Shaping participation: an international NGO implementing a government participation policy

This article reports on a case study of how one NGO utilised a government participation policy to establish ostensibly participatory spaces in the Cambodian health sector. The ethnographic field study revealed how the NGO exerted influence in establishing and facilitating participative committees by controlling membership, resources, and meeting agendas. This resulted in limited citizen participation, with committees used to educate, lobby, and mobilise community leaders to work towards the NGO’s priorities rather than community identified needs. This case contributes to our understanding of insisted spaces and the role of third parties implementing government participation policies.     

“We don’t want to hear about discrimination”: Evidence slippage and evidence invention in the politics of foreign credential recognition in Canada

This article investigates how Canadian politicians engaged with evidence on foreign credential recognition in 2009. We find that some evidence receives decreasing attention over time, that some politicians bring forward explanations that have nothing to do with the evidence, and that most politicians hold the same position before and after the process of evidence‐gathering. These findings cast doubt on the extent to which politicians use evidence to inform their position on immigration‐related issues, even when they explicitly solicit it.     

Identification of adrafinil and its main metabolite modafinil in human hair. Self-administration study and interpretation of an authentic case

For several years, the misuse of stimulant substances is increasingly observed both in the field of sport, to improve the functions of the body and therefore to be more performant, and also by non-athletes to make life more tolerable on a daily basis. Adrafinil, 2-((diphenylmethyl)sulfinyl)-N-hydroxyacetamide, is a drug designed for the treatment of narcolepsy by promoting an awakened state, and to treat alertness and neurological symptoms in the elderly. It is primarily metabolized in vivo to an active form, i.e. modafinil, 2-((diphenylmethyl)sulfinyl)acetamide. The World Anti-Doping Agency (WADA) banned these two drugs in sports in 2004. The authors report an authentic case involving adrafinil and modafinil. The laboratory was requested to test for adrafinil in a hair strand collected from a woman found in possession of vials of adrafinil and suspected of trafficking. A specific method was developed by liquid chromatography tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS). Unlike modafinil (varying from 6.8 to 13.9 ng/mg), adrafinil was not identified in the strand. The interpretation of the results was difficult because this is the first case describing human hair analysis. In order to be able to interpret the results, a self-administration study was conducted after an oral administration to a volunteer (200 mg) whose beard hair was collected 10 days after administration. The analysis of this specimen highlighted the presence of adrafinil at 0.8 ng/mg and modafinil at 0.5 ng/mg. These results demonstrate the dual identification of both compounds after a single consumption, even after administration of a low dose. According to these results, the analysis of the hair strand from the authentic case does not match with a consumption of adrafinil, in accordance with abuse of modafinil alone. Intelligence considered that this was a trafficking case of adrafinil, with no self-consumption.     

Reluctant policy innovation through profit concession and informality tolerance: A strategic relational view of policy entrepreneurship in China's urban redevelopment

This paper engages with the theoretical perspective of policy entrepreneurship to examine the pattern and process of policy change in the context of China's urban redevelopment. Drawing upon a strategic-relational reinterpretation of policy entrepreneurship, this paper identifies a distinctive form of reluctant policy innovation in the “three old renewals” scheme initiated in Guangzhou where profit concession and informality tolerance were practiced to create a small window of opportunity for the project of urban redevelopment to break ground. The motivation of policy entrepreneurship in the successful urban renewal projects in Guangzhou was heavily contingent upon the geographically important location of the project site and the historically incidence of hosting the 2010 Asian Games, which forced municipal government to become entrepreneurial and innovative in decision making and income redistribution in order to get things done as quickly as possible. The distinct fashion of policy innovation identified in the case of Guangzhou points to the polymorphous and dynamic nature of policy entrepreneurship and advocates a relational treatment of the strategies and motives of policy entrepreneurs embedded in concrete geographical and historical context.     

Ideological extremism and electoral design. Multimember versus single member districts

Relying on a formal theoretical model, Gary Cox demonstrates that single member districts induce candidates toward policy positions at their constituency median while multimember districts encourage dispersion. We test this theoretical implication in the context of the Arizona state legislature, in which each legislative district chooses one senator and two representatives in single member and multimember contests respectively. To do so, we generate W-NOMINATE estimates of scores based on roll-call data from the Arizona state legislature that are comparable across chambers (Senate and House). Our results are substantially less supportive of the formal theory than are those of prior studies.     

Public‐private partnerships in Canada: Theory and evidence

Abstract: This article develops some theory on and examines the implementation and performance of Canadian public‐private partnerships (P3s). It focuses primarily on infrastructure projects and addresses three questions: 1) What goals do governments expect to achieve through P3s? 2) How effective are P3s likely to be at delivering value to governments and citizens? 3) What lessons can be derived from the use of P3s? The article reviews the government's intended social goals for P3s and evaluates how effective P3s have been in fulfilling them. It then formulates a more comprehensive framework and outlines a “positive theory” perspective of P3s that takes into account the divergent goals of the partners – profit maximization goals of private‐sector participants and the political goals of the public sector. The article evaluates and summarizes the findings and implications of ten Canadian P3s. The appropriate test of success, from a social (normative) perspective, is whether P3s have lower total social costs, including production costs and all of the transaction costs and externalities associated with the project. The ten case studies indicate that the potential benefits of P3s are often outweighed by high contracting costs due to opportunism generated by goal conflict. These costs are particularly high when construction or operating complexity is high, revenue uncertainty (use‐risk) is high, both of these risks have been transferred to the private‐sector partner, and contract management effectiveness is poor. In infrastructure projects, it rarely makes sense to try to transfer large amounts of risk to the private sector. Sommaire: Le présent article élabore une théorie et examine la mise en œuvre et la performance de partenariats des secteurs public/privé canadiens (P3). Il se penche essentiellement sur des projets d'infrastructure et aborde quatre questions : 1) quels objectifs les gouvernements prévoient‐ils atteindre en ayant recours aux P3 ? 2) Dans quelle mesure les P3 seront efficaces à fournir de la valeur aux gouvernements et aux citoyens ? 3) Quelles leçons peut‐on tirer des P3? L'article passe en revue les justifications normatives avancées par le gouvernement pour les P3 et examine leur efficacité. Ensuite, il formule un cadre normatif plus exhaustif. Puis, il présente les grandes lignes d'une perspective de «théorie positive» des P3 en tenant compte des objectifs divergents des partenaires : à savoir, les objectifs de maximisation des profits pour les participants du secteur privé et les objectifs politiques du secteur public. Par la suite, l'article passe en revue et évalue dix études de cas de P3 canadiens. Le test du succès, selon une perspective (normative) sociale, consiste à déterminer si les P3 ont des coûts sociaux totaux inférieurs, y compris les coûts de production, et tous les coûts de transactions et coûts externes associés au projet. Les dix études de cas indiquent que les avantages potentiels des P3 sont souvent surpassés par les frais élevés de passation de contrats dûs à l'opportunisme généré par les conflits en matière d'objectifs. Ces coûts sont particulièrement élevés lorsque la complexité de la construction ou de l'exploitation est élevée et que l'incertitude des revenus (le risque d'utilisation) est forte, que ces deux risques ont été transférés au partenaire du secteur privé, et que l'efficacité de la gestion du contrat est médiocre. Dans les projets d'infrastructure, il est souvent absurde d'essayer de transférer de grands montants de risque d'utilisation au secteur privé.     

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