Policing the Holy Nation: The State and Righteous Violence in Vanuatu

ABSTRACT In Vanuatu, the police force has in recent years been strengthened by foreign government aid. AusAid and NZAid are heavily involved inside the police force, seeking to create ‘good governance’ and to shape Vanuatu's national developments. However, these measures also coincide with some other unexpected developments. Recent cases of violence, and especially of sorcery, have led the police to intervene in a quest for moral order. Police are becoming part of the articulation of new occult understandings of wealth and power. These developments are traced back partly to the history of colonial governance and the idea of righteous violence, but also to current restructurings of the Vanuatu state and growing Christian conceptions of Vanuatu as a holy nation.     

New public management and welfare-to-work in Australia: Comparing the reform agendas of the ALP and the Coalition

Since the 1990s, the adoption of new public management (NPM) as a management philosophy has translated into multiple waves of reform in the employment services sector in Australia, namely Working Nation (1994–96), Job Network (JN: 1996–2009) and Job Services Australia (JSA: 2009–present). Each wave has sought to improve the preceding policy. In this article, we examine changes implemented during the Rudd/Gillard Labor governments. Using government policy documents and survey data from frontline employment services staff, we compare JSA to JN against five benchmarks. Our data indicate that JSA has generated modest improvement. JSA is also a system with less emphasis on strong forms of sanctioning. Our combined data suggest that policy actors operating under NPM conditions are indeed able to influence specific aspects of frontline practice, but they must spend great effort to do so and must accept new imperfections as a consequence.

1990年代以来,新型公共管理被作为一种管理哲学而被接受。这导致了就业服务部门的数次改革浪潮,即工作国（1994—96）、工作网（1996—2009）、澳大利亚工作服务（2009至今）。每波浪潮都力图改良此前的政策。本文考察了陆克文/吉拉德工党执政时期的变革。作者根据政府的政策文件、一线就业服务机构员工的调查数据等等,在五个基准点上将澳大利亚工作服务与工作网做了对比。根据我们的资料,澳大利亚工作服务这个系统带来的改进最小,也不大注重强有力的制裁。我们认为,实施新型公共管理的政策制定方的确能影响一线实践的某些方面,但他们还要花大力气,还要接受往后新的不圆满。     

A Critique in Search of a Corpus: Re-visiting Governance and Re-interpreting Urban Politics

One of the most profound changes of the last two decades has been in the form and the function of local government. Its role as part of the local state has been challenged through the re-scaling and re-configuration of many of its aims. This paper examines the growth of business sector involvement and the ascendancy of the partnership model in urban development, as part of an analysis of the changes and the continuities that stretch across the local government – local governance conceptualization of political relations. I start the paper with a discussion of the main issues in the local governance literature as a precursor to a commentary onImrie and Raco's (1999) recent paper, 'How New is the New Local Governance? Lessons from the United Kingdom'. The wider literature is drawn upon to discuss some of the theoretical approaches used to analyse this much-vaunted transformation and three key themes are used to structure the remainder of the paper. I argue that Imrie and Raco caricature the work of other academics in order to make their claims over omissions from the literature. In doing so, they ignore or under-play how state restructuring and the logic of capital has often been the object of analysis, rather that the voluntarist incorporation of business élites into the local governing apparatus. Using empirical examples from three English cities I argue that while, on the one hand, their examples are revealing and serve to sensitize current debates around governance, the state and regulation, on the other hand, there is still a need to interpret these 'local' politics within a broader and more scale-sensitive framework and in more abstract terms. This demands a clear distinction between local governance as a concept, and its investigation in an empirical way.     

Of Vines and Policy Vignettes: Sectoral Evolution and Institutional Thickness in the Languedoc

We argue that the search for rural regimes in particular localities can be usefully advanced through the deployment of a sensitive and suitably nuanced conceptualization of institutional thickness. Empirical validation of this theoretical framework with reference to Languedoc viticulture offers substantial evidence of the interdependency between regime building maintenance and stability, and local institutional integrity. The theoretical framework developed here, based on the notions of consensus and concrete institutions , also provides an analytically rigorous approach for understanding the complex rescaling of the political economy of rural governance, not least by offering some indication of the scalar rationale for consensus compatibility and partnership building between elites situated at different politico-geographic scales. We contend that an understanding of this shared logic of action among local and extra-local administrative and political elites is crucial to the restructuring process unfolding in European rural regions.     

