law, or as solely attributable to the skills of exemplary sovereigns, it destabilizes any law-bound ruler who fails to reorient the passions motivating subjects to obey. Lasting stability and comfort can be achieved only when public rule is redefined as the preservation of a cognitive balance, setting fear of the destructive effects of unregulated self-assertion against hope of the possibility of continuous peace through obedience to law.