Structural Changes to the Public Sector and Cultural Incompatibility: The Consequences of Inadequate Cultural Integration

Structural changes are commonly undertaken to achieve gains, such as enhanced efficiency and performance. In this paper, we explore the cultural issues associated with a structural change in the Australian Public Service. We argue that cultural differences across merged functions were disruptive and challenging to overcome. We posit, however, that these challenges were exacerbated by the lack of systemic effort to integrate cultures, thus impeding synergy realization. Our findings are consistent with the private sector literature that warns mergers and acquisitions undertaken with too much haste and without adequate planning can lead to cultural issues when not managed appropriately.     

Can the hidden hand of the market be an effective and legitimate regulator? The case of animal welfare under a labeling for consumer choice policy approach

In Australia, labeling for consumer choice, rather than higher government regulation, has become an important strand of the policy approach to addressing food animal welfare. This paper illustrates the usefulness of “regulatory network analysis” to uncover the potentials and limitations of market‐based governance to address contentious yet significant issues like animal welfare. We analyzed the content of newspaper articles from major Australian newspapers and official policy documents between 1990 and 2014 to show how the regulatory network influenced the framing of the regulatory problem, and the capacity and legitimacy of different regulatory actors at three “flashpoints” of decisionmaking about layer hen welfare in egg production. We suggest that the government policy of offering consumers the choice to buy cage free in the market allowed large‐scale industry to continue the egg laying business as usual with incremental innovation and adjustment. These incremental improvements only apply to the 20 percent or so of hens producing “free‐range” eggs. We conclude with a discussion of when and how labeling for consumer choice might create markets and public discourses that make possible more effective and legitimate regulation of issues such as layer hen welfare.     

The Unintended Consequences of Structural Change: When Formal and Informal Institutions Collide in Efforts to Address Wicked Problems

Significant restructuring of bureaucracies has occurred to facilitate joined-up working. This article draws on new institutionalism to explore the rationale behind the use of structural change for the promotion of joined-up working. It argues that a strong institutionalized myth has emerged which has created isomorphic pressures in the public sector to instigate structural changes in the name of vertical integration. These combine with informal institutions in ways that can be both productive and unproductive, highlighting the need to find a balance between formal institutional change and informal institutionalized practices, which often go unacknowledged as a powerful influence on policy.     

Suicide Ideation among Participants in an After-School Program: A Convenience Sample

This exploratory study examined differences between elementary-age youth who have considered suicide and their peers using a data set that was collected from elementary school-age children (N = 51) who participated in an after-school program. Data were collected using a standardized survey assessing daily activities, social support, self-esteem, and antisocial behaviors. Youth considering suicide were distinctive from their peers in two composite measures representing club affiliation and illicit drug use. However, these two groups of youth did not differ in attitudes about school or a composite measure of worry, low confidence, and antisociality. These findings were interpreted as reflecting these vulnerable youths' ambivalence about seeking help, which presents an opportunity for intervention.     

A Transnational Project? Women and Gender in the Social Sciences in Australia, 1890–1945

This article presents a broad overview of the gendered regimes which shaped the development of social scientific knowledge in Australia, and the position of women within the field, from 1890 to 1945. It particularly explores the local desire to emulate developments in Europe and the United States. Australian women were prominent in early ‘amateur’ social science, which was strongly linked to social reforming activities. However, the social sciences developed exceedingly slowly within the Australian academy and rather continued to be sustained largely by the social reform movement. The continuing lack of formal institutionalisation, well into the twentieth century, provided considerable scope for some (privileged) women to create themselves as social scientific experts. Indeed, it was largely the interests of women social reformers who eventually drove professionalisation of the social sciences from the 1930s. Nevertheless, when professionalisation and institutionalisation did finally come in the 1940s, Australia followed remarkably similar patterns to those seen in the United States and United Kingdom nearly 50 years earlier. Women were largely regulated to the lower‐status, applied, feminine field of social work while men took over the new and more prestigious academic arena.     

Precursors to femicide: Guatemalan women in a vortex of violence

Today women in Guatemala are killed at nearly the same rate as they were in the early 1980s when the civil war became genocidal. Yet the current femicide epidemic is less an aberration than a reflection of the way violence against women has become normalized in Guatemala. Used to re-inscribe patriarchy and sustain both dictatorships and democracies, gender-based violence morphed into femicide when peacetime governments became too weak to control extralegal and paramilitary powers. The naturalization of gender-based violence over the course of the twentieth century maintained and promoted the systemic impunity that undergirds femicide today. By accounting for the gendered and historical dimensions of the cultural practices of violence and impunity, we offer a re-conceptualization of the social relations that perpetuate femicide as an expression of post-war violence.     

Contextualising the Teaching of Statistics in Political Science

The teaching of quantitative research methods is an integral part of most postgraduate programmes in politics, but less common at undergraduate level. This article explores the extent to which research methods in general, and quantitative research methods in particular, form part of the curricula of Politics departments in the UK. We then discuss an approach for motivating interest in a subject that tends to be unpopular with many students. We recommend an approach that utilises the links between the general quantification of politics with the quantitative study of political phenomena, as well as a combination of basic research methods for all and more advanced student-focused training for some.     

A Review of “Culture Jam: Hijacking Commercial Culture”

Abstract

Can the Internet and nondemocratic rule coexist? A number of key features of the Internet can be corrosive to nondemocracies. In particular, the scope and ease of obtaining information on the Web, as well as the communication capabilities available to users, provide the means for undermining the pillars of nondemocratic rule. Furthermore, the decentralized nature of the Internet complicates the task of state control of the medium. Nevertheless, despite the risks that may exist from joining the global computer network, nondemocratic regimes have not shunned this technology because it promises to be the key to development, prosperity, and influence. However, their strategies of containment may prevent a complete usage of the capabilities of the Internet. The case of China illustrates the attractions of the Internet, the measures the ruling Chinese Communist Party has implemented to make this technology politically reliable, and the impact of these measures on the full use of the Internet.