The number of libraries providing access to Governance in print or electronic form increased by fifteen percent between 2008 and 2009, according to statistics released this week.  Governance is now available in three thousand libraries around the world.  As the following chart shows, the journal’s readership was broadly distributed around the world in 2009.

Advocates of agencification — the practice of “hiving off” functions into formally separated organizations — claim that it is an effective way of reducing political interference in operational matters.  Some have doubted the claim.  In the current issue of Governance (22.4), Morten Egeberg and Jarle Trondal use data from two decades of surveys of Norwegian civil servants to show that the argument has merit.  Organizational setting “makes a clear difference,” they conclude.  “Officials within ministerial departments are significantly more sensitive to signals from executive politicians than their counterparts within national agencies.”  Read the article: Political leadership and bureaucratic autonomy: Effects of agencification.

Jon Blondal, Deputy Head of Budgeting and Public Expenditures Division, OECD

Academics from fourteen universities participated in Governance‘s roundtable on the impact of the financial crisis, held at Suffolk University Law School in Boston on November 13.  Current and former representatives of the Federal Reserve, Bank of England and OECD also joined the discussion, aimed at considering how the crisis was likely to change views about the role of government.  See more photos on Flickr.  A follow-on roundtable will be held in London in May 2010.

Sung Deuk Hahm, professor of public administration at Korea University and a member of Governance‘s editorial board, has called for constitutional reforms that would see “the end of imperialistic presidency” in South Korea.  Hahm’s proposals are described in a news report in the October 23 issue of the Korea Times.

Dalhousie University at Halifax will host a symposium and dinner in honor of Professor Peter Aucoin on November 12-13.  Aucoin, a long-time SOG member and Governance contributor, taught at Dalhousie University for nearly forty years before his recent retirement. More details about the symposium and dinner here.  Aucoin’s article Administrative Reform in Public Management: Paradigms, Principles, Paradoxes and Pendulums (Governance 3.2, April 1990) has been cited over five hundred times, according to Scholar Google. The article examines the collision of two schools of thought in administrative reform — one rooted in public choice theory, and the other in managerialism.  Aucoin was also named to the Order of Canada last year.

The 2010 Levine Book Prize Committee is comprised of Professor Mirko Noordegraaf, Utrecht School of Governance (Chair); Professor Susan Phillips, School of Public Policy and Administration, Carleton University; and Professor Anthony B.L. Cheung, Hong Kong Institute of Education.  Information about the prize, and directions on how to nominate a book, are provided on the Levine Prize page.   Nominated books must reach all three members of the committee by 31 March 2010.