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The article examines the political origins and impact of recent managerial reform (the shift from the professional bureaucracy model of public administration to the new public management [NPM]) in UK local government. Two key drivers of managerial reform are identified: central–local relations and labour management. The former are historically complex due, partly, to the Victorian expediential justification of local government, and the tenuous constitutional status of local government in the British polity. These factors necessitate and permit central control with models of public administration a key mechanism for achieving this. In addition, as 70% of overall sector costs are made up of centrally funded labour costs, the centre's attempts to control labour management (pay and performance) is a second key driver of managerial reform. And models of public administration, again, are a major mechanism for achieving central control. The analysis is rooted in a brief historical examination of developments from the 1880s, and a longitudinal case study examining more recent developments to illustrate the general case made. Empirical findings show councillor, union and worker resistance to managerial reform. They also show job loss, work intensification, job insecurity and demoralisation of staff. Another key finding is that NPM is not new, but a regression to the Victorian era.     

Shared Services: Lessons from the Public and Private Sectors for the Nonprofit Sector

Shared services arrangements in the Australian third sector are becoming more common. Notably, however, there is a lack of information to guide nonprofit organisations through the development and engagement of shared structures. This article reviews the lessons that have been recorded from the public and private sectors with respect to the engagement of shared services arrangements. Additionally this article explores the different types of shared services structures that can be adopted. Overall, this article highlights the need for further research and analysis of issues relating to shared services arrangements in order to assist the increasing number of Australian nonprofit organisations engaging these collective arrangements and structures.     

The Catholic Lobby: Structures,Policy Styles and Religious Networks

This article is about the place of lobbying by the Catholic Church in contemporary Australian federal politics. It builds on some previous attention by political scientists to Catholic political campaigning (eg, Hogan 1978, 1993 ; see also Byrnes 1993 ), but it is more comprehensive. Discussion of such lobbying uses various terminology and, like much lobbying, it can be viewed in a normative sense either favourably or unfavourably, as democratic or undemocratic. During the parliamentary debate in December 1996 on the anti‐euthanasia private members bill introduced by Kevin Andrews, for instance, Nick Dondas (Country Liberal, Northern Territory) alleged that ‘the debate has been driven by the Catholic community of this country’. To which his Catholic colleague Tony Abbott (Liberal, New South Wales), alleging that Dondas had blamed the bill on the ‘Catholic lobby’, responded that ‘those comments were beneath him’. ¹     

Trustworthiness: the Commentators

Mark Thompson deplores the decline in the public trust of government and of public service institutions such as the BBC. But there has also been a decline in another form of trust: government's trust in the ability of professionals such as doctors and teachers to deliver high quality public services. And, unlike Thompson's type of trust, this decline was inevitable, because it was based on untenable assumptions concerning professional motivation. The author discusses the importance of trust in an unwritten constitution, including trust in the use made of public resources, trust that appointments are being made on merit, trust that the civil service is ‘speaking truth unto power’ behind the scenes and ultimately trust that it retains the ability to serve future governments. In a world where trust in institutions is diminishing, there are still surprising levels of trust in the world of private philanthropy. The public are only too ready to give donations without seeking to question, especially in the wake of major disasters. Yet the nature of aid agencies has changed dramatically in the past thirty years into major global enterprises with sophisticated media and marketing operations. In this case a greater degree of scepticism from those who donate and paradoxically less trust might actually result in better outcomes from aid and better use of funding. Trust is critical to the mission of the FCO. The public needs to trust the competence and sound judgment of the professional diplomats. The diplomats themselves need to be able to rely on the commonsense of their fellow colleagues. Ministers and diplomats need to trust each other. And other governments need to have confidence in the discretion of their British counterparts. This is an increasing challenge in the world of instant news. Trust can be quickly lost by indiscreet or self‐serving revelations. But the key is to be as open and transparent as possible about the processes of diplomacy. A new survey commissioned by the British Journalism Review demonstrates that public confidence in journalism has collapsed over the last five years. This is particularly true for the commercial broadcasters ITV and Channel 4, whose journalism has traditionally commanded as much public esteem as the BBC. Trust in the BBC and print journalists has also declined, and journalism suffered more than any of the other 16 occupational groups being assessed. This is partly due to the cumulative effect of various “fakery” scandals that have afflicted broadcasters over the last 18 months and partly down to a more widespread cynicism directed at those in authority.     

Visions of National Service

While national service enjoys broad support across the political spectrum, the actual goals of programs such as AmeriCorps remain somewhat amorphous. Based on a set of interviews with both experienced. practitioners and key thought leaders in the field, four competing visions of national service are detailed. The article suggests that national service has alternatively been seen as a way to promote an active and engaged citizenship, accelerate the personal growth of the young people in the programs, build social capital in communities, and meet critical social needs through public work. These four competing visions can and do coexist in practice, which helps to explain the widespread and enduring popularity of the idea of national service in America.

