Governing the multicultural city‐region

Abstract: This article reports on a study that identified the challenges posed by large immigrant populations for the governments of eleven Greater Toronto Area municipalities and the way those challenges were being addressed by municipal agencies that provided nine local services: government‐assisted housing, land‐use planning, policing, public education, public health, public libraries, public recreation, public transit, and social services. Many of the agencies were trying to accommodate their multicultural clienteles in a variety of ways. There were large differences in agency responses, however, not only among municipalities but also among agencies providing different services within the same municipality, and even among district offices of the same municipal agencies. Moreover, municipal agencies often found it difficult or impossible to adapt to new clienteles, even when they were seriously committed to doing so, in the face of provincial government indifference, cuts in provincial and local funding, and community ambivalence or antagonism. The study concluded that municipal agencies are unlikely to devote many resources to helping the immigrant settlement process without financial and legislative support from central governments. Sommaire: Le présent article porte sur une étude qui a cerné les défis que posent d'importantes populations d'immigrants aux gouvemements de ome municipalités de la Région du Grand Toronto, et sur la manière dont ces défis ont été relevés par des organismes municipaux assurant neuf services locaux: logement subventionné par le gouvernement, aménagement du territoire, services de police, enseignement public, santé publique, bibliothèques publiques, loisirs publics, transport en com‐mun et services sociaux. Un grand nombre de ces organismes ont essayé de répondre aux besoins de leurs clientèles multiculturelles par différents moyens. Cependant, les écarts étaient grands dans la manière d'y parvenir, non seulement parmi les municipalités mais également parmi les organismes foumissant différents services au sein de la même municipalité, et même parmi les bureaux de districts des mêmes organimes municipaux. En outre, les organismes municipaux trouvent souvent qu'il est difficile, voire même impossible, de s'adapter à de nouvelles clientèles, même lorsqu'ils se sont sérieusement engagés à le faire, face à l'indifférence du gouvemement provincial, aux compressions budgétaires à I'échelle provinciale et locale, et face à I'ambivalence ou à I'antagonisme de la colledivité. L'étude a conclu qu'il y avait de fortes chances que les organismes municipaux ne consacrent pas d'énormes ressources à I'aide au processus d'établissement des immigrants s'ils ne reçoivent pas un appui financier et législatif des gouvernements centraux.     

Policy Design and Achieving Social Outcomes: A Comparative Analysis of Social Enterprise Policy

This article compares American, British, and Korean social enterprise policies to explore how government policy design shapes social enterprises and how “social benefit” and “public value” are defined. A social enterprise is defined as the legally structured organizational pursuit of blending social purpose and economic profit through business activities, and examples from each country are presented. Applying Bozeman's publicness theory, the authors demonstrate the wide range of roles that governments play in shaping social enterprises' ownership, funding, and control across the three countries using regulations, subsidies, and procurement policies. These roles may affect the impact of social enterprises in society. The case studies show that the U.S. approach to social enterprise policy is heavily market oriented, while the United Kingdom is in the middle of the market-to-publicness continuum, and South Korea is much closer to the publicness (government-dominated) end of the continuum.     

After the storm comes the sun: A rhetorical analysis of Melbourne Storm's advertising campaigns after the 2010 salary cap scandal

One of the most common motifs surrounding sports, sports teams, and sports stars is “the scandal.” One typifying feature of mediated scandals is the ease with which they can be presented as, or massaged into, an unfolding narrative. Although some research has been conducted into the initial stages of these narratives, there is significantly less that focusses on the ways in which the “transgressor” can be rehabilitated in a separate but linked part of that overarching story. This article addresses that gap by analysing two television commercials that significantly assisted the Melbourne Storm rugby league franchise in encouraging and maintaining identification and, coterminously, overcoming disidentification with its membership. Furthermore, we contend that the Melbourne Storm purposively used rhetorical strategies to emphasise the socially desirable aspects of its identity to repair damage done to its organisational image. Using rhetorical analysis, the article explicates the various techniques through which this was accomplished.     

Feminism,peace, and civil liberties: Women's role in the origins of the World War I civil liberties movement

Historians of the women's movement in the World War I era tend, understandably, to concentrate on the final heroic chapter of the suffrage campaign. Since the majority of suffragists followed their leader, Carrie Chapman Catt, into the war effort after April 6, 1917, suffragist‐feminist patriotism is a dominant theme. Recently historians have begun to chronicle women's pre‐war and wartime peace work, particularly through the aegis of the Woman's Peace Party, founded in early 1915.¹ Women's civil liberties activism during the war and in the Red Scare aftermath is still uncharted terrain. There is, to date, little appreciation of the way the World War I era experience in the United States influenced a small but determined and articulate number of left‐wing feminists to become civil‐libertarian activists. In this article I examine women's involvement in several important civil liberties organizations and argue that the convictions and activities of women not only helped to shape the agenda of the burgeoning civil liberties movement but also to influence federal public policy, particularly with respect to treatment of conscientious objectors, political prisoners, and “enemy aliens.” I also suggest that some feminists involved in both antiwar and civil liberties work during the war era came to see how militarism, war, and misogyny are related in western society, an insight which informed the thought and activities of the post‐war women's peace movement.     

