Public Employment: Attractiveness,Representativeness, and Performance

The functions of the public sector penetrate almost all aspects of social life. Considering the tremendous implications that government employment holds for economic health and other aspects, it is understandable that the processes controlling entry to these jobs are subject to widespread concern. Democratic norms call for a representative bureaucracy. The large size and increasingly mono-ethnic of the Malaysian civil service have caused concern for some time. This study suggests that job characteristics, some background and personal characteristics are significant determinants of graduating students’ job choice. The study also demonstrates how representative bureaucracy would affect performance of the public sector.     

A Challenging State of Affairs: Public Administration in the Republic of Lebanon

ABSTRACT

This article highlights Lebanon’s administrative challenges and reform efforts, since the end of its Civil War (1975–1990). In recent years, Lebanon and international donors have worked to improve transparency, promote modern management techniques, and encourage the use of information technology throughout the public sector. Despite these efforts, Lebanon’s public institutions remain constrained by the centralization of power, corruption, outdated bureaucratic structures, and deficiencies in administrative knowledge. The success of future reform efforts will depend on whether the Lebanese bureaucracy can overcome the challenges created by regional political tensions, its Syrian refugee crisis, and an increasingly indifferent Lebanese public.     

Ethnic boxes: the unintended consequences of Habsburg bureaucratic classification

The classificatory efforts that accompanied the modernization of the Habsburg state inadvertently helped establish, promote, and perpetuate national categories of identification, often contrary to the intentions of the Habsburg bureaucracy. The state did not create nations, but its classification of languages made available some ethnolinguistic identity categories that nationalists used to make political claims. The institutionalization of these categories also made them more relevant, especially as nationalist movements simultaneously worked toward the same goal. Yet identification with a nation did not follow an algorithmic logic, in the beginning of the twentieth century, sometimes earlier, various nationalisms could undoubtedly mobilize large numbers of people in Austria–Hungary, but people still had agency and nation-ness remained contingent and situational.     

The Mine at Wittenoom: Blue Asbestos,Labour and Occupational Disease

Australia and South Africa are the only countries to have mined crocidolite or blue asbestos. Crocidolite was mined at Wittenoom in Western Australia from 1944 until 1966. Although production levels were modest, Wittenoom has become the site of Australia's worst occupational health disaster. The labour regimes in South Africa and Wittenoom were very different and yet the rates of occupational disease were probably similar. The hazards facing miners arose from the nature of the labour process, the technologies of production and the limitations of state regulation.     

Running dry: international law and the management of Aral Sea depletion

The Aral Sea disaster is the result of Soviet-era irrigation policy. The collapse of the Soviet Union left the issue under the purview of international law. This essay addresses how this shift has affected attempts to slow or reverse the sea's depletion. Treaties on the non-navigation use of international watercourses and on the prevention of desertification have had little effect. While a number of regional instruments and arrangements have been brought to bear, they have also done little to reverse damage to the sea. Finally, attempts to regulate the issue through domestic law, as evidenced in the case of Kyrgyzstan, have done little as well. While some progress has recently been made under the auspices of the World Bank, it is not a result of international law. The conclusion is that the shift from domestic to international law has little improved the situation, and may have made matters worse.     

Contract farming and the reorganisation of agricultural production within the Chókwè Irrigation System,Mozambique

This paper contributes to the discussion about ‘inclusive business models’ as alternatives to large-scale land acquisitions by analysing a case in which a foreign agribusiness investor, within an impact investment paradigm, acquired and rehabilitated a rice processing plant in Chókwè, Mozambique. A contract farming programme drawn up to source raw produce for the factory led to radical shifts in control over land and water resources. The case is set against the background of a large-scale irrigation system that has played an important role in national agricultural policies since colonial times. The private sector-led development approach is strongly supported by the state which portrays it as an opportunity to reduce its dependency on rice imports. The investor redirected the benefits of land and water use through taking a role of coordination and control within the irrigated production system.

The ensuing rural transformation reminds one of earlier periods in the development of the irrigation system: the central control over production, and the very high level of agricultural inputs and mechanisation, remind one of the state socialist period, while the removal of smallholders from their land and its concentration in the hands of a few bears a strong resemblance to the scheme's establishment under colonial rule.     

Tackling Corruption at its Source: The National Corruption Prevention Bureau

In Spring 2007 as part of its ongoing anticorruption efforts, the PRC announced the establishment of a new organization called the “National Corruption Prevention Bureau” (NCPB). The article first examines the origins of the NCPB and its position in the current Chinese anticorruption regime. The NCPB will concentrate primarily on information collection and coordination work. Given these goals, This article examines the organization’s potential for improving work in three areas related to information collection and coordination; increased oversight of the private sector, improving information quality and dissemination, and strengthening routine anticorruption activities. The final section examines potential problems that will likely limit the ability of this new organization to improve anticorruption work, such as the possibility of increasing complexity within the anticorruption system, and the NCPB’s limited independence from the agencies it seeks to coordinate.

Administrators as Deliberative Representatives: A Revised Public Service Role

We suggest a role for public administrators as deliberative representatives. The goal is to apply a re-conceptualization of representation within the context of public administration based on a literature review on the following concepts: 1) representative democracy, (2) representative bureaucracy, and (3) deliberative democracy. We find that dominant models of representative democracy are ill suited for ensuring the true interests of citizens and communities are met and that representative bureaucracy is not satisfactory to address the failings of representative democracy. Finding promise in deliberative democracy models, we consider how the re-conceptualization of representation for the administrative role might shape the advancement of public participation in order to enhance the quality of representation. Specifically, a fourth construction is defined to add to the list of three above: deliberative representation.     

Frontline Problem Solvers: The Structuring of Frontline Service Work

The purpose of this article is to contribute to the understanding of the role of frontline employees in organizing public service delivery. Combining inspiration from organizational institutionalism and social theory of practice, this study offers an integrative understanding of frontline agency in organizational dynamics during the institutionalization of a public sector reform. Findings are presented from an ethnographic field study of frontline employees' strategies of adopting new structures of service work during the institutionalization of a public reform. The study illustrates how frontline actions provide the basis for both stability and change in the structures through which frontline work is organized. The agency exerted by frontline employees in institutionalization of reforms may have both equilibrating effects as well as deepen the gaps between the public sector and the public served.     

Artists in an Iron Cage? Artists’ Work in Performing Arts Institutions

This article discusses artists’ work in performing arts institutions in Norway. Many scholars describe Nordic performing arts institutions as slow-moving and heavy “art factories,” where artistic creativity is almost suffocated within bureaucratic “prisons.” The general problem that we raise in the article is whether this pessimistic picture of the relation between state control, market influence, and artistic work is relevant for studying the performing arts today. The study is primarily based upon twenty-seven qualitative interviews with informants in an institutional theatre and a symphony orchestra. We conclude that the actors in the Theatre are trapped—not so much within “a bureaucratic iron cage”—but rather within “an iron cage of charismatic leadership,” while the musicians in the Orchestra enjoy the relative freedom and democratic power of a rather soft bureaucratic organization.