Managing Middle Earth: The Evolving Role of Local Authority Chief Executive Officers in Auckland,New Zealand

New Zealand is often seen as a ‘test-bed’ for public sector management reform. Indeed, much has been written about the machinery and operation of central government, yet little attention has been paid to the actors and institutions of local government. This article, using evidence obtained through a series of semi-structured interviews with serving and former Chief Executive Officers (CEOs) in the Auckland region, examines the impact upon local authority chief executives of two major reforms within local government. Firstly, the impact of sweeping managerial reforms in 1989, and then secondly reforms to reinvigorate and reinvent the scope and scale of local authorities in the period since 2002. The article argues that whilst local government CEOs in New Zealand are managerially strong, these skills need to be refocused to ensure maximum benefit for local government can be gained from post-2002 reforms.     

The mental health association and prevention

Summary

The history of the Mental Health Association's involvement in prevention is described. From its inception in 1909 the Association has played a key role in advocating for prevention. It contributed to the Child Guidance Center movement, the community mental health center movement, and helped focus the 1978 President's Commission on Mental Health on prevention. In recent years, it has served as the catalyst for the formation of a coalition of national organizations with an interest in prevention.     

Book reviews

Simon Singh, The Code Book: The Evolution of Secrecy from Mary, Queen of Scots to Quantum Cryptography (London: Fourth Estate, 1999). Pp.xiii + 402, illus., bibliog., index. £16.99. ISBN 1–85702–879–1

Alan Judd, The Quest for C: Mansfield Cumming and the Founding of the Secret Service (London: HarperCollins, 1999). Pp.501, illus., bibliog., index. £19.99. ISBN 0–00–255901–3.

Michael Smith, Station X: Decoding Nazi Secrets (London: Channel 4 Books, 1999). Pp.184, 8pp illus., bibliog., index. £14.99. ISBN 0–7522–2189–2.

Hugh Skillen (ed.), The Enigma Symposium, 1998 (Privately printed, 1998). Pp.ix + 205, illus., facsims., no index. £9.95. ISBN 0–95–313300–1.

Frank B. Rowlett and David Kahn, The Story of Magic, Memoirs of an American Cryptologic Pioneer (Laguna Hills, CA: Aegean Park Press, 1998). Pp.266, 12 b/w photos., no index. $32.80. ISBN 0–8941–2273–8.

David Alvarez, Secret Messages: Codebreaking and American Diplomacy, 1930–1945. (Lawrence, KS: UP of Kansas 2000). Pp.292, photos, bibliog., index. $35. ISBN 0–7006–1013–8.

Michael E. Haas, In the Devil's Shadow: U.N. Special Operations During the Korean War (Annapolis, MD: Naval Institute Press, 2000). Pp.xx + 243, 1 map, 5 illus, 26 photos, notes, bibliog., index, chronology. $29.95; £26.50. ISBN 1–55750–344–3.

Stephen G. Rabe, The Most Dangerous Area in the World: John F. Kennedy Confronts Communist Revolution in Latin America (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1999). Pp.257, bibliog., index. £31.95 (cloth); $17.95 (paper). ISBN 0–8078–2461–5.

L. V. Scott, Macmillan, Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis (London: Macmillan Press, 1999). Pp.x + 251, bibliog., index. £45; $65. ISBN 0–333–71470–9.

Ezra Y. Siff, Why the Senate Slept: The Gulf of Tonkin Resolution and the Beginning of America's Vietnam War (Westport, CT: Praeger, 1999). Pp.xi + 172, illus., notes, bibliog., appendices, index. $37.50. ISBN 0–275–96389–6.

Fredrik Logevall, Choosing War: The Lost Chance for Peace and the Escalation of the War in Vietnam (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1999). Pp.xxv + 529, bibliog., index. $35. ISBN 0–520–21511–7.

John Prados, The Blood Road: The Ho Chi Minh Trail and the Vietnam War (New York: John Wiley, 1999). Pp.432, index. $35. ISBN 0–471–25465–7.

Kenneth Conboy and Dale Andrade, Spies & Commandos: How America Lost the Secret War in North Vietnam (Lawrence: University of Kansas Press, 2000). Pp.347, illus., bibliog., index. $34.95. ISBN 0–7006–1002–2.

Anne Hessing Cahn, Killing Detente: The Right Attacks the CIA (University Park, PA: The Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998). Pp.232, index. $24.50/£17.38 (paper). ISBN 0–271–01791–0.

Thomas K. Adams, US Special Operations Forces in Action: The Challenge of Unconventional Warfare (London and Portland, OR: Frank Cass Publishers, 1998). Pp.xxviii + 360, 11 photos, glossary of acronyms and terms, bibliog., index. £42.50/$59.50 (cloth); £19.50/$27.50 (paper). ISBN 0–7146–4795–0 and ‐4350–5.     

