Compulsory Voting Rules,Reluctant Voters and Ideological Proximity Voting

Political Behavior - Political theorists have argued that democracies should strive for high turnout, leading to an argument for the introduction of compulsory voting, one of the surest ways to...     

Museum Outreach Programs to Promote Community Engagement in Local Environmental Issues

Ideas of ‘community’ and ‘community voice’ have been mobilised in collaborative programs developed between the National Museum of Australia and the Murray‐Darling Basin Commission since 1992. This collaboration is set within a broader context of changing ideas and practice around governance, community and environmental issues. The recent Murray‐Darling Outreach Project (MDOP), a series of museum outreach projects with regional communities aiming to increase community engagement in local environmental issues in the Murray‐Darling Basin, is specifically examined. Evaluation research on the MDOP found that the approach to program development significantly shaped the types of voices, range of issues presented and the nature of the communicative forums established. The potential impacts on online audiences are discussed along with broader implications for government agencies involved in community partnerships.     

Deinstitutionalisation and Managerialism in Queensland's Public Psychiatric Institutions: Challenging ‘Rhetoric’ with Empirical Results

This article places the experience of public psychiatric institutions for the long term mentally ill in the context of New Public Management (NPM). This managerialist school of thought has been in widespread ascendancy since the 1970s. Some key characteristics of deinstitutionalisation and NPM are outlined. We then present some historical data about the temporal process of deinstitutionalisation in Queensland's public psychiatric institutions. The time series analysis provided is of a single state since Australia's public health care system is state‐based. Although NPM is not a coherent set of principles or doctrines, it is argued that ideology and the reality may be contradicting. Some of NPM's particular emphases are empirically analysed, in particular the view that administration/management expenditures are to be reduced, while emphasising workers ‘at the coal face’. The empirical results provide no evidence of a ‘parsimonious’ approach to management: parsimony occurs only for nursing staff. Relative expenditures on managerial functions have increased.     

Otto Kahn‐Freund and Collective Laissez‐Faire: An Edifice without a Keystone?

This paper describes Otto Kahn-Freund's advocacy of the British 'collective laissez-faire' system of regulation of industrial relations, in which regulation proceeded autonomously of the state. It suggests that a weakness of collective laissez-faire as a normative principle was its failure to make adequate provision for the furtherance of the public interest. It links this failure to a more general reluctance, on the part of Kahn-Freund, to conceive of the state as representative of the public interest. And it seeks to explain this reluctance with reference to Kahn-Freund's experiences of living and working as a labour court judge in the Weimar Republic, and of moving to the UK as a refugee from Nazism.     

Women's empowerment in challenging environments: a case study from Balochistan

This article offers strategies for women's empowerment in conservative, tribal, and religious environments, based on an innovative programme in Pakistan. Mainstreaming Gender and Development (MGD) encouraged participants to build on their communities' strengths, minimised resistance among families and communities by including them in the development process, and succeeded in building a cadre of women activists. Drawing on its experience, the author questions the importance of collective action, suggests that the selection of participants should be based on aptitude rather than socio-economic status, and highlights the potential for women's empowerment in challenging environments.     

Public International Law and the Regulation of Private Spaces: Does The Convention on the Rights of the Child Impose an Obligation on States to Allow Gay and Lesbian Couples to Adopt?

Opposition to the adoption of children by gays and lesbiansis invariably based on the claim that such a practice is contraryto the rights and best interests of children. The aim of thisarticle is to examine this claim in light of the provisionsof the United Nations Conventions on the Rights of the Child.It will be argued that an approach to the interpretation ofa child's rights and best interests which is based on empiricalevidence reveals that there is no basis for sexual orientationto be a relevant consideration in assessing a person's suitabilityto adopt a child.     

KEEPING THE PEACE

This article presents the results of an evaluation of 11 parent-adolescent mediation and family therapy programs in Australia established to prevent youth homelessness. The article examines the impact of these services on the resolution of family conflict and the living circumstances of young people who are at risk of youth homelessness. Ninety-two families participated in the pre-and postintervention stages of the evaluation. The majority of parents and adolescents felt they had made some progress in resolving their problems and improving family relationships. Indicators of risk of homelessness were lower at the time of follow-up for most young people.     

The Human Rights Act: A View from Below

The paper is based on survey work undertaken in the Cynon valley, south Wales, an area of high social deprivation. We interviewed local solicitors to establish their understanding and usage of the Human Rights Act (HRA). Outside of south Wales there is evidence of growing awareness and involvement of specialist practitioners in human rights actions. This we call a top-down process. Our work starts at the other end: a bottom-up account of high-street, small-practice solicitors.