Truncated Decision Making and Deliberative Implementation: A Time-Based Policy Process Model for Transitional China

The time dimension has not attracted enough attention in policy process research in China, yet speed is the most distinctive feature of China’s recent development. This article, based on observations of China’s policy practices, proposes a new research perspective for understanding how the Chinese government has been able to address policy challenges in an era of rapid transition. The approach adopted by the government allows decision makers to respond quickly to serious problems with a truncated decision-making process, and then implement the decisions through a more gradual deliberative process. The article examines China’s coal-mining industry reform as an empirical case to illustrate how this governance approach has been used to achieve major policy reform, namely property rights reform for coal mines, while simultaneously maintaining stability, regulating production safety, and stimulating industrial development. The article concludes with a discussion of the broad implications of this pattern for improving the effectiveness of public policy both in and outside China.     

The Abbott government and the Islamic State: a securitised and elitist foreign policy discourse

This article analyses the foreign policy discourse that surrounded the Abbott government’s 2014 decision to fight the Islamic State (IS). An analysis of parliamentary Hansard reveals that the debate featured three prominent axes: the legacy of the 2003 Iraq War; the strategies and objectives of the 2014 mission; and Australia’s domestic terror threat level. Throughout, the Abbott government not only marginalised dissenting views, but also justified its renewed engagement in the Middle East via a highly securitised and elitist foreign policy discourse. This finding has consequences beyond the battle against the IS. It reveals a deep-seated tension between the ideals of democratic pluralism and the reality that securitised and elitist foreign policy discourses protect governments from serious scrutiny.     

Wind(ow) of Change: A Systematic Review of Policy Entrepreneurship Characteristics and Strategies

What lessons can we learn from 40 years of policy entrepreneurship scholarship on policy entrepreneurs’ strategies and defining characteristics? While scholars have offered important insights, many questions remain open. This article systematically reviews 229 articles that were published between 1984 and 2017. Our findings provide (i) an analysis of policy entrepreneurship characteristics by sector, policy domain, individual/group, government layer, and geographical spread, (ii) an empirically based identification and classification of policy entrepreneurship strategies, and (iii) a statistical analysis of the relationship between policy entrepreneurs’ characteristics and strategies. We conclude with an agenda for future studies that will continue to examine new theoretical approaches that advance our understanding of the role that individuals and small groups play in the policy process.     

Designing cultural policy in a postcolonial colony: the case of Puerto Rico

Puerto Rico became a territory of the United States in 1898 with the end of the Spanish-American War. In 1952, the island became a ‘Commonwealth’ through the development and approval of a local constitution. While this political status allows Puerto Rico some degree of autonomy, it nevertheless continues to subject the island to United States federal authority. For the last 60 years, discussions on whether Puerto Rico’s Commonwealth status is a permanent or transitional status has fuelled much of the political debate and public policy of the region, and has been highly influenced by political status ideologies: to become a state of the United States, to maintain the current status, or to become independendent. Budgetary, legal, and commercial dependence on the United States causes constant conflicts in the design and implementation of Puerto Rican public policy in areas such as education, law, and economic development. Likewise, culture has not been exempt from these debates. In fact, cultural differences have caused conflict at all levels – from the theoretical conceptions of culture, to cultural policy and arts management. Moreover, the implementation of cultural policies has also been subject to political ideologies and the concept of culture has variably been seen as an obstacle or strength for specific political purposes. In the midst of a sustained economic crisis, the current Puerto Rican government has proposed the development of a comprehensive cultural policy through a participatory process. The objective of this paper is to present this process as a means of analyzing Puerto Rico’s experience through the challenges in designing and implementing cultural policy within a ‘postcolonial colony’ scenario. This paper will place emphasis on the government’s role, cultural public institutions, and cultural production.     

