The GOVERNANCE blog

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.

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.

The current issue of Governance (22.3) offers two perspectives on the complexities of Europeanization in the field of education policy.  Christine Trampusch contrasts the German and Austrian response to the Bologna Process, which included an effort to rationalize processes of vocational education and training.  German policymakers adopted a proactive reform policy, while in Austria, Europeanization was effected through “ongoing, quotidian change in domestic institutions, without special attention to EU policies.”  Trampusch’s study attempts to incorporate a dynamic conception of domestic institutional change into models of Europeanization.  Meanwhile, Michael Dobbins and Christopher Knill examine the effect of the Bologna Process on the structure of higher education institutions in Central and Eastern Europe.  They find “a massive expansion of transnational communication and interlinkages” but no clear trend toward policy convergence; in fact, “differences in Higher Education governance have increased.”  It is another reminder of the enduring effect of “national institutional peculiarities” on policy development.

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.