Labour internationalism and the public sector: The case of the Public Services International

This paper sets out the need to conceptualise labour internationalism in the public sector, given its distinct political character and orientation. Our analysis adds to a literature on labour internationalism that hitherto has mainly depicted strategies of unions in private sector industries. To better understand the reasons for upscaling trade union efforts in a sector where the main employer remains the institutional apparatus of the nation-state, we have interviewed office bearers in the most important global union federation organising across different public services – Public Services International (PSI) – asking them to explain their political and strategic considerations. We find that the distinct role of the nation state as an employer, the public character of work and specific relations between public sector workers and the users of services, are all determinants in shaping labour transnationalism in the public sector. This in turn leads to a greater emphasis on alliances with social movements and oppositional campaigns, representing a radical global political unionism. Neoliberal austerity and privatisation measures have reinforced the importance of such political relationships and power, but also challenged their organisational foundations. However, alliance-building is not PSI's sole strategy. We find that office bearers at the transnational level combines three strategic rationales through orientations that we have labelled the political-institutional, the movement-popular and the industrial-corporate. We also suggest that employing these sensitising concepts can bolster the scholarly treatment of understanding labour internationalism and its strategy repertoires more generally.     

Spaces of Governance: Gender and public sector restructuring in Canada

While the literature on economic restructuring tends to understand neoliberalism as a uniform governance ideology or economic-political reality, we suggest that it is more useful to understand neoliberalism as a loosely knit assemblage of programmatic efforts that consist of various political rationalities and practices of rule that aim to manage social conduct. The paper focuses on the various ways that these efforts are connected to complex state rescaling processes in Canada. Specifically, the first part of the paper examines the restructuring of nation-state responsibilities in social service and security provisions. It illustrates the shift toward a new citizenship regime that renders women as active agents who are responsible for solving problems in an individualized manner. The second part of the paper exemplifies how neoliberal programmatic efforts create new spaces of governance, particularly those of flexibility through non-standard work. The massive rescaling of the public sector, the decreasing demand for women's ‘traditional’ occupations, and the increasing prevalence of women in non-standard work arrangements constitute women as political-economic subjects in new ways. We analyze these processes using data drawn from in-depth interviews with personnel in the Canadian Federal Public Service. We outline some of the implications these initiatives have had on public service programmes and various public sector groups. Additionally, we provide a selection of individual accounts of public sector restructuring and gendered work by professionals and contract workers employed in the public service, and offer empirical illustrations of the contentions surrounding neoliberal restructuring initiatives.     

Transformation of forest policy regimes in Finland since the 19th century

In this paper, interpretations of sustainable forestry are investigated against the historical background of transformations in the industrial utilisation of forests. Three distinct forest policy regimes in Finland since the 19th century are identified. First, the introduction of the German forestry model, with the central notion of sustained yield, and the establishment of the Finnish Forest Service took place simultaneously in the latter half of the 19th century. These actions aimed at changing patterns of local forest use considered detrimental to long-term forest utilisation. Second, a national forest sector was established during the 20th century. Industrial forestry was seen as a guarantee of economic independence for the new nation-state. Third, during a recent phase the influence of non-governmental organisations and international forest industry companies has increased, and traditional power relations have changed as issues such as biodiversity, forest certification and global investments have been introduced to the debates. It is concluded that the recent transformations in forest management should be read as transformations in industrial forestry rather than as abandonment of industrial forest use models; the legacy of the 19th century German forest science still prevails in forest management.     

London: Structural Continuities and Institutional Change in Water Management

This article provides a synthetic account of the historical development of London's water supply system within its wider national context, and addresses the current organizational setting of the water sector. Particular attention is paid to the post-Second World War period, which marked a transition towards integrated water management in England and Wales, a trend that has been consolidated since the 1970s. The article emphasizes the continuities and contradictions arising from the different combinations of public and private management strategies characterizing the UK water sector, and their implications for the sustainable management of water resources. It argues that there exists an in-built contradiction in the current institutional framework between the profit-oriented rationale of the private operators and the goals of efficiency, equity, and environmental sustainability pursued by the water regulators. Within this framework, it highlights the key policy issues facing the metropolitan water systems, and suggests what their most likely trajectories might be in the foreseeable future.     

