Stability and change at commonwealth elections, 1910–69: A test of the conventional wisdom

This article investigates and revises the conventional wisdom about aggregate‐level electoral change at Commonwealth elections. Unlike previous Australian analyses, it distinguishes temporary from permanent change and uniform from heterogeneous change. It also formulates rival hypotheses about the extent, timing and source of such change, and it tests them with a new source of data. It shows, in sharp contrast to the conventional wisdom, that significant aggregate‐level change occurred at virtually every election between 1910 and 1969. In so doing it directs attention to the infrequent but pivotal influence of voters upon the scope and direction of public policy in Australia.     

Book reviews

Cultural Policy and Urban Regeneration: The West European Experience. F. Bianchini and M. Parkinson (Eds). Manchester, Manchester University Press, 1993, 220 pp., £35.00 hb, ISBN: 0 7190 3556–2

International Perspectives in Urban Studies 1. R. Paddison, B. Lever and J. Money (Eds). London/Philadelphia, Jessica Kingsley Publishers, 1993, 328 pp., £16.95, ISBN: 1 85302163 6

Towards Global Localization: The Computing and Telecommunication Industries in Britain and France. P. Cooke, F. Moulaert, E. Swyngedouw, O. Weinstein and P. Wells. London, UCL Press, 1993, 227 pp., £14.95 pb, ISBN: 1–85728–261–2 1992, 227 pp., £30 hb, ISBN: 1–85728–000–8

Single Market to Social Europe: The European Community in the 1990s. Mark Wise and Richard Gibb. New York, Longman, 1993, 328 pp., £13.99, ISBN: 0–582–06088–5

Decision Making in Transport Planning. P. Truelove. Harlow, Longman Group Ltd, 1992, 184 pp., £14.99 pb, ISBN: 0 582 0 8951 4     

Topping Off and Bottoming Out: Setting Budget Priorities Through Executive Power

This article examines the role of the institutional power of executives in public budgeting; specifically, how executives change spending on particular budget items. Leveraging extant theories of the policy process concerning preference expression, attention, and institutions, we argue that executives deepen large cuts and boost large increases in budgetary change. The strictures of the budgetary process force trade-offs for executives in preference expression such that increases to preferred categories typically require decreases in other categories. Literatures in public policy and political representation suggest that all executives would like to express fiscal preferences, thereby contributing to categorical budget oscillations; however, not all executives are created equal. We employ quantile regression to examine whether the institutional strength of governors determine cuts, stasis, and expansion in spending across all budget functions in the American states between 1985 and 2009. Our model includes a host of political and economic variables found in the literature of fiscal policymaking, such as partisanship and divided government. The desire to change policy may be widely shared across executives, but we find that the ability to “top off” categorical increases and bottom out categorical decreases is a function of an executive's capacity to call attention to preferred categories via agenda-setting power and to secure those changes via veto power. The findings show strong governors are well positioned to influence public policy through the budgetary process.     

‘The invisible chain’: Jeremy Bentham and neo-liberalism

ABSTRACT

Bentham's thought cannot be reduced to the usual oppositions between ‘natural freedom’ and government interference. For Bentham, freedom in a political society is determined by the existence of a legal system that creates obligations for some people and rights for others. The government's task does not directly consist in respecting a sacred natural right, but aims at producing the ‘arrangements’ that are to direct the interests of the greatest number towards beneficial goals for the community as a whole. The legislator is to know, form and guide the individual interests. For this purpose, he has to summon public opinion in order to control individual action. On this point, we should reiterate, contrary to what Michel Foucault contended, that the main form of power in modern society is not exerted by a central state, but by each individual on others. That is the meaning of a very important idea in Bentham's theory, which appears in his writings on indirect legislation under the metaphor of the ‘invisible chain’. The habit of watching and judging others in the permanent Public Opinion Tribunal is the best way to learn self-discipline. Bentham's ideal is the self-government of individuals by the calculation of pleasures and pains.     

Slums,Squats, or Hutments? Constructing and Deconstructing an In-Between Space in Modern Shanghai (1926-65)

Hutments—a term used to designate “beggars’ villages,” “straw- house villages” or more bluntly “slums”—became a standard feature of Shanghai’s urban landscape in the early 1920s. Located in peripheral areas, they became a central object of concern by the authorities that governed the foreign settlements in the city. Over time, due to economic crisis and above all war, “hutments” slowly colonized the whole urban space and became a massive housing issue and a problematic historical legacy after 1949. This paper argues that hutments arose mostly from the turmoil of the Civil War period. Their nature changed little from the time of their appearance in the 1920s to the early 1950s. Yet, perceptions and policies over three major periods under study here varied significantly. They were strongly influenced by the discursive constructions and distorting lenses the local administrations formulated around issues of nuisance, public health, and city beautification. Each era carried over the concerns and prejudices of the previous period. Yet, each municipal institution also brought in new cultural and political postures that changed the overall discourse and treatment of hutment dwellers.