Public administration reform for Aboriginal affairs: An institutionalist analysis

Persistent underperformance of public policy and program implementation in Aboriginal affairs is widely recognised. We analysed the results of two case studies of attempted reforms in public administration of Aboriginal primary health care in the Northern Territory, using a framework based on the institutionalist and systemic racism literatures, with the aim of better understanding the sources of implementation failure. Implementation of the agreed reforms was unsuccessful. Contributing factors were as follows: strong recognition of the need for change was not sustained; the seeds of change, present in the form of alternative practices, were not built on; there was a notable absence of sustained political/bureaucratic authorisation; and, interacting with all of these, systemic racism had important consequences and implications. Our framework was useful for making sense of the results. It is clear that reforms in Aboriginal affairs will require government authorities to engage with organisations and communities. We conclude that there are four requirements for improved implementation success: clear recognition of the need for change in ‘business as usual’; sustainable commitment and authorisation; the building of alternative structures and methods to enable effective power sharing (consistent with the requirements of parliamentary democracy); and addressing the impact of systemic racism on decision-making, relationships, and risk management.     

Negotiated compliance at the street level: Personalizing immunization in England,Israel and Sweden

Often portrayed as behaviour that is inconsistent with policy goals, public noncompliance poses a significant challenge for government. To explore what compliance efforts entail on the ground, this study focuses on childhood immunization as a paradigmatic case where a failure to ensure compliance poses a public health risk. The analysis draws on 48 semi‐structured interviews with frontline nurses and regional/national public health officials in England (N = 15), Sweden (N = 17) and Israel (N = 16), all of which have experienced periodic noncompliance spikes, but differ in direct delivery of vaccination provision. Compliance efforts emerged as a joint decision‐making process in which improvisatory practices of personalized appeals are deployed to accommodate parents’ concerns, termed here ‘street‐level negotiation’. Whereas compliance is suggestive of compelling citizens’ adherence to standardized rules, compliance negotiation draws attention to the limited resources street‐level workers have when encountering noncompliance and to policy‐clients’ influence on delivery arrangements when holding discretionary power over whether or not to comply.     

The White House as a Black Box: Oral History and the Problem of Evidence in Presidential Studies

Scholars who study the American presidency usually have to rely on indirect evidence for understanding the internal operations of the 'black box' that is a contemporaneous White House. Most of the direct evidence about White House behavior becomes available only after a president has left office, when confidential communications are opened to the public by the presidential libraries. In recent years, however, such direct evidence has become increasingly inaccessible, because of changes in the record-keeping habits of senior executive branch officials and because of the politics of archival release. This article explores the nature and extent of these problems, and how elite oral history interviewing can compensate for them. It further examines the strengths and weaknesses of oral history as a means of learning about the usually hidden workings of the American presidency.     

Rousseau's General Will: Freedom of a Particular Kind

Had Rousseau not been centrally concerned with freedom, some of the structural features of his political thought would be unaccountable. Above all, the notion of general will would not have become the core of his political philosophy. Rousseau's reasons for using 'general will' as his central political concept were essentially philosophical. The two terms of general will - 'will' and 'generality' - represent two main strands in his thought. 'Generality' stands for the rule of law, for civic education that draws us out of ourselves and towards the general (or common) good. 'Will' stands for Rousseau's conviction that civil association is 'the most voluntary act in the world', that 'to deprive your will of all freedom is to deprive your actions of all morality'. And if one could 'generalize' the will, so that it 'elects' only law, citizenship, and the common good, and avoids 'willful' self-love, then one would have a general will in Rousseau's particular sense. The distinctiveness of Rousseau's general will is further brought out through a comparison with Kant's 'good will' about which Rousseau would have felt severe doubts.