The Enemy Within: Intragovernmental Politics and Organizational Failure in Greek Privatization

Mainstream approaches explain privatization policy failure by taking account of the surrounding sociopolitical and economic context. This article examines the unsuccessful Greek privatization over the first half of the 1990s by following an alternative approach. It looks at the obstacles originating from intragovernmental politics and the state organizational structures and resources. Contrary to what the British or French experience would suggest, the adoption of a statist, impositional policy-making strategy in the Greek case failed to achieve policy effectiveness. Indeed, it probably ended up accelerating policy failure. The employment of statism as a policy-making strategy was undermined by the structural weaknesses of the state.     

The struggle for power and control: shifting policy‐making models and the Harris agenda for education in Ontario

Abstract: This article describes the evolution of three different models in educational policy‐making in Ontario. In the late 1960s, education policy moved away from reliance on a traditional, centralized, administrative‐agency approach and gravitated towards a decentralized, asymmetrical policy interdependence that dominated until the mid‐1990s. The ndp government erected a more centralized scaffolding, with the centre undertaking a greater tutelary role vis à vis local authorities. The aim was to make more transparent the rules and standards by which local authorities, trustees and educators would operate and be held accountable. The education minister also sought to bolster local democracy by widening local parental participation in decision‐making, Since 1995, the Conservative government has erected a politicized administrative agency that has adopted a confrontational stance towards stakeholders, reduced the powers of school board trustees, decimated middle‐level professional staffing, and muffled teacher union executives. Decision‐making now seems to reside with Harris advisers and key cabinet ministers, whose stance is driven by an amalgam of neo‐liberal and neo‐conservative ideology and by voter opinion. This neo‐conservative approach differs in its embrace of a social conservatism ‐ that government maintain social order and that excessive concern for individual choice and liberty not be allowed to undermine it. Harris' social conservatism, in its K‐12 reforms, includes an embrace of regulation, hierarchy, monopoly and uniformity in the design of public policy. Sommaire: Cet article décrit l'évolution de trois modèles différents d'élaboration de politiques en matière d'éducation en Ontario. Vers la fin des anébes 1960, ces politiques d'éducation ne suivaient plus l'approche classique et centralisée caractéristique d'un organisme administratif; elles tendaient plutôt vers une interdépendance décentralisée et asymétrique, qui prédomina jusqu'au milieu des années 1990. Le gouvemement néo‐démocrate érigea une structure plus centralisée qui accordait au centre un plus grand rôle tutelaire par rapport aux autorités locales. Ceci, aux fins d'une plus grande transparence des règles et normes de fonctionnement et de redev‐abilité pour les autorités locales, les conseillers scolaires et les enseignants. Le minis‐tre de l'Éducation s'est efforcé aussi de favoriser la démocratic locale en amplifiant la participation parentale dans la prise de décisions. Depuis 1995, le gouvemement conservateur a éigé un organisme administratif politicisé qui a adopté des positions conflictuelles envers les intervenants, qui a réduit les pouvoirs des conseillers scolaires et qui a sabré dans les rangs du personnel professionnel de niveau intermédi‐aire tout en muselant les dirigeants syndicaux des enseignants. II semblerait que les décisions sont maintenant prises par les conseillers de Harris et par certains de ses ministres ‐ clé, poussés par l'opinion des électeurs et une idélogie à la fois néo‐libérale et néo‐conservatrice. Cette approche néo‐conservatrice embrasse un certain conservatisme social: le gouvemement doit maintenir l'ordre social qui ne doit pas être sapé par une trop grande préocupation concemant la liberté et les choix personnels. Le conservatisme social de Harris dans le cadre des réformes scolaires fait appel à la réglementation, à la hiérarchie, au monopole et à l'uniformité dans l'élaboration des politiques gouvemementales.     

CAREFUL COMMITMENT

New avenues to be explored for Belt and Road cooperation At the beginning of 2021,the situation looks better in China and the rest of the world.China is striving to maintain its success in eliminating COVID-19 cases domestically and fostering immunity for its 1.4-billion population.The more the vaccination process gains ground,the more it is likely that lives will return to normalcy.     

Institutional isomorphism,negativity bias and performance information use by politicians: A survey experiment

New Public Management popularized performance measurement in public organizations. Underlying performance measurement's popularity is the assumption that it injects performance information (PI) into decision-making, thus rationalizing the ensuing decisions. Despite its popularity, performance measurement is criticized. In part, this criticism results from the limited knowledge of the conditions under which PI is purposefully used by politicians. We conducted a survey experiment based on real PI with 1,240 politicians. We hypothesized that PI has a positive impact on performance information use (PIU) when PI is benchmarked with coercive, mimetic or normative pressures. Moreover, due to negativity bias we expected this positive impact to be stronger when PI signals low performance. We found that normative pressures had a positive impact on actual PIU while coercive pressures positively affected intended PIU. Negativity bias is only relevant when linked to coercive pressures and intended PIU for analysing the organization's finances.     

Preventing Political Violence in Britain: An Evaluation of over Forty Years of Undercover Policing of Political Groups Involved in Protest

This article offers a first academic evaluation of the Special Demonstration Squad and the National Public Order Intelligence Unit, two British undercover police units working for the Metropolitan Police Service at different times between 1968 and 2011. It provides a historical overview of their infiltration of political groups involved in protest for the purpose of gathering criminal and political intelligence aimed at preventing violence, public disorder, and subversion. It discusses the controversies surrounding these units, and the related institutional responses, and offers an attempt at understanding their operations within the remit of intelligence-led policing and against a political culture that prioritizes action over inaction in reducing risks and threats to the State and society.     

The Changing Structure of American Cities: A Study of the Diffusion of Innovation

Using historical and numerical analysis and the five-part schema, this study finds that over the past 50 years structural modifications and adaptations by American cities have generally followed the standard S curve of the diffusion of innovation. In tests of Kaufman's and Hirshman's theories of epochs of change from representativeness to administrative efficiency, this study determines that mayor-council cities have, in a standard innovation diffusion S curve, adopted many of the key features of council-manager cities, increasing their administrative efficiency. At the same time, council-manager cities, again in an S curve, have adopted many of the key features of mayor-council cities, increasing their political responsiveness. Fewer cities are now either distinctly mayor-council or council-manager in form, and most cities are structurally less distinct, constituting a newly merged or hybrid model of local government—the type III city.