Changing the design: cabinet decision-making in three provincial governments

Abstract: The subject of this investigation is cabinet decision-making in the provincial governments of Saskatchewan, Manitoba, and British Columbia. Specifically, it attempts to examine the forces that underlie the initiation and persistence of cabinet institutionalization in the postwar period. The postwar period has witnessed the replacement of the unaided (or traditional) cabinet by the institutionalized (or structured) cabinet. In other words, unstructured and relatively uncoordinated central executives have given way to those which are more structured, more collegial, and more prone to emphasize planning and coordination. The factors promoting initial cabinet institutionalization in the three provinces were a mixture of ideology, pragmatism, and historical precedent unique to each province. There were both endogenous factors (those growing from within government) and exogenous factors (those acting from without) which affected the persistence of institutionalized cabinets. They were common to more than one province but their relative weight differed between premiers. Not surprisingly, the institutionalization of provincial cabinets has had major effects on political actors and functions in the three provinces studied. Cabinet structure has both changed and been changed by power relations within cabinet. Full cabinet appears to have been overshadowed as a decision-making center. It is apparent that central agencies and central departments do not always yield similar political effects. Lastly, planning and budgeting have grown in both complexity and complementarily. Sommaire: Cette enquête traite du le processus décisionnel au sein du Conceal des ministers dans les governments provinciaux de la Saskatchewan, du Manitoba et de la Colombie-Britannique. Plus précisément, elle cherche B examiner les forces qui ont favorisé l'apparition puis le maintien de l'institutionnalisation des Conseils des ministres au cours de l'après-guerre.     

Rethinking Academic Entrepreneurship: University Governance and the Emergence of the Academic Enterprise

The theory and practice of academic entrepreneurship, like many domains of public management, requires active recognition that context affects individual behavior. In this Viewpoint essay, the authors contend that the operational logic of a university affects the values and activities of actors within that university in ways that shape the broader entrepreneurial activities of the university. The authors describe a new entrepreneurial organizational logic, termed the “academic enterprise,” and situate it in relation to the more established academy, bureaucratic, and market logics. The academic enterprise is inherently entrepreneurial in terms of the management of the university and its reliance on faculty and student entrepreneurship as a tool for broad-scale social and economic transformation.     

The Ironies of Helping: Social Interventions and Executable Subjects

Law and society scholars have theorized about the link between capital punishment and the hegemony of individualism, but few offer empirical investigations to illustrate how individualism makes capital punishment possible (and vice versa) in the contemporary United States. In order to fill this gap, we analyze the legal and human service records that were compiled in the construction of one executable subject, Daniel Farnsworth. Using a critical discourse approach, we look at what was said and not said about Daniel in the records created by various helping agencies. In our analysis, we demonstrate how the helping agencies involved in Daniel's life repeatedly relied on an individuating psychological paradigm that led them to produce decontextualized catalogs of his actions and characteristics. Next, we illustrate how these pathologizing accounts were, ironically, later invoked in court in the name of preserving his life. Finally, we explain how "helping" discourses, along with the rules that regulate capital defense practice, straightjacket defense attorneys into reinforcing individualism in this context.     

Walking the walk vs. talking the talk： A comparative analysis of the ASA and ASPA ethics initiatives

The American Sociological Association and the American Society for Public Administration are widely recognized as being among the premier professional associations in their respective fields within academia and beyond. Although a commitment to the promotion of ethical competence among their members is clearly viewed by both organizations as being central to the accomplishment of their missions, their techniques for doing so have included both similar and unique initiatives. It is the purpose of this paper to provide a comprehensive, comparative inventory of their ethics-related programs with a view toward determining if the establishment of what would appear to be a mutually beneficial, collaborative relationship between the ASA and ASPA in the ethics arena should be pursued.     

Beyond Horror: Terrorist Atrocity and the Search for Understanding-- The Case of the Shankill Bombing

The old order has broken up. We have reached the end of a postwar world whose premises were based on terror, but whose conditions had become familiar, and even comforting, over the years. The waters we are now entering are unchartered and perhaps treacherous, and we are not likely to steer safely through them unless we have the courage to question the old assumptions which once seemed eternal and have now become so threadbare.     

Short notes on some books received

Africa's Management in the 1990s and Beyond: Reconciling Indigenous and Transplanted Institutions. By Mamadou Dia. Washington, DC: The World Bank, 1996. Pp.xii + 293. NP. ISBN 0 8213 3431 X

A Land Without Gods: Process Theory, Maldevelopment and the Mexican Nahuas. By Jacques M. Chevalier and Daniel Buckles. London: Zed Books, 1995. Pp.x + 374. £55.00/$69.95 and £19.95/$29.95. ISBN 1 85649 325 3 and 326 1

Local Resource Management in Africa. Edited by J.P.M. van den Breemer, C.A. Drijver and L.B. Venema. Chichester: John Wiley, 1995. Pp.xii + 245. £40. ISBN 0 47196004 7

Third World Cities in Global Perspective: The Political Economy of Uneven Urbanization. By David A. Smith. Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996. Pp.xiii + 202. £40.95 and £13.50. ISBN 0 8133 8720 5 and 2998 1

Power of Development. Edited by Jonathon Crush. London and New York: Routledge, 1995. Pp.xvi + 324. £35 and £ 14.99. ISBN 0 415 11176 5 and 11177 3

Financial Liberalisation and Investment. By K.L. Gupta and R. Lensink. London: Routledge, 1996. Pp.xii + 183. £40. ISBN 0 415 13879 5

Anthropology of Tourism. By Denison Nash. Oxford, New York and Tokyo: Pergamon, 1996. Pp.ix + 205. £41/US$66. ISBN 0 0804 42398 1

Politics of Technology in Latin America. Edited by Maria Ines Bastos and Charles Cooper. London and New York: Routledge, 1995. Pp.xii + 258. £47.50. ISBN 0 415 12690

Voices from Mutira: Change in the Lives of Rural Gikuyu Women: 1910–1995. By Jean Davison. Boulder, CO and London: Lynne Reinner Publisher, 1996. Pp.vi + 271. £18.95. ISBN 1 55587 602 1

Women and Politics in the Third World. Edited by Haleh Afshar London: Croom Helm, 1996. Pp.xi + 210. £40 and £12.99. ISBN 0 415 13853 1 and 13861

Re‐Presenting the City: Ethnicity, Capital and Culture in the Twenty‐First Century Metropolis. Edited by Anthony D. King. Basingstoke: Macmillan, 1996. Pp.ix + 282. £42.50 and £13.99. ISBN 0 333 60191 2 and 60192 0

Women and Industrialization in Asia Edited by Susan Horton, London and New York: Routledge, 1996. £50. ISBN 0415 12907 9

Enterprise and the State in Korea and Taiwan. By Karl J. Fields. Ithaca, NY and London: Cornell University Press, 1995. Pp.xiv + 269. NP. ISBN 0 8014 3009 7