Governance,public policy and boundary-making

This symposium draws attention to innovative and emerging research in Australian public policy exploring the interplay of governance, public policy and boundary-making. Conceptually and substantively, boundaries are fundamental to understanding policy outcomes, yet remain overlooked and undertheorised. We aim to contribute to public policy debates, in Australia and beyond, by provoking further reflection on this theme, in particular, the distributive effects of boundaries in policy-making; the blurring of boundaries implicit to governance frameworks; the crossing of boundaries, especially by policy-officials within and between institutions; the construction of boundaries to separate and marginalise; and the existence of temporal–spatial boundaries that demarcate jurisdiction and authority. In short, the study of governance and public policy-making is marked by multiple different types of boundaries but the way in which boundaries get drawn and redrawn is also suffuse with political contestation meaning they raise crucial questions about the exercise of power.     

Cartography,geographic information,and public policy

Abstract

Cartography is as much a policy science as it is a graphic art and science. The inevitable demise of the paper map as the principal medium of geographic communication and the increasing concentration of mapping activities and geographic data base development in large public‐sector agencies argue in favour of replacing the current emphasis on map production with one involving policy. A focus on mapping policy will reverse the unfortunate split between cartography and geography.     

Trumping foreign policy: public diplomacy,framing, and public opinion among middle power publics

Even as the world’s sole superpower, the United States requires the cooperation of other states to achieve many of its foreign policy objectives. The President of the United States thus often serves as ‘Diplomat in Chief’ in public diplomacy efforts to appeal directly to publics abroad. Given Donald Trump’s antagonistic approach to foreign relations and widespread lack of popularity, what are the implications for support for US policy among publics abroad – particularly among middle power states allied to the US? While previous research on public opinion relying on observational data has found that confidence in the US President is linked to support for American foreign policy goals, the mechanisms at work remain unclear. Using original data from survey-based experiments conducted in Canada and Australia, this article seeks to clarify the effect of ‘presidential framing’ (presenting a policy goal as endorsed or not endorsed by Trump) on attitudes toward key policy issues in the Canada–US and Australia–US relationships. Results point to a negative ‘Trump framing’ effect in Canadians’ and Australians’ trade policy attitudes, but such an effect is not observed in other policy domains (energy policy in Canada, and refugee policy in Australia).     

The Odyssey Case: press,public opinion and future policy

The Odyssey Case refers to the dispute between Odyssey Marine Exploration Inc. (OME) and the Kingdom of Spain in the US courts to determine the ownership of more than 500,000 coins, as well as other artefacts, that OME recovered from a wreck‐site it had code‐named Black Swan. However, the process was much more than a dispute over the coins. It reflected many of the components involved in the protection of underwater archaeological heritage, especially when economic and political interests are at stake. Written from the perspective of an archaeologist working for the regional authority responsible for developing archaeological policy, this paper tries to assess the case's impact on future policy development.     

Cross-border regional innovation systems: conceptual backgrounds,empirical evidence and policy implications

The concept of cross-border regional innovation systems (CBRIS) surfaced in the literature on economic geography through discourses that highlighted the need for broadening innovation systems to cross-border contexts. Since these early discussions, the theoretical backgrounds of CBRIS have been elaborated through notions of geographical scale, proximity and related variety in a range of conceptual papers proposing CBRIS as a comprehensive framework for analysing regional cross-border integration. However, the empirical literature on CBRIS has failed to keep up with the advances in conceptualization. This paper discusses the reasons behind this mismatch, which means that the concept still rests upon and draws policy suggestions based on a thin evidence base. Directions for further research are pointed out by underlining the need for holistic empirical validation of the concept together with the need of understanding how suggested policy measures based on CBRIS reasoning have been implemented in border regions, and their effectiveness in promoting cross-border integration.     

