Performance and Accountability: Budget Reform in New Zealand

Since 1984, New Zealand has made major changes in public sector management. This article describes the perceived problems with the previous New Zealand system and discusses the reforms designed to address these problems. The changes attempt to increase efficiency by: (1) separating commercial functions from other government operations; (2) strengthening lines of ministerial and executive accountability; and (3) designing budget and financial management systems to improve measurement of public sector performance. This last reform includes shifting from an input to an output-based system, changing from cash to accrual accounting, and creating different forms of appropriations for different types of government activities. While it is too early to assess whether the reforms are successful, we note potential problems.     

The provocative public sector: Domestic political protest and public sector growth in the OECD, 1965–1982

The results shown in Tables 1 through 8 above are consistent in that %GG is repeatedly shown to be significant whether making cross-national comparisons of DPP or predicting intra-national variations over time. Therefore, Hypotheses 1a and 1b are confirmed. The confirmation of Hypotheses 2a and 2b shows that, taking into account public sector size, government growth is most provocative in countries where it represents a major socio-economic change (i.e., where the public sector is small). Government growth has a neutral impact where the role of the public sector is long-established (i.e., where the public sector is large).Hypotheses 3a and 3b posited that average and annual rates of economic growth would be inversely associated with domestic protest. These hypotheses, too, were confirmed. The belief that economic growth rates would clearly provide the margin of affordability for public sector growth was not confirmed, as the coefficient of the interaction term (%GG*%GDP) was not statistically significant.     

Pricing public sector services: The tuition gap

The large gap between the tuition charged by public colleges and universities and private ones is likely to cause severe disruptions to the private sector institutions of higher education. If it continues, private sector institutions may once again become bastions for students who can afford their services, rather than for those who merit them, and these institutions will diminish in size and diversity as well. Public sector institutions will become relatively stronger - not solely for reasons of effectiveness, efficiency, or equity - but because of the competitive advantage that the tuition gap affords them. This paper explores the feasibility and desirability of the three methods of correcting this problem, using real cost and demand data from the University of Massachusetts for illustrative purposes. It concludes the subsidization of students (rather than institutions) and raising public sector tuitions are two possible alternatives to the present tuition gap.     

Policy Design and Achieving Social Outcomes: A Comparative Analysis of Social Enterprise Policy

This article compares American, British, and Korean social enterprise policies to explore how government policy design shapes social enterprises and how “social benefit” and “public value” are defined. A social enterprise is defined as the legally structured organizational pursuit of blending social purpose and economic profit through business activities, and examples from each country are presented. Applying Bozeman's publicness theory, the authors demonstrate the wide range of roles that governments play in shaping social enterprises' ownership, funding, and control across the three countries using regulations, subsidies, and procurement policies. These roles may affect the impact of social enterprises in society. The case studies show that the U.S. approach to social enterprise policy is heavily market oriented, while the United Kingdom is in the middle of the market-to-publicness continuum, and South Korea is much closer to the publicness (government-dominated) end of the continuum.     

After the storm comes the sun: A rhetorical analysis of Melbourne Storm's advertising campaigns after the 2010 salary cap scandal

One of the most common motifs surrounding sports, sports teams, and sports stars is “the scandal.” One typifying feature of mediated scandals is the ease with which they can be presented as, or massaged into, an unfolding narrative. Although some research has been conducted into the initial stages of these narratives, there is significantly less that focusses on the ways in which the “transgressor” can be rehabilitated in a separate but linked part of that overarching story. This article addresses that gap by analysing two television commercials that significantly assisted the Melbourne Storm rugby league franchise in encouraging and maintaining identification and, coterminously, overcoming disidentification with its membership. Furthermore, we contend that the Melbourne Storm purposively used rhetorical strategies to emphasise the socially desirable aspects of its identity to repair damage done to its organisational image. Using rhetorical analysis, the article explicates the various techniques through which this was accomplished.     

Feminism,peace, and civil liberties: Women's role in the origins of the World War I civil liberties movement

Historians of the women's movement in the World War I era tend, understandably, to concentrate on the final heroic chapter of the suffrage campaign. Since the majority of suffragists followed their leader, Carrie Chapman Catt, into the war effort after April 6, 1917, suffragist‐feminist patriotism is a dominant theme. Recently historians have begun to chronicle women's pre‐war and wartime peace work, particularly through the aegis of the Woman's Peace Party, founded in early 1915.¹ Women's civil liberties activism during the war and in the Red Scare aftermath is still uncharted terrain. There is, to date, little appreciation of the way the World War I era experience in the United States influenced a small but determined and articulate number of left‐wing feminists to become civil‐libertarian activists. In this article I examine women's involvement in several important civil liberties organizations and argue that the convictions and activities of women not only helped to shape the agenda of the burgeoning civil liberties movement but also to influence federal public policy, particularly with respect to treatment of conscientious objectors, political prisoners, and “enemy aliens.” I also suggest that some feminists involved in both antiwar and civil liberties work during the war era came to see how militarism, war, and misogyny are related in western society, an insight which informed the thought and activities of the post‐war women's peace movement.     

The Check Is in the Mail: Interdistrict Funding Flows in Congressional Elections

This article analyzes the financial ties between congressional candidates and individual donors residing outside those candidates' districts. Congressional campaigns today rely more heavily on nonresidents than in the past, with contests in the typical district drawing more than two-thirds of individual donations from nonresidents. Empirical results reveal that nonresident contributions are primarily partisan and strategic in nature, rather than access-oriented or expressive/identity-based. Funds are efficiently redistributed from a small number of highly educated, wealthy congressional districts to competitive districts anywhere in the country. Big donors direct funds where they can make a difference for party control of seats, even if those investments are hundreds, or even thousands, of miles away.     

Legal aid for coroners' inquests

Inquests held into deaths perform important functions, not only in determining the facts relevant to the death, but also in investigating and making recommendations on matters of public safety. Coronial legislation allows a number of parties to appear at inquests but a right of appearance without the possibility of legal representation is an illusory right. There are persuasive arguments for allocating funding for grants of legal aid to persons appearing at inquests and particularly to families. However, the demands on public legal aid funds are overwhelming and there are many competing needs. Historically, legal aid has not been available at inquests. Justifications for this are considered and whether government legal aid funding for advice and representation should be available to individuals involved in coroners' inquests and in what circumstances. The nature of the inquest process, indications of need for legal assistance, the level of assistance currently provided, defining what is the "public interest" for legal aid purposes in an inquest and the detriment suffered by individuals or the community if assistance is not available, are examined.