Mapping EU agencies as political entrepreneurs

The European Union relies on decentralised agencies to implement important transnational regulations, such as certifying the safety of medicines. However, the authority of these agencies does not have ‘hard’ legal status and crucially depends on disseminating ideas and information effectively: what can be termed ‘political entrepreneurship’. This article provides the first comprehensive analysis of the political entrepreneurship of EU agencies by constructing a conceptual typology of entrepreneurial strategies. Drawing conceptually on transnational public administration, a new database is constructed of the ‘entrepreneurship’ of 33 EU agencies in 2014 based on their media communication activities, face‐to‐face networking in workshops and collaborations, and knowledge dissemination and ‘learning’ exercises. This is mapped against the political salience of agencies in the European Parliament and media. The mapping exercise shows four types of entrepreneurial strategies covering the population of EU agencies: technical functional, insulating, network‐seeking and politicised. The typology is validated through semi‐structured interviews in 11 EU agencies, showing the core characteristics of each type of strategy. The article concludes by arguing that this typology provides an important addition to existing categories of EU agencies based on autonomy and accountability, and advocates a future research strategy examining the interaction between agencies’ entrepreneurial strategies and the expectations and reactions of stakeholder audiences.     

Conceptualising a Framework for Effective Performance Measurement in Cultural Precinct Development and Operation

The purpose of this paper is to firstly identify and synthesise critical measurement themes in extant academic literature concerning performance measurement in cultural precincts. Secondly, the paper posits for consideration a holistic and systematic framework (which embraces those themes) for developing appropriate performance measures for cultural precincts. The outcomes in this paper (a) confirm and clarify the complexity of performance measurement needed, (b) furnish a framework for practitioners embarking on the development of such measures, and (c) indicate the conceptual and pragmatic challenges faced in developing and enacting appropriate and meaningful measures for cultural precincts. Consequently, this paper serves as a conceptual positioning paper and a practical embarkation point for practitioners willing to engage with and pursue this phenomenon. Thereby, it endorses more dialogue on and further research and analysis of performance measurement in government operated cultural precincts.     

莫迪执政以来印度海洋安全战略的观念与实践

2014年莫迪在印度执政以来,引领印度经济持续快速发展,印度其对外贸易、国内民生与国家安全对海洋的依赖越来越高。莫迪政府清醒认识到海洋特别是印度洋对印度的安全与发展的关键意义,并于2015年起适时调整海洋安全战略,将2007年确立的以“自由使用海洋”为主题的海上军事战略在有所继承的基础上调整为以“确保安全的海洋”为主题的海洋安全战略。这说明印度在自由使用海洋的过程中,遭遇了多样的海上安全挑战。来自海上以及发生在海上的安全风险直接影响到印度的对外贸易和海上运输、海洋经济活动的展开、海岸和港口城市的安全、海外资产与海外公民的安全,最终危及印度的国家安全。印度调整海上安全战略,明确以印度洋地区为首要利益区,同时加强以印度海军为主体的海上安全保障力量,为之确立多样任务目标下的军事战略,并积极采取有针对性的海上军事行动。同时,印度政府还通过外交手段,与周边邻国、关键的地区大国或国家集团以及全球大国建立双边和多边海上安全机制来应对多样的海上安全威胁,维护海洋安全,最终服务于印度的经济发展和国家安全,并为印度寻求印度洋的主导地位积累资本、创造条件。     

行政公益诉讼原告资格的设定

在行政公益诉讼中,由于受损的是公共利益,因而在诉讼中由谁来提起诉讼则显得尤为重要。对于建立我国行政公益诉讼制度而言,考虑到我国行政诉讼法的价值取向和司法实践,结合域外行政公益诉讼的发展趋势,应赋予我国公民个人、社会组织和检察机关具有行政公益诉讼原告资格。     

执政安全与党内民主建设中的风险防范

维护执政安全,防控执政风险,是执政党巩固执政地位的必然要求.执政党的执政风险可能来自多个方面,其中包括执政党自身的民主建设状况,故必须加强党内民主建设,发展党内民主.如果在党内民主建设中出现原则性偏差或措施失当,有可能在党内造成思想多元、成员分层、组织分派、政治权威降低等,从而削弱党的凝聚力和战斗力,进而威胁党的执政地位和党的生存发展.因此,在推进党内民主建设时,必须强化风险防范意识,并从目标、方向、道路、制度、程序等方面着手,探索出一条增量式、渐进式的党内民主发展道路.     

