The GOVERNANCE blog

The next conference of the IPSA Structure and Organization of Government Research Committee (SOG) will be hosted by the Centre for Public Policy at University of Melbourne on January 27-29, 2012.  SOG is the sponsoring organization of Governance.  A Call for Papers is now available.  The theme for the conference is “Public Policy and Public Management: Exploring the Changing Linkages.”  The deadline for paper proposals is August 31.  For more information, contact Damon Alexander at University of Melbourne.

In the current issue of Governance, Henrik Enroth of Linnaeus University reviews Democratic Governance by Mark Bevir.  The book makes “vital contributions to our understanding” of the rise and spread of the language of governance, Enroth says.  Read the review.  Richard Allen reviews The International Monetary Fund in the Global Economy by M.S. Copelovitch.  Allen says that Copelovitch “provides a comprehensive review of how decisions are taken in the IMF . . . and is exceptional in terms of the depth of its coverage and adroit use” of evidence.  Read the review.  And Paul ‘t Hart reviews Groupthink vs. High Quality Decision Making in International Relations by Mark Schafer and Scott Crichlow.  Their study “adds a whole new layer of analysis” about the way leaders’ traits and behavior can affect high-level policymaking, ‘t Hart concludes.  Read the review.

Professor Christopher Hood of the University of Oxford gave a keynote address on the advent of “WikiLeaks World” at the First Global Conference on Transparency Research at Rutgers University on May 19.  Professor Hood’s address was sponsored by Governance and will appear as a commentary in the October 2011 issue of the journal.  Photo: Alasdair Roberts, co-editor, Governance; Christopher Hood; and Suzanne Piotrowski, Rutgers University, conference chair.

In a research note in the current issue of Governance, Joshua Stark reports on the first decade of work by the ombudsman of the Indian state of Kerala.  Kerala was one of a host of jurisdictions in the developing world that adopted the ombudsman model to improve accountability within government.  Kerala’s ombudsman has had notable successes but its potential is “constrained by an unresponsive state government,” Stark says.  The note is based on a longer study supported by Centre for Policy Research and the Research Foundation for Governance for India.  Read the research note.

In the current issue of Governance, Darren Halpin of the University of Aarhus examines the behavior of organized interests in Scotland, and asks whether they are prone to the same kind of bandwagon behavior observed elsewhere.  They are: most issues attract little attention, while a few issues gain the most attention.  Halpin advances the literature by examining the reasons for this.  It is not simply that some issues are more important than others, he says.   A large number of actors cannot monitor the policy environment directly and rely instead on cues from “keystone groups.”  This process of cue-taking frequently generates “cascades of attention,” and thus bandwagons.  Read the article.

Higher education is usually regarded as “one of the last bastions of national sovereignty” in the European Union, say Agnes Batory (Central European University) and Nicole Lindstrom (University of York).  But the last decade has seen still seen a strong convergence of national practices in higher education.  In the current issue of Governance, Batory and Lindstrom explain why.  The European Commission has used financial incentives to shape the behavior of universities, often turning them into agents that lobby national governments for its preferred policies.  EC initiatives are often portrayed as “soft” devices for coordination.  This is mistaken, Batory and Lindstrom say.  Sometimes the power of the purse allows the EC to operate “in coercive mode,”  preempting policy debate at the national level.  Read the article.