The GOVERNANCE blog

In 2003 the French government implemented a new automated system for detecting and punishing speed limit violations. In the current issue of Governance (July 2010), Fabrice Hamelin of the French National Institute for Transport and Safety Research examines how this “rapid, radical break” in policy on speed limit enforcement came about.  Underlying the change in policy was a more fundamental shift in thinking about the role of central government in this policy domain, Hamelin says.  “The adoption of Automated Speed Enforcement confirms that the state — and with it French statism — has not said its last word . . . The instrument chosen enables a comeback by the state.”  Read the article, “Renewal of Public Policy via Instrumental Innovation: Implementing Automated Speed Enforcement in France.”

Governance co-sponsored a roundtable on “public governance after the financial crisis” at University College London’s School of Public Policy on May 28.  Academics and policymakers from over twenty institutions participated in the day-long discussion, which was a follow-on to a similar session held at Suffolk University Law School in Boston last November.  Papers prepared for the roundtable are being compiled for a forthcoming special issue of Governance.  Photo below: Paul Posner of George Mason University discusses the capacity of democratic systems to deal with fiscal crises.

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.

In the current issue of Governance, 23.1, Vandna Bhatia of Carleton University uses Canada as a case study to illustrate the subtle ways in which policymakers in welfare states have undermined health programs.  The conventional view that healthcare is protected from retrenchment is misguided, Bhatia says.  Discourse has subtly shifted away from the proposition that healthcare is a societal obligation, while governments have relied on “policy drift” — the failure to update programs to meet new needs — to limit their liabilities.  The cumulative effect, says Bhatia, is a gradual adjustment of the public to “new realities.”  Read more: Social Rights, Civil Rights, and Health Reform in Canada. Free download until January 31.

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.

What happens to conventional understandings about democratic representation when responsibility for policy formulation moves to new “governance networks”? Carolyn Hendriks explores this question in the current issue of Governance (22.4).  Examining participants in networks engaged in Dutch energy reform, Hendriks finds a “complex mix” of understandings about roles, which often “have little to do with conventional democratic understandings.”  Network participants, she says, “were mostly autonomous elites whose ‘democratic work’ is reduced to promoting symbolic messages when politically necessary.”  Read the article: The democratic soup: Mixed meanings of political representation in governance networks.

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.