In the October issue of Governance, Caner Bakir of Koç University explains a “radical policy reform” — the establishment of Turkey’s independent central bank in 2001. Bakir focuses on the critical role of a policy entrepreneur — Kemal Dervis, a World Bank official newly appointed as Turkey’s treasury minister — and his success in seizing the opportunity presented by Turkey’s 2001 economic crisis, the most severe in its history. Dervis, says Bakir, built a powerful reform group centered on the Ministry of the Economy, and “was also instrumental in utilizing coercion by conscious manipulation of incentives by the IMF to press for the implementation of the program.” Read more: Policy Entrepreneurship and Institutional Change: Multilevel Governance of Central Banking Reform.
Archive for the 'Uncategorized' Category
Economic crisis and the establishment of Turkey’s independent central bank
Published October 3, 2009 Uncategorized Leave a CommentTags: central bank, economic policy, monetary policy, policy entrepreneurs, reform, Turkey
Mitchell A. Orenstein of Johns Hopkins University has won the 2009 Levine Prize for his book Privatizing Pensions: The Transnational Campaign for Social Security Reform (Princeton University Press, 2008). The Levine Prize is awarded annually by SOG and Governance to a book that makes a contribution of considerable theoretical or practical significance in the field of public policy and administration, takes an explicitly comparative perspective, and is written in an accessible style. The award committee complimented Orenstein for “a penetrating analysis . . . of interest to a wide range of scholars and policymakers.” The committee also gave an honorable mention to David E. Lewis of Vanderbilt University for his book The Politics of Presidential Appointments. Read more about this year’s prizewinners.
Book reviews: performance management, industrial policy, central banking, carbon taxes
Published August 19, 2009 Current issue , Uncategorized Leave a CommentTags: book reviews
In the current issue of Governance (22.3), Matt Andrews says that Donald P. Moynihan‘s book The Dynamics of Performance Management “breaks new ground in addressing questions about why performance management reforms are often adopted in limited forms, why these reforms seem to deliver different results to those expected, and how the value of these interventions might manifest in unexpected ways.” Also reviewed in the current issue: Dan Breznitz on the state’s role in nurturing the high tech sector; Jon Kvist and Juho Saari on the impact of EU institutions on national social protection systems; William Nordhaus on the case for carbon taxes; Lucia Quaglia on Europe’s central banks; David Richards on the condition of the Westminster Model; and Einer Elhauge on problems of statutory interpretation. Read the reviews here.
Professor Kishore Mahbubani, Dean of the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy at the National University of Singapore, will contribute a commentary for the April 2010 issue of Governance. Commentaries are a new feature of the redesigned journal that will appear in January 2010. Mahbubani, also a Professor in the Practice of Public Policy at the Lee Kuan Yew School, is most recently the author The New Asian Hemisphere: The Irresistable Shift of Global Power to the East (PublicAffairs, 2009).
Governance’s new lead commentaries are short, unrefereed pieces designed to cultivate discussion on critical topics. The first commentary, in the April 2010 issue, will be written by Paul Starr, Professor of Communications and Public Affairs at Princeton University.
Trade rules on agriculture: dynamics of bargaining and enforcement
Published July 24, 2009 Uncategorized Leave a CommentTags: international institutions, negotiation, trade
In the current issue of Governance, Adrian Kay and Robert Ackrill challenge the view that the 1994 Uruguay Round Agreement was a “singular event in the international governance of agriculture,” marking a sudden leap to liberalization. Kay and Ackrill provide historical context for the 1994 Agreement, showing that it was proceeded by a decades-long process of learning through bargaining and rule enforcement. The significance of the Uruguay Round commitments, they argue, is “a matter of nuance and evolution.” Kay and Ackrill also speculate that the 1994 agreement may complicate further bargaining because it “locked in” a high degree of specificity in trade rules. Read more: Institutional Change in the International Governance Agriculture: A Revised Account, 22.3 (July 2009).
Why privatization? New services, not fiscal stress
Published July 17, 2009 Uncategorized Leave a CommentTags: contracting, fiscal stress, outsourcing, privatization, United States
A new study of privatization decisions by US country governments from 1992 to 2002 challenges the assumption that fiscal stress is a major reason for privatizing public services. “There is no evidence that fiscal stress induces privatization,” says Roland Zullo in the current issue of Governance. Nor is there clear evidence that politically conservative regions favor privatization, or that labor-friendly laws impede it. Surprisingly, says Zullo, “the results suggest that private and intermunicipal contracting expand when government grows . . . this reflects a pragmatic use of external suppliers for trial, temporary and contingent services.” Read more: Does Fiscal Stress Induce Privatization? 22.3 (July 2009).
Explaining merit system adoption: tenure in office matters
Published July 13, 2009 Uncategorized Leave a CommentTags: civil service reform, democracy, democratization, human resources, New Political Economy
In the current issue of Governance, Victor Lapuente and Marina Nistotskaya challenge conventional wisdom about the factors that lead to the adoption of merit-based civil service systems. Their research — examining 35 developing countries and 39 Russian regions — suggests that rulers who have more security in office are more likely to pursue reform, because they know they will reap its long-term economic benefits. Other considerations — including the level of democratization, electoral competition, or fragmentation of political authority — prove not to be so important as determinants of reform. Lapuente and Nistotskaya caution that “normative implications” about the relative virtues of authoritarian and democratic regimes cannot be inferred from their research. Read more: To the short-sighted victor belong the spoils: Politics and merit adoption in comparative perspective, July 2009 (22.3).
Free download: Mashaw on terror and the rule of law
Published June 24, 2009 Uncategorized Leave a CommentTags: Obama administration, rule of law, terrorism, United States
Free download: In another of Governance‘s notes on the Obama administration, Jerry Mashaw of Yale Law School reflects on Terror, the Rule of Law, and Institutional Design (22.3, July 2009). Mashaw says that the post-9/11 struggle is a “story of administrative arrogance, judicial hesitancy, and congressional failure.” But he is skeptical that a change in administration will eliminate the long-term threat to American legal culture that is posed by the war against terror. Mashaw doubts that interbranch competition, or reforms within the executive branch, can assure respect for the rule of the law in times of national emergency. The best solution, he says, might be the previously unthinkable notion of “two constitutions” — one for normalcy, and one for emergencies — so that “actions taken and legally sanctioned in extraordinary times [do] not bleed into and shape the normal legal culture.” Sign up for notices about future downloads here.
Governance has again improved its standing in the 2008 ISI Journal Citation Report, released on June 19. Based on impact factor, Governance ranked eighth among journals in Public Administration in 2008, up from ninth in 2007 and tenth in 2006. Among journals in Political Science, it ranked twenty-second in 2008, up from twenty-fifth in 2007. (It was not ranked in Political Science in 2006.)
Starr discusses forthcoming commentary
Published October 1, 2009 Uncategorized Leave a CommentTags: commentary, liberalism, technology, United States