Public Services after Austerity: Zombies,Suez or Collaboration?

Public services—in the UK and elsewhere—are under considerable pressure, not just from austerity, but also from a variety of social, demographic and technological changes (in effect ‘austerity plus’). In this context, three broad options are open to policy‐makers: continue with tried‐and‐tested approaches while spending less money, which in the UK means a reliance on ‘New Public Management’ (NPM); withdraw completely from certain public services; or develop new approaches to public administration. We argue that all of these approaches have been attempted in recent years, but it is the final option that is most interesting and potentially the most beneficial. In this article, we examine experiments with these new approaches in responding to ‘austerity plus’. In particular, we examine various attempts at ‘collaboration’ in public services and discuss the risks associated with them. We conclude by setting out the extent to which policy‐makers have moved beyond NPM and suggesting some of the benefits that this could bring.     

The Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey and the Limitations of Vulnerability-based Politics

ABSTRACT

This article investigates opposition to the Australian Marriage Law Postal Survey, which surveyed Australians on their position on marriage equality from September to November 2017. Opposition to the hosting of a public vote on marriage equality was based in a perceived vulnerability of LGBTIQ Australians, with marriage equality advocates taking what Tietze (2016) described as a ‘dark view of the voting public’. While acknowledging the high levels of homophobic rhetoric that occurred during the postal survey, and the impacts that public votes can have on the mental health of LGBTIQ people, the article argues this ‘dark view’ was overstated. This article argues that opposition to the survey reinforced vulnerability within LGBTIQ Australians, promoting an increased reliance on the state for protection and recognition. Opposition ignored the democratic potential of the survey, particularly as an opportunity to further debate on LGBTIQ issues and to reduce broader societal homophobia. Despite the eventual yes vote therefore, approaches to the postal survey missed a political opportunity, likely leaving LGBTIQ Australians and the Australian queer movement in a weaker position than previously.     

Political Pressure,Conformity Pressure,and Performance Information as Drivers of Public Sector Innovation Adoption

Why public organizations adopt and abandon organizational innovations is a key question for any endeavor to explain large-scale developments in the public sector. Supplementing research within public administration on innovation with the related literature on policy diffusion, this article examines how external factors such as conformity pressure from institutionalized models, performance information from other organizations, and political pressure affect innovation adoption. By the use of two survey experiments in very different political contexts—Texas and Denmark—and a difference-in-differences analysis exploiting a reform of the political governance of public schools in Denmark, we find that public managers respond to political pressure. We find no indications that they emulate institutionalized models or learn from performance information from other organizations when they adopt organizational innovations. The results thereby point to political pressure as an important factor behind large-scale adoptions of organizational innovations in the public sector.     

Pushed by national politics or pulled by localism? Voting for independent local parties in the Netherlands

This study examines why citizens in the Netherlands vote for independent local parties. These are parties that run in municipal council elections, but do not run in elections at higher levels. This article examines a number of expectations: namely that voters vote for these parties out dissatisfaction with established parties, that they do so because they have a 'localist' political orientation or that they do so because their own national party is not running in the municipal elections. More support is found for the idea that voters vote for local parties because they are pushed away by national parties (either because they do not participate in some municipalities or because voters distrust them) than for the idea that voters vote for local parties for positive reasons, such as a localist political orientation. This article examines two surveys concerning voting behaviour in the 2014 Dutch municipal elections.     

Sovereignty,bare life and the Arab uprisings

Five years after people took to the streets in protest at political organisation across the Middle East, the consequences of these actions remain. As the protests gained traction, states began to fragment and regimes sought to retain power, whatever the cost. While a great deal of focus has been upon what happened, very little attention has been paid to the role of agency within the context of the fragmenting sovereignty and political change. This article contributes to these debates by applying the work of Giorgio Agamben to the post-Arab Uprisings Middle East, to understand the relationship between rulers and ruled along with the fragmentation of the sovereign state. The article argues for the need to bring agency back into conceptual debates about sovereignty within the Middle East. It concludes by presenting a framework that offers an approach building upon Agamben’s bare life.     

Nationalist Jāhiliyyah and the Flag of the Two Crusaders,or: ISIS,Sovereignty, and the “Owl of Minerva”

This article argues that by understanding Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) state-building processes we are able to understand how ISIS has developed while also developing a united citizenship body built from people in Iraq and Syria and those making hijra. The fragmentation of Iraq and Syria resulted in conditions that would prove conducive to the group's expansion and identifying these conditions is imperative to understanding Sunni extremism in the Middle East. The article argues that ISIS builds citizenship in two ways: first, by developing asabiyya—group feeling—among Sunni and second, by securitizing the Shi'a threat. Identifying and engaging with the concepts of sovereignty and citizenship helps to develop much stronger policy responses.     

Seal the Deal: Bargaining Positions,Institutional Design,and the Duration of Preferential Trade Negotiations

Multilateral negotiations at the World Trade Organization have stalled. This has contributed to a steep rise in preferential trade agreements (PTAs). At the same time, negotiations for PTAs have not always proven quick and painless: While some treaties are sealed within a few months or days only, other agreements are preceded by protracted bargaining processes in trade and trade-related issue areas. In this article, we provide a theoretical explanation for this empirical variation. More specifically, we argue that PTA negotiations take longer the greater the distance between the prospective partners’ initial bargaining positions. Moreover, we contend that negotiation processes become more protracted the higher the relative ambition of the prospective PTA. Due to the limited links to the domestic political arena in autocracies, we expect this latter effect to play out for groups of democratic bargaining partners only. We test these two hypotheses for 198 preferential trade negotiations using novel measures for bargaining templates and the ambition of PTA clauses. In our two-stage survival models, we find support for our argument. In line with qualitative evidence from recent preferential trade initiatives, our models indicate that services, investment and intellectual property rights are particularly sticky agenda items for democratic leaders at the international bargaining table.     

Is there a selection bias in roll call votes? Evidence from the European Parliament

We examine the magnitude and significance of selection bias in roll call votes. Prior to 2009, all recorded (roll call) votes in the European Parliament had to be requested explicitly by European Political Groups. Since 2009, a roll call vote has been mandatory on all final legislative votes. We exploit that change in the rules and compare differences between final legislative votes, amendment votes and non-legislative votes before and after 2009, using a difference-in-differences approach with extensive controls. Using data from the Sixth (2004–2009) to Seventh (2009–2014) European Parliaments, we fail to find any large differences in voting cohesion for the main political groups. We find even less significance when we control for changes in parliamentary membership between those two periods. The results suggest that selection biases in the European Parliament associated with strategic choices are negligible.     

In Brief

Hawthorne's Fuller Mystery, by Thomas R. Mitchell. Amherst: University of Massachusetts Press, 1998.

New Latina Narrative: The Feminine Space of Postmodern Ethnicity, by Ellen McCracken. Tucson: The University of Arizona Press, 1999.

Dos Passos and the Ideology of the Feminine, by Janet Galligani Casey. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.

The World Wars Through the Female Gaze, by Jean Gallagher. Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1998.

The Play of Reason: From the Modern to the Postmodern, by Linda Nicholson. Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1999.

Sex and Sexuality in Early America, edited by Merril D. Smith. New York: New York University Press, 1998.

Kate Chopin's Private Papers, edited by Emily Toth and Per Seyersted, associate editor, Cheyenne Bonnell. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1998.

Sex and Citizenship in Antebellum America, by Nancy Isenberg. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1998.

Women and the Rise of the Novel, 1405–1726, by Josephine Donovan. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1999.

Eroticism on the Renaissance Stage: Transcendence, Desire, and the Limits of the Visible, by Celia R. Daileader. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1998.