A shared future: territoriality,pluralism and public policy in Northern Ireland

This paper addresses the making of post-conflict public policy in Northern Ireland. In particular it considers an extended consultation process, A Shared Future: Improving Relations in Northern Ireland, initiated in January 2003 by the Community Relations Unit of the Office of the First Minister and Deputy First Minister, as a response to the statutory requirement to further ‘good relations’ as specified in the 1998 Belfast Agreement and the subsequent Northern Ireland Act (1998). This public consultation process invited responses to a set of core principles for a plural but socially cohesive society and a series of policy options for fostering ‘good relations’. In this paper we discuss the Shared Future process within the context of the consociational underpinnings of the 1998 Agreement and the ways in which it foregrounds ideas of cultural diversity and pluralism but fails to engage adequately with the temporal and spatial dimensions of identities in Northern Ireland. Secondly, we explore both the difficulties of making policy that will encourage a pluralist but cohesive polity in a context in which territoriality dominates identity at state, local and even individual scales, and the problems of the ways the Shared Future policy seeks to replace ethnocratic or ethno-nationalist markers with those of ‘normal’ identities in ‘normal’ capitalist material space. We conclude with reflections on the limitations of consociational democratic practices in a society that has democratically mandated political parties promoting territorially-based ethno-nationalist ideologies.     

Ethnography and policy: Perspectives on reproduction in anthropology and public health

MacCormack, Carol, ed. Ethnography of Fertility and Birth. New York: Academic Press, 1982. x + 293 pp. including illustrations, notes, references, index. $35.00 cloth.

Mangay‐Maglacas, A., and H. Pizurki, eds. The Traditional Birth Attendant in Seven Countries: Case Studies in Utilization and Training. Geneva: World Health Organization Public Health Papers 75, 1981. 211 pp. including appendices, references. Sw. fr. 15.00.     

Creating twenty-first century Korean bodies: public movement education practice,cultural policy and therapeutic ethos

This article focuses on the public movement education practices of a group of middle-class, Korean dance instructors at the Korea Laban Movement Institute (KLMI), a recently established civil institution in Seoul, South Korea. The KLMI classes promote self-directed and well-rounded Korean bodies through student-centered and egalitarian movement instruction. In recent years, these classes received public funds from the culture and arts foundations supported by the state’s cultural policies, as well as attention from Korean public media. This research introduces the public movement education practices that have aligned well with the state’s early twenty-first century cultural policies by making culture and arts education more accessible to the average Korean. In addition, the study shows the broader impact of KLMI’s public movement education practices, which have merged into the political and social landscapes of contemporary South Korea.     

Politicians,Parties, and the Persistence of Weak States: Lessons from the Philippines

Under what conditions will politicians strengthen state capabilities through bureaucratic reform? This article presents a principal–agent model of state capacity that shows that unless competition to influence policy is largely confined to a single dimension, politicians have no incentive or ‘political will’ to adopt bureaucratic reform. The validity of this model is tested using the experience of the Philippines in the period 1946–72. It is found that politically relevant groups in the Philippines were competing to influence policy over issues of social welfare, economic nationalism and control over public spending, and that groups' demands over these issues failed to align along a single dominant dimension. Consistent with expectations derived from the principal–agent model, there were numerous calls for and attempts to improve bureaucratic performance, but the calls went unheeded and the attempts failed miserably. The study highlights a lesson of potential use to countries currently undergoing democratization. It argues that state capacity is not a function of insulating the state from societal forces, but rather of clarifying lines of authority and accountability in the hierarchy of principal–agent relationships between society, politicians and bureaucrats.     

The public-facing policy agenda of state legislatures: The communication of public policy via twitter

How political actors choose which politics to focus on helps shape the outcome of the policy process. While the policy agenda of the federal government has received widespread attention, there is much less known about the policy agendas of the U.S. states. In this paper, we describe how and why states choose to have similar agendas. We rely on the Twitter activity of every state legislator in America to measure the attention that states pay to the categories developed in the Policy Agenda Project (PAP). We develop machine learning tools to measure the proportion of tweets from every state legislature from 2017 in each of the PAP policy topics. Our results show that states that the public-facing policy agenda of a state legislature is correlated with the level of legislative professionalism and the partisan and ideological politics of the state. These results further our understanding of state policymaking and agenda setting.     

