Norfolk Island as Region: A Pacific Puzzle

Commonwealth‐enforced changes to the constitutional status of Norfolk Island through 2014–2016 have removed the island's autonomous identity as a self‐governing Australian territory. Its conversion to what is effectively a part of New South Wales, with the main instrument of governance titled ‘regional council’, is said to be based on a NSW local government model. However, it is difficult to view Norfolk Island as a region, and difficult also to trace the thinking that bestowed the form of the regional council on its governance. This article briefly summarizes the Norfolk changes. It then considers how the concept of the regional council has been used in NSW, and moves on to Queensland where the concept is better defined. It notes particularly how it has been applied in the case of the Torres Strait Islands, and asks whether that application might have relevance for Norfolk. It concludes with speculation about what might be a better approach in designing a system of governance suitable for Norfolk conditions.     

Policy Games and Venue‐Shopping: Working the Stakeholder Interface to Broker Policy Change in Rehabilitation Services

How should bureaucrats engage effectively and ethically with stakeholders to achieve legitimate policy change? This essay draws upon findings from a case study of the introduction of an evidence‐based rehabilitation program for injured workers with soft‐tissue injuries in a workers' compensation jurisdiction in Australia. Despite initial enthusiasm for collaborative policy reform, clinical associations soon withdrew their support. In a classic case of venue‐shopping, a coalition of clinical associations formed in opposition to the foundation principles of the proposed policy, overturning the bureaucrats' preferred consultation strategy: a think‐tank comprising of invited clinical experts. The policy game turned from highly cooperative to fiercely competitive. These policy upheavals are interpreted through the lens of two theoretical perspectives: Sabatier's Advocacy Coalition framework, and Scharpf's Actor‐centred Institutionalism framework. The contrasts in perspectives are melded into propositions for bureaucrats seeking to engage with stakeholders in a contested policy drama.     

Reviews

Books reviewed in this article: From White Australia to Woomera: The History of Australian Immigration James Jupp The Ethical State? Social Liberalism in Australia Marian Sawer What's Wrong with the Liberal Party? Greg Barnes Government Reformed: Values and New Political Institutions Ian Holland and Jenny Fleming eds Turning off the Television: Broadcasting's Uncertain Future Jock Given Handbook of Public Administration B. Guy Peters and Jon Pierre eds Policy Responses to Social Exclusion: Towards Inclusion? Janie Percy‐Smith ed. Bob Carr: A Self‐Made Man Andrew West and Rachel Morris     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed: Peter Oborne, Alastair Campbell: New Labour and the Rise of the Media Class Nicholas Jones, The Control Freaks: How New Labour Gets its Own Way Paul Richards, How to Win an Election: The Art of Political Campaigning Charles Miller, Politico’s Guide to Political Lobbying Jonathan Rose, The Intellectual Life of the British Working Classes Niall Ferguson, The Cash Nexus: Money and Power in the Modern World 1700–2000 Stephen F. Cohen, Failed Crusade: America and the Tragedy of Post‐Communist Russia Alan Macfarlane, The Riddle of the Modern World, of Liberty, Wealth and Equality Howard Glennerster, John Hills and Tony Travers, Paying for Health, Education, and Housing: How does the Centre Pull the Purse Strings? Malachi Haim Hacohen, Karl Popper, the Formative Years 1902–1945: Politics and Philosophy in Interwar Vienna Vito Tanzi and Ludger Schuknecht, Public Spending in the Twentieth Century: A Global Perspective Robert Oakeshott, Jobs and Fairness: The Logic and Experience of Employee Ownership     

BOOK REVIEWS

Books reviewed in this article: Nineteen Men and One Woman DICK LEONARD The 20 British Prime Ministers of the 20th Century, twenty volumes, general editor Francis Beckett. Britain's Prime Ministers, by Roger Ellis and Geoffrey Treasure. Contra Blair Richard Briand Yo, Blair!: Tony Blair's Disastrous Premiership, by Geoffrey Wheatcroft. The columnist's progress Mark Garnett What's Left? How Liberals Lost Their Way, by Nick Cohen. The neo‐con and Iraq Martin Durham The Right War? The Conservative Debate on Iraq, edited by Gary Rosen. The road to hell … Dick Pountain The Politics of Good Intentions: History, Fear and Hypocrisy in the New World Order, by David Runciman.     

