Russian Central Government Budgeting and Public Sector Reform Discourses: Paradigms,Hybrids, and a “Third Way”

ABSTRACT

This study explores how public sector reform discourses are reflected in Russian central government budgeting. Through the lenses of institutional logics, Russian central government budgeting is considered to be a social institution that is influenced by rivaling reform paradigms: Public Administration, New Public Management (NPM), the Neo-Weberian State, and New Public Governance. Although NPM has dominated the agenda during the last decade, all four have been presented in “talks” and “decisions” regarding government budgeting. The empirical evidence illustrates that the implementation of management accounting techniques in the Russian public sector has coincided with and contradicted the construction of the Russian version of bureaucratic governance, which is referred to as the vertical of power. Having been accompanied by participatory mechanisms and a re-evaluation of the Soviet legacy, the reforms have created prerequisites for various outcomes at the level of budgeting practices: conflicts, as in the UK, and hybridization, as in Finland.     

Mining and subaltern politics: political struggle against neoliberal development in Bangladesh

Drawing on social movement scholarship, this paper analyses subaltern struggles against a multinational mining company. The Phulbari coal mine is the centre of contention between the mining company and local/national activists. Local concerns about the dispossession of lands and livelihoods and environmental destruction have been merged with a Leftist political agenda on the growing vulnerability of the state and national sovereignty in the Global South. A close examination of the movement's discourses suggests that a broader political struggle against resource plunder and energy imperialism has been strengthened by local community resistance to an environmentally destructive coal mine. Based on in-depth qualitative interviews, I analyse how activists have created new meanings of the conflict to confront and delegitimize hegemonic discourses of capitalist development and modernity.     

The politics of history in West Papua - Indonesia conflict

This study examines how history is used as a source of legitimacy and a political instrument in the sectarian conflict between the Indonesian government and the West Papua nationalists. This paper explores the debate surrounding two historical aspects relevant to West Papua’s demand for independence: first, West New Guinea’s past as part of the Dutch colony and its relations with Indonesia and second, the 1969 referendum, the so-called Act of Free Choice, to decide West Papua’s fate. The Indonesian democratization in 1998 provided momentum to revise the narration of West Papua’s history. Democracy has empowered the Papuans as the victims of a power struggle to challenge the previous Indonesia’s monolithic narration of history. The Papuans’ alternative narration of history also serves as a medium of liberation from oppression by the Indonesian government. The Papuan story counters the theory that the narration of history is a privilege of the ruler and the winner.     

Hit the Core or Weaken the Periphery? Comparing Strategies to Break the Circle of Violence with an Embryonic Terrorist Group: The Case of Galician Resistance

This article studies whether the action-reaction model holds on an “embryonic” terrorist group like Galician Resistance (REGA). After presenting an overview of REGA’s history, structure, financing, terrorist campaigns, and the police measures adopted against them, the text empirically contrasts whether deterrence is an efficient measure in reducing an incipient terrorist group’s actions. Our results show that deterrence does in fact reduce the number of attacks when aimed at the group’s periphery. However, it causes a backlash of new attacks when aimed at the group’s core. In addition, we prove that an increase in the number of attacks also causes a reaction by police forces and a higher number of detentions of core members. Our results give some meaningful insights into the design of counter-terrorism strategies aimed against “embryonic” groups.     

中国与东盟间的国际危机管理合作——基于博弈分析的角度

中国与东盟共同面临着各种危机,双方在国际危机管理方面存在着广泛而共同的利益。本文运用博弈论,对中国与东盟在共同应对亚洲金融危机、SARS危机、禽流感、印度洋海啸等国际危机时进行合作的发展历程作了分析。从合作的广度、深度等看,中国与东盟间的国际危机管理合作还有待于进一步拓展与深化。     

Redefining development for national security: implications for civil society

The effects of counter-terrorism legislation on civil-society organisations (CSOs) based in the South have received little attention in the wider literature. This article reports on the findings of a series of international workshops to examine the effects of such legislation, held in Lebanon, the Kyrgyz Republic, India, the Netherlands, the UK, and the USA. The evidence presented at these workshops suggests that counter-terror legislation is undermining the work of civil society in complex and interrelated ways.     

