William Robertson: Exemplar of Politics and Public Management Rightly Understood

William Robertson, director of the City of Los Angeles' Bureau of Street Services, is profiled here as an exemplary public administrator. The authors suggest that Robertson practices politics appropriately in his role in order to achieve great outcomes for his bureau, the citizens with whom he works, and the city as a whole. To adequately define the ways in which Robertson uses politics, Sherry Arnstein's "ladder of participation" is reconceptualized as a circle of participation in which Robertson uses multiple strategies of interaction with citizens, elected officials, employees, and peers. Lessons for public administrators are offered based on Robertson's example.     

Waging Lawfare: Law,Environment and Depoliticization in Neoliberal Australia

ABSTRACT

When environmental NGOs in Australia successfully sued the nation’s environment minister in August 2015 to temporarily withhold environmental approval for Australia’s largest coal mine, the ruling Coalition government accused environmentalists of waging “lawfare.” Through a critical discourse analysis of Parliamentary debate and media coverage, this article explores the lawfare battles fought in Australia in 2015, arguing that these were a site of depoliticization, in Mouffe’s (2005, Mouffe, Chantal. 2005. On the Political. Abingdon: Routledge) sense of the term. By exploring how the question of legal regulation of coal mining was rationalized, moralized, and stripped of significant political or ideological differences, this seeks to add to our understanding of processes of depoliticization by considering metadiscourses concerning “the law.”     

Organizational loyalty and personal ethics: The moral priorities of Chinese cadres

The ethical norms of senior cadres in the Peoples Republic of China are examined with respect to personal ethics, organizational loyalty and social responsibility. The extent to which one of these sets of norms may take priority over the other is investigated using survey research. The personal ethical values of the 46-50 age group are found to be unusually acute for a group of middle-aged administrators, much closer to those of the younger cadres. Also, they demonstrate exceptional homogeneity in their responses as compared to other age groups. However, they appear to have little independence of conscience when confronted with concrete decision making situations. Loyalty to the organization is found to be particularly dominant over personal ethics and responsibility to the larger society among these 46-50 year-old cadres. Lacking a moral anchor in any foundational philosophy or ideology, these cadres are highly vulnerable to control by the bureaucracies in which they are employed. Further research is suggested to explore the possibility that the Cultural Revolution of 1966-76 may have impacted this particular generation of cadres in ways that severed their ties to Marxism and traditional Chinese values rooted in Confucianism.     

The impact of tax structures on deficits: tax elasticity and fiscal illusion in sixteen oecd countries

This paper represents the first systematic attempt to link revenue structure to deficits cross-nationally. Recent analyses of the causes of increased budget deficits in the industrialized countries have focused on the factors that influence government spending, ignoring the possibility that chronic deficits might also be caused by shortfalls in revenue. In this research, using data from sixteen OECD countries during the period 1959-1990, we test hypotheses regarding the linkage between a country's revenue structure and its experience with deficits. We find evidence that countries heavily dependent on direct taxes had more difficulty keeping spending and revenues in line, particularly during times of high unemployment. We find no evidence, however, of a “fiscal illusion” impact on deficits.     

Transnational Capital,the US State and Latin American Trade Agreements

This paper examines the role of US-based transnational corporations in advancing trade, investment, regulatory and intellectual property rights provisions within NAFTA and DR–CAFTA. I explore the linkages between US firms, the US state and investment patterns in Mexico, Central America and the Dominican Republic in order to develop a framework for understanding the political economy of these regional trade agreements. I locate the timing of each of these agreements within the context of the goals of a transnational interest bloc that includes US-based transnational firms, US state officials and regional business interests and state bureaucracies in Latin America, with each trying to utilise regional agreements as a substitute for failed multilateral initiatives as well as a springboard for advancing a more aggressive set of protections for investors within bilateral investment treaties. In order to determine the extent to which transnational firms based in the USA have influenced these trade agreements, I explore three interrelated aspects of business influence: the extent to which transnational firms with investment interests in Mexico and Central America were involved in organisations that had regular access to key US policy makers; the historical development of a transnational interest bloc that has linked US firms and the US state to transnational capital and state bureaucracies in Mexico, Central America and the Dominican Republic; and the extent to which the same group of transnational firms has been attempting without success to advance a policy agenda in the WTO that incorporates many of the provisions of NAFTA and DR–CAFTA. The failure of this transnational interest bloc to effect substantial changes in WTO policies has led the bloc to rely on regional trade agreements to pursue its interests.