Conceptualising a Framework for Effective Performance Measurement in Cultural Precinct Development and Operation

The purpose of this paper is to firstly identify and synthesise critical measurement themes in extant academic literature concerning performance measurement in cultural precincts. Secondly, the paper posits for consideration a holistic and systematic framework (which embraces those themes) for developing appropriate performance measures for cultural precincts. The outcomes in this paper (a) confirm and clarify the complexity of performance measurement needed, (b) furnish a framework for practitioners embarking on the development of such measures, and (c) indicate the conceptual and pragmatic challenges faced in developing and enacting appropriate and meaningful measures for cultural precincts. Consequently, this paper serves as a conceptual positioning paper and a practical embarkation point for practitioners willing to engage with and pursue this phenomenon. Thereby, it endorses more dialogue on and further research and analysis of performance measurement in government operated cultural precincts.     

No Need to Watch: How the Effects of Partisan Media Can Spread via Interpersonal Discussions

To what extent do partisan media sources shape public opinion? On its face, it would appear that the impact of partisan media is limited, given that it attracts a relatively small audience. We argue, however, that its influence may extend beyond its direct audience via a two‐step communication flow. Specifically, those who watch and are impacted by partisan media outlets talk to and persuade others who did not watch. We present experimental results that demonstrate this process. We therefore show that previous studies may have significantly underestimated the effect of these outlets. We also illustrate that how the two‐step communication flow works is contingent upon the precise composition of the discussion group (e.g., is it consistent of all fellow partisans or a mix of partisans?). We conclude by highlighting what our results imply about the study of media, preference formation, and partisan polarization.     

Complex Contracting: Management Challenges and Solutions

Governments at all levels buy mission‐critical goods and services whose attributes and performance requirements are hard to define and produce. Many governments—and the public managers who lead them—lack experience and knowledge about how to contract for complex products. The contract management counsel provided to public managers is thin. Missing is a conceptual managerial framework to guide purchasing the complex products that are often so critical to public organizations' core missions. Drawing on perspectives from across the social sciences, the framework presented in this article provides guidance on how managers can harness the upsides of complex contracting while avoiding its pitfalls. The framework helps identify conditions that increase the likelihood of positive outcomes for the purchasing government and the vendor—the win‐win. To illustrate the framework, the article provides examples of successful and failed acquisitions for complex products such as transportation projects, social service systems, and information technology systems.     

State Capacity,Bureaucratic Politicization,and Corruption in the Brazilian State

Responding to recent articles in Governance highlighting the need for improved measurement of bureaucratic characteristics, this article describes efforts to map Brazil's federal agencies on three dimensions—capacity, autonomy, and partisan dominance—derived from data on more than 326,000 civil servants. The article provides a “proof of concept” about the utility of agency‐level measures of these variables, demonstrating how they relate to an output common to all agencies: corruption. The article provides a first step in the direction of building a comparative research program that offers objective evaluation of bureaucracies within nation‐states, with the intent of better disentangling their impact on governance outcomes.     

Value,Nature, and Labor: A Defense of Marx

In this theoretical intervention, I argue that Karl Marx’s theory of value remains a powerful way to understand nature–society relations under capitalism. I suggest environmentalist critiques often misunderstand Marx’s value theory as a theory that “values” workers over nature. His critical theory is better understood as an explanation of how capitalist value exploits both workers and the environment. My defense of Marxian value theory is articulated through five “theses.” I provide empirical illustration based on recent research into the nitrogen fertilizer industry. (1) Value theory does not refer to all values. (2) Marx’s contention that nature does not contribute to value helps us explain its degradation under capitalism. (3) Marx’s value theory rooted in production allows for a critique of environmental economic valuation schemes (e.g. payments for ecosystem services) which are based on neoclassical value theories rooted in consumption/exchange. (4) Value is abstract social labor, but that means it also abstracts from nature. (5) Capital does value certain parts of nature and that matters. I conclude by advocating a “value theory of nature” in the spirit of Diane Elson’s powerful articulation of Marx’s “value theory of labor.”     

Advancing the study of political cleavages through experimentation: Revisiting regionalism and redistributive preferences in Canada

The maintenance of welfare state policies requires citizen support for the provision of a social safety net through taxation and redistribution. Research has shown that a diverse political polity presents a risk to the welfare state; however, Canada bucks the trend and does not see citizen support for economic redistribution decline in response to immigration-based population diversity. Using Canada as our case, we argue that scholars of welfare state politics and redistribution should turn their attention to other sources of population heterogeneity in an effort to better understand how different political cleavages affect citizens’ redistributive preferences. We use an online experimental survey to manipulate the in-group identity of 500 Canadians. The survey enables respondents to identify with other in-group identities along regional, linguistic, income-group, and urban/rural characteristics. Our results find that while Canadians do have a strong baseline preference for redistributive behaviour, regional and linguistic cleavages moderate this outcome.     

Innovation and Alliances

Explanations for national success in science and technology typically focus on domestic institutions and policies. However, that line of research has yet to identify any particular set of institutions or policies that explain variation in national innovation rates across cases or over time. This article offers new evidence that the problem with domestic institutions approaches stems from their failure to consider international security factors. Specifically, this article finds a positive effect for U.S. security alliances on innovation. This finding is robust across different specifications and periods of analysis. While countries that ally militarily with the United States are found to realize benefits in economy‐wide, indigenous innovation, such an effect is not observed in military technologies. This suggests that alliances may substitute for being on the frontier in military technologies. Therefore, this article contributes not just to debates over S&T competitiveness, but also to alliance formation.     

What is the Canon in American Politics? Analyses of Core Graduate Syllabi

Many core graduate-level seminars claim to expose students to their discipline’s “canon.” The contents of this canon, however, can and do differ across departments and instructors. This project employs a survey of core American politics PhD seminar syllabi at highly ranked universities to construct a systematic account of the American politics canon. Our results offer valuable insights into the topics and literature that political scientists consider important and on which future scholars base their work. Our article breaks down the literature into a comprehensive list of topics and subtopics, which allows us to identify both an overall field canon and one for each topic, to assess whether some topics receive more attention than others, and to identify which topics are most clearly defined. We explore the extent to which diverse perspectives and methods are (or are not) taught to young scholars, and, although we identify sets of frequently assigned readings and authors within each topic, we also find considerable variation between seminars.