The Trouble in Mali—corruption,collusion, resistance

The combined force of the 2012 coup in Bamako and the rebellion in the north entailed an unmasking of Mali. What had been presented as a showcase of democracy, good governance, and peace and reconciliation proved to be a facade for institutional weakness and mismanagement. The collusion between regional and national ‘big man’ interests that the crisis revealed showed little if any respect for human security and development. This article will analyse the causes of the crisis and the strategies of key actors, including the Islamist rebels. The consequences of and responses to the conflict will also be addressed before the article ends with some tentative conclusions concerning the future stability of Mali and the Sahel region. The article is based on the authors’ long engagement with Mali, spanning more than a decade, but the most recent material presented is based on a series of in-depth interviews conducted there in February and March 2013.     

The Impact of a Break-Through Rule on European Firms

We analyze the impact of a 75 pct. Break-Through rule on 1,035 European firms with dual class shares. In 3–5 pct. of the firms the controlling owners incur a direct loss of control, while in another 11–17 pct. of the firms, the controlling owners are likely to incur a loss of control. Firms in Germany, Italy and the Scandinavian countries are more likely to incur a loss of control. The restrictions that the Break-Through rule put on the ability of these firms to issue new shares to outsiders without changing the control structure are also estimated. We conclude that a significant number of firms with dual class shares in the European Union will be affected by a 75 pct. Break-Through rule.     

What to Do Here? What to Do There? The Effect of Change in Organization Size on Public Management

For a long time, researchers have been interested in the consequences of creating larger public organizations. The outcomes of changes in the size of public organizations have been relatively widely studied; however, much less is known about the internal processes through which these outcomes are actually achieved. This article explores whether changes in organizational size affect public management. As endogeneity is an inherent problem when studying outcomes of organizational size, we apply a quasi-experimental design in order to establish the causal linkage between size and different elements of public management. We use unique survey data collected before and after a large reform that changed the size of most Danish municipalities. The results suggest that public management related to daily operations is generic and not affected by size, whereas public management related to overall tasks such as creating a vision, servicing the mayor, and maintaining external relations is positively affected by size changes.     

Organized Grour>Government Relations in Norway: On the Structured Selection of Participants, Problems, Solutions, and Choice Opportunities *

This article reviews the nature of direct interest organizational participation in government in Norway. Organizational involvement, while high, varies markedly across different kinds of associations and issues. Activities are concentrated in the two organizational forms of the committee and remiss systems. The analysis of the linkage patterns with the ministries suggests that corporatism is a somewhat inadequate concept for describing the Norwegian system in general.     

The Fourth Level of Government: on the Standardization of Public Policy within International Regions*

Both in the literature and in public documents one usually operates with three levels of government: local, regional, and national. This may be partly due to a common perception of coordination and standardization as something that takes place only through hierarchical forms of organization. However, if we realize that coordination and standardization may also take place through other organizational forms, as for instance bargaining, consultation, and autonomous adjustment, we can add A fourth level of government. At the same time, hierarchy seems considerably modified at the national levels. Thus, a central argument is that 'national' policies cannot be adequately explained by 'national' politics alone. Some data from the Norwegian context are used to illustrate this argument.     

The Institutional Context of Market Ideology: A Comparative Analysis of the Values and Perceptions of Local Government CEOs in 14 OECD Countries

During recent decades, various versions of market practices have, in most nation states, diffused into the public sector. We analyse variations in the adoption of market ideologies and examine plausible explanations for these variations. Four managerial ideal types are constructed, based on their attitudes towards two dimensions of market ideology. Managerial attitudes and perceptions are conceived as embedded in a global process of diffusion highly affected by varying institutional preconditions. The impact of five types of institutional contexts is examined: the national context, the organizational context, the context of interaction, the context of socialization and the norms of the manager.     

A Not So Technocratic Executive? Everyday Interaction between the European Parliament and the Commission

The European Commission, although generally portrayed as a technocratic, non-majoritarian institution, or as an agent of EU member governments, has become increasingly linked to the European Parliament (EP) through a range of semi-parliamentary measures intended to increase the executive’s legitimacy and accountability. In this article we argue that in addition to several highly visible and often treaty-based control instruments, an almost symbiotic, less visible, routine relationship can be observed between the two institutions. Based on an online survey of EP staff, as well as on minutes from EP committee meetings, this article examines the daily interaction taking place between the Commission and the EP, particularly at the level of officials. Although mutual interdependence in the legislative process may trigger daily interaction, the theoretical argument proposed is that the latter is facilitated and reinforced under two particular conditions: (i) if the two institutions share similar organisational patterns, and (ii) if they share similar behavioural patterns. Three such patterns are emphasised: sectoral, ideological and supranational.     

Book reviews

Given shortcomings in basic data collection and insufficient resources in preparing official statistics African growth data are unlikely to be very reliable. Estimates of an annual growth rate of 3 per cent may be consistent with a reality between 0 and 6 per cent growth. Although data from international databases are widely used in an expanding literature on African growth there has been no research into how serious these data inaccuracies are. This paper addresses the reliability of the available growth evidence for a selection of countries and offers concrete measures of inaccuracies. It examines the reasons for discrepancies and shows that they can be quite large.