Building the Administrative State

Books reviewed in this article:
Daniel P. Carpenter, The Forging of Bureaucratic Autonomy: Reputations, Networks, and Policy Innovation in Executive Agencies, 1862–1928
David E. Lewis, Presidents and the Politics of Agency: Design Political Insulation in the United States Government Bureaucracy, 1946–1997     

The Rise of 'New' Policy Instruments in Comparative Perspective: Has Governance Eclipsed Government?

Governance is a term in good currency, but there are still too few detailed empirical analyses of the precise extent to which it has or has not eclipsed government. This article explores the temporal and spatial characteristics of the governance transition by charting the deployment of new policy instruments in eight industrialised states and the European Union. The adoption and implementation of ('old' and 'new') policy instruments offer a useful analytical touchstone because governance theory argues that regulation is the quintessence of government. Although there are many 'new' environmental policy instruments in these nine jurisdictions, this article finds that the change from government to governance is highly differentiated across political jurisdictions, policy sectors and even the main instrument types. Crucially, many of the new policy instruments used require some state involvement (that is, 'government'), and very few are entirely devoid of state involvement (that is, pure 'governance'). Far from eclipsing government, governance therefore often complements and, on some occasions, even competes with it, although there are some cases of fusion. Future research should thus explore the many complex and varied ways in which government and governance interact in public policy-making.     

Editorial

Liverpool Law Review -     

The Retreat from Government Support for Social Dialogue in the Australian Public Service

This article explores the impact of the Coalition government's federal public sector reforms since 1996 in the Australian Public Service (APS). Under the Labor governments from 1983 to 1996, a range of measures operated to facilitate the development of social dialogue practices in the APS. There were also various mechanisms for consultation, information sharing and employee participation in decision-making, such as the Joint Council and Departmental Councils, statutory provisions for Industrial Democracy Plans, award provisions for consultation over business restructuring and support for consultative structures under enterprise bargaining and health and safety legislation. Nearly all of these measures have been dismantled or downgraded since the Coalition government came to office, especially those requiring consultation with trade unions or providing unions with a central role in participative mechanisms. It is argued here that the government's reforms have involved a substantial reduction in formal support for social dialogue in the APS, and a rejection of the benefits that such an approach offers.     

Book reviews

Nations and Politics in the Soviet Successor States Ian Bremmer and Ray Taras, (editors) Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1993, 577 pp, £35

Central Asia in World History S. A. M. Adshead London: Macmillan Press, 1993, 291 pp, £40

Turkey and the West: Changing Political and Cultural Identities Metin Heper, Ayse Oncu and Heinz Kramer (editors) London: I. B. Tauris, New York: St Martins Press, 1993, 289 pp, £39.50

Endurance and Endeavour. Russian History 1812–1992 J. N. Westwood Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1993, 624 pp, £40

State, Religion and Society in Central Asia. A Post‐Soviet Critique Vitaly Naumkin and Sergei A. Panarin (editors) Reading: Ithaca Press, 1993, 289 pp, £35

Communism Ferdinand Mount (editor) London: Harvill, 1992, 321 pp, £9.99     

Verdict selection processes in insanity cases

Judicial instructions (traditional American Law Institute vs. Guilty But Mentally Ill [GBMI]) were manipulated within an insanity defense vignette portraying a highly psychotic defendant. Construals were highly predictive of verdicts in both instructional conditions. Instead of influencing case construals, the GBMI option seems to operate by increasing respondents' decisional thresholds for insanity and guilty verdicts, creating a collapsing effect such that few such verdicts are rendered. Between-instruction comparisons reveal that the construals of respondents who choose insane and guilty verdicts are considerably more homogeneous and extreme under the GBMI conditions. Results suggest that many respondents intend their GMBI verdicts to signify diminished blame and punishment, indicating that such verdicts entail cognitive compromises that reflect both the thresholdraising effects and also probable confusion about the jurisprudential meaning of a GBMI verdict.This article is an expanded version of a paper entitled Insanity case construals are not simply verdict justification effects, which was presented at the 99th annual convention of the American Psychological Association at San Francisco, August, 1991. We would like to thank Linda Roberts, Norman Finkel, and the anonymous reviewers for their comments on an earlier version of this paper. Support for this research was provided in part by a grant from the Baldy Center on Law and Social Policy at the State University of New York at Buffalo.     

Interest groups and the regulation of pesticides: Congress,coalitions, and closure

This article is essentially a rejoinder to Christopher Bosso's piece, Transforming Adversaries Into Collaborators: Interest groups and the regulation of chemical pesticides, which appeared in this journal (21: 3–22). The case of pesticides regulation is re-examined and some new insights are offered. At the center of Bosso's argument is the contention that Congress is passive. John Kingdon's agenda/alternative distinction is utilized to arrive at an alternative way to think about the role of Congress in today's permeable pressure system.     

Television TV by Barney Daniels Tjungurrayi

This paper examines the alliance that Derrida makes between his notion of justice as undeconstructible and a certain spirit of Marx's emancipatory promise. By following some of the precautions that Derrida undertakes in distinguishing the undeconstructibility of justice from the deconstructible justice should not be viewed as a contradiction in terms. I also argue that while the themes of justice, ethics, and politics can be rendered self‐present. Rather, Derrida's response to the injunctions of Marx suggests that it is precisely because justice and the emancipatory promise cannot be given over to the present that they are situated as undeconstructible. As such, taking responsibility for the heritage of Marxism involves working and sorting through the many spectres of Marx that inhabit the same injunction, where the promise remains as that yet to come.