New Public Management Meets Civic Discontent? TheAustralian Public Service in 1999

The new millennium brings with it an irresistible urge to reflect. In particular, to reflect on the social, political and economic dimensions of our lives. We recently revisited our constitutional beginnings and chose to retain what our forefathers bequeathed to us. Yet, by contrast, with respect to the way our nation state is administered, we have witnessed significant change. We now have a public service that our forefathers would barely recognise.     

Making Rights Work: Legal Mobilization at the Agency Level

This article discusses how McCann's theory on legal mobilization and social change is generalizable to the legal decisions of agencies. I demonstrate how the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) routinely delayed and denied Title VII employment rights on the basis of sex and how this resulted in the formation of the National Organization for Women (NOW) to ensure that the sex provision of Title VII was enforced. The article also discusses the influence of NOW in shaping the first years of Title VII law and the organization's role in reversing EEOC decisions denying rights under the sex provision of the law.     

‘Behind the blessed shelter of the microphone’: managing celebrity and career on the early BBC—Mabel Constanduros, 1925–1957

Mabel Constanduros was a much-loved radio star on the BBC for over thirty years. Best known as the creator and performer of the comedic Cockney family, the Bugginses, she also wrote and performed in numerous dramatic works and novel adaptations, and penned over one hundred plays and novels. Furthermore, she was a pioneer of both British situation comedy and soap opera. Yet, to date, there has been no serious academic attempt to understand Constanduros's life, craft, or influence on twentieth-century British popular culture. In addition to biographical recovery, this article analyses Constanduros's public and private personas in order to open a much-needed conversation about the contours of women's experiences on radio in the early days of the BBC.     

How Structural Variations in Collaborative Governance Networks Influence Advocacy Involvement and Outcomes

Collaborative governance is intended to solve complex problems and promote democratic outcomes by connecting ground‐level stakeholders with government. In order for these goals to be met, however, participants must have meaningful influence and opportunities for voice. Using national survey data from Continuums of Care (CoCs) mandated by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, this article investigates what structural characteristics of collaborative governance networks are related to promoting stakeholder inclusion and voice through policy advocacy involvement. Specifically, it investigates which network characteristics are associated with (1) the frequency of advocacy involvement by the network, (2) providers' engagement in and influence over that advocacy, and (3) the CoC having stronger relationships with policy makers. Findings show significant relationships between greater network capacity and network advocacy, and between network governance structure and provider engagement and influence in that advocacy. Networks have stronger relationships with policy makers when providers are more engaged, providers have more influence, network capacity is higher, and direct advocacy tactics are used.     

Social Networks and Protest Participation: Evidence from 130 Million Twitter Users

Pinning down the role of social ties in the decision to protest has been notoriously elusive, largely due to data limitations. Social media and their global use by protesters offer an unprecedented opportunity to observe real‐time social ties and online behavior, though often without an attendant measure of real‐world behavior. We collect data on Twitter activity during the 2015 Charlie Hebdo protest in Paris, which, unusually, record real‐world protest attendance and network structure measured beyond egocentric networks. We devise a test of social theories of protest that hold that participation depends on exposure to others' intentions and network position determines exposure. Our findings are strongly consistent with these theories, showing that protesters are significantly more connected to one another via direct, indirect, triadic, and reciprocated ties than comparable nonprotesters. These results offer the first large‐scale empirical support for the claim that social network structure has consequences for protest participation.