Public management: first approximations

Public Management as a synthesis of business management and public administration confronts some severe conceptual problems that are rooted in the dissimilarities between business and government. In the two books reviewed, the authors attempt to build concep- tual frameworks for studying public management which minimize the importance of many of these differences. As a result, both books come closer to meeting the expanding market for texts which present management tools and techniques than most of the other texts written in the past few years using a “Public A.dministration as Political Science” approach. Nevertheless, both books still fall considerably short of providing a coherent and comprehensive solution to the problem of defining the scope and substance of the field of Public Management. Therefore, Public Management, as presented in these books, remains largely a truncated field of study limited to issuestof internal management control and ,cost effectiveness. For the field to flourish, it must find a way to bridge and dissolve the dichotomies between politics and administration, policy and management, and political and technical rationality.     

Kommunikasiekunde aan die Potchefstroomse Universiteit vir C.H.O.

SUMMARY

This case study tracks the process of the establishment of a community radio station in the Zululand area of KwaZulu-Natal, an area which is characterised by the vastly different levels of development of its constituent communities. Survey work, establishing the patterns of attention to existing media, and the question of the establishment of a community station to satisfy community communication needs are discussed. The role of the station in the areas of local governance, economic development, media training, public relations and industrial relations and language policy are examined. The findings of a survey investigating listeners' responses to the station's language policy, subsequent to the station going on the air, are also discussed.     

Using grid-group theory to explain distinctive Japanese political institutions

Particularly for Americans, Japanese political institutions present a paradox. On one hand, in comparison to other advanced industrial societies the size of Japan's public sector (as a proportion of GDP) is extremely small. On the other hand, Japan's small but expert state is highly interventionary, leaving far less to the vagaries of markets than the United States or even the more statist societies of Europe (Johnson 1982). This contrast leaves many American analysts, particularly economists but others (Esping-Andersen 1997) as well, in a quandary as to whether Japan is a liberal individualistic society. I draw on Douglas-Wildavsky “grid-group” theory to explain these seemingly contradictory institutional characteristics as the result, not of liberal individualistic influence, but of conflict between and the alternation in dominance of two factions of Japanese hierarchy. My primary focus of attention rests on showing how these two hierarchical factions produce a public policy orientation with a predisposition toward state social intervention but periodic restraint with respect to public social programs that accounts for the modest fiscal size of the active Japanese state. I also examine Japanese public policy responses to recent difficulties in overcoming recession and confronting increasing immigration to clinch the case that Japan is a society in which various factions of hierarchy, rather than liberal individualism, dominate.     

Intellectual Orthodoxy,the Economy of Knowledge and the Debate Over Zhang Jingsheng’s Sex Histories*

Abstract

Since the Guomindang (GMD) and the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) adopted it as the basis of the marriage system in the early twentieth century, yifu yiqi zhi — which literally means a system of one husband, one wife—has been translated as monogamy. Yet the conflation of the Chinese characters yifu yiqi zhi with the English word monogamy resulted from contests over meaning that can be traced to Republican discussions on marriage and sex in general and on concubinage in particular, which attached the new notion of conjugal fidelity to yifu yiqi zhi. The criminalization of concubinage as adultery under GMD law and as bigamy under CCP law signaled the different meanings yifu yiqi zhi held in the early twentieth century, meanings that continue to influence contemporary usages of the term.