RECONCILING PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY AND ABORIGINAL SELF-DETERMINATION/SELF-MANAGEMENT: IS ATSIC SUCCEEDING?

Abstract: Since the early 1970s commonwealth governments have been pursuing policies of self-determination/self-management in relation to Aborigines. In 1987, the Hawke government announced its intention to establish an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) to further this policy goal. During the debates over ATSIC's formation, the issue of public accountability in the existing administration of Aboriginal affairs came to public prominence. The result was some extensive reworking of the ATSIC proposal, which in 1989 reemerged with a strengthened emphasis on public accountability. This article traces the events and arguments surrounding ATSIC's formation and then goes on to examine ATSIC in practice. It asks whether ATSIC is succeeding in reconciling the two imperatives of Aboriginal self-determination/self-management and public accountability.     

THE DEPARTMENT OF SOCIAL SECURITY'S TREATMENT OF ABORIGINAL POLYGYNY AND TRIBAL MARRIAGE: A SAGA OF ADMINISTRATIVE DEBATE

Abstract: Since the inclusion of Aborigines in the Australian social security system, the treatment of Aboriginal polygyny and tribal marriage by the Department of Social Security (DSS) has been a recurring minor issue of departmental, and at times extra-departmental, debate. This article traces the history of that debate from the early 1960s to the present day. Although the article is primarily historical, there is also some attempt made to analyse both the nature of the administrative processes involved and the types of administrative argument deployed in the debate.     

Socialization and generational political trajectories: an age,period and cohort analysis of political participation in Britain

The role of political socialization in explaining disengagement from specific modes of activism beyond voting remains largely unexplored, limited to date by available data and methods. While most previous studies have tended to propose explanations for disengagement linked to specific repertoires of political action, we propose a unified theory based on the different socialization experiences of subsequent generations. We test this theory using a new dataset of collated waves of the British Social Attitudes Survey and by applying age–period–cohort models for repeated cross-sectional data and generalized additive models to identify generational effects. We show that generational effects underlie the participatory decline across repertoires. Consistent with our expectations, the results reveal that the generation of “Thatcher’s Children” are much less likely to engage in a range of repertoires of political action than “Wilson/Callaghan’s Children”, who came of age in the more politicized 1960s and 1970s. Significantly, and in line with our theoretical expectations, the “Blair’s Babies” generation is the least politically engaged of all. We reflect on these findings and highlight the concerning implications of falling levels of activism for advanced democracies.     

High Costs and Segregation in Subsidized Housing Policy

This article examines the public policies determining the distribution of subsidized housing in the Twin Cities metropolitan area of Minnesota, the resulting distribution of subsidized housing, and the comparative costs associated with building in the region's central cities or in suburbs. The analysis concludes that current policies are clearly not meeting the region's responsibility to affirmatively further fair housing. The metropolitan area abandoned its role as a national leader in this area decades ago. The result is an affordable housing system that concentrates subsidized housing in the region's poorest and most segregated neighborhoods. This increases the concentration of poverty in the two central cities, in the region's most racially diverse neighborhoods, and in the attendance areas of predominantly nonwhite schools. In the long run, this hurts the regional economy and exacerbates the racial gaps in income, employment, and student performance that plague the Twin Cities.     

Efficient compensation for employees' inventions

We analyze a legal reform concerning employees' inventions in Germany. Using a simple principal-agent model, we derive a unique efficient payment scheme: a bonus which is contingent on the project value. We demonstrate that the old German law creates inefficient incentives even if litigation cost is zero. However, the new law (concerning university employees) and the pending reform proposal (concerning other employees) also fail to implement first-best incentives. With suboptimal incentives to spend effort on inventions, the government's goal, an increase in the number of patents, is likely to be missed. A part of this research was done while I enjoyed the hospitality of the University of California in Santa Barbara (Economics Department) and Berkeley (Law School). Financial aid by the Thyssen Stiftung is gratefully acknowledged. classification K 12 . J 33 . C 72