The Burger Court's View of the Relationship Between the States and Their Municipalities

This article examines selected Burger Court cases concerningmunicipal antitrust immunity in order to determine whether theU.S. Supreme Court has a theoretical perspective on the relationshipbetween the states and their municipalities. After delineatingthe constitutional position of municipalities through an examinationof key Court cases and Dillon's rule, the study explores thederivative status of state-action immunity to municipalitiesin antitrust suits. In two significant cases, including oneinvolving a home rule city, the Burger Court has refused togrant municipalities the state-action exemption granted statesunder the Sherman Act. But, in reinforcing the unitary relationshipbetween the states and their municipalities, the Court has notaddressed Dillon's rule or the ambiguities inherent in denyingmunicipalities the residual powers of local self-government.     

Le modéle-idéal de gestion des professionnels: le point de vue des gestionnaires

Sommaire: Le nombre de professionnels salariés croict de façon réguliere sur le marche du travail. Pourtant, selon certains auteurs, les grandes organisations bureaucratiques n'auraient pas suffisamment pris en compte les aspirations et valeurs des travailleurs intellectuels. II existerait, dans le secteur public, un malaise generalise et constaté, y compris le sentiment de nombreux professionnels que leur organisation ne les valorise pas vraiment. Pour satisfaire leurs aspirations, il s'agirait de mettre en place des pratiques de gestion des ressources humaines innovatrices favorisant une meilleure atmosphère de travail, une nouvelle forme de pensée oú l'integrite professionnelle et les finalites organisationnelles seraient maintenues et valorisées. Le but de l'article est de cerner le point de vue des gestionnaires sur la façon de gerer la main-d'oeuvre professionnelle dans leurs organisations. Cette analyse sera effectuee a partir du modele-idéal de gestion des professionnels. Notre etude démontre qu'il serait possible de satisfaire davantage les aspirations professionnelles en matière d'intégration des nouveaux employés, d'appreciation du travail par le superieur, d'amenagement du temps de travail, de signature du travail et d'autonomie. Cependant, les besoins de participation, de communication, de developpe-ment de la carriere et de responsabilisation des professionnels seraient plus difficiles a combler dans des milieux de travail ou il y a centralisation de la prise de decision. Enfin, en matière de mobilite, les aspirations professionnelles seraient limitees par diverses clauses de conventions collectives, de meme que par le type de culture qui existe actuellement dans les organisations du secteur public. Abstract: The number of salaried professionals in the labour market is growing steadily. According to some writers, however, large bureaucratic organizations have not taken sufficient account of the values and expectations of non-manual workers. These writers contend that within the public sector a generalized malaise is expressed in several ways, including the feeling among many professionals that they are not truly appreciated by their organization. To deal with these expectations, innovative human resources management practices should be adopted to promote a better work atmosphere and new thinking through which professional integrity and organizational purposes could be maintained and enhanced. This article seeks to define the perspective of managers on the management of professional employees within their organizations. The analysis begins with the presentation of an ideal model of professional management and shows that it is possible to meet more effectively professional expectations in the field of new-employee integration, work appréciation by superiors, timetable adjustments, work recognition and responsibility. Satisfying professional needs for participation, communication, career development arid empowerment would be more difficult in organizations where decision-making is centralized. Finally, regarding mobility, professional expectations would be limited by several collective-agreement clauses, as well as by the type of corporate culture that presently prevails in public-sector organizations.     

Socialist Intergovernmental Policy During the Mitterrand Era

Many observers of French politics see intergovernmental decentralizationas President Mitterrand's most impressive domestic policy accomplishment.This article assesses the current state of affairs in the Frenchintergovernmental system by focusing on how Socialist reformshave altered relations among levels since the early 1980s. Itexamines the Mitterrand government's most recent effort to addressremaining nettlesome issues in a system that is, ten years afterthe first legislation, still very much influx. Using evolutionin intergovernmental finances as an indicator of changing center/peripheryrelations, this study reveals both fundamental transformationsand significant continuity in the French system.     

