Cultural Authenticity and Liberal Democracy: A Reply to Colin Tyler

This paper takes issue with Colin Tyler's critique of Bhikhu Parekh's work on liberalism and cultural pluralism in his 'The Implications of Parekh's Cultural Pluralism', Politics 16(3). I argue that Tyler subscribes to an overly monolithic view of cultural identity, that democracy can be a procedural or practical ideal not a cultural understanding, and that in any case the existence of deep-seated cultural pluralism is a good reason for rethinking democratic values and endorsing a republican, rather than liberal, conception of democracy.     

The Impact of Electoral Reform on the Public Service: The New Zealand Case

October 1996 marked the beginning of a new era in New Zealand politics, with the advent of a system of proportional representation based on the German model. This article explores the impact of electoral reform on the public service. First, it summarises the extensive public sector reforms during the mid-to-late 1980s and considers the preparations undertaken by the public service for proportional representation. Second, it outlines the concerns and expectations about the likely consequences of the new electoral system on the bureaucracy. Third, against this background, the article examines the extent to which the public service has been affected by electoral reform. It is argued that despite some notable changes to the political environment within which officials operate, the overall impact of proportional representation on the public service to date has been modest. The analysis presented here is based on a series of interviews conducted during 1997 with ministers, senior public servants, ministerial advisers and parliamentary officials, along with a range of secondary sources.     

The pilot technology access program: A federal experiment in technology transfer

In 1990, Congress authorized the creation of a pilot Technology Access Program (TAP), to be administered jointly by the Small Business Administration and the National Institute of Standards and Technology. TAP, modelled substantially on a Minnesota state program, will subsidize access by small businesses to [1] a network of several thousand peer-recommended technical experts across the country and [2] interactive searching of technical and business literature databases. Preliminary evidence, from two surveys of random samples of companies that subscribe to the Minnesota service, indicate that this form of technology transfer is effective and could have a substantial positive impact on the productivity of small companies. If the pilot TAP program is successful, it could serve as the basis for a national technical-extension service.     

The Role of "Enemy Images" and Ideology of Elite Belief Systems

We use data from the Leadership Opinion Project (LOP), a panel survey of American opinion leaders which brackets the end of the Cold War, to investigate two interrelated questions about the structure of elites' foreign policy beliefs. We assess, first, whether the militant internationalism/cooperative internationalism scheme, developed primarily by Wittkopf (1981, 1990) and Holsti and Rosenau (1990), has continued relevance now that the USSR has collapsed; and second, whether Hurwitz and Peffley's (1987, 1990; see also Peffley and Hurwitz, 1992; Hurwitz, Peffley, and Seligson, 1993) domain-specific, hierarchical model of mass belief structure can be applied to elite belief systems. The evidence indicates that respondents' past stances toward military and cooperative ventures are highly predictive of their views once the Cold War ends. This continuity in leaders' postures toward international affairs, in itself, suggests that "enemy images" of the Soviet Union were less important within elite belief systems than Hurwitz and Peffley (1990; see also Peffley and Hurwitz, 1992) posited for the mass public. The starkest difference, however, between their findings for mass samples and our findings for a leadership sample centers on the importance of ideology in constraining foreign policy beliefs, and the close interconnection with domestic beliefs. Consequently, as we illustrate, predictable ideological divisions among opinion leaders persist in the post–Cold War era. In sum, our evidence demonstrates considerable continuity in elites' beliefs despite profound changes in the global system, and reaffirms the importance that ideology plays in structuring attitudes within elite belief systems.     

Living in an Age of Precarity in 21st Century Asia

ABSTRACT

The term “precarity” pays attention to the various ways in which policies and processes that promote economic growth can also, at the same time, induce a state of precarity or precarious living. In this introductory article, we interrogate one of the paradoxes of Asian development: greater precarity set against the backdrop of an economic “miracle.” The focus is on how policies and processes that are part of neo-liberal orthodoxy create new forms of marginalisation or precarity and new classes of the marginalised or the precariat. These include: transnational migrants without basic protection; factory workers employed on casual contracts; elderly with no old age state support; minorities dispossessed by land grabbing or resettled to make way for mega-projects; and farmers facing declining terms of trade, shrinking landholdings, and growing debts as they invest in new farm technologies. These disparate experiences provide a telling antidote to the growth-at-all-costs philosophy that favours economic expansion over matters of distribution, material prosperity over human flourishing, and corporate profitability over workers’ basic incomes.     

When tinkering is not enough: provincial reform to manage health care resources

Abstract: Prompted by fiscal deficits and guided by recommendations of provincial review commissions, a number of provinces are restructuring their health care systems to iniprove resource management. British Columbia, Saskatchewan, Manitoba, Quebec, New Brunswick, and Nova Scotia have published comprehensive plans for health care reforms. The plans reveal a diversity of management approaches, including devolved structures in British Columbia, Saskatchewan, and Nova Scotia, strongly centralized, technocratic structures in Manitoba, and variations on these in the other provinces. Though impossible to judge a priori which approaches are most likely to improve management, a number of limitations can be observed in the newly created institutions that decrease the chances of achieving the stated goals. The changes represent a potential watershed in medicare's history as the provinces embark down divergent paths for planning and managing health care resources. They will provide an interesting natural experiment regarding the effectiveness of the alternative approaches to organizing health care systems as well as challenge some of medicare's principles and the concept of a national system. Sommaire: Sous la pression des déficits fiscaux et face aux recommandations de commissions d'enquête provinciales, plusieurs provinces restructurent actuellement leurs systêmes de santé pour améliorer la gestion des resources. La Colombie-Britannique, la Saskatchewan, le Manitoba, le Québec, le Nouveau-Brunswick et la Nouvelle-Éosse ont publié des plans détaillés de réforme de ces systèmes. Les plans adoptent toute une gamme de méthodes de gestion: des structures déléguées en Colombie-Britnnnique, en Saskatchewan et en Nouvelle-Écosse, des structures technocratiques fortement centralisées au Manitoba, et diverses variantes des deux dans les autres provinces. II est impossible de décider a priori quelles sont les méthodes les mieux adaptées pour améliorer la gestion, mais on peut d'ores et déjà noter, dans le cadre des institutions nouvellement créées, des limitations qui entravent la possibilité d'atteindre les objectifs énoncés. Ces changenients pourraient constituer un tournant critique dans l'évolution des systèmes d'assurance-maladie car les provinces empruntent maintenant des chemins divergents en ce qui concerne la planification et la gestion des ressources consacrées aux soins de santé Cela constituera une expérience empirique intéressante pour déterminer l'efficacité des diverses façons d'organiser les systèmes de soins de santé, tout en mettant en question certains principes de l'assurance-maladie ainsi que l'idée même d'un système national.