THE REFORM OF FINANCIAL MANAGEMENT IN THE EUROPEAN COMMISSION: A PUBLIC MANAGEMENT POLICY CYCLE CASE STUDY

Since the mid‐1990s during the Santer, Prodi, and Barroso presidencies, the European Commission has experienced several public management policy cycles. Included on the Barroso Commission's (2004–2008) policy agenda was the reform of internal financial control, prompted by significant irregularities in budget execution signalled repeatedly by the European Court of Auditors (ECA) in its annual Declaration of Assurance (DAS) and Annual Reports. This led to a declared Barroso Commission strategic objective of achieving a ‘positive DAS' by 2009. The proposed solution was ‘integrated internal control’ based on an international reference point within the accounting and auditing professions. The result was a centrally co‐ordinated Commission project aiming to reform management and audit practices within both the Commission and EU member states. This article reports on the ‘positive DAS' and ‘integrated internal control’ policy cycle and explains its agenda‐setting, alternative‐specification, and decisional processes.     

From Subjects to Citizens: On Educational Reforms and the Demarcation of the “Israeli-Arabs”

Based on a critical analysis of the Arab educational policy, from Israel's independence in the 1970s, this article examines the pivotal role of the state in engendering the trends of Palestinianization and Israelization that arguably characterize the attitude of the Arab minority to the Israeli state. Exploring the educational reforms of the 1960s and 1970s, it shows the contingent relation between ethnicity and the state, and also, the interrelationship between the intra-Jewish and Jewish-Arab divides. Looking at the ethnicization of social relations not as a preordained upshot of primordial realities, the history of the reforms unravels the changing patterns of inclusion and exclusion that result in demarcating the Arab minority as both Israeli and Palestinian, and in constructing the oxymoronic category of “Israeli-Arabs”. Seen from the perspective of the goals for Arab and Jewish education, this category manifests the internalization of the “Arab Question” and the shift in educational policy from preclusion to incorporation, but also the limits of inclusion. These goals thus epitomize the ways in which the new discourse of meritocracy (resulting from the liberalizing of the economy and society) had determined civic equality between Arab and Jewish citizens, but equally important, the seclusion of the Arab minority from both the Jewish (ethnic) society and the Palestinian (national) collective. In this sense, I argue, neither Israelization nor Palestinianization were a matter of choice. Rather, both constitute the inevitable dual path for social and political inclusion, limited as it is.     

EUROPEAN COMMISSION OVERLOAD AND THE PATHOLOGY OF MANAGEMENT REFORM: GARBAGE CANS,RATIONALITY AND RISK AVERSION

Prior to the EU resignation crisis (the fall of the Santer Commission in 1999), it had long been argued that the European Commission was suffering from managerial ‘overload’. The incoming Prodi Commission embarked on a programme of administrative and managerial reform under the leadership of Commission Vice President, Neil Kinnock. Central to this programme were the objectives of improving managerial capacities and bolstering legitimacy in order that the Commission would be better able to discharge its expanded responsibilities. Using the model of governmental overload developed in the 1970s and 1980s, this article quantifies the impact of the reforms and argues that the overload problem has been aggravated rather than diminished. In this context, the rationale of the reform project is explored with reference to theories of public policy decision making.