From Merkel to Kramp‐Karrenbauer: Can German Christian Democracy Reinvent Itself?

Germany's Christian Democrats have started preparing for the time after Angela Merkel. After ten years as German chancellor facing a weak opposition, Merkel unexpectedly split the country in late 2015 and early 2016 because of her ‘open border’ policies that allowed more than 1 million refugees and migrants to rapidly enter Germany. Her management of the subsequent crisis was largely considered a failure and her party suffered a series of dramatic election defeats. Reacting to the negative electoral feedback, and in particular the breakthrough of the rightist and anti‐immigration Alternative for Germany (AfD), the Christian Democratic Union organised an intra‐party contest to replace Merkel as party leader. Three candidates with different political profiles, Annegret Kramp‐Karrenbauer, Friedrich Merz and Jens Spahn, contested the election. By voting for Kramp‐Karrenbauer, the CDU membership voiced support for maintaining a large‐scale political coalition based on efforts to find compromises between different party wings and social and cultural interests.     

Building informal knowledge‐sharing relationships between policy makers and academics: Insights from a PM&C engagement project

This article outlines an innovative project to encourage knowledge sharing and engagement between academics and a policy team within the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C). The project was designed to enhance policy advice by drawing on a group of academics outside the policy ranks to act as a sounding board, to question, and provide differing perspectives within the policy process of crafting advice to government. External expertise and particularly academic research has the potential to improve evidence‐based policy but often fails to be specific or timely for those at the “pointy end” of policy decision making. An informal knowledge sharing framework has the potential to improve the exchange of information through confidential and targeted conversations between researchers and public servants as one way of overcoming these barriers.     

Mobilising evidence in public policy: The contribution of the evidence provider

This article contributes to the conceptualisation of evidence‐based policy through providing a framework of the key factors that influence research utilisation, including those that shape the quality of evidence provided. We apply this framework to an analysis of public policy to regulate the remuneration of freight truck drivers to improve workplace safety in their industry. Recent policymaking concerning the regulation of truck drivers’ remuneration in Australia provides an opportunity to examine the quality and utilisation of research evidence by external evidence providers in opposing political contexts. This article suggests the need for informed and vigilant scrutiny of the contributions of evidence providers to government policymaking, particularly in the case of wicked policy problems about which there are sustained ideological differences that underpin problematisation, research interpretation, and conceivable policy solutions.     

Why do “teeth” need “voice”? The case of anti‐corruption agencies in three Australian states

Interactions between horizontal accountability agencies (e.g., anti‐corruption agencies [ACAs]) and social accountability actors (e.g., journalists, civil society activists, and complainants/whistleblowers) are recognized as important to horizontal agencies’ performance, but the reason(s) is not clear. This study therefore explores why horizontal accountability agencies need social accountability actors in performing their functions. The study analyses data from 30 key stakeholders in Australia, including ACAs staff members, social accountability actors, and other observers to report on the specific support roles social actors play to ACAs’ activities and operations. Through the conceptual lens of social accountability, evidence show that social actors play four key types of support roles to ACAs’ activities and operations: activate ACAs’ investigations; “amplify” ACAs’ operations; guard ACAs’ activities and operations; and defend ACAs’ independence and powers. These findings support the need for interactions and, also, affirm the potential for research into how these support roles can better be provided for effective anti‐corruption outcomes. The research is of value to public accountability agencies in Australia, and internationally.     

Public Wi‐Fi provision by Australian local government authorities

Investment by Australian local government authorities (LGAs) in public Wi‐Fi (PWF) provision has grown substantially in recent years. PWF represents the first significant venture of LGAs into telecommunications, a field of national jurisdiction, and thus is a precursor of wider local investment in digital communication technologies, particularly the Internet of Things and other ‘smart city’ infrastructure. However, there has been little published analysis of PWF provision and use in Australia. This knowledge gap limits understanding of the rationales, business models, and uses and impact of investment in these networks and offers little guidance for local authorities and communities contemplating wider ventures in the field of digital networks. This article draws on a national survey of PWF provision by LGAs, together with interview data and critical analysis of policy and institutional settings, to present an overview of local PWF provision in Australia. The analysis highlights some familiar problems associated with LGA infrastructure investment and service delivery, as well as some novel challenges posed for local managers by digital communication networks. Following an empirical mapping of PWF provision in Australia, we explore three significant themes that our research in this field highlights: accountability and transparency, competence in the field of information and communication technologies (ICT) and evaluation.     