The cultural industry policies of the Korean government and the Korean Wave

The paper examines how the Korean government promoted Korea’s cultural industries over the last 20?years. In the early 1990s, there was a radical departure in the government’s cultural industry policy, from that of political control over the cultural industries to viewing them as central to the government’s export-focused economic development strategies. The policy of developing the cultural industries was implemented in conjunction with government investment in other strategic industries, such as the information and communication technology industries. In the 2000s, the domestic market for cultural products expanded and diversified rapidly as the Korean society enjoyed improved living standards and a growing middle class demanded improved quality from Korea’s cultural products. The rapid development of other industries also facilitated the enhanced competitiveness of Korean cultural products in global markets. As a result, Korea’s cultural industries made substantial inroads into East-Asian markets in the late 1990s and into global markets in the 2000s.     

Film policy in Japan – an isolated species on the verge of extinction?

This article examines changes of the place that film has occupied in the public policy of the Japanese government, including not only cultural policy per se, but also industrial and economic policy. After describing some of the distinctive features of the Japanese film market, this paper discusses the inadequate basis of the government’s cultural policy for film. Film in recent years has received some attention as an industry with export potential, particularly with the rise of ‘Cool Japan’, the policy of promoting Japanese culture abroad as a tool for economic and diplomatic aims. In the chequered history of economic growth strategies and nation branding of recent years, the film industry has had some good news but received no serious attention either as a sector with economic significance or as a form of national culture.     

Australia and middle power approaches to Asia Pacific regionalism

This article presents a liberal-institutionalist conceptual framework drawn from Middle Power theory to analyse Australian foreign policy approaches towards Asia Pacific regionalism. Building on precedents set by the former Keating administration, the Labor government of Rudd/Gillard (2007–13) undertook high-profile efforts not only to engage, but to champion, the regionalism process in the Asia Pacific. This enterprise became fused with a self-proclaimed identity as a ‘creative middle power’. Through an analysis of regional community building, regional security architecture and regional order, the article identifies the strong linkages between the theory and practice of ‘middle power’ diplomacy, and the concept of ‘regionalism’ itself, in Australian foreign policy. The article thus contributes to the theoretical literature by exposing the important intersections between the two concepts and concludes that despite Rudd’s prolific attempts to harness Australia’s middle power credentials, Canberra was not able to significantly affect the process of Asia Pacific regionalism unilaterally.     

Researchers,bureaucrats and the lifeworlds of cultural policy

This paper reflects on the value of cultural policy research, particularly when such research forms part of projects that seek to produce insights or ‘outcomes’ that are useful to non-university research partners. The paper draws from the author’s involvement in a project examining cultural diversity in the arts that was funded as part of the Australian Research Council’s Linkage Project scheme. It addresses Eleonora Belfiore’s provocation that this kind of instrumental cultural policy research routinely amounts to ‘bullshit.’ However, in order to understand the critical function of such research, there needs to be greater attention to the lifeworlds of cultural policy and the multiplicity of the policy-making process. This multiplicity both complicates the possibilities for usefulness in policy research, at the same time that it enables such research to be generative in unpredictable ways.     

Changing philosophies of action? Argentine’s cultural policies in the 21st century

ABSTRACT

How can the many institutional and ideological changes of Argentine cultural policy at the beginning of the 21st century be explained? This paper analyses how representations of culture, programs and public actions are translated into different ‘philosophies of action’ depending on the political stripe of each government and the agents of cultural policy. If the predominant philosophy of action during the whole period is ‘culture as an economic resource’, it coexists with other philosophies: ‘culture as show’, ‘a communication tool’, ‘social inclusion’ and finally ‘a factor of citizenship’.     

New technologies in cultural institutions: theory,evidence and policy implications

Publicly-funded cultural institutions such as theatre companies, symphony orchestras, museums, libraries and so on are increasingly engaging with new technologies as a means of improving their operational efficiency and extending the range of ways in which they pursue their cultural missions. For example, opera companies are broadcasting performances by satellite to cinemas, and art museums are using the Internet to show virtual exhibitions. These developments have implications for funding authorities who need to update their policy approaches to encompass a range of new technological phenomena. This paper provides a framework for assessing technological innovation in cultural institutions, and discusses the ramifications of such a framework for cultural policy. The paper is illustrated using the results of a recent research project that evaluated the UK National Theatre’s NT Live experiment and the Tate Gallery’s use of a web-based exhibition as strategies to expand their audience reach.     

