The GOVERNANCE blog

For those attending the ECPR meetings in Reykjavik, we are pleased to invite Governance authors, reviewers and other friends to a reception hosted jointly by the journals Governance and Public Administration.  It will be held on Friday, August 26, from 7-8pm in the HT-200-Háskólatorg 2nd floor.  Please save the date now and plan to join us for this celebration.  The reception is sponsored by Wiley/Blackwell Publishing.

The 2011 Levine Prize has been awarded to World Rule: Accountability, Legitimacy, and the Design of Global Governance (University of Chicago Press, 2010), by Jonathan G.S. Koppell.  Koppell