System Innovation in Spatial Development: Current Dutch Approaches

A system innovation is a cross-organizational qualitative intervention that various system participants bring about together through their various contributions of different kinds of knowledge and skill. The term refers to the innovation of an entire system involving many actors. Spatial development refers to both the dynamic in land use, and changes in the development and implementation of spatial plans. The current large number of societal and spatial developments taken as a whole in a country such as the Netherlands increase the pressure on space and create the need for a powerful system innovation. This paper explains the system innovation which is going on in the Netherlands now, drawing on such themes as the coproduction of policy, public–private partnership and demand management. A process architecture for area development is more and more proposed, in which project envelopes are formed, the scope is optimized and surplus profits are ploughed back into the area (value capturing). The future will tell whether this new approach will really work and whether the traditional values and performance of Dutch spatial planning will be safeguarded under changing circumstances.     

Gender and Global Labour Migrations: Incorporating Skilled Workers

Female labour migration has increased in the past two decades, and has become more complex and interconnected, attracting considerable attention from researchers and policy makers. Earlier debates on the relationship between production and reproduction have resurfaced in a period of changing configurations of welfare states; contemporary theorisations of global labour migration are now paying attention to the role of women in the reproductive sector. However, much of the literature has focused on migrants who enter the lesser‐skilled sectors, in particular domestic labour. In this paper we argue that the migration of women into skilled sectors of the labour market, especially in health, alters our understanding of the role of migrant women in social reproduction. Migrant women are present in multiple sites and spheres of reproduction beyond the household and recognising the different ways in which they are incorporated into globalised labour markets challenges simplistic representations of migrant women and draws out a fuller appreciation of their contribution to social reproduction and welfare in the First World.     

The mobilisation of identities: a study on the relationship between elite rhetoric and public opinion on national identity in developed democracies

Over the last decade, the topic of national‐identity has gained considerable importance after various heads of states have made it an important political issue in the context of ongoing globalisation and European integration processes. There is also a large, mainly historical literature that has emphasised the role of the political elite in the formation of national‐identities. While this argument is widely discussed in both public and academic debates, there is, surprisingly, hardly any empirical research on this issue. We do not know whether elite positions resonate with how the masses think about these issues. We therefore set out to test this relationship by combining the 2003 wave of the International Social Survey Programme and content analysis of elite mobilisation rhetoric from the Comparative Manifesto Project. Results indicate that an overlap exists between politicians' articulation of exclusive notions about the contours of national‐identity and heightened expressions of civic and ethnic national‐identity within public opinion. By contrast, elite mobilisation along more inclusive lines appears ineffective. From this, it appears that exclusionary arguments play a more important role, at least in terms of attitudes about national‐identity, than inclusionary ones.     

‘The dilemmas and paradoxes of public bodies performing commercial tasks’: The rhetoric of rationality and the rejection of traditional labor philosophy on the role of the state.

Traditionally a commitment to an active public sector has been a centrepiece of Labor's official thinking. Rhetorical conflict between Labor and non‐Labor has always focused upon the role of the State. The most recent instance of this was the debate between Labor and non‐Labor over the Fraser Government's Review of Commonwealth Functions (commonly known as the ‘Razor Gang').

Traditions have been changing and developing on both sides. The changes made by E. G. Whitlam have been widely discussed. Three years and as many months after the election of the first Hawke Government Labor traditions themselves are being rewritten.

In this paper I shall use the policy area of the function and administration of public sector enterprises in order to demonstrate the depth and significance of this change. It has been said also that the Hawke Government has reduced politics to pronouncements from the Kirribilli Cabinet and non‐productive factional squabbling. The ‘fourth graders’ of the Hawke Government, which apparently includes members of the outer Cabinet as well as the backbenchers, have been excluded from the policy‐making process. This is notwithstanding the firm intentions of the Report of Task Force on Government Administration.