Media literacy: the UK’s undead cultural policy

This article examines media literacy in the UK: a policy that emerged within the Department for Culture, Media and Sport in the late 1990s, was adopted by the New Labour administration, and enshrined in the Communications Act 2003. That legislation gave the new media regulator, Ofcom, a duty to ‘promote’ media literacy, although it left the term undefined. The article describes how Ofcom managed this regulatory duty. It argues that over time, media literacy was progressively reduced in scope, focusing on two policy priorities related to the growth of the internet. In the process, media literacy’s broader educative purpose, so clearly articulated in much of the early policy rhetoric, was effectively marginalized. From the Coalition government onwards, the promotion of media literacy was reduced further to a matter of market research. Today, if not altogether dead, the policy is governed by entirely different priorities to those imagined at its birth.     

Slow boat from China: public discourses behind the ‘going global’ media policy

What mission and objectives does China want to achieve through its project of globalizing Chinese media? What are its moral and intellectual justifications? What key recommendations are being made in its policy deliberations so far, and to what extent do they represent continuity with or departure from China’s past? I pursue these questions in this paper through an analysis of a range of policy statements and scholarly research published in China. First, I examine the extent to which China’s public diplomacy policy has shifted, paying particular attention to both continuity and change over time. I then outline the major policy recommendations that have been proposed as part of China’s efforts to improve its global image through media expansion. Finally, I consider the ways in which various moral and intellectual resources have been marshalled to justify and propel such initiatives.     

Institutionalization and change in cultural policy: CONACULTA and cultural policy in Mexico (1988–2006)

This paper analyses the process of institutionalization of Mexican cultural policy and its evolution after the political alternation of 2000. It demonstrates that since its institutionalization with the creation of the National Council for Culture and Arts in 1988, the objectives, definitions and bureaucratic organization of the cultural policy have not known important changes in the period studied (1988–2006). The inertia observed in Mexican cultural policy can be explained by the institutional structures’ constraints inherited from the Partido de la Revolución Institucional (The Party of the Institutionalized Revolution) and by the actors’ resistance to change.     

Learning About Regionalism from Europe: ‘Economic Normalisation’ and Beyond

This paper critically analyses the European Union's regional policy framework and considers its implications for Australia's multi‐level governance system. The analysis is made with reference to the ‘new regionalist’ debates in Europe and North America that have asserted the importance of regional economic development in the context of globalisation. New regionalism's advocacy of ‘economic normalisation’ as a leading regional policy aim is critically evaluated against the EU policy experience. Conclusions about the adequacy of new regionalist claims are drawn for Australian policy debates.     

Trade agreements and the myth of policy constraint in Australia

In this paper, I challenge the conventional view that trade agreements act as a major constraint on Australia’s industry policy options. Through a comparison with South Korea – a country with similar trade obligations to Australia – I find that the Australian government retains significant room to move in the industry policy sphere. However, Australian policy-makers appear far less willing than their foreign counterparts to use that space. To explain Australia’s comparative industry policy in-activism, I move beyond broad-brush explanations centred on ‘liberal ideology’ to explore the ideational, institutional and structural obstacles to the pursuit of a more proactive industry policy approach on the part of Australian policy-makers.     

Disseminating the policy narrative of ‘Heritage under threat’ in China

ABSTRACT

Originating from within the UNESCO, narratives on ‘heritage under threat’ tell the story of how and why intangible cultural heritage (ICH) practices are valuable, why are they disappearing, and how they can be protected from destruction. Focusing on PR China, this paper conducts a frame analysis to identify narratives on ‘heritage under threat’ as employed by the UNESCO, the Chinese party-state, and academics. The study argues that while policy narratives in any country undergo a process of congruence-building, circulation, and implementation, these processes take distinctive forms in authoritarian countries due to the states’ discursive and political monopoly: While non-state actors are involved, the state primarily steers the appropriation process. Nevertheless, once established, the policy narrative transforms across time and space, enabling local actors to use it to pursue their own interests.     

