Lobbying in the 21st century

This paper suggests that the nature of activism is changing to take account of the shifts in political and economic conditions. It further goes on to consider that as a result of these emerging trends we have witnessed a generational shift in how governments, businesses, interest groups and citizens will interact. It is possible to place the issues and questions that this new environment raises under a number of broad headings—Democracy and Dissent, Government and Parliament, Media, and Lobbying –each of which the paper deals with in turn. Copyright © 2003 Henry Stewart Publications.     

Going privately: partnership and outsourcing in UK public services

Public private partnerships provide an important illustration of the way the traditional role of government as employer and service provider is being transformed. While policy–makers argue that the growing role of the private sector is not driven by ideological thinking – that, in fact, both public and private sector organizations can benefit from working together in partnership relations – in practice it is the norms and rules of private sector management that underpin reforms. This paper assesses evidence from two detailed case studies of partnerships and demonstrates, first, that there is little evidence of mutual gains from partnership arrangements and, second, that because of an imbalance of power between public and private sector partners, any gains achieved are not distributed equitably. These results suggest that current reforms need to be refocused around building on the distinctive qualities of services provision in the public sector, rather than expanding the private sector world of markets and contracts.     

Singing Our World into Existence: International Relations Theory and September 11

This paper focuses on the relationship between International Relations theory and ethics. It poses the question of the complicity of the discipline in the events of September 11, 2001. The paper begins with a discussion of Weber's notion of science as a vocation, and links this to the commitment in the discipline to a value-free conception of social science, one that sharply separates facts from values. The paper then examines the role of ten core assumptions in International Relations theory in helping to construct a discipline that has a culturally and historically very specific notion of violence, one resting on distinctions between economics and politics, between the outside and the inside of states, and between the public and the private realms. Using the United Nations Human Development report, the paper summarizes a number of forms of violence in world politics, and questions why the discipline of International Relations only focuses on a small subset of these. The paper then refers to the art of Magritte, and specifically Velazquez's painting Las Meninas, to argue for a notion of representation relevant to the social world that stresses negotiation, perspective, and understanding rather than notions of an underlying Archimedean foundation to truth claims. In concluding, the paper asserts that the discipline helped to sing into existence the world of September 11 by reflecting the interests of the dominant in what were presented as being neutral, and universal theories.     

Interpreting the World of Political Elites

This paper uses an interpretative approach to analyse the relationship between ministers and officials. It argues that generally, the relationship between ministers and civil servants is harmonious. This can be explained by the fact that both sets of actors tend to draw from the same tradition, the Westminster model. The Westminster model can be understood as the building block from which both ministers and civil servants develop narratives that shape and condition their actions. In the case of ministers, the dominant narrative drawn from the Westminster model is what we refer to as that of 'historical impact'. In the case of civil servants, their dominant narrative, again drawn from the Westminster model is conditioned by the need to provide an account that continually emphasizes how they have acted with 'constitutional propriety'. Generally, these two contrasting narratives do not lead to conflict between ministers and civil servants. However, a serious breakdown in the relationship between ministers and civil servants can occur when either one or both sets of actors draw on a tradition other than the Westminster model, or when they appeal to a different narrative within the Westminster model which shapes their subsequent behaviour and actions.