The public sector area can be used to demonstrate shifts along four axes, (i) Significant frontbenchers have been bent upon changing the rhetoric, so that the activities of public sector enterprises are assessed in terms like ‘efficiency’ and ‘dollar rationality’. Change in rhetoric is part of a wider tendency to reject appeals to traditional Labor imagery (such as equality, welfare, the public sector as a good in its own right and other social as opposed to economic goals).

(ii) This, in turn, is related to a rejection of the traditional Labor practices whereby the Labor Party Platform (which could broadly be seen as a pro‐public enterprise document) is no longer seen by significant members of the Labor front‐bench as the most important guide to policy, (iii) Other sources of policy have become more salient, in the case of public sector enterprises, the rhetoric and ideas of the Department of Finance have become prominent (iv) The changing tone of the rhetoric has reflected to a small extent changes being made to official party theology as expressed in the Party Platform. Key individuals have successfully opposed left‐wing challenges to maintain and to shore up the role of the public sector and of public sector enterprises. To the extent that the Platform will retain its traditional symbolic role these activities are significant.

Policy‐making has been about domination from above and the ‘crowding out’ of traditional ideas and their sources. Control, however, has not always been successful. Sources of objection have included the Left Faction of Caucus, key Ministerial Departments (viz. Transport and Communications) dealing with public sector enterprises, and the Ministers themselves.     

Chile's Export Diversification since 1960: A Free Market Miracle or Mirage?

Conventional wisdom has proclaimed Chile's recent economic development a ‘free market miracle’. In an examination of Chile's export diversification experience, this article departs from that view. By analysing the dynamics underlying the emergence of the salmon, fruit, forestry and wine sectors in Chile's export basket since the 1960s, the study sheds light on the crucial role of industrial policy in the process of capability accumulation that shapes new industries. The article undertakes a qualitative historical analysis of the scope and nature of policy interventions in each of the four sectors and conducts a quantitative policy evaluation using the difference‐in‐difference method. It finds that public institutions are essential in overcoming market failures inhibiting the emergence of new industries. Specifically, it shows that the government has a key role to play as a catalyst of human capital accumulation, as a venture capitalist, in trade promotion, and in ensuring ‘national’ sector reputation through a strong regulatory and quality control role. By elaborating on the dynamic process of structural transformation and capability accumulation, this article contributes to theoretical debates on the role of vertical policies in the emergence of new competitive sectors, and debates relating to static versus dynamic approaches to comparative advantage.     

开封市产业空心化的历史考察

无论发达国家或是发展中国家,都会面临着产业空心化问题。通过对开封市经济数据的分析及实地调研,发现开封市的产业空心化属于离制造业现象:经济地位明显下降,固定资产日渐减少,工业发展缓慢且结构不尽合理,第三产业比重低且结构失衡。指出开封市产业空心化具有欠发达区的共性特征-贫困恶性循环积累性,同时也是其特定的区位条件所引致的。最后提出开封市产业空心化的防治措施:以增强技术创新为核心,进行体制机制、科研体制、教育制度创新及人才的激励机制等;以需求结构变化为导向,调整、优化产业结构,加强财政、金融改革及基础设施的支持力度;加速完善硬件设施,改变市区的对外联系等。     

Green Infrastructure,Grey Epistemologies,and the Urban Political Ecology of Pittsburgh's Water Governance

This paper explores Pittsburgh's water governance to consider the way divergent approaches to urban stormwater management reproduce existing urban metabolisms and belie more radical possibilities for the urban hydro‐social cycle. Federal action has forced municipalities in the Pittsburgh metropolitan region to make changes to its urban water systems and develop a plan to comply with water quality regulations. Within Pittsburgh's water governance debates, compliance centers on various sets of technological strategies for defining and solving purportedly wicked urban environmental problems. Urban political ecology, here, is used to deconstruct the tensions and convergences between these different stormwater governance strategies. I argue that green infrastructure approaches (whose intentions are to expand practice and participation) are framed by dominant grey epistemological approaches. In this view, alternative and creative forms of greening the city may not necessarily represent a more democratic process, but instead reproduce uneven urban landscapes under greener cover.     