Deep commoning: public folklore and environmental policy on a resource frontier

Abstract

This article explores the concept and practice of the commons as a holistic, multi-sectoral, cross-disciplinary framework for critical heritage work on resource frontiers. Drawing from my research on forest commoning in the Appalachian coalfields, I argue that land-based systems of commoning vital to communities in the path of resource extraction merit more attention from heritage workers. Commons tend to disappear through their atomization into siloed objects of study and stewardship. This disappearance, partly a function of reductionist, dualistic thinking, also signals a persistent colonialist myth of emptiness. I argue that the embodied, participatory field methods of public folklorists are particularly well-suited to the study and accreditation of land-based commons as heritage. Building on the idea of ‘deep ecology’, the notion of ‘deep commoning’ espouses our implication in worlds we bring into dialogue through the practice of public folklore as critical heritage work.     

Aura borealis: images,perceptions, and realities of the european north

Encountering the North. Cultural Geography, International Relations and Northern Landscapes. Edited by Frank Möller and Samu Pehkonen (Hampshire, UK: Ashgate, 2003), xiii?+?294 pp. $89.95/50.00 cloth.

The Nordic Peace. Edited by Clive Archer and Pertti Joenniemi (Hampshire, UK: Ashgate, 2003), x?+?217 pp. $79.95/46.50 cloth.

Sweden and the “Third Way”: A Macroeconomic Evaluation. By Philip Whyman (Hampshire, UK: Ashgate, 2003), xi?+?251 pp. $94.95/52.50 cloth.     

Becoming public: public pedagogy,citizenship and the public sphere

This paper explores the question what kind of educational work can be done in attempts to reclaim or reinvigorate the public sphere. Through a discussion of the intersection of public sphere and public space, it engages with the work of Hannah Arendt in order to outline a conception of the public sphere as a space for civic action based on distance and the conservation of a degree strangeness rather than on commonality and common identity. The discussion of the educational work that can be done to support the public quality of common spaces and places focuses on three interpretations of the idea of public pedagogy: that of public pedagogy as a pedagogy for the public, that of public pedagogy as a pedagogy of the public and that of public pedagogy as the enactment of a concern for the public quality of human togetherness. The latter form of public pedagogy neither teaches nor erases the political by bringing it under a regime of learning, but rather opens up the possibility for forms of human togetherness through which freedom can appear, that is forms of human togetherness which contribute to the ‘becoming public’ of spaces and places.     

Politicians, Parishes and Police: The Failure of the 1812 Night Watch Bill

The public outcry heard in the wake of the Ratcliffe Highway murders of December 1811 was muted by May 1812 when the 1812 Night Watch Bill died in the house of commons. Responding to the moral panic following the murder of two East End families, the home office gathered considerable information and input from the professional police magistrates and local authorities before proposing the reform of parochial night watch in much of metropolitan London. Nevertheless the bill ran into concerted opposition on grounds of practicality as well as of ideology. A close study of its trajectory through parliament illuminates the role of parliament as a broker for conflicting demands emanating from differing concepts of the public good. The failure of the Night Watch Bill adds significantly to our understanding of the genesis of legislative initiatives, calling into question whether it is possible to distinguish accurately whether particular bills originated from back- or front-bench activity as well as to our knowledge of the relationship between parliamentary activity, ministerial objectives and public opinion.     

Nuclear fears,hopes and realities in Pakistan

In the four decades since Pakistan launched its nuclear weapons program, and especially in the fifteen years since the nuclear tests of 1998, a way of thinking and a related set of feelings about the bomb have taken hold among policy‐makers and the public in Pakistan. These include the ideas that the bomb can ensure Pakistan's security; resolve the long‐standing dispute with India over Kashmir in Pakistan's favour; help create a new national spirit; establish Pakistan as a leader among Islamic countries; and usher in a new stage in Pakistan's economic development. None of these hopes has come to pass, and in many ways Pakistan is much worse off than before it went nuclear. Yet the feelings about the bomb remain strong and it is these feelings that will have to be examined critically and be set aside if Pakistan is to move towards nuclear restraint and nuclear disarmament. This will require a measure of stability in a country beset by multiple insurgencies, the emergence of a peace movement able to launch a national debate on foreign policy and nuclear weapons, and greater international concern regarding the outcomes of nuclear arms racing in South Asia.