Forgotten histories: three stories of black girls from Barnardo's Victorian archive

The history of black women in Britain, particularly before the arrival of the Empire Windrush, is underresearched, and the histories we do have are largely ignored. In this article, biographies of young black women in Victorian London are revealed through the photographic and written archive of Barnardo's. These documents allow a history of black women to be examined in the context of their own time. They add complexion to our current understanding of the Black Atlantic, and the relationships and histories that impact upon our identities today, as well as being a tool with which to interrogate British history.     

Implementation of CRM systems in Portuguese Municipalities

Customer relationship management is a business strategy which dynamically integrates a set of services with the purpose of creating value for the organisation and for their customers. In Portugal, the 2009/2010 edition of ‘Simplex for Municipalities’, the action plan carried by the Portuguese government through the Secretary's Office of State for Administrative Modernisation, makes a commitment to promote a set of initiatives in order to help citizens using the public services. This process intends to reduce costs of context which burden the economic activities, making way for the modernisation of administration. Customer relationship management assumes a central role in this context. This paper presents the main results of a survey that was carried out with Portuguese municipalities, aiming a general characterisation of the adoption of customer relationship management systems, covering several aspects, from the motivations for CRM adoption to the obtained results. The improvement of the relationship with citizens and a higher information quality are some of the most important results obtained by municipalities.     

Threat-Based Competition Policy

This note suggests a link between the theory of contestable markets and competition policy. We propose that in the absence of potential hit and run entrants into an industry the behaviour of a firm may be constrained by the fear of intervention by the competition authorities. Hence, in periods in which hit and run entry is believed to be a non-credible threat, the competition authorities can affect a firm's behaviour by the threat of intervention, as well as by intervention itself. Requirements for the successful use of threat-based competition policy are identified, and its potential benefits are outlined.     

Trade policy and the politics of access to drugs

This article explores the relationship between trade policy and access to drugs, using the ARV drugs as an example. It begins by noting the moral problem of inequality in access to drugs. It goes on to explore the political problem in terms of the discrepancy between what is legal/permissible under WTO rules, and what is permissible/desirable under the terms of US trade policy. Finally, it explores the problem of credibility for global health governance and the global market system in terms of access to drugs.     

University Matters: Early Institutional Development of Public Administration Education in Québec

What role do universities play in the early institutional development of public administration education? While related literature aptly describes the role of external influences and demands, universities' influence remains largely unexplored. Using the theory of fields, this article analyzes the role universities of the province of Québec, Canada, had in the early institutional development of public administration education during the 1960s and 1970s. The article shows universities had an impact through academic structures, their positions in different fields of activities, and the profiles of their faculty members. The conclusions of the article are a first step toward an understanding of what universities can do, rather than what they should do, when it comes to educating public servants.     

International Intervention and the People's Will: The Demoralization of Democracy in Cambodia

This article examines the deterioration in relations between two Cambodian opposition parties and the “international community” from whom they sought support during the 1998 Cambodian elections. It is suggested that the manipulation, by influential political actors, of internationally promoted political concepts such as “democracy,” “sovereignty,” and “the people's will” is problematic for mutual understanding between international and local political actors. In Cambodia in 1998, liberal views of the “people's will” as an amoral and neutral construct facilitating the delegation of authority were awkwardly but influentially conflated, by the election campaigning of the two parties, with a view of the “people's will” as a moral imperative to liberate the nation from alleged “traitors.” This caused widespread adherence, among the parties' followers, to views of the 1998 elections that were non-liberal and antidemocratic in a number of respects. When sharp differences in understandings of the political situation emerged between local and international actors, following the electoral defeat of those opposition party leaders, the fragile nature of a purported “partnership” between a self-appointed “international community” and the Cambodian people was exposed.