Brazil's South–South development cooperation: Principles and experiences of the domestic bureaucracy

How did Brazilian bureaucrats view President Lula's approach to the provision of development assistance in the context of South–South cooperation (SSC)? How did they see their own bureaucracy's role, as a provider of such assistance? This paper addresses these questions within the broad context of Brazil's development assistance program. The analysis begins with an elaboration of the internal legal and political structure supporting the country's provision of development assistance. Then, it addresses the research questions by drawing on original material obtained from 54 interviews, conducted in Brasilia, with diplomats and public servants from 25 federal ministries and institutions directly involved with implementing technical cooperation agreements. Evidence leads to three main observations: (a) the bureaucracies' limited autonomy vis‐à‐vis the Presidency's command of the Brazilian development assistance program; (b) great convergence in the worldviews and principled values upheld by public servants and diplomats in regard to Brazilian foreign policy; and (c) the existence of interbureaucracy complaints and struggles related to the operational side of agreement implementation. These findings are relevant for understanding the inner workings of Brazilian SSC, as well as in comparison to other national bureaucracies' involvement in the conceptualization and implementation of South–South knowledge transfers.     

The Blair Governments, Public Sector Reform and State Strategic Capacity

Two books at the end of the Blair era—by Michael Barber and Julian Le Grand—offer to redeem the ‘third way’. Both authors explore the political case for public sector reform and the means by which it can be accomplished. They explore a similar range of reform models: command and control; quasi‐markets; and devolution and transparency. But the circle between efficiency, client service and continuous improvement must be squared. Neither author considers the ‘learning by doing’ alternative. No less fundamentally, neither author addresses the political and technical challenges in developing strategy. How are issues to be aired in advance so as to expose evidence and perspectives? How are interests to be engaged and supporting coalitions formed? How are these processes to occur without executive commitment? How are unconventional ideas to be aired without being over‐ruled by populist or media sensationalism? These are the practical dilemmas that confounded Blair's efforts. These books invite a strategic conversation that is badly needed. But where in the political system can it be pursued?     

Organizational Reputations and the Observability of Public Warnings in 10 Pharmaceutical Markets

How does a regulator's reputation affect the public observability of its regulatory errors? I present a verbal model in the policy domain of drug safety that suggests that media coverage of the regulator's errors is a function of the regulator's predominant basis of reputation. Media coverage will be lowest when the regulator has a reputation for scientific expertise in preapproval drug evaluation (or when it “shadows” decisions made by regulators that have reputation for expertise) and highest when it has a reputation as a guarantor of public safety in the media. Empirical tests of the model in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, Canada, South Africa, Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, Israel, and Switzerland between 1975 and 2004 supports the model's prediction and therefore, undermine Carpenter's assumption that regulators cannot recover reputation losses resulting from the approval of a truly dangerous drug.     

Housing and the Welfare State in Norway

This article discusses housing and the welfare state in Norway in 1980 and 2005 by applying Esping‐Andersen's theories of welfare state regimes to this sector. How should Norwegian housing policy be understood in light of Esping‐Andersen's conceptual framework, and what is the impact of post‐industrial change? In 1980, Norwegian housing policy was mainly characterised by social‐democratic traits such as market regulation, substantial public expenditure and universal subsidies for both renters and a large owner‐occupied housing sector. The effects of post‐industrial changes, including deregulation of the credit and housing markets, marked a major turn in housing policy and the housing market in Norway. By 2005, Norwegian housing policy was mainly characterised by traits that are typical of a liberal welfare regime: market economics, low public expenditure and subsidies for small, targeted groups, while other segments of the Norwegian welfare state remain characterised by social‐democratic traits. Esping‐Andersen's claim that the effect of post‐industrial transformation was different in different welfare regimes is thus not supported by the case of the Norwegian housing sector.     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed in this issue. Pakistan: The Hope of Wiser Mornings
F. S. AIJAZUDDIN The Future of Pakistan, by Stephen P. Cohen and others. The euro crisis: will the left awaken?
Jon Bloomfield The Future of Social Democracy: Building the Good Society, by Henning Meyer and Jonathan Rutherford. Nudging or nagging? Nudge, Nudge, Think, Think: Experimenting with Ways to Change Civic Behaviour, by Peter John, Sarah Cotterill, Alice Moseley, Liz Richardson, Graham Smith, Gerry Stoker, Corinne Wales, Hanhua Liu and Hisako Nomura. Is Berlusconi history?
Claudia Capelli Berlusconi passato alla storia. L'Italia nell'era della democrazia autoritaria, by Antonio Gibelli. Berlusconismo. Analisi di un sistema di potere, edited by Paul Ginsborg and Enrica Asquer. Island story or real history?
Kate Moorse The Right Kind of History: Teaching the Past in Twentieth‐century England, by David Cannadine, Jenny Keating and Nicola Sheldon. The Tea Parties: neither crazies nor righteous
Martin Durham The Tea Party and the Remaking of Republican Conservatism, by Theda Skocpol and Vanessa Williams. A global mafia?
John Dickie Mafias on the Move: How Organized Crime Conquers New Territories, by Federico Varese. What now, America?
Ilaria Poggiolini Strategic Vision: America and the Crisis of Global Power, by Zbigniew Brzezinski. Knaves not fools
Dick Pountain The Cost of Inequality: Three Decades of the Super‐Rich and the Economy, by Stewart Lansley.     

