China’s foreign aid system: structure,agencies, and identities

China’s rise as a (re)emerging donor has attracted attention over the last decade, with a focus on Chinese development assistance as a challenge to the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) aid norms. Knowledge of China’s domestic aid structure is needed to understand Chinese aid abroad. This paper addresses gaps in the literature and challenges the accepted nostrum that China’s Ministry of Commerce (MOFCOM) dominates China’s aid programme. Building on the authors’ experience as Chinese aid practitioners and scholars over more than a decade and drawing on over 300 interviews, the paper explores China’s aid decision-making processes by examining the main agencies, identities and informal interactions. We argue that the Chinese aid system is characterised by fierce and ongoing competition for influence among actors, especially MOFCOM, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (MFA) and the Ministry of Finance (MoF), as well as the companies responsible for implementing Chinese aid projects.     

Birth Registration and Protection for Children of Transnational Labor Migrants in Indonesia

ABSTRACT

Policies on transnational labor migration do not consider workers' needs as parents or the rights and welfare of their children, including a child's right to an official identity through birth registration. A study of birth-registration decision making by migrant parents in Lombok, Indonesia underscored the need for targeted responses to uniquely challenging circumstances and priorities of migrant parents. Free birth registration through birthing and health centers and village-level leaders can overcome problems of decentralized implementation of national strategies and an exploitive registration brokerage industry, mitigating risks of de facto statelessness for children and a multigenerational pattern of undocumented and unsafe migration.     

Political Symbolism and the Fall of the USSR

When Gorbachev came to power he inherited not simply a system in crisis, but a structure of symbols that was embedded within the broader political system and which was also in crisis. Given the ideocratic nature of the Soviet system, any change to that system would require symbolic change as well. This essay charts how Gorbachev sought to come to grips with this problem, investing some symbols with new meaning while rejecting others. It shows how ultimately he was unable to produce a new, coherent narrative.     

Public–Private Partnerships: An International Performance Review

Public–private partnerships are enjoying a global resurgence in popularity, but there is still much confusion around notions of partnership, what can be learned from our history with partnerships, and what is new about the partnership forms that are in vogue today. Looking at one particular family of public–private partnerships, the long-term infrastructure contract, this article argues that evaluations thus far point to contradictory results regarding their effectiveness. Despite their continuing popularity with governments, greater care is needed to strengthen future evaluations and conduct such assessments away from the policy cheerleaders.     

Autonomy, justice, and disability

In this Article, Professor Carlos A. Ball explores the philosophical foundations for the types of rights and benefits that our society currently provides to individuals with disabilities. The concept of autonomy places on society a moral obligation to assist individuals with disabilities when their basic human functional capabilities are impaired. The exercise of this obligation entails assisting individuals with crossing a minimum threshold of functional capabilities below which it is not possible to lead autonomous lives. In making this argument, Professor Ball responds to libertarian critics who contend that notions of freedom or liberty proscribe an activist role for government in this arena. He explains how even a libertarian state redistributes wealth in order to provide for some incapacities. Professor Ball also disputes the idea that the meeting of the needs of the disabled is enough to provide moral justification for the rights and benefits provided to individuals with disabilities. The problem with the concept of needs, Professor Ball argues, is that it fails to account sufficiently for the human good of personal autonomy.     

The Future of the Public Service Workforce: A Dialogue

It has been widely suggested that public service delivery of the future will be different to that of today. Added to this, we are currently witnessing significant changes in terms of the nature of work. Taken together these developments signal that we will see transformation in terms of the role of public servants and the public service workforce. Against this background, this paper presents a dialogue on the future of the public service workforce between Helen Dickinson and Helen Sullivan of the Melbourne School of Government, University of Melbourne and Graeme Head, New South Wales Public Service Commissioner. This paper offers insights from academics actively engaged in teaching the future public service workforce and a public service commissioner actively working to make a reality of a vision of the future.