Public Administration in a Conflict Situation: The Case of Northern Ireland

This article examines recent developments in the public administrative system in Northern Ireland. The conflict in Northern Ireland has received widespread publicity, Yet government in the region continues. Public services are delivered. The article considers how the public administrative system has played its part in the management by the British government of the conflict. There are many other situations where there is political violence. The Northern Ireland case may offer insights to public administrators and policymakers in managing such situations.     

DEVON COUNTY COUNCIL: A CASE STUDY OF A HUNG COUNCIL

Discussions on coalition politics have tended to see the phenomenon as a feature of European national systems offering a contrast to the British tradition of (largely) single-party government. However, the 1980s saw the rise of English local governments where highly politicized party groups were forced to compromise their political programmes in order to attain a share of power; between 1985–89, half of the English county councils were hung. This situation has particular significance in Devon, where four distinct political groups were negotiating for control. This study analyses the process of administrative formation, maintenance and breakdown in Devon, using the insights of the actors involved. While icy closeness is a crucial factor in the formation of administrations, the initial distribution of office portfolios plays a critical role in the later demise of the co-operation between the Alliance and Labour. The study also highlights the importance of considerations such as past history, personal relations, institutional structures, and even geography to the formation and maintenance of political agreements. Devon's experience of hungness is interpreted using a 'multi-method' approach, with reference to both studies of hung councils and developments in coalition theory.     

INTRODUCING RACE AS A VARIABLE INTO THE POLITICAL ECONOMY OF KENYA DEBATE: AN INCENDIARY IDEA

The debate on the nature and development potential of ‘indigenous’capitalism in Kenya seemed to have petered off indecisivelyin the 1980s. At that time some form of socialism was stillan option for some of the debaters. Following the seemingly-globalacceptance of free-enterprise as the developmental model ofchoice, however, the Kenya debate has been resurrected but ina different intellectual guise. In line with the revival (especiallyin the United States) of culture and ethnicity as determinantsof economic prosperity, some non-Kenyan authors have faultedthe 1980s literature for leaving out Kenyan-Asian capitalists,the principal protagonists of local entrepreneurship, who, itis argued accounted for Kenya's outstanding development performancein the high-growth years before independence in 1963, and theonset of economic regress under the Moi government in the early1980s, by dint of their industry and cultural heritage. Withoutgiving in to the undeserved Asian-bashing which this thesishas provoked in some Kenya-African political circles, this articleprovides evidence that credit for Kenya's economic achievementsis more widespread and more race neutral. So is credit for thecorruption and crass mismanagement that has characterized theMoi years. Considering the low intellectual pay-off and thehigh political dangers inherent in careless introduction ofrace and culture as operating variables to explain growth, thearticle advocates greater attention to analytical concepts thatshow more promise in accounting for inter-ethnic differencesin material prosperity. These include law-based governance,a stable macroeconomic environment, and the strengthening of‘social capital’ at community level.     

Policy Networks, Policy Communities and the Problems of Governance

This article reviews and evaluates the literature on policy networks and policy communities that has emerged in the comparative public policy field. It argues that these concepts are important innovations because they suggest a renewed attempt to be both encompassing and discriminating in describing the policy process: encompassing because they refer to actors and relationships in the policy process that take us beyond political-bureaucratic relationships; discriminating because they suggest the presence of many communities and different types of networks. Yet if the concepts are going to continue to make a contribution, some problems must be resolved. The article suggests three that are particularly important: network and community concepts encounter obstacles in incorporating the influence of ma-cropolitical institutions and the power of political discourse; they have some difficulty in accommodating the internationalization of many policy domains; they have not addressed well the issues of policy innovation and policy change.     

Only the Beginning

President Obama must re-evaluate the U.S. Iraq mission for the future president Barack Obama's draw-down to 50,000 U.S. troops has been well implemented and is, in fact, a prudent course of action.     

Strategic Voting in Multi‐Office Elections

What are the incentives for voters to vote strategically when legislative policy outcomes are constrained by a system of checks and balances? The policy‐balancing theory supposes that moderate voters split their tickets because such splitting is the only way these voters can achieve moderate policy outcomes. I show that a different type of strategic voting, policy stacking, is characteristic of legislatures that endow the majority party with only limited institutional powers. Focusing on voting for the president and House of Representatives in the United States reveals that a substantial proportion of voters engage in policy‐stacking behavior, but very few engage in policy‐balancing behavior.     

‘As time goes by’: Explaining the transposition of maritime directives1

The aim of this article is to explain the speed with which Member States transpose EC directives in the maritime sector. By discussing earlier work, the focus is on explanatory factors related to the contents of the directive that needs to be transposed and the context within which national transposition takes place. The authors' expectations have been tested using data across seven Member States and 32 maritime directives. Using survival analysis based on Cox regression, several political‐administrative and legal factors are identified that have an impact on the speed of transposition. The political sensitivity of the directive and the total number of national implementing measures lengthens the duration of transposition, while the degree of specialisation of the directive, the use of package law and experience speed up transposition. The authors also find that the impact of some of these explanatory factors changes over time. This underscores the importance of taking time seriously and to explore time dependency in further theoretical work on explaining policy‐making processes.