The carceral wet: Hollowing out rights for migrants in maritime geographies

Over recent decades, various governments have turned to the spatiality of the maritime realm in the pre-emptive policing of migration, deploying concentrated efforts of mobility regulation to territorial and extra-territorial seas. With and through this process of increased policing, the maritime has concurrently been expunged of frameworks of rights for migrants. This article explores the hollowing out of rights at sea and how it has allowed governments to use maritime environments and more broadly the condition of wetness as a means to hold migrants beyond the juridical order and administrative bodies of the state. This practice emerged in a discernible way in the United States in the early 1990s, when the Refugee Convention was ruled not to apply on the high seas. De-territorialising the maritime from the state's geography of protection allowed the US Government to re-territorialise the sea as a space of heightened policing. Similar strategies of de- and re-territorialising the sea subsequently developed in Australian policies of migration control. Through this, the maritime is used to contain migrants not only in a condition of partial rights and exaggerated policing, it is also used to relocate migrants, exposing a “disciplined mobility” that works through the sea. Interrogating these various legal renditions of the maritime exposes the carceral wet that has developed in migration regulation at sea.     

Intermediaries in Regional Innovation Systems: High-Technology Enterprise Survey from Northern Finland

Intermediaries play an important role in national as well as in regional innovation systems, especially in innovation policy. In linking organizations within an innovation system, intermediaries are focusing on technology transfer, commercialization of ideas and funding. This research focuses on the role of intermediaries in high-technology product development in northern Finland. Based on a survey of 168 high-technology enterprises, funding services are regarded as the most important activity of intermediaries. Our results show that finance matters: a key actor within the Finnish innovation system in terms of direct funding and indirect collaborative resourcing, the Finnish Funding Agency for Technology and Innovation (TEKES), is considered the most important public sector organization in private sector product development. The survey also reveals that growth-driven companies with emphases on product innovation and high levels of investment in research and development for increasing their annual turnover benefit the most from intermediaries.     

Public Challenges and the Private Ways of State Archaeology: the Case of Greece

Abstract

Since its emergence Greek archaeology has been run exclusively by the state for political and economic reasons. The relevant legislation has always granted the Archaeological Service enough power to establish it as one of the most authoritative services in the public sector. I argue that the conditions under which archaeology is practised in Greece are increasingly changing. Agents operating at an international, national and local level are challenging the exclusive rights of the state in archaeological heritage management and demanding their views on protection are acknowledged. An overview of recently undertaken initiatives and research projects, as reported in the press and on websites, demonstrates an increasing demand for a more inclusive and public approach to the management of archaeological heritage. I also argue that Greek archaeologists are aware of the potential value of a public engagement with the discipline, but for different reasons — such as conservatism, bureaucracy and lack of means — do not act on it to the extent that they should. Finally, the paper confronts Greek state archaeology as an exclusive system of archaeological heritage management, and puts forward the importance of the local rather than the global public (i.e. tourism — where the emphasis of archaeological management in Greece currently lies).     

The “Commons” Versus the “Commodity”: Alter‐globalization,Anti‐privatization and the Human Right to Water in the Global South

Abstract: In response to the growth of private sector involvement in water supply management globally, anti‐privatization campaigns for a human right to water have emerged in recent years. Simultaneously, alter‐globalization activists have promoted alternative water governance models through North‐South red‐green alliances between organized labour, environmental groups, women's groups, and indigenous groups. In this paper, I explore these distinct (albeit overlapping) responses to water privatization. I first present a generic conceptual model of market environmentalist reforms, and explore the contribution of this framework to debates over ‘neoliberalizing nature’. This conceptual framework is applied to the case of anti‐privatization activism to elucidate the limitations of the human right to water as a conceptual counterpoint to privatization, and as an activist strategy. In contrast, I argue that alter‐globalization strategies—centred on concepts of the commons—are more conceptually coherent, and also more successful as activist strategies. The paper concludes with a reiteration of the need for greater conceptual precision in our analyses of neoliberalization, for both academics and activists.     

