The internal development of the Ukrainian parliament

At the time of independence, parliaments in Central and Eastern Europe and the Newly Independent States of the former Soviet Union were highly underdeveloped institutions. Since that time, many parliaments have begun the process of building legislative capacity in order to participate more fully in the process of governance. One aspect of building legislative capacity is the internal structure of the parliament. This article examines the internal development of one of these parliaments—the Verkhovna Rada of Ukraine—focusing on the legislative process, the budget process, the committee system and faction organization. The article identifies where progress has been made in each of these areas, and points to key aspects that require critical attention in order to ensure future progress. Finally, it discusses how one development project—the Parliamentary Development Project—has used a ‘comparative action research’ approach to aid key decision makers in the Verkhovna Rada in building legislative capacity.     

Rooting and Cultura in West Mexico

Drawing on Kwame Appiah’s discussion of the relationship between rooting and cosmopolitanism, I show that this concern was shared by many in west Mexico, where I conducted fieldwork among diverse groups of townspeople, villagers, weekend visitors from Guadalajara, and migrants working in Guadalajara and in California. All of those groups talked about belonging or rooting to specific places – villages, towns, cities, countries and so on. They also used the term cultura in a way that resonated more with Appiah’s ‘cosmopolitanism’ than with his ‘cultural particularities’. Although most people aspired to gain cultura without losing rooting, I found that many people judged themselves or others to fail in one or both respects. Migrants in California, in particular, were felt to have lost rooting without having become cosmopolitan. I focus throughout on how west Mexicans, including the novelist Juan Rulfo, used their knowledge of history as a way of claiming both rooting and cultura.     

ADAPTIVE AND MALADAPTIVE RESPONSES OF MANAGERS TO CHANGING ENVIRONMENTS: A STUDY OF AUSTRALIAN PUBLIC SECTOR SENIOR EXECUTIVES

This paper examines data collected from senior executives in two Australian government agencies to identify patterns of adaptive and maladaptive responses to change in public sector environments. The conceptual categories of passive maladaptive, active maladaptive and active adaptive responses are all supported by the interview data, with half of the executives expressing predominantly active adaptive responses to external change and uncertainty and half displaying various kinds of passive and active maladaptive responses. The implications of the findings for managers as agents of organizational learning and adaptation in public sector environments are discussed.     

Superdiversity and the Browning of Labour

Superdiversity across Europe has focused attention on the increasing significance of ethnic minorities to electoral outcomes. We use unique Origins software to analyse a sample of minority voters in the May 2014 European elections; drawing on the work of the Ethnic Minority British Election Study (EMBES), we show that the growth of non‐White minorities will combine with a persistent preference for Labour to produce some unexpected consequences. We also compute the different ethnic penalties suffered by minority Labour and Conservative supporters, and demonstrate their likely trend between now and mid‐century. The analysis shows the increased importance of social and cultural factors in determining political preferences, and illustrates the way in which Big Data‐derived tools such as Origins can be used to produce fresh insights.