Creating the cultures of the future: cultural strategy,policy and institutions in Gramsci

Gramsci’s writings have rarely been discussed and used systematically by scholars in cultural policy studies, despite the fact that in cultural studies, from which the field emerged, Gramsci had been a major source of theoretical concepts. Cultural policy studies were, in fact, theorised as an anti-Gramscian project between the late 1980s and the early 1990s, when a group of scholars based in Australia advocated a major political and theoretical reorientation of cultural studies away from hegemony theory and radical politicisation, and towards reformist–technocratic engagement with the policy concerns of contemporary government and business. Their criticism of the ‘Gramscian tradition’ as inadequate for the study of cultural policy and institutions has remained largely unexamined in any detail for almost 20 years and seems to have had a significant role in the subsequent neglect of Gramsci’s contribution in this area of study. This essay, consisting of three parts, is an attempt to challenge such criticism and provide an analysis of Gramsci’s writings, with the aim of proposing a more systematic contribution of Gramsci’s work to the theoretical development of cultural policy studies. In Part I, I question the use of the notion of ‘Gramscian tradition’ made by its critics, and challenge the claim that it was inadequate for the study of cultural policy and institutions. In Parts II and III, I consider Gramsci’s specific writings on questions of cultural strategy, policy and institutions, which have so far been overlooked by scholars, arguing that they provide further analytical insights to those offered by his more general concepts. More specifically, in Part II, I consider Gramsci’s pre-prison writings and political practice in relation to questions of cultural strategy and institutions. I argue that the analysis of these early texts, which were written in the years in which Gramsci was active in party organisation and leadership, is fundamental not only for understanding the nature of Gramsci’s early and continued involvement with questions of cultural strategy and institutions, but also as a key for deciphering and interpreting cultural policy themes that he later developed in the prison notebooks, and which originated in earlier debates. Finally, in Part III, I carry out a detailed analysis of Gramsci’s prison notes on questions of cultural strategy, policy and institutions, which enrich the theoretical underpinnings for critical frameworks of analysis as well as for radical practices of cultural strategy, cultural policy-making and cultural organisation. I then answer the question of whether Gramsci’s insights amount to a theory of cultural policy.     

Howard's way? Public opinion as an influence on Australia's engagement with Asia, 1996–2007

Using the typology developed by Douglas Foyle, this article argues that John Howard behaved as a ‘pragmatist’ in dealing with situations where public opinion was relevant to Australia's engagement with Asia. Howard adhered to his own views on the relevant issues while attempting to lead public opinion in the direction he believed desirable. During the 1996–2007 period the most relevant issues relating to the impact of public opinion on Australia's Asian engagement were Australia's relations with Indonesia and Asian immigration. In the case of Australian–Indonesian relations the Howard government had to deal with various situations where an activated public opinion threatened to undermine the long term Australian approach that gave primacy to Indonesian concerns. Political leadership entailed developing a response that the government believed to be appropriate to Australia's long term objectives, while also attempting to persuade the public that this was the case. In the second instance policy developed in a more ‘deliberative’ context: Howard modified his earlier stance that was critical of Asian immigration, but continued to adhere to a strongly ‘integrationist’ position. This position was consistent with both his own views and his perception of public attitudes on the matter.     

The institutional odyssey of the Italian Parliamentary Republic

This article examines the Italian foreign policy of the second Berlusconi government. The first section focuses on the episodes that critics have used to argue that, under the second Berlusconi government, there has occurred a process of ‘Americanization’ of Italian foreign policy, and provides an interpretation of their significance. The second section looks at these episodes against the historical background of Italian?–?American relations since the end of World War II and argues that, from this perspective, very little, if anything, has changed in Italian?–?American relations or Italian foreign policy in general.