Enduring Tensions in the 2000 Defence White Paper

In 2000 the Howard government formed a consultative committee to review defence policy and gauge public opinion on defence issues. It concentrated on the impact of budgetary stringency and dramatic strategic change and supported increased defence spending on equipment to cater for high‐level threats. Was there a thorough review? Inconsistencies occurred in the reports developed from the review and statements made by senior policy‐makers while it was being conducted. The way the review was undertaken points to conceptual tensions in Australia's strategic culture and serious problems with entrenched interests in the services. Unless these challenges are addressed, a thorough review of defence policy cannot be undertaken. The review process itself needs to be reviewed.     

A Strategic Theory of Bureaucratic Redundancy

Do redundant bureaucratic arrangements represent wasteful duplication or a hedge against political uncertainty? Previous attempts at addressing this question have treated agency actions as exogenous, thus avoiding strategic issues such as collective action problems or competition. I develop a game‐theoretic model of bureaucratic policy making in which a political principal chooses the number of agents to handle a given task. Importantly, agents have policy preferences that may be opposed to the principal's, and furthermore may choose their policy or effort levels. Among the results are that redundancy can help a principal achieve her policy goals when her preferences are not aligned with the agents'. But redundancy is less helpful if even a single agent has preferences relatively close to the principal's. In this environment collective action problems may cause multiple agents to be less effective than a single agent. Redundancy can also be unnecessary to the principal if the agent's jurisdiction can be terminated.     

In the Wake of 'A Certain Maritime Incident': Ministerial Advisers, Departments and Accountability

This article considers the accountability of ministerial advisers and their relationship with departments in the light of 'the children overboard' incident. It argues that if ministers are not going to accept responsibility for the actions of their advisers then on those occasions the advisers should be separately accountable to the parliament. The article further suggests that the department heads have a particular responsibility for ensuring the integrity of ministerial advice, and proposes steps to reinforce their capacity to fulfil that responsibility.     

A spatial analysis of county-level outcomes in US Presidential elections: 1988–2000

This paper identifies spatial patterns of county-level presidential election outcomes from 1988 to 2000, and tests the retrospective (reward–punishment) and issue–priority models of voting behavior within the context of county-level geographical clusters. Based on our spatial analyses, we find that: the geographical concentration of the partisan vote has increased at both the global and regional scales. Globally, counties have become more likely to be clustered with similar counties in terms of their partisan support. Regionally, Democrats have increasingly received more votes from the East and the urban areas than Republican candidates while the opposite is true in the West and the rural areas. The regression analyses also support aspects of the issue–priority model of voting behavior, while the retrospective theory is confirmed only for 1996.     

When Doves Cry: International Rivalry, Unreciprocated Cooperation, and Leadership Turnover

Varied research traditions suggest that dovish leaders will be thrown out of office under harsh external circumstances. Below, I elaborate a model of rivalry maintenance that draws on and refines the insight from studies of leadership tenure and foreign policy. Specifically, I expect a leader who offers unreciprocated cooperation to a rival (a dove) to be more likely to be deselected from power than a leader that takes a harder line vis-à-vis the rival (a hawk). I test this expectation using event history techniques and data spanning the 1950–1990 time period and find strong evidence that dovish leaders pay an electoral price within a rivalry context. The findings suggest an internationally contingent domestic incentive to maintain rivalry and conflict over time .     

Creating a Performance Culture? Performance-based Pay in the Australian Public Service

This article provides a critique of the operation of performance-based pay in the Australian public service from 1992 to 1996 and questions proposals for further experimentation with such managerial initiatives. Performance agreements underpinning performance-based pay were unable to measure adequately the performance of senior officers undertaking policy work. Appraisal reviews of these agreements also failed to increase performance feedback between supervisors and senior officers. The process of rating senior officers by supervisors, and the moderation of those ratings by senior agency management, proved to be inherently subjective and considerably increased the prerogatives of public service managers over senior officers. Linking pay to individual performance undermined teamwork and increased friction between those eligible for performance bonuses and junior officers excluded from the scheme. Yet the emphasis on individual employment relationships did not serve to undermine collective values, in particular workforce commitment to unionism.