RECONCILING PUBLIC ACCOUNTABILITY AND ABORIGINAL SELF-DETERMINATION/SELF-MANAGEMENT: IS ATSIC SUCCEEDING?

Abstract: Since the early 1970s commonwealth governments have been pursuing policies of self-determination/self-management in relation to Aborigines. In 1987, the Hawke government announced its intention to establish an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Commission (ATSIC) to further this policy goal. During the debates over ATSIC's formation, the issue of public accountability in the existing administration of Aboriginal affairs came to public prominence. The result was some extensive reworking of the ATSIC proposal, which in 1989 reemerged with a strengthened emphasis on public accountability. This article traces the events and arguments surrounding ATSIC's formation and then goes on to examine ATSIC in practice. It asks whether ATSIC is succeeding in reconciling the two imperatives of Aboriginal self-determination/self-management and public accountability.     

Federal Aid to Local Governments in the West: An Irony of the Reagan Revolution

Despite the fact that the Reagan election was viewed as a power shift toward the West, the decade of the 1980s produced cruel disappointment. The region was generally left out of the economic recmery of the nation because of the bust in the agricultural and mineral industries. These state and local gmernments which sufferfrom high costs and low resources were particularly dependent on the national gmernment at the very time when the Reagan Administration was cutting federal aid and transferring power to the states. Unlike Nixon's New Federalism which helped the state and local governments of the West, Reagan's policies caused their relative position in federal aid flows to deteriorate. Although the Reagan revolution in cutting domestic programs was viewed as the embodiment of western rugged individualism, the region lost in terms of federal aid to small rural local governments.     

The federal Employment Equity Act: goals vs. implementation

Abstract: Policy analysts have frequently noted the gap between the intentions of policy makers and the effects of a program of change. This paper questions the ability of the implementation process to achieve the objectives of the federal Employment Equity Act. It argues that organizations under the act have not progressed towards employment equity, not because they have failed to implement the policy according to its legal provisions, but because the act itself is fundamentally flawed. While collecting statistics from the workplace may be useful in identifying discriminatory practices and problem areas and in identifying weaknesses in the evaluative and corrective mechanisms in the act, the reliance on data collection as the sole measure of effective implementation is highly simplistic. The usefulness of the data is compromised by the extent to which they actually reflect decreased discrimination. Furthermore, it is erroneous to suppose that employers of their accord will sanction themselves when statistics reveal an unrepresentative internal workforce. Sommaire: Les analystes de politiques ont souvent noté l'éart entre les intentions de ceux qui définissent les politiques, d'une part, et les effets d'un programme porteur de changement, d'autre part. Cet article met en cause la capacité des processus de mise en oeuvre à réaliser les objectifs de la loi fédérale sur l'équité en matière d'emploi. Selon l'article, les organismes soumis à la Loi n'ont pas fait de progres vers l'eAquité en matière d'emploi, et ce, non pas parce qu'ils ont manqué d'appliquer la politique conformément à ses clauses légales, mais plutôt parce que la loi elle-même a des lacunes fondamentales. Recueillir des données statistiques sur les lieux de travail est peut-êre utile lorsqu'il s'agit d'identifier les pratiques discriminatoires et les faiblesses des mécanismes d'évaluation et de correction prévues par la loi, mais il serait par trop simpliste de se fier aux données comme indicateur unique d'une mise en oeuvre réussie. L'utilité des données est relative dans la mesure oh elles reflètent simplement une diminution de la discrimination. De plus, il est incorrect de supposer que les employeurs se sanctionneront deux-mêmes lorsque les données statistiques révèlent l'inobservation de la loi.