Drivers for Policy Agreement in Nascent Subsystems: An Application of the Advocacy Coalition Framework to Fracking Policy in Switzerland and the UK

The study of public policy deals with subsystems in which actors cooperate or compete to turn their beliefs into policy solutions. Yet, most studies concern mature subsystems in which the main actors and their allies and enemies can easily be identified. This paper tackles the challenge of studying nascent subsystems, in which actors have begun to engage in politics but are uncertain about other actors’ beliefs. Actors therefore find it relatively difficult to identify their allies and opponents. Focusing on the Advocacy Coalition Framework, we examine three main ways in which actors might agree to support the same policy design before they decide whether or not to form long‐term relationships within advocacy coalitions: they see the issue through the same lenses, they follow leaders, or they know each other from earlier cooperation. We use the case of fracking policy in Switzerland and the UK as a key example, in which actors have begun to agree with each other, but where final policy outputs were not yet defined, and long‐term relationships not yet observable. We find that, when dealing with new issues, actors strongly rely on former contacts rather than shared ideologies or leadership.     

Barriers to Co-Governance: Examining the "Chemistry" of Home-Care Networks in Germany, England, and Quebec

This article aims at studying the dynamics of organized home care and particular problems in the delivery of social services, analyzed against the background of the international recasting of welfare systems. Challenging an influential academic discourse on the advent of new forms of network governance thought to improve service provision, three jurisdictions—Germany, England, and Quebec—are compared with regard to how home-care networks are actually configured and the rationales which appear to shape the interaction between network members. The article argues that notwithstanding the extensive literature extolling the virtues of network governance or the possibility of reconciling different governance modes, home care operates through arrangements embracing conflicting rationales. Rather than providing for mutual adjustment and shared perspectives, contemporary home-care networks tend to produce tensions and outcome problems as a result of the "biased" interplay between various steering rationales within given institutional arrangements and different meta-governance regimes.     

Flexibility Meets Accountability: State Charter School Laws and Their Influence on the Formation of Charter Schools in the United States

Using an original and unique database of state charter school laws that we have developed, we analyze how state policymakers have incorporated two key values into state charter school laws: flexibility and accountability. We supplement this database with other state‐level measures to answer two specific questions: What factors influence the degree of flexibility and accountability in state charter school laws? How does the content of state charter school laws, and the different values those laws embrace, affect the formation of charter schools in the United States? Overall, we show that state political and contextual factors help account for the degree of flexibility, but not accountability, in state charter school laws. Further, we show that the degree of flexibility, accountability, and political and contextual factors influence the number of charter schools that form in the states.     

宗藩体制解体与东北亚乱局

东北亚问题成为国际焦点问题之一,这是近代以来国际局势再演再变的结果.清政府面对近代化压力不得不放弃"王道政治",直面自己的内部问题,力图建立近代国家.对于先前各藩邦受到列强或近邻的侵害,清政府无力亦无心继续予以救助,于是先前行之有效的宗藩体制解体,并导致至今扰攘不宁的东北亚乱局.     

Contextualising the AIDS epidemic in the South Pacific: orthodoxies,estimates and evidence

There is a growing consensus that HIV/AIDS is a ‘time bomb’ ticking in the South Pacific. This may, in fact, be the case. However, there are at least two major problems with this approach. First, analysis of the implications of the epidemic is based on supposedly concrete links between the epidemic and social, economic and political outcomes. Many of these apparent links have not been established (because the data is not available for the South Pacific). As such, much of the method for analysing the ramifications of the epidemic is borrowed from elsewhere, notably Africa, and the strength of these links is beginning to unravel. Second, research on the vectors of the epidemic that informs this consensus is only as good as the data that it relies on. There are major testing and surveillance gaps in the South Pacific that mean projections are often based on patchy and incomplete data. This can dramatically skew priorities. Reflecting on these problems is important because of the clear ramifications they pose for the development of good public policy in, and toward, the South Pacific.     

