What Works and Why? Lessons from Public Management Reform in Malaysia

This article examines the Malaysian experience with public management reform to verify arguments about various reform models. Drawing on empirical data, it investigates reforms that have worked and those that have had limited impacts on public service improvements. It identifies critical success factors that determine reform outcomes and concludes that for reforms to succeed a combined top–down and bottom–up approach is crucial. It argues that while diagnostic and problem-oriented reforms have a better chance of being successful, the value of best-practice reforms should not be discounted. The cumulative impact of such reforms can be significant, as the Malaysian case demonstrates.     

The diverse domains of quantified selves: self-tracking modes and dataveillance

The concept of self-tracking has recently begun to emerge in discussions of ways in which people can record specific features of their lives, often using digital technologies, to monitor, evaluate and optimize themselves. There is evidence that the personal data that are generated by the digital surveillance of individuals (dataveillance) are now used by a range of actors and agencies in diverse contexts. This paper examines the ‘function creep’ of self-tracking by outlining five modes that have emerged: private, communal, pushed, imposed and exploited. The analysis draws upon theoretical perspectives on concepts of selfhood, citizenship, dataveillance and the global digital data economy in discussing the wider socio-cultural implications of the emergence and development of these modes of self-tracking.     

A community of practice: explaining change and continuity in ASEAN's diplomatic environment

Despite change in the aims, institutions and informal diplomacy of ASEAN since 1997, the formal diplomatic code of conduct remains locked in a traditionalist mode first outlined in the 1970s. Existing approaches from mainstream International Relations theorising are unable to adequately explain this continuity and change. The recent ‘practice turn’ in theorising offers distinct explanatory advantage, which this article illustrates by arguing that the formation of an ‘ASEAN rationality’ between 1967 and 1997 fundamentally curtailed the ability of regional diplomats to revise ASEAN post 1997, resulting in the coexistence of new and old norms in ASEAN's organisation design.     

结构与功能的背离:宋代州府司法中的长属分职与长官专权

宋代州级司法职能配置在长官与属官之间存在明确的分工。这种职能分工被赋予了防范长官干预属官司法行为的权力约束功能。但在审判实践中,长官往往借助官制特权或法定特权赋予的优势地位,干预或控制属官的审判行为,操纵州府审判的过程与结果,使州府审判过程呈现出鲜明的长官专权特质。从其司法制度演进的历史考察,两宋时期之所以出现司法体制上的控权倾向与审判过程中的专权特质并存的局面,根源在于其政权建设中难以克服的"祖宗之法"与"汉唐故事"之间的深刻抵牾。     

当代中国特色社会主义理论和实践的新发展——学习党的十八大报告

党的十八大报告对中国特色社会主义理论和实践的新经验作了深刻总结和精辟概括,提出了一系列紧密相连、相互贯通的新思想、新观点、新论断。高度评价和提升了科学发展观的理论地位和指导作用;全面总结和评估过去五年工作和十年历史;重新认定中国特色社会主义“三位一体”科学内涵;提出和确认全面建成小康社会新目标;提出加快完善社会主义市场经济体制,促进经济发展方式转变新思路;深刻阐述推进政治体制改革新思想;提出建设社会主义文化强国整体新理念;提出加强社会建设新部署;提出并描绘生态文明建设新篇章;提出推进党建科学化水平全面提升新理论。     

A Pragmatist Critique of Liberal Epistemology

Abstract

This paper wrestles with the issue of the place of comprehensive beliefs within the public space. It tries to strike a middle path between the liberal ban on comprehensive beliefs and the anti-liberal claim that comprehensive beliefs should be given full pride of place in public deliberations. The article relies on arguments that are inspired by the pragmatist tradition. It starts locating the main cause of failures at articulating comprehensive beliefs and public reason in a central feature of liberal epistemology, namely the way it conceives public reason via a preliminary distinction between public and non-public beliefs. After criticizing this distinction, the article introduces a distinction between the normative practice of justification and the normative practice of adjudication as a more perspicuous way to establish the place that comprehensive beliefs should play within political forums. It then concludes showing that this approach provides a satisfying answer to the issue of the public role of comprehensive beliefs in a liberal democratic regime that is respectful of citizens’ thick identities while at the same time complying with the requirements of respect set by the liberal tradition.     

Making sense of terrorism: a narrative approach to the study of violent events

ABSTRACT

How does violence become understood as terrorism? In this article, we show how a narrative approach to the study of violent events offers a conceptually productive way to understand the process of “seeing” an event as a terrorist act, one that explicitly integrates the phenomenology of violence. While the collective practice of defining terrorism in academia and the policy arena has struggled to produce a universal definition, we identify a set of “common sense” characteristics. We argue that if the framing of violent events prominently features these characteristics as discursive anchors, this primes processes of sensemaking toward interpreting violence as terrorism. While terrorism markers are often articulated as being pragmatic and apolitical indicators of terrorist acts, we show that they are indeed at the core of political contests over historical and physical facts about violent events. The narrative approach we develop in this article underscores that intuitive leanings toward interpreting violence as terrorism are a sign of political agency precisely because they are produced through the stories political agents tell.     

What Voters Want From Political Campaign Communication

Implicit and explicit norms in broadcasting require that interviewees be treated in a fair and objective manner and given an equal chance to express themselves, regardless of interviewers' personal liking or preference. Nonverbal behavior of seven Israeli televison interviewers was investigated to discover whether they treated politicians from opposing camps and other interviewees in a differential or fair manner. Very brief clips (averaging 7 seconds) showing the interviewer alone were judged by American students who had no comprehension of speech content. In Study 1, all six interviewers were found to demonstrate differential nonverbal behavior toward interviewees, and four of them treated Labor versus Likud camp politicians in a differential manner. A range of individual differences in effect magnitudes of the differential behavior effects was found. Study 2 focused on two lengthy parallel interviews conducted by a prominent interviewer during the 1996 election campaign with the two candidates for prime minister. The interviewer's nonverbal behavior was found to be blatantly preferential in favor of one candidate. Study 3 examined micro behaviors contributing to the formation of global negative/positive impressions. Correlational analyses yielded several global (presumably universal) mediators: smiling, rhythmical beating hand movements, leaning forward, sarcasm, and attempts to regulate the interviewee. Each interviewer was found to demonstrate a unique personal style in which different nonverbal behaviors mediated the overall impression. The tentative conclusion is that more dominant and aggressive interviewers show more differential/preferential behavior. Social and ethical implications, as well as implications for nonverbal research, are discussed.     

Introduction: The dynamics of ideas

Abstract

Participants in today's financial markets confront a sea of data. While the availability of market data has benefits it also creates problems, notably those relating to questions of meaning, judgement and intervention: how to make sense of these flows – how to see the ‘market’, its futures, and thus act pre-emptively. Over more recent years financial organizations have been turning to new technologies of representation, in particular the design and application of visualization software in an effort to enable better visual imagination of and interaction with markets as they unfold in real time. ‘What you see is what you risk’ in many respects captures the thinking or at least the desire underlying the employment of the latest visualization software. The more powerful one's vision the better able one is to participate in increasingly complex financial markets, at least in theory.

Based on recent interviews with those involved in developing and using the latest visualization software within some of the key markets of global finance, and developing the influential work of Daniel Beunza and David Stark, and Karin Knorr Cetina, in particular, this paper adopts a cultural-economy-of-finance perspective to examine the implications of these new techniques of representation. The paper argues that the latest visual turn within finance should be afforded a more central position in the study of contemporary financial market practices.