Institution of Public Administration Australia: Some Observations About the Profession of Public Service

What does the future hold for the great institution of public service in this country? I will try to answer that in the traditional way by going through some of the more interesting of the many challenges we face. But first let me observe that what public administration in most Western democracies has been through in the past two decades is nothing short of a revolution.     

Managing Orderly Decline? Nationalism in Northern Ireland Since the Good Friday Agreement (1998)

The 2016 Northern Ireland Assembly election highlighted substantive issues within nationalism. Both the main nationalist parties, the Social Democratic and Labour Party (SDLP) and Sinn Féin, recorded the worst combined vote for over 20 years. This article suggests that the downturn in nationalist support was years in the making and examines why nationalist voters might be turning away from the ballot box. It considers the various factors that underlined both parties' approach to consecutive electoral tests from 1998 until 2016, showing how Sinn Féin replaced the SDLP as the leading force within nationalism, and concluding that new leadership may yet halt the process of orderly decline.     

Assessing Candidates at Home and Abroad: A Comparative Analysis of Colombian Expatriates in the 2010 Presidential Elections

This article examines candidate favorability among Colombian expatriates and Colombians in the home country in the 2010 Colombian presidential elections. It analyzes the influence of several socioeconomic, migratory, mobilizing, and contextual factors on candidate appraisal using a large exit poll conducted at Colombian consulates in five cities in the United States and Europe and five cities with high emigration rates in Colombia. Aside from differences in candidate favorability stemming from socioeconomic variables (education, income, and religious affiliation), Colombians living abroad largely evaluate candidates in ways similar to Colombians living in the country.     

An Additional Form of Appropriation: A Note

Forms of appropriations continually evolve as Congress attempts to balance the interest of the appropriations committees against those committees and program supporters interested in assuring funding for their priorities. The 21st Century Cures Act is the latest attempt to balance these forces. The Act contains a two-step process (i) the creation of an account via mandatory appropriations and (ii) the added requirement that funds be appropriated from the account via the annual appropriations process in order to be available for programmatic activity.     

Decentralizing Pork: Congressional Roll‐Call Voting,Decentralized Administration,and Distributive Politics

Congress packages pork‐barrel spending in complicated proposals that belie theories of distributive politics. We theorize that roll‐call voting on such bills depends on grant programs' administrative centralization, party ties with presidents or home‐state governors, and differences in geographic representation between chambers. Analyzing votes between 1973 and 2010 using a within‐legislator strategy reveals that House members are less likely to support decentralized spending when they are copartisans with presidents, while senators support decentralization regardless of such party ties. When House members or senators share affiliation with only governors or with neither chief executive, the likelihood of support rises with decentralization.