Managing flood risk in the UK: towards an integration of social and technical perspectives

In recent years, an apparent increase in the frequency and severity of floods in the UK has led to growing concerns about societal exposure and vulnerability to flooding, particularly in the context of climate change, floodplain development and changing insurance practices. Despite the important link between assessments of exposure to flooding (hazard assessments) and issues of societal vulnerability, this link has rarely been explored in detail and has often been reflected in policy terms by a highly technocratic approach to flood risk management. Indeed, more comprehensive studies have usually favoured rigid and deterministic definitions of vulnerability, in keeping with the wider technocratic paradigm pervading management institutions. In an attempt to redress the balance, this paper considers the role of hazard assessment and issues of societal vulnerability as mutually informative debates and advocates a movement away from the technocratic ideals currently favoured in the UK.     

A trade balance: litigation and negotiation in the World Trade Organization's dispute settlement system

The establishment of the World Trade Organization (WTO) has been widely accepted as representing the legalisation of world trading rules. However, it is important to reflect on the limits of this legalisation thesis in terms of the interface between international and domestic policy processes. By locating trading disputes in a political analysis of policy implementation, it is argued that it is difficult to establish conceptually how the WTO dispute settlement system could have authority separate from and above the conventional international politics of trade policy relations. Instead, the article argues that case outcomes should be expected to be largely the product of domestic political institutions and policy processes, and how these intersect with developments in the WTO dispute settlement system. Brief studies of the Australian government's dispute settlement strategy and two high-profile WTO disputes—the US upland cotton and European Union sugar cases—serve to suggest that the authority of international trade law is not as significant as assumed by the legalisation thesis. Rather, domestic politics and institutions have an important impact on the outcome of trade disputes.     

The Public Assistance Policies of Cities and the Justice Concerns of Elected Officials: The Centrality of the Floors Principle in Addressing Urban Poverty

City councils are significant, though seldom central, actors in local policy networks providing public assistance to disadvantaged residents. Mayors and council members in 12 American cities more often support than oppose public assistance initiatives. They claim that their own normative judgments are more important to their preferences and voting behavior on such matters than are public opinion, group demands, or economic considerations. While such elected officials hold a variety of justice principles, the most important of these affecting their positions on public assistance issues is the “floors” principle. A broad ethical commitment to providing social minimums enhances support for living‐wage ordinances, for linking subsidies for economic development to assistance to less advantaged citizens, and for exempting spending on social services from budget cuts. We discuss the implications of these findings for major theories of urban politics and policies—collective‐action theory, regime theory, and pluralism—and for advocates on behalf of the urban poor.     

巴达维亚甲必丹制度与华侨包税制关系探析——以玛腰陈永元为个案

以玛腰陈永元为个案,阐述了巴达维亚甲必丹制度与包税制度的源起与演变及包税事业的经营,并通过探讨陈永元长期经营承包税收的原因,对两个制度之间的相互关系进行分析研究。     

The Diffusion of Voluntary International Management Standards: Responsible Care,ISO 9000, and ISO 14001 in the Chemical Industry

This article analyzes the factors that explain the international diffusion of voluntary international management standards. We argue that international management standards should not be analyzed in isolation but in conjunction with other standards and their institutional environment. We present two opposite views explaining how the previous diffusion of management standards facilitates or hampers the adoption of new management standards. We test a comprehensive model of diffusion of international environmental management standards within the chemical industry using a panel of 113 different countries during the period 2000 to 2003. Our results show that the previous experience of businesses in voluntary standards such as the Chemical Industry's Responsible Care Program or ISO 9000, government commitment toward Environmental Management Systems Standards, and the level of activity of international nongovernmental organizations in the country of adoption, impact positively on the adoption of ISO 14001 by chemical firms. Unlike previous studies that focused mostly on cross industry analyses, we do not find trade‐related factors significant while explaining adoption in the chemical industry. Our results differ, therefore, from previous research and highlight the need to isolate industry effects to understand the diffusion of international standards.