The Check Is in the Mail: Interdistrict Funding Flows in Congressional Elections

This article analyzes the financial ties between congressional candidates and individual donors residing outside those candidates' districts. Congressional campaigns today rely more heavily on nonresidents than in the past, with contests in the typical district drawing more than two-thirds of individual donations from nonresidents. Empirical results reveal that nonresident contributions are primarily partisan and strategic in nature, rather than access-oriented or expressive/identity-based. Funds are efficiently redistributed from a small number of highly educated, wealthy congressional districts to competitive districts anywhere in the country. Big donors direct funds where they can make a difference for party control of seats, even if those investments are hundreds, or even thousands, of miles away.     

Rebels-Turned-Narcos? The FARC-EP’s Political Involvement in Colombia’s Cocaine Economy

Abstract

According to the ‘rebels-turned-narcos’ premise, increasing involvement in the illicit drug industry causes insurgent groups to lose sight of their political aims, as they shift their focus to profit-making. The (former) Colombian rebel group, the FARC-EP, became a paragon for this idea. Drawing on primary research, we argue that the FARC-EP’s involvement in the illicit drug economy was itself political. Their involvement included governance activities, which are by their very nature political. Furthermore, these activities formed part of the FARC-EP’s political project, aimed at ensuring the reproduction of the peasant smallholder economy. Our argument challenges the rebels-turned-narcos premise more broadly by showing why involvement in the illicit drug economy, on its own, is insufficient evidence to posit the depoliticization of an insurgent group.     

Governance Disclosure on the Internet: The Case of Australian State Government Departments

This paper examines corporate governance disclosures on the websites of Australian state government departments. The study focuses on the nature and extent of governance information and the ease of finding this information directly on department websites and also in annual reports which are downloadable from websites. Our sample comprises six departments from each of the six states in Australia, giving a sample size of 36 departments. Our findings indicate considerable variability in both the level of disclosure and the accessibility of the information disclosed. The study also highlights a lack of consensus regarding the meaning of governance and what governance comprises, together with the need for a more structured approach to communicating governance information to stakeholders.     

Book reviews

Bryan S. Turner, Orientalism, Postmodernism and Globalising (Routledge, London 1994). 208pp. ISBN 0–415–10861–6, 0–415–10862–4 (pb).

Mir Zohair Husain, Global Islamic Politics, (Harper Collins, London 1995). 282pp. ISBN 0–06501484–7 (pb).

Sondra Farganis, Situating Feminism: From Thought to Action, (Sage, London 1994). 195pp. ISBN 0–8039–4650–3

Tom Mayer, Analytical Marxism, (Sage, California 1994). 371pp. ISBN 0–8039–4681–3 (pb).

Ian Adams, Political Ideology Today, (Manchester University Press, Manchester 1995). 369pp. ISBN 0–7190–3347–0.

Geoffrey Pridham and Tatu Vanhanen, Democratization in Eastern Europe: Domestic and international perspectives, (Routledge, London 1994). 274pp. ISBN 0–415–11063–7(hb), 0–415–11064–5(pb).

Ash Amin (ed), Post‐Fordism: A Reader, (Basil Blackwell, Oxford 1994). 435pp. ISBN 0–631–18857–6 (pb).     

Executive–Legislative Relations in Poland, 1991–2005: Institutional Relations in Transition

This paper relates factors previously identified as significant for parliamentary governance to general developments in post-communist CEE and proceeds to assess their relevance to the development of executive–legislative relations in Poland. The Sejm was institutionally strong, while governments were inexperienced, internally divided, and unstable. Governments could not assume the support of their parliamentary parties. Tensions with coalition partners were rife, and only in the period 1993–97 did the coalition survive intact. Periods of ‘cohabitation’ with a relatively strong president complicated governance even after the new Constitution of 1997. These factors suggest weak government, amply borne out by the experience of the two minority governments of the first term. Yet governments gained greater control of the legislative agenda and, regardless of their type or extent of parliamentary support, they usually succeeded in enacting their legislation and proved highly successful in defending individual ministers from votes of no confidence. We explain this apparent contradiction by contrasting institutional weakness with an underlying consensus on broad outlines of both foreign and domestic policy. Despite a discourse of hostile confrontation between government and opposition, much legislation was passed with the broad endorsement of the legislature. Governments were receptive to modifications of policy. When needed, they could often rely on cross-party support or that of independent-minded deputies. Parliament thus remained a key legislative actor; it was never merely the pawn of majority governments. Governments also benefited from opposition disunity. The opposition proved incapable of defeating ministers, even of minority governments.