Bush: The Sequel

This article examines the likely foreign policy initiatives of the U.S. under the leadership of George W. Bush. The new president has outlined a fairly thorough critique of America's international behavior in the 1990s. Because a leader's public statements arguably serve to persuade various audiences and to build support for policy change, the article takes Bush's words quite seriously—along with those spoken or written by his closest foreign affairs advisors. Bush intends to abandon the so-called Clinton Doctrine and deploy national missile defenses. He is critical of American policies toward China and Russia, but has not presented bold new initiatives toward those powers. Under the rubric of "compassionate conservatism," Bush may alter U.S. relations toward the Global South in some interesting ways. The president and his advisors often purport to be realists, but the article demonstrates that their own words belie this claim as they often justify policies based on ideals rather than the pursuit of power.     

Administrative reform assistance and democracy promotion: exploring the democratic substance of the EU’s public administration reform principles for the neighbourhood countries

International donors, particularly the European Union (EU), vehemently endorse institution-building and public administration reform (PAR) in their work on democracy support. Still, the linkages between externally sponsored reform and advancement of democratic governance in beneficiary countries constitute a blind spot in our understanding of democratization. This article contributes to examining this relationship by exploring the democratic substance of the EU’s PAR portfolio for the neighbourhood countries. The aim of the article is to focus attention on the PA–democracy interface in the study of democracy promotion by elaborating a conceptual framework for exploring the nature of externally supported administrative reforms and the substantive content of democracy being advanced. By using the OECD/SIGMA’s (Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development/Support for Improvement in Governance and Management) PAR framework for the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) countries as a case study, this article demonstrates how the EU’s approach to programming PAR accommodates elements from several formats of democratic governance while the conceptualization of the democratic effects of the PAR principles remains vague. The article concludes by highlighting the need for closer examination of the potentials and limits of external PAR strategies in democracy support, and for attuning the EU’s PAR design to its democratic implications.     

Big change,little change? Punctuation,increments and multi-layer institutional change for English local authorities under austerity

This paper draws on new institutionalist theories to consider how we might characterise the process and outcomes of change occurring in English local government as a result of the UK’s austerity policies. It uses national and local empirical data to argue that changes are best understood as multi-layer processes, whereby radical ‘punctuated’ shifts in national funding can be mitigated to incremental adjustments in service delivery at a local level. However, the paper also suggests that the incremental appearance of change may be temporary, and that diminishing institutional resilience and emergent discursive shifts potentially prefigure a paradigm change in local governance.     

Administrative Styles in the OECD: Bureaucratic Policy-Making beyond Formal Rules

As we know from comparative public policy, bureaucracies contribute to a considerable degree to the contents and the ways of policy-making. One important driver of administrative policy-making are their specific “styles” or “cultures”. “Administrative styles” are understood here as the standard operating procedures and routines that characterize the behavior and activities of administrative bodies in initiating, drafting and implementing policy. In this article, we convey the concept of Administrative Styles to the level of International Organizations (IOs) and apply it to the Organization for Economic Development and Co-Operation (OECD). The article proceeds in three steps: First, the concept of administrative styles is introduced and refined. Drawing on expert interviews with OECD staff, we secondly show that consideration of OECD administrative styles significantly advances the literature’s understanding of the organization. Finally, we give an outlook on new research avenues and the relevance of our findings for the study of International Public Administrations (IPAs) more generally.