Governing for the Mainstream: Implications for Community Representation

In this paper I begin by examining the role of extra-parliamentary institutions of representation within Australian democracy. I suggest that such institutions are an important supplement to majoritarian political institutions in ensuring that 'weak voices' are heard in the policy process. I then look at the impact of the Howard government on such extra parliamentary forms of community representation, drawing parallels with contemporaneous developments in Canada. I find that changes were in fact initiated under Labor governments, seeking to impose managerialist models on community-based representation. The further controls introduced by the Howard government have, however, seriously reduced the capacity of community-based peak bodies to represent their constituencies. These constraints create the danger of a less inclusive democracy, where the voices of those outside the mainstream can be ignored or misrepresented.     

Stages of identity development and problem drinking in college women

Deviation from age-appropriate identity-developmental stage and problem drinking in 75 undergraduate women was investigated. A quantity/frequency scale assessed problem drinking. Two measures of identity, one projective and one observational, were used. May's Deprivation/Enhancement fantasy pattern measure assessed sexual identity. The College Women's Assertion Sample assessed the cognitive-style component of identity. The results supported the hypotheses that younger (freshman/sophomore) women deviating from their age-appropriate identity stage of dedifferentiation, and older (junior/senior) women deviating from their age-appropriate stage of identity integration, were significantly more likely to experience drinking problems than were women who had entered their age-appropriate identity stages. The findings support psychodynamic theories of identity development in late adolescence, and suggest that problem-drinking women in different age/ developmental stages of identity drink for different reasons and should be treated differently.Doctoral candidate in Clinical Psychology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Teaching Associate with the Psychological Services Center there. She has also served on the clinical staff of the Amherst College Counseling Center, the Community Care Mental Health Center in Springfield, Massachusetts, and the Franklin/Hampshire Community Mental Health Center in Northampton, Massachusetts. Her primary interest is in the area of identity development in women.Professor of Clinical Psychology at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst and Clinical Fellow of the American Psychological Association. She has held faculty appointments at the University of Illinois at Champaign-Urbana, the State University of New York at Stony Brook, the University of Hawaii, the University of Connecticut, and Smith College. Her primary interests are in the areas of statistics and assessment, and clinical gerontology.     

Beyond Performance Management: A Networked Production Model of Public Service Delivery

The use of outcome-based performance management as a means of coordinating and monitoring the production of decentralized public services has been growing. At the same time, it has been associated with significant problems, notably difficulty in controlling opportunistic behavior. However, alternative service delivery models based on open collaboration and coproduction, which can control opportunism, require initial trust between partners, and are often vulnerable to corruption, complacency, and rent-seeking. Thus, open collaboration models appear to need additional mechanisms that would promote trust building between partners even where trust is initially low, together with ensuring accountability and reducing opportunism. Based on a review of the recent business literature on networked production, the paper puts forward a service delivery model based on benchmarking, iterative planning and design, and error detection and correction mechanisms.     

The role of procedural and distributive justice in organizational behavior

To investigate the relationship between fairness and organizational outcomes, the present study examined the survey responses of government employees at six Federal installations. Indices of procedural and distributive fairness were factor-analytically derived. Multiple regression analyses indicated that both the procedural measures and the distributive measures were significantly related to measures of job satisfaction, evaluation of supervisor, conflict/harmony, trust in management, and turnover intention. Procedural fairness accounted for significantly more variance than distributive fairness in each of these criterion measures, except for turnover intention. These findings are related to conceptual and methodological issues concerning procedural fairness and organizational behavior.     

Constituting 'the public' in public participation

The emphasis on public participation in contemporary policy discourse has prompted the development of a wide range of forums within which dialogue takes place between citizens and officials. Often such initiatives are intended to contribute to objectives relating to social exclusion and democratic renewal. The question of ‘who takes part’ within such forums is, then, critical to an understanding of how far new types of forums can contribute to the delivery of such objectives. This article draws on early findings of research conducted as part of the ESRC Democracy and Participation Programme. It addresses three questions: ‘How do public bodies define or constitute the public that they wish to engage in dialogue?’; ‘What notions of representation or representativeness do participants and public officials bring to the idea of legitimate membership of such forums?’; and ‘How do deliberative forums contribute to, or help ameliorate, processes of social inclusion and exclusion?’     

Globalization,state, and innovation: An appraisal of networked industrial policy

One of the most pressing questions in comparative social science is whether, and to what extent, the rapid advance of globalization has negatively affected states’ capacity to initiate successful economic and social policies. This paper puts forward the notion that states continue to be relevant because they have the potential to build and sustain networks of production and learning, which are sorely needed in the current era of globalization when productive arrangements are dominated by decentralized production networks. The paper argues that government efforts aimed at building and sustaining such networks, labeled as “networked industrial policy,” have become predominant. The study features a series of fixed‐effects time series cross‐section (TSCS) regressions linking innovation performance to several networked industrial policies in 17 countries from western and central Europe. The study finds that several of the policies have a robust effect on innovation performance and technology competitiveness, even after controls are included. These findings constitute considerable support for the notion of networked industrial policy. However, the results of the present study must be treated less as a definitive answer to the research question and more as a first step in an ongoing research process.