Pragmatist and Neo‐Classical Policy Paradigms in Public Services: Which is the Better Template for Program Design?

Principal-agent theory alerts principals to their problematic relationship with agents. The former are encouraged to take deliberate action to counter asymmetries in knowledge, moral hazard etc. To avoid this, principals should determine outcomes and contracts and incentives should be designed to achieve them. This approach has influenced the form of purchaser-provider arrangements, including the Job Network. This article reviews impacts, which include incentives for gaming and increased transaction costs. Another survey highlighted the extent to which innovation in the disability employment sector had depended on collaboration, which competition would end. The article then sketches an alternative pragmatic or experimental approach, which assumes that the centre can never establish outcomes that are other than provisional and corrigible. Program design needs to be built around this fundamental fact. Learning not 'carrots and sticks' is the appropriate form of relationship. The article explores the feasibility of this approach in a Job Network context .     

Commodity relations and class formation in the Zimbabwean countryside, 1898–1920

By disaggregating the peasantry, this article seeks to explain the variety of experience uncovered by previous local studies of the Zimbabwean countryside. A combination of those pockets of pre‐colonial accumulation which had survived the violence of the 1890s, and the productive reinvestment of income earned in wage labour, gave rise to a distinctive pattern of rural differentiation. By the start of the 1920s a class of small farmers had emerged.     

A Structural analysis of Macbeth

SUMMARY

Kierkegaard's authorship could be summarized in the following statement: what it means to exist, that is, what it means to become a Christian. The crucial category is den enkelte, the single one, who upon becoming aware of his true self in personal communication with God, reaches the highest possible level of self-realization in interhuman communication.

However, to assume that Kierkegaard merely tried to enforce his Christian perspectives, would be to misunderstand him completely. Kierkegaard's spheres of existence offer an overview of all possible modes of existence by means of which a human being could reach self-realization. His intention was to invoke his readers to choose their own mode of existence and to accept responsibility for their choice.

This article illuminates the communicological relevance of Kierkegaard's spheres of existence by discussing both the views of life characteristic of each sphere and the forms of communication by means of which they are expressed. It is also maintained that a full understanding of the spheres of existence requires a study of Kierkegaard's concept of the self. A brief sketch of Kierkegaard's life is included to highlight his own struggle for self-realization.     

Killing Nationalism with Liberalism? Austria–Hungary and the Serbian Constitution of 1869

Based on material from the Hungarian archives hitherto unpublished in English, this article examines the contribution Austro–Hungarian diplomacy made to the approval, by the Ottoman government, of a new constitution for its vassal-state Serbia in 1869. The episode reflects the emergence of a Hungarian influence on the Habsburg Monarchy's policy towards Russia, the Ottoman Balkans, and especially Serbia in the years immediately following the Ausgleich of 1867. Hungarian Minister-President Count Gyula Andrássy, through the new Austro–Hungarian consul in Belgrade, Benjámin Kállay, lobbied Vienna to support the new constitution. He did so in the hope that a more liberal political system in Serbia would impede the Serbian government's tendency to foment nationalist unrest within the Habsburg Monarchy and distract Belgrade from its policy of territorial expansion at the expense of the Ottoman Empire.     

How External Intervention Made the Sovereign State

From post-World War II decolonization to establishing order in war-torn polities today, external intervention can play an important role in fostering sovereign statehood in weak states. Much attention in this regard emphasizes local reactions to outside pressures. This article augments these perspectives by drawing attention to ways that foreign actors may affect the development of sovereignty through their efforts to work with various domestic groups. Structured comparisons of China and Indonesia during the early to mid-twentieth century suggest that active external intercession into domestic politics can collectively help to shape when and how sovereignty develops. As these are least likely cases for intervention to affect sovereign state making, the importance of foreign actors indicates a need to reconceptualize the effects of outside influences on sovereignty creation more broadly.     

Security culture,transnational challenges and the Economic Community of West African States

This special issue explores how one particular regional organisation, the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), has defined certain transnational issues as security threats and how it has addressed them. In this introductory article, we begin by providing an overview and analysis of some of the most important transnational security challenges facing West Africa. Specifically, we discuss some of the problems raised by cross-border insurgencies, health challenges, organised criminal activities, terrorism and environmental degradation. We then examine the different levels at which actors have responded to these challenges. The section ‘Security culture: shaping the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) response?’ sets out our approach to thinking about the concept of security culture and asks whether it might be relevant to understanding how and why ECOWAS has focused on responding to certain transnational security challenges and not to others. The final section provides an overview of the other articles in this issue.     

The 2007 Australian Federal Election: The Story of Labor's Return from the Electoral Wilderness

In an era of continuous campaigning, elections are seldom won in the final weeks of the formal campaign period. The 2007 Australian federal election saw voters dispatch a Liberal Party and Nationals Coalition government that had presided over a buoyant economy, and return the Australian Labor Party from the electoral wilderness it had occupied since 1996. The explanation of this revival in Labor's stocks can be traced to the Wheat Board scandal, the unpopularity of the labour market deregulation, and to a series of other political tribulations that the fourth Howard Government faced during 2005 and 2006. Initially their impact was masked by the failure of Labor's parliamentary leadership. But when caucus elected Kevin Rudd and freed him to position Labor as offering fresh ideas and a safe pair of hands, Labor seized a lead in the opinion polls and retained it throughout 2007. Rudd's tactical leadership of his party proved critical. This article describes how the 2007 campaign unfolded and the pattern of events which saw a refashioned ALP win an eighteen‐seat lower house majority.