Cost‐Effectiveness of Early Childhood Interventions to Enhance Preschool: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment in Head Start Centers Enrolling Historically Underserved Populations

We evaluate the cost‐effectiveness of two early childhood interventions that use instructional coaching and parent coaching as levers for improvement. The study design allows us to compare the individual effects of each intervention as well as their combined effect on student outcomes. We find that teachers receiving instructional coaching improve their use of evidence‐based instructional practices, while families receiving parent coaching show increases in numerous responsive parenting behaviors associated with positive child outcomes. Both interventions demonstrate positive impacts on students, but only parent coaching shows statistically significant effects across a range of student outcomes. Instructional coaching alone is substantially less costly and may therefore be the most cost‐effective of the three treatment conditions; however, small sample sizes limit our ability to reach definitive conclusions. Policy simulations suggest that implementing these interventions could raise the overall cost‐effectiveness of Head Start by at least 16 percent.     

Alternative South–South development collaboration? The role of China in the Coega Special Economic Zone in South Africa

Aid, in the form of financial aid and investment, has become increasingly prevalent in both bilateral and multilateral partnerships in the BRICS. In Africa, the Forum on China–Africa Cooperation provides the official framings for forms of development assistance to the continent, with financial forms of aid available through the New Development Bank and the China–Africa Development Bank (CADFund). This article explores how Chinese international development assistance has influenced South Africa's economic growth and development strategies and is reshaping South Africa as “gateway” to Africa and continental leader. Special economic zones (SEZs) have become a prioritised form of BRICS development collaboration particularly in terms of Chinese trade and investment expansionism into Africa through South Africa. Chinese international development assistance and foreign direct investment in South Africa in particular are very notable and have been strengthened during the Chinese official state visit prior to the Johannesburg BRICS Summit in 2018. The article critically analyses the development policy discourse on BRICS spearheading an alternative model of South–South international cooperation by examining the Coega SEZ in South Africa, hailed as the most SEZ in Africa. The article critically examines the development alternative potential of the Coega SEZ.     

Between regulatory field structuring and organizational roles: Intermediation in the field of sustainable urban development

Recent contributions in the domains of governance and regulation elucidate the importance of rule‐intermediation (RI), the role that organizations adopt to bridge actors with regulatory or “rulemaking” roles and those with target or “rule‐taking” roles. Intermediation not only enables the diffusion and translation of regulatory norms, but also allows for the representation of different actors in policymaking arenas. While prior studies have explored the roles that such RIs adopt to facilitate their intermediation functions, we have yet to consider how field‐level structuring processes influence (and are influenced by) the various and changing roles adopted by RI. In this study we focus on the mutually constitutive relations between field‐level change processes and the evolving roles of RIs by studying the rise of the International Council for Local Environmental Initiatives (ICLEI)/Local Governments for Sustainability, an RI serving as a bridge for sustainable urban development policies between the United Nations and local authorities. Using ICLEI as an illustrative case, we theorize four different processes of regulatory field structuration: problematization, role specialization, marketization, and orchestrated decentralization. We discuss their implications for RI roles in the field and further theorize the changing dynamics of trickle‐up intermediation processes as an RI gains power and influence.     

Automated detection and classification of counterfeit banknotes using quantitative features captured by spectral-domain optical coherence tomography

Counterfeiting of banknotes is still a severe crime problem in many countries. One of the most significant issue for solving the crime is to classify the counterfeit types and identify the sources. Most of the current methods to classify counterfeit banknotes rely on manual examination that is time-consuming and labor-intensive. Moreover, these methods only detect surface features which can be easily imitated through advanced printing technology. In this study, an automated method based on optical coherence tomography (OCT) and machine-learning algorithms was proposed to classify different types of banknotes based on the internal features. A spectral-domain OCT (SD-OCT) system was employed for sub-surface imaging and quantitative assessment of banknotes. A total of 29 Chinese 100-Yuan banknotes were collected, in which 4 of them were real and 25 of them were counterfeiting by three different printing processes. Each banknote was imaged 10 times in 3 distinct regions, which resulted in a dataset of 290 samples. Each sample was characterized by extracting 2 A-scan (OCT signal intensity along depth) based features and 14B-scan (cross-sectional OCT images) based features. Several machine-learning models, including logistic regression (LR), support vector machines (SVM), K-nearest neighbor (KNN) and random forest (RF), were built and optimized as the classifiers that were trained using 203 samples and applied to predict 87 testing samples. The best performance was achieved by SVM classifier in which the sensitivity of 96.55% and specificity of 98.85% were obtained in discriminating between authentic and counterfeit banknotes, and the sensitivity of 94.67% and specificity of 98.22% were obtained in predicting the types of counterfeit banknotes. These classifiers were also evaluated using the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study where A-scan and B-scan derived features from OCT images have been used for the detection and classification of different types of counterfeit banknotes.