Green citizenship and the political critique of injustice

Over recent decades, normative theories of green citizenship have drawn upon observations that a long-prevalent dualistic understanding of society, as completely subjecting nature, is being displaced by growing political and cultural support for a holistic view of society, as participating in nature. Differences between avowedly liberal and civic-republican interpretations of green citizenship notwithstanding, the normative theories share five key social critiques: (1) the need to challenge nature/culture dualism; (2) to dissolve the division between the public and private spheres; (3) to undermine state-territorialism; (4) to eschew social contractualism and (5) to ground justice in awareness of the finiteness and maldistribution of ecological space (ES). This article offers a sympathetic provocation to normative theories of green citizenship. Adopting a critical realist perspective, it describes the partial and problematic realisation of these critiques in the contemporary types of social and political participation, contents of the rights and duties and institutional arrangements of the ‘stakeholder’ citizenship that has become established within the neoliberal or weak eco-modernising, global competition state. This perspective is important because it offers new insights into the discursive framework that encompasses contemporary debates over justice and injustice. In particular, injustice from within the post-industrial ecostate appears to be a diffuse whole-of-society problem, the by-product of unsustainable development that lacks an identifiable class of perpetrators. This makes the progressive task of enunciating claims that injustice is present in some senses difficult, while conservative ideological positions are simplified.     

Patterns of EU Energy Policy Outputs: Incrementalism or Punctuated Equilibrium?

Although macro-level analyses of EU policy outputs are common, few empirical studies have measured the long-run evolution of the Union’s energy policy sector. This article provides an overview of European energy legislation to show past sectoral developmental trends, current characteristics and potential future directions. During this period, EU energy policy has evolved sequentially to encompass multiple sectors, including coal, nuclear energy, oil and gas production, energy conservation, market harmonisation and climate change concerns. Moreover, by measuring the velocity of legislative output as an indicator of policy activity, the overall picture is one of gradual incremental growth centred broadly on several episodes of shallow, delayed action punctuated equilibrium that has resulted in an uneven mixture of national and supranational decision-making. Expansion is perhaps set to continue along a similar path as a common EU climate–energy policy emerges, although some constraints are evident.     

Pathways to impact in local government: the mini-Stern review as evidence in policy making in the Leeds City Region

Although in recent years great emphasis has been placed on global agreements and national commitments on climate change, ultimately action on mitigation and adaptation must take place at the local level. Many local authorities have to face questions of whether they should develop policies on climate change, and if so, on what evidence should policies be designed and delivered. This paper describes how academic research on the economics of low carbon cities (the ‘mini-Stern review’) helped create such an evidence base for the Leeds City Region and its constituent local authorities. We describe how the response to the evidence and the pathways to impact were different in the individual local authorities and what this means for our understanding of evidence in local policy making. In terms of Weiss’ (Social sciences and modern states: national experiences and theoretical crossroads. Advances in political science, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 1991) classification, the study was mainly useful as an argument and idea rather than being used instrumentally. We find that the policy and political context in each authority determines to a large extent whether such an academic study is useable as evidence. The contents and timing of the study need to align with existing policy and/or political agendas: is climate change on the agenda at all, with what priority and how is it framed. We find confirmation of a relationship between the policy problem type and the role of evidence as argument, idea or data. The mini-Stern study itself was just one contribution to wide-ranging processes of informing, convincing, pressurising, etc., not just within the different councils but also within the wider communities. Other contextual factors include composition, agenda and activities of local civil society and the local business community. Finally, it depends on the expertise of policy officers in the councils what use is made of evidence. Making policy takes (much) time, translation and negotiation across levels and sectors. Policy work describes how policy officers bring their diverse forms of knowledge to bear on policy questions; how this work is done is something that is learned from practice rather than from the study.     

Developing Powers and the Challenge of Peacekeeping: The Example of Malawi

Abstract

Malawi’s contribution to UN peacekeeping is growing. The development of the Malawi Defence Force was stunted under Hastings Banda, but Malawi’s foreign and security policies were reoriented under multiparty democracy and the Defence Force and police personnel were engaged in peacekeeping missions. Peacekeeping has had a profound effect on Malawi. It has led to the procurement of military hardware, contributed substantial sums to the national economy, and raised the income and living standards of participants. It has encouraged the adoption of UN best practice and contributed to gender integration. However, there are issues around transparency and accountability, and more partnerships with developed countries are desirable. There is also a role for the Commonwealth.     

Sudden infant death due to neurofibromatosis type I

Sudden infant death syndrome (SIDS) is the unexpected death of an infant under the age of 1 year, where a complete autopsy, including scene investigation, fails to reveal a cause of death. Although the frequency of SIDS has decreased almost 50% over the past 10 years, it remains the leading cause of death in infants aged 1 to 6 months. SIDS is a diagnosis of exclusion and requires the elimination of a wide range of possible causes, including asphyxia, poisoning, abuse, occult heart disease, and other natural disease processes. In this report, we describe the case of an infant death initially suspected to be a SIDS death in which autopsy revealed an optic pathway glioma (optic glioma or hypothalamic glioma) and other stigmata of neurofibromatosis type I.