Tutors and Pupils: International Organizations, Central European Elites, and Western Models

In the past decade, political elites in Central and Eastern Europe have often sought to imitate Western organizational and institutional models, while organizations like the EU and NATO have often acted as “institutional tutors” in the region. Using evidence from Hungary and the Czech Republic, this paper demonstrates why imitating Western structures has been both administratively expedient and useful in building political coalitions. It also stresses that the short‐term benefits of doing so are followed by longer‐term costs. The paper answers four questions: How have certain models been held up to CEE elites? Why might some such models be targets for elites to imitate? How does such imitation occur? And what results from imitation? Contrary to expectations that institutional modeling would be merely technocratic and used only yearly in the transformation, the paper's threefold heuristic of templates, thresholds, and adjustments shows that the process is both politically contentious and sustained.     

Think tanks in transitional China

There is a growing interest in China's think tanks within and outside China. But many questions remain to be answered. How have their roles changed over time? Why are some think tanks more active than others in some areas, but less so in others? To answer such questions, the authors classify China's think tanks according to organisational structure, as a key explanatory concept. A longitudinal review shows that since the 1970s the organisational structure of think tanks has evolved gradually from semi‐official to civilian, with the evolving structures playing different roles and complementing one another. Following analysis of four case studies of China's think tanks, two of which are semi‐official and two of which are civilian, the article draws a picture of the complex relationship between organisational structure, strategy and behaviour of China's think tanks. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Review Essay: Death and Delusion on the Trade Front

Books reviewed in this article: How to Kill a Country: Australia's Devastating Trade Deal with the United States Linda Weiss, Elizabeth Thurbon and John Matthews All the Way with the USA: Australia, the US and Free Trade Ann Capling Community and Local Governance in Australia Paul Smyth, Tim Reddel and Andrew Jones (eds) The Thirty Year Problem: The Politics of Australian Tax Reform Richard Eccleston Into the Future: The Neglect of the Long Term in Australian Politics Ian Marsh and David Yencken Yes, Premier: Labor leadership in Australia's States and Territories John Wanna and Paul Williams (eds) Making and Breaking Universities Bruce Williams Ethics and organisational politics Chris Provis Power Politics. The electricity crisis and you John Spoehr (ed) Markets in Vice, Markets in Virtue John Braithwaite Pensions: Challenges and Reforms, International Studies on Social Security, Vol. 9 Editors Einar Overbye and Peter A. Kemp     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed in this issue. A breed apart: the Waziristan model
F. S. AIJAZUDDIN The Thistle and the Drone. How America's War on Terror Became a Global War on Tribal Islam, by Akbar Ahmed. Inventing history or inventing Israel?
Dennis Marks The Invention of the Land of Israel, by Shlomo Sands. Explaining the Congo wars
Sara Hellmüller Congo, by Thomas Turner. Not so right‐wing after all
Richard Briand Small Wars, Faraway Places: The Genesis of the Modern World 1945–1965, by Michael Burleigh. Caucasian problems and old Russian questions
Andrew Wachtel The Fire Below. How the Caucasus Shaped Russia, edited by Robert Bruce Ware. Capitalism versus democracy?
Gianfranco Pasquino Politics in The Age of Austerity, edited by Armin Schäfer and Wolfgang Streeck. Anti‐colonialism with a hint of nostalgia
Arifa Akbar From the Ruins of the Empire. The Revolt against the West and the Remaking of Asia, by Pankaj Mishra. What to do with the toffs and the not‐so‐toffs
Meg Russell The House of Lords 1911–2011: A Century of Non‐Reform, by Chris Ballinger. How liberal was John Stuart Mill?
Duncan Kelly Mill and Paternalism, by Gregory Claeys. Liberty Abroad: J. S. Mill on International Relations, by Georgios Varouxakis. War on terror: ‘Collateral damage’ in Britain
Laleh Khalili Shadow Lives: The Forgotten Women of the War on Terror, by Victoria Brittain.     

