Newspaper Reporting and Changing Perceptions of Ministerial Accountability in Australia

Throughout the developed world, there is a general perception that politicians are more corrupt than they used to be. In Australia these claims appear to be supported in recent decades by far more calls for ministers to resign. In this article we argue that the perception of declining quality in our federal government ministers is the result of much greater media attention, the rise of new controversial cross‐cutting issues and changing cultural attitudes rather than declining parliamentary and ministerial standards. We argue that the belief that politicians are more corrupt or less trustworthy than they used to be has arisen because they are now much more comprehensively reported upon; and we suggest that ministerial accountability might have been enhanced by more extensive media coverage.     

Resource Tangibility and the Evolution of a Publicly Funded Health and Human Services Network

This article is a longitudinal examination of a publicly funded network of health and human services organizations that provide services to mentally ill adults. Data were collected at two points in time from a single network in a large U.S. metropolitan area: when the network was completely reorganized, and again when it had matured, four years later. Analysis focuses on changes in the patterns of interaction within and across five resource‐based subnetworks. The authors argue that the structure of network relationships depends on the type of resources involved—whether tangible or intangible, the stage of network evolution, and whether macro‐ or micro‐level interactions are considered. Implications for theory and for network management, governance, and policy are discussed.     

City government structure: are some institutions undersupplied?

City councilors have a vested interest in maintaining the local government structure that got them elected. This resistance to change may result in non-optimal supplies of particular local political institutions as cities and metropolitan areas experience changes in population and diversity. Using unique data from the State of Florida, we show that there is an undersupply of cities offering larger council sizes. Our evidence also suggests that there is no undersupply of cities with the mayor-council versus the council-manager form of government or cities with at-large versus district election methods.     

The Implications of the ASLEF Case

The decision of the European Court of Human Rights in ASLEFv United Kingdom (27 February 2007) will require the governmentto re-visit the law relating to the right of trade unions toexclude and expel individuals because of their membership ofpolitical organisations perceived by trade unions to be hostileto their interests. It is now clear—as was pointed outat the time—that the changes made by the Employment RelationsAct 2004 do not go far enough to meet obligations under theEuropean Convention on Human Rights (ECHR). However, the casealso raises much wider questions about the compatibility ofother statutory restraints on trade union autonomy with Article11 of the ECHR, notably ss 64–67 (on unjustifiable discipline)and 174–177 (on exclusion and expulsion as a whole, andnot only the measures relating to membership of hostile politicalparties). This article considers both the immediate and thewider implications of the ASLEF decision for British trade unionlaw, in the context of what appears to be a greater willingnessof the Strasbourg Court to listen more carefully to trade uniongrievances than in the past. The article also draws attentionto the role of litigation as a trade union strategy to recoverlost rights, and again emphasises the importance of InternationalLabour Organisation Convention 87 and the Council of Europe'sSocial Charter of 1961 (as well as the jurisprudence thereunder)as important sources in the construction of the ECHR, Article11.     

Measuring Network Structure

Networks have been a research issue in public administration for many years. Because of the difficulty of measuring networks, they have often been treated as a metaphor, a conceptual scheme, or a management technique (networking). The work on networks in public administration is almost all of the case study and rarely of the comparative case variety. This article presents the results of two studies of networks using social network analysis as a technique for studying structural relationships between organizations. This technique is utilized to show both the research and practical potential of network analysis as an evaluation methodology for organizations that jointly produce a service. In the first study, the network provides mental health services to seriously mentally ill adults. In the second study, the network attempts to prevent young people from abusing drugs and alcohol. The two studies were undertaken for different reasons. The first was an elaborate comparative study of four mental health networks and the relationship between network design and performance. The second was a much simpler consulting effort to help a local prevention partnership create linkages to other community organizations. However, in both of the studies the goal was to measure the structural ties in the network based on various types of relationships that exist in a given field of practice. These linkages are ties that bind the network together and become data that can be used to compare networks on their degree and type of integration. The article makes the argument that links in a network are one way that scholars can compare networks in similar or different policy domains. At the same time, the article argues that analysing linkages in an organization's network is an effective and practical means of determining how well integrated any given organization is in a network.     

The Rehnquist Court and Indigenous Rights: The Expedited Diminution of Native Powers of Governance

The U.S. Supreme Court has long played a prominent role in defining,critiquing, and, in some cases, rearranging the political relationshipbetween indigenous peoples and the states and the federal government,and in enlarging or reducing the inherent sovereign status ofnative peoples. This article assesses the most recent SupremeCourt opinions that are systematically, and without referenceto judicial precedent, redefining the political status of tribalnations by reducing their heretofore acknowledged sovereignauthority from an internal perspective and especially from anintergovernmental standpoint. Although the U.S. Congress stilladheres to a policy of tribal self-determination, the Courtis dramatically and permanently minimizing the rights of tribesto practice political, economic, and cultural self-determinationbecause in the opinion of a majority of the justices, thereare only two sovereigns in the United States: states and thefederal government.