吉林省私营家族企业发展中存在的问题与对策

私营家族企业在吉林省的经济发展中占有重要的地位,并以极快的速度成长着。然而伴随着私营经济的进一步发展壮大,私营家族企业出现了这样那样的问题,但在目前情况下,还不可能放弃这种制度模式,私营家族企业还有它存在的优势。但这并不能说明私营家族企业的管理模式就没有革新改造的任务了。吉林省的私营家族企业也将面临着革新、改造的任务,以此克服私营家族企业的弊端,使家族企业快速健康成长。     

The American West’s longest large mammal migration: clarifying and securing the common interest

Over the last 10 years, conflict has grown over a 170-mile pronghorn antelope (Antilocapra americana) migration between Grand Teton National Park and the Upper Green River Basin in western Wyoming. Resolving conflict in the common interest is proving difficult. This movement is the longest mammal migration in the lower 48 states, spanning the jurisdiction of three federal agencies, three Wyoming counties, and over 40 private landowners. In addition, there are over ten non-governmental conservation organizations, two major state agencies, Wyoming’s executive office, and many citizens involved in the issue. There are three major problem definitions serving the beliefs of participants: the ecological-scientific (conservation biologists, environmentalists), local rights (local control, property rights), and cultural value (historic, western heritage) definitions. These definitions challenge the social and decision making processes of regional communities and government agencies. Underlying the problem of securing the common interest is the highly fragmented patterns of authority and control, misorganized arena(s), and parochial perspectives of many participants. Options promoted by participants can be loosely classified as top-down (government, expert driven) versus bottom-up (local, practice-based) approaches and reflect preferences for the distribution and uses of power and other values. Given the social and decision making context of this case, the bottom-up, practiced-based approach would likely best secure a common interest outcome.     

Die Wiederherstellung des Marktsubjekts

The UK is generally considered a laboratory for styles of governance influenced by New Public Management: outsourcing, internal markets, targets, auditing. The shifts in governance style, and the new instruments that have accompanied them, were once synonymous with “Thatcherism” but have since been adopted and refined by New Labour. Early critical social scientific analyses deployed the Gramscian notion of hegemony to analyse this shift. This was followed by Foucault inspired analyses of “governmentality”. The latter focused more explicitly on the micro-level of conduct. This article follows that lead, but seeks to address the central puzzles thrown up by this experiment through Max Weber’s conception of a “bureaucratic revolution” and Karl Polanyi’s analysis of the constitution of a “market subject” via a “double movement”: a simultaneous loosening and tightening of control. The Weber-Polanyi approach allows us, we argue, to make the link more explicit between micro-level changes in the “conduct of life” (Lebensführung) and the meso-level instruments designed to bring about such a re-orientation of conduct. The article makes the case with reference to empirical material from a number of public services, notably education and health. Overall, the decisive factor is not a weakening of the state, but a change in its capacities and instruments.     

公立医疗机构民营化改革的模式及其比较

公立医疗机构民营化改革是新自由主义思潮波及并影响医疗卫生领域的重要表现,是当代全球公共部门治道变革的有机组成。尽管全球金融危机的爆发引起了人们对新自由主义思潮的全面反思,但是公共部门民营化改革的取向不会因此发生重大的转变。从国内公立医疗机构民营化改革的实践来看,托管经营模式、股份合作制模式和产权整体转让模式是较为典型的三种模式,这三种模式不论是在改革的进路、力度、目标,还是在绩效、阻力与风险等方面均存在着较为显著的差异。文章借助于浙江公立医疗机构民营化改革的实证材料,对上述三种模式进行了多维度的比较分析,以期更好地解读公立医疗机构民营化改革的不同模式及其适用性。