Intelligently Designing Deliberative Health Care Forums: Dewey's Metaphysics,Cognitive Science and a Brazilian Example

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Kate Soper: What is Nature? Oxford: Blackwell, 1995.

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Debt administration in Small Island‐States

Public debt management is an infrequent focus of public administration studies. Yet without appropriate debt management, administrators have few financial resources for public service provision. Island‐state administrators face an enhanced service provision challenge. The peculiarity of island‐state economies, the unpredictability of exogenous events and the state's endogenous choices increase debt administration's importance. Via its focus on debt management office location and the administrative constraints posed by brain drain, transparency and regionalization, this paper goes beyond typical debt management studies to engage debt administration spaces. The result is a framework for studies of debt administration in Small Island‐States.     

Book Reviews

Books reviewed in this article: Owen Hughes, Public Management and Administration: An Introduction Byong‐man Ahn, John Halligan and Stephen Wilks (eds.), Reforming Public and Corporate Governance: Management and the Market in Australia, Britain and Korea Fred Argy, Where to From Here? Australian Egalitarianism Under Threat Richard Woolcott,The Hot Seat: Reflections on Diplomacy from Stalin's Death to the Bali Bombings Bent Flyvbjerg, Rationality and Power Bent Flyvbjerg, Making Social Science Matter Denis Murphy, Roger Joyce, Margaret Cribb and Rae Wear (eds.), The Premiers of Queensland Ciaran O'Faircheallaigh, A New Approach to Policy Evaluation: Mining and Indigenous People Michael Pusey, The Experience of Middle Australia. The Dark Side of Economic Reform     

Tracing and periodizing China's food safety regulation: A study on China's food safety regime change

How has China's food safety administrative system changed since it was founded in 1949? How can we periodize the process of this historical transformation in terms of regulators, regulatees, and regulatory tools? This review article offers an analytical framework that distinguishes three regimes in the history of China's food safety governance: an old regime of command and control (1949–1977), an intermediate regime of mixed instruments (1978–1992), and a new regime of regulatory governance (1993–ongoing). In the article the regimes' features, advantages, disadvantages, and development tracks are discussed, and the groundwork is laid for an analysis of China's emerging regulatory state. Finally, a new notion of “transitional regulatory state” is used to define the current Chinese regulatory state based on its food safety regulation.     

BOOK REVIEWS

Books reviewed in this issue. Britain's problem: how to be nice about Europe ILARIA POGGIOLINI Britain's Policy towards the European Community, 1964–7: Harold Wilson and Britain's World Role, by Helen Parr. Harold Wilson's EEC Application, by Jane Tooney. A Stranger in Europe: Britain and the EU from Thatcher to Blair, by Stephen Wall. For love of what you are not Rosemary Bechler Visceral Cosmopolitanism: Gender Culture and the Normalisation of Difference, by Mica Nava. Globalised capitalism: the migrants Selina Chen Chinese Whispers: The True Story behind Britain's Hidden Army of Labour, by Hsiao‐Hung Pai. Globalised capitalism: the poor Suzanne Franks The Bottom Billion: Why the Poorest Countries Are Failing and What Can Be Done about It, by Paul Collier. The dark side of globalisation Ombretta Ingrascì McMafia: Crime without Frontiers, by Misha Glenny. The militant matryoshkas F. S. Aijazuddin Frontline Pakistan: The Path to Catastrophe and the Killing of Benazir Bhutto, by Zahid Hussain. Walking under Israeli occupation Jad Adams Palestinian Walks: Notes on a Vanishing Landscape, by Raja Shehadeh. A decade of deconstruction: Britain in the 1970s Richard Mullender Crisis? What Crisis? Britain in the 1970s, by Alwyn W. Turner. The threat from the Internet Kathy Bowrey The Future of the Internet and How to Stop It, by Jonathon Zittrain.