New Public Management and ‘Photocopy’ Bargaining in the Australian Public Service

The industrial relations policy of the Federal Coalition Government is to encourage industrial bargaining to occur at the enterprise or individual level, free from ‘outside’ influences. While it encourages devolved bargaining at the agency and individual level within the Public Service (Australian Public Service) this policy creates tensions with its role as a centralized policy maker, economic manager and employer of the APS workforce. It also conflicts with the APS' adoption of New Public Management. In practice, the government retains considerable centralised control over agency bargaining outcomes, which is a de facto method of pattern bargaining. By analysing the substantive outcomes from nine APS agency level certified agreements (hours of work, pay and leave entitlements), the article discusses whether this one size fits all' model is evidence of an appreciation that public sector industrial relations is separate and distinct from private sector industrial relations, or another example of duplicity in the federal coalition government's ideology driven approach to industrial relations.     

Hidden transcripts: The micropolitics of gender in Commonwealth universities

The knowledge economy is a globalised policy discourse which relates particularly to higher education. The findings from the empirical data in the five countries, backed up by international literature, suggest that for many women, entry into higher education can be a means of mitigating gender oppression e.g. via social mobility, financial independence, professional identity and academic authority. However, this is accompanied by contradictions and tensions as women experience a range of discriminatory practices, gendered processes and exclusions within higher education itself. Women report male privilege in pedagogical processes, assessment, promotion and research opportunities and management. A repeated theme is how women perceive fewer opportunities to develop academic capital and how women's professional and intellectual capital are devalued and misrecognised in the knowledge economy.All five countries reported that gender has a significant impact on academic and professional identity formation. Gendered power relations symbolically and materially construct and regulate women's everyday experiences of higher education. Similar concerns about women's unequal status are articulated in spite of different socio-economic and national policy contexts. The gendered environment impedes women's progress as staff and has a detrimental effect on the learning environment for students. Gendered differences are relayed and reinforced in classrooms, boardrooms, and via everyday social practices. These practices need to be exposed and challenged in order for the wider aspirations of gender equity policy initiatives to be achieved.

Endnote

¹ This means something below standard, of poor quality.     

How women use family networks to facilitate migration: A comparative study of Irish and Polish women in Britain

Within migration studies there has been a tendency to focus on a single case study of a particular national group. Adopting a comparative approach may raise new and interesting questions or challenge conventional thinking on migration. While on the surface, at least, Irish and Polish migrants would appear to have many commonalities, there has been surprisingly little comparative analysis of these two groups. Drawing on my own research on these migrants in the British context, I focus on women as a large but under-researched aspect of both groups. This paper suggests ways in which such a comparison could be undertaken by using social networks as a useful comparative tool. A social networks perspective not only allows a probing analysis of migration strategies, but also provides a framework within which to compare across different migrant groups, such as for example, examining the role of family networks (here and there) in migration processes. In addition, this approach enables an examination of dynamism over time and how migrants develop relationships within spatially dispersed as well as locally embedded ties.     

Quotas: changing the way things look without changing the way things are

This paper argues that while quotas can quite easily be used rapidly to address the problem of insufficient numbers of women in representative political institutions, effective representation requires us to pay attention to far more than merely the numbers of women present. This article suggests that, in particular, we need to look at which kinds of women are made present by quotas, how these women gain office and what they do once they are there. Using the South African example as a case in point, the paper suggests that where women become representatives through mechanisms controlled by party political hierarchies rather than by way of more broad-based political processes reflecting real social change, quotas can act to legitimate and perpetuate women's actual absence of power rather than being an effective remedy.     

Adding Value to an Arena Legislature? A Preliminary Examination of Topical Debates in the British House of Commons

The introduction of the topical debate mechanism in the autumn of 2007 sought to enhance the contemporary nature of debate in the British House of Commons and to increase opportunities for the participation of backbench MPs. Though experimental in the first instance, these debates have since become an entrenched feature of parliamentary life. This note seeks to assess the impact of topical debates on a legislature which has long been characterised by the strength of its plenary sessions. Analysis of the topical debates held during the 2007–08 parliamentary session demonstrates that topic selection has indeed been broad, examining issues of both national and constituency concerns. Whilst there has been no extraordinary change in the House, the use of topical debates by backbench opposition MPs in particular is significant and has the potential to add considerable value to the House of Commons as an arena legislature.