Reexamining the Relationship Between Fiscal Stress and Outsourcing

The determinants of outsourcing in local government are widely studied from a variety of frameworks. One concept consistently used to explain local government outsourcing is fiscal condition, with many noting that outsourcing is more likely when a local government’s fiscal condition declines into fiscal stress. Despite the ubiquity of this expectation in the outsourcing literature, several articles reviewed suggest that the findings for this relationship remain uncertain. As a result, the research presented in this article sought to examine and extend what is known about the relationship between fiscal stress and outsourcing in U.S. municipalities. The research includes previous measures of fiscal stress and adds new measures. In addition, it tries to overcome the limited theoretical testing of the relationship between fiscal stress and outsourcing by examining both direct and indirect effects of fiscal stress on outsourcing. It finds that municipalities in the United States that are experiencing fiscal stress are more likely to engage in outsourcing, particularly municipalities that are experiencing fiscal stress and have a positive evaluation of the external market to provide services.     

Do associations support authoritarian rule? Evidence from Algeria,Mozambique, and Vietnam

Whether associations help to democratize authoritarian rule or support those in power is a contested issue that so far lacks a cross-regional, comparative perspective. In this article we focus on five types of associations in three post-socialist countries, situated in different world regions, that are governed by authoritarian regimes. We first explore how infrastructural and discursive state power impact such associations and vice versa. We then discuss whether these associations support the development of citizens’ collective and individual self-determination and autonomy and/or whether they negate such self-determination and autonomy – a state of affairs that is at the core of authoritarianism.

Our analysis addresses decision-making in associations and three specific policy areas. We find that most of the covered associations accept or do not openly reject state/ruling party interference in their internal decision-making processes. Moreover, in most of these associations the self-determination and autonomy of members are restricted, if not negated. With respect to HIV/AIDS policy, associations in Algeria and Vietnam toe the official line, and thus contribute, unlike their counterparts in Mozambique, to negating the self-determination and autonomy of affected people and other social minorities. Looking at enterprise promotion policy, we find that the co-optation of business and professionals’ associations in all three countries effectively limits democratizing impulses. Finally, in all three countries many, but not all, of the interviewed associations support state-propagated norms concerning gender and gender relationships, thus contributing to limiting the self-determination and autonomy of women in the private sphere.     

A Broad Alliance of Civil Society Organizations on Climate Change Mitigation: Political Strength or Legitimizing Support?

One hundred and one very different organizations joined together prior to the election for the Norwegian parliament in 2013 in order to make climate change mitigation the most important issue in the election campaign. The alliance (CE2013) agreed on six political demands relating to mitigation. In this article, we categorize the 101 organizations and discuss their identity and objectives according to these demands. The analysis demonstrates that even though a broad variety of organizations joined the campaign, their commitment was rather weak. Few of the organizations justify their involvement in CE2013 by all six political demands, hence demonstrating that climate change mitigation is a valence issue.     

Civil society: Bringing the family back in

This article explores the complex and contradictory positioning of the family within civil society literature. In some accounts, the family is seen as the cornerstone of civil society. In others, the family is positioned firmly outside – even antithetical to – civil society. This paradox arises from the ways in which civil society is variously defined through a series of binary oppositions – in relation to each of which the family sits uneasily. And while feminist critiques have tried to bring women back into view, they too tend to marginalize the family. In addition, the normative nature of these oppositions has meant that while civil society tends to be seen as the property of the political ‘left’, the family is often associated with the political ‘right’. The article argues that we need to move beyond oppositional definitions of civil society and assumptions about the family if we are to understand the multiple ways in which the family is implicated as not only the ‘reproducer’ of particular resources and dispositions but as a principal source and focus of civil society engagement and activism.     

The contested spaces of civil society in a plural world: norm contestation in the debate about restrictions on international civil society support

Civil society organizations are facing increasing political restrictions all over the world. Frequently, these restrictions apply to the foreign funding of NGOs and thus curtail the space for external civil society support, which, since the 1990s, has become a key element in international democracy and human rights promotion. This so-called ‘closing space’ phenomenon has received growing attention by civil society activists, policymakers and academics. Existing studies (and political responses), however, neglect the crucial normative dimension of the problem at hand: As we show, the political controversy over civil society support is characterized by norm contestation, and this contestation reveals competing perceptions of in/justice and touches upon core principles of contemporary world order. Taking this dimension into account is essential if we are to academically understand, and politically respond to, the ‘closing space’ challenge. It is also highly relevant with regard to current debates on how to conceptualize and construct order in a world that is plural in many regards and in which liberal norms are fundamentally contested. Empirically, the paper combines an assessment of the global debate about closing space in the UN Human Rights Council with an analysis of a specific controversy over the issue in US-Egyptian relations.