Co‐production: Option or Obligation?

Co‐production is an idea being discussed in the international public management literature but less so in New Zealand and Australia. Co‐production rejects the idea of service delivery to passive users, proposing instead they be treated as active participants in the production of outcomes. As partners in delivery, users bring resources, skills and capabilities to their interactions with providers. Co‐production requires providers to share power and negotiate the interaction. There are strong managerial reasons for adopting co‐production to improve effectiveness and efficiency. But the political reasons for adopting co‐production are even stronger because of trends of many decades towards greater citizen participation. These reasons oblige public managers in Australasia to adopt co‐production in many fields of policy as part of the future.     

Pre‐existing condition: Taking media coverage into account when preparing for H1N1

This article examines the claim that the media exaggerated the threat of H1N1, prompting an immediate demand for limited vaccine. We compare The Australian's and the Daily Telegraph's coverage of H1N1 with that of The Globe and Mail, which was comparatively critical of government performance. The events of October 2009 underscore the difficulty and importance of responding to media coverage of “uncertain risks” (Renn 2008 ), risks for which there is a lack of scientific basis for decision making and potentially generate anxious public responses.     

THE SOCIETY'S TOUR OF BHUTAN, 13–29 OCTOBER 2016

This article provides an account of the 2016 RSAA tour to Bhutan. It includes: a brief history of the country; an account of travel including visits to Paro, Punakha, Bumthang, Trongsa, Gangtey, Punakha, and Thimphu, and reflections on the current state of the country based on the tour.     

In search of criminological tradition: the development of criminology in Taiwan

There has been a growing interest in the historical development of criminology(ies) throughout the world. This paper examines the development of criminology in Taiwan (Republic of China) using both questionnaire and interview data. Textbooks, institutional development, and research activity are taken as proxy measures of a criminological tradition. Beginning with criminology in Republican China (1929–1949), the article explores the key features of change in criminology against the background of Taiwan's own particular adoption of social, political and economic ‘modernisation’. Foreign influence and the contemporary meaning of ‘indigenous’ are considered. The article ends with a research agenda for a grounded historical sociology of criminology on Taiwan; key identified research questions relate to sponsorship, research priorities and the production of criminological knowledge; the reception of research by policy communities and practitioners; the relationship between criminological knowledge and politics; and the processes of selective appropriation.