Talking past each other: Journalists,readers and local newspaper reporting of general election campaigns in the UK

Drawing on an extensive database of local press reporting of the last four general elections (1987, 1992, 1997 and 2001), as well as contemporary interviews with journalists and editors, this paper argues that local press coverage of the constituency campaign has changed markedly since 1987, and in ways which may contribute to diminishing voter interest and participation in elections. Significantly, journalists do not perceive themselves as the ‘cause’ of voter apathy, but their efforts to ‘lighten up’ election coverage and report local election issues, contrast starkly with readers' preference for more serious reporting of the national agenda. Journalists and readers appear to be talking past each other in the pages of the local press. Copyright © 2004 Henry Stewart Publications     

Integrated planning and Bob tunings organizational conflict

Abstract: This paper examines the introduction and operation of integrated resource planning management in the Department of Energy and Natural Resources, Government of Alberta, during the period 1976-86. In government planning, systems are introduced to increase task interdependencies, create common purposes and establish performance monitoring. Such a system forces the organizational units concerned to confront their differences. This is because planning systems change task interdependence from pooled to reciprocal. This change means that the differences between organizational units in terms of values, status, organizational processes and power are brought into the open. As a result conflict occurs, not so much because planning in uSis context represented an organizational change, but because reciprocal interdependence is inherently conflictual. This case shows that the planning systems are about both policy-making and organizational structure and processes. Changes in ways of making policy are changes in organizational operation. Outcomes such as incrementalism and political behaviour are derived from the pre-existing pattern of organizational differentiation and the way in which an innovative technical system, in this case integrated resource planning, interacts with that differentiation by changing task interdependence between resource agencies. Sommaire: Cet article traite de la mise sur pied et du mode de fonctionnement d'un service intégré de planification des ressources au ministére de l'Énergie et des Res-sources naturelles de l'Alberta entre 1976-86. Les gouvernements conçoivent des systémes de planification pour accroître l'interdépendance des tâches, fixer des objec-tifs communs et surveiller le rendement. Un systéme de ce genre fait ressortir les divergences qui existent entre les unités organisationnelles car l'interdépendance des tâches y est réciproque au lieu d'y être collective. Ceci met en lumiére les différences qui opposent les unités organisationnelles sur le plan de leurs valeurs, de leur statut, de leurs procédés organisationnels et de leurs pouvoirs. Il en découle un conflit, non pas tant parce que dans ce contexte la planification représente un changement organisational, mais parce que l'interdépendance réciproque est conflictuelle par essence. L'étude démontre que les systémes de planification touchent à la fois l'élaboration des politiques, la structure et les procécdés organisationnels. Modifier la façon d'élaborer les politiques débouche sur un changement du fonctionnement organisationnel. La comportimentation et le comportement politique qui en résultent proviennent du modéle organisationnel pré-existant, des divergences qu'il comporte et de la maniére dont un systéme technique novateur, en l'occurrence la planification intégrée des ressources, répose sur ces divergences pour modifier l'interdépendance des tâches entre les organismes ressources.     

Race, conventional crime, and criminal justice: The declining importance of skin color

Blacks in the United States are arrested, prosecuted, convicted, and incarcerated in numbers disproportionate to their percentage of the population. One explanation is that racial discrimination against Blacks pervades the American system of criminal justice. This study examined the nature and extent of racial discrimination in the criminal justice system by evaluating five propositions using data from extant literature. Little evidence was found to support the allegation that the criminal justice system systematically discriminates against Blacks.     

Public Sector Labour Relations in Western Australia – An Overview

The election of a LiberalNational Coalition government in 1993 heralded a period of significant and sustained change in Western Australian public sector labour relations. As legislator, the Coalition government embarked upon a program to decentralise and deregulate the Western Australian industrial relations system; as an employer, the government has had to respond to the economic imperatives which have faced most employers in recent years. The result has been a period of major change in the public sector – employment levels have declined as services have been privatised or contracted out; the proportion of non-permanent and part-time employees has risen significantly. Individual workplace agreements have been introduced; individualised performance-related management and reward systems have increased; and the scope for union involvement has diminished, as has the level and density of union membership. The experience of the public sector therefore reflects many of the workplace changes that are also found in the private sector. It also brings the government's industrial relations policies into sharper focus.     

International relations in Indonesia: historical legacy, political intrusion, and commercialization

This paper is about the development of international relations(IR) as a field of study in Indonesian universities. It arguesthat IR as a discipline has been encountering a paradox. Onthe one hand, while the discipline has been increasingly heldin high esteem by students, marked by an increasing number ofapplicants to IR departments across the country; on the otherhand, IR scholars show too little commitment to research andpublication for the development of the discipline; and if theydo publish, the quality of writing is generally poor. This articleindicates that the paradox of teaching IR in Indonesia has muchto do with historical legacies and political intrusion, as wellas an economic environment in which universities are increasinglydriven toward commercial activities. All these factors shapethe current development of social science in general, and IRin particular. Received for publication August 28, 2008. Accepted for publication October 7, 2008.     

Transformational Leadership and Public Service Motivation: Driving Individual and Organizational Performance

Despite growing evidence about prosocial motivations and their effects on employee behavior, how can new public service motivation research translate into more effective management practices—which, so far, regrettably remain underdeveloped? Increasingly, public service motivation studies have moved from understanding what motivates public servants to exploring how public service motives influence performance. Similarly, greater attention is now paid to the practices of transformational leadership. Drawing on concepts from transformational leadership, this essay explores how managers can harness the positive aspects of public service motivation to enhance employee and organizational performance and outlines strategies that can help managers incorporate public service motivation values across management systems.     

European Monarchies: Guardians of Democracy?

How is it possible to account for the continuing presence of monarchy in advanced social democracies? Much traditional political science assumes teleologically that monarchies inevitably transform into republics as a higher form of governance. This comparative study of the eight main European monarchies maintains otherwise: monarchy is perfectly compatible with democracy, and can help strengthen citizens’ loyalty to the system of government. Provided it delivers a politically impartial head of state, monarchy can endure indefinitely with government and popular support. In practice, the countries studied are de facto republics, but with hereditary heads of state who occupy social roles beyond the reach of quotidian politics. Monarchy’s principal danger is not republicanism, but the pressures of conflicting expectations about what is required of royal families, and the relentless intrusions of modern media in an age when royalty and celebrity are in danger of being conflated. Responses to Covid-19 show how monarchs can speak to and for their nations in ways no partisan politician can.     

The Roots of Stereotypes about Tourists

The unique characteristics of the first generation tourists and the nature of their interactions with the host community leads to the formation of enduring stereotypes. The first wave of mass tourists sees themselves as innovators, worldly, outward looking, risk takers who are different and somehow better than other members of society. Yet, in reality, they are relative latecomers to the world of international tourism, causing members of the receiving community to perceive them as laggards, inward looking individuals who are culturally and socially introverted, unworldly and resistant to change. The situation is exacerbated by package tour participation which is the typical way any new markets begins to travel. Unfortunately, packages produce a highly mediated experience between host and guest that intensify the sense of outsidedness felt by each group, which in turn create stereotypes.