The village on java and the early‐colonial state

This essay represents an attempt to question and revise the conceptualisation of village Java‐especilally prevalent in the colonial literature‐which represents it as an endless number of homogeneous communities of cultivators, living closely and harmoniously together, with a high degree of institutional self‐sufficiency. The emphasis in the essay is upon the pattern of vertical relations and horizontal diversity. The existence of considerable internal differentiation is stressed, and it is argued that the Javanese village has never been marked by the homogeneity and static rigidity which has been ascribed to it so often.     

Perceptions of Problem Behavior in Adolescents’ Families: Perceiver,Target, and Family Effects

Considerable research has focused on the reliability and validity of informant reports of family behavior, especially maternal reports of adolescent problem behavior. None of these studies, however, has based their orientation on a theoretical model of interpersonal perception. In this study we used the social relations model (SRM) to examine family members’ reports of each others’ externalizing and internalizing problem behavior. Two parents and two adolescents in 69 families rated each others’ behavior within a round-robin design. SRM analysis showed that within-family perceptions of externalizing and internalizing behaviors are consistently due to three sources of variance; perceiver, target, and family effects. A family/contextual effect on informant reports of problem behavior has not been previously reported.     

Structural reform histories and perceptions of organizational autonomy: Do senior managers perceive less strategic policy autonomy when faced with frequent and intense restructuring?

Through recurrent structural reform programmes governments are on a quest to design public organizations that will stand the test of their environment. One of the approaches to uncertain or sensitive issues has been to create various forms of (semi‐)autonomous organizations with substantial strategic discretion. However, while governments repeatedly experiment with designs, one might simultaneously expect that such interference through repeated structural change may limit the degree of strategic policy autonomy perceived by senior managers. More specifically, we propose that intense structural reforms may inadvertently reduce strategic policy autonomy perceptions through two mechanisms. First, intense sequences of structural reforms may lead to perceptions of relatively controlling political principals. Second, they may reduce an organization's ability to accrue resources beneficial to autonomy, such as a strong internal culture, network embeddedness and expertise. Results indicate that strategic policy autonomy perceptions will indeed be detrimentally affected for organizations that experience intense sequences of structural reform.     

TTIP and legislative‒executive relations in EU trade policy

Abstract

This paper analyses Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership (TTIP) negotiations in order to assess how the move towards tighter economic integration within the EU?US strategic partnership impacts on legislative?executive relations in EU trade policy. The analysis examines the institutional, substantive and party political dimensions of national parliaments’ scrutiny of the Common Commercial Policy. Based on insights into both domestic and EU channels of parliamentary monitoring of TTIP negotiations, the paper argues that, although the government remains the central object of democratic control, the involvement of national parliaments in transatlantic trade extends to encompass the EU’s own transatlantic and trade policies. This is rooted in the legislatures’ legal capacity to constrain the executive in the negotiation, conclusion and, where applicable, ratification phases of EU trade agreements. It is argued that national parliamentary influence takes the shape of politicisation of the legitimacy of the expected policy outcomes of these agreements.     

Why Do Autonomous Public Agencies Use Performance Management Techniques? Revisiting the Role of Basic Organizational Characteristics

This study investigates to what extent the use of different performance management techniques within (semi-) autonomous public sector organizations, also called public agencies, can be explained by the defining organizational features of such organizations. Using multi-country survey data of over 400 public agencies, the effect of these features—internal performance target setting and monitoring, multi-year planning, as well as the internal performance-based allocation of resources—upon three performance management techniques has been studied. This set-up recognizes differences among management techniques, as well as recurring factors, allowing us to make more general statements. Analyses illustrate that external result control by the minister and parent ministry positively affects the use of all performance management techniques examined in public agencies. However, each performance management technique is affected differently by specific organizational variables.     

Administrative Styles in the OECD: Bureaucratic Policy-Making beyond Formal Rules

As we know from comparative public policy, bureaucracies contribute to a considerable degree to the contents and the ways of policy-making. One important driver of administrative policy-making are their specific “styles” or “cultures”. “Administrative styles” are understood here as the standard operating procedures and routines that characterize the behavior and activities of administrative bodies in initiating, drafting and implementing policy. In this article, we convey the concept of Administrative Styles to the level of International Organizations (IOs) and apply it to the Organization for Economic Development and Co-Operation (OECD). The article proceeds in three steps: First, the concept of administrative styles is introduced and refined. Drawing on expert interviews with OECD staff, we secondly show that consideration of OECD administrative styles significantly advances the literature’s understanding of the organization. Finally, we give an outlook on new research avenues and the relevance of our findings for the study of International Public Administrations (IPAs) more generally.     

African farmer-led irrigation development: re-framing agricultural policy and investment?

The past decade has witnessed an intensifying focus on the development of irrigation in sub-Saharan Africa. It follows a 20-year hiatus in the wake of disappointing irrigation performance during the 1970s and 1980s. Persistent low productivity in African agriculture and vulnerability of African food supplies to increasing instability in international commodity markets are driving pan-African agricultural investment initiatives, such as the Comprehensive Africa Agricultural Development Programme (CAADP), that identify as a priority the improvement in reliability of water control for agriculture. The paper argues that, for such initiatives to be effective, there needs to be a re-appraisal of current dynamics of irrigation development in sub-Saharan Africa, particularly with respect to the role of small-scale producers’ initiatives in expanding irrigation. The paper reviews the principal forms such initiatives take and argues that official narratives and statistics on African irrigation often underestimate the extent of such activities. The paper identifies five key characteristics which, it argues, contradict widely held assumptions that inform irrigation policy in Africa. The paper concludes by offering a definition of ‘farmer-led irrigation’ that embraces a range of interaction between producers and commercial, government and non-government agencies, and identifies priority areas for research on the growth potential and impact of such interactions and strategies for their future development.