Changing public accountability mechanisms in the governance of Dutch urban regeneration*

Contemporary urban planning dynamics are based on negotiation and contractual relations, creating fragmented planning processes. On the one hand, they trigger technocratic forms of governance, which require the ‘legal instrumentalisation’ of planning in a piecemeal approach ensuring legal certainty. On the other hand, these processes require flexibility to enable easy, fast and efficient forms of implementation due to the increasing involvement of private sector actors in urban development. This article unravels the influence of these conflicting dynamics on the fundamentals of urban planning practices by focusing on changing public accountability mechanisms created through contractual relationships between public and private sector agencies. Dutch urban regeneration has demonstrated changing governance principles and dynamics in the last three decades. Representing instrumental and institutional measures, we connect accountability mechanisms to these changes and argue that they ‘co-exist’ in multiple forms across different contexts. This article embeds this evolution in wider theoretical discussions on the changing relationships between public and private sector actors in urban governance relative to the changing role of the state, and it addresses questions on who can be held accountable, and to what extent, when public sector actors are increasingly retreating from regulatory practices while private sector actors play increasingly prominent roles.     

新公共管理对官僚制是摒弃还是扬弃——基于制度层面的思考

新公共管理是20世纪70年代以后西方各国先后开展的以“企业家政府”为理论模型、以市场化运作模式和私营部门的管理为研究方法、以提高政府工作效率为目的的一项改革运动。新公共管理对政府流程再造的初期的确发挥了一定的作用,提高了行政效率,但是仍然无法改变官僚制的人事制度。新公共管理所提出的私营部门的管理方法,只是对官僚制的修正与补充,是对官僚制的扬弃,而不是摒弃。     

Innovation platforms as a solution to the proximity paradox

The paper studies what kind of proximities and distances can be found in complex innovation environments. Case-study methods were used, with the research strategy building on experiences of creating a regional innovation platform aimed at development of new models for collaborative co-operation between the private, public and third sector in the context of physical-activity promotion. Building the innovation platform brought various proximities and distances between actors into focus. Distances may explain why some of the actions have not been successful or why some actions involved should be repeated several times. However, this study also highlights the role of distances as sources of various innovation. Distances and proximities are not static, and they could be exploited from a position of knowledge.     

Rooms of Their Own: Public toilets and gendered citizens in a New Zealand city, 1860‐1940

Differences in the provision of public toilets for men and women point to the gendering of citizens. In the later nineteenth century, provision of public toilets in the city of Dunedin centered on the management of male bodies as the meaning of 'public decency' was transformed, while women were catered for as consumers. By the beginning of the twentieth century, when provision for women became a public issue, it was debated in terms of women's special character as citizens. The bodily and spatial characteristics of public and private were renegotiated around this issue: as women became more public, toilets became more private. This article draws on debates about the sexed and gendered body in public space, maternal citizenship, the civilising and modernising of landscapes and bodies, and shifting conceptions of privacy and public.     

Divided Government and the Rise of Social Regulation

Political scientists have debated the causes of divided government since the Reagan administration. In addition, a handful of scholars have also pondered the possible consequences of divided party rule for politics and policy. Still, one serious oversight in the divided'government literature is the potential consequences of divided party rule for the types of policy pursued during divided and unified party regimes. Divided government may create incentives for conflicting institutions to use social regulation debates, often considered the most divisive public policy debates, as "wedges" in order to damage the opposing party in future elections. Each party also has an incentive to embrace social regulation in order to reaffirm its allegiance to its core constituency. This article tests the hypothesis that divided government produces more important social regulation votes than unified government. I define the population of important votes as all Key Votes in the House of Representatives from 1953 to 1998. The data analysis reveals that important social regulation votes are in fact more prominent during eras of divided government than during unified party control. This finding has potential implications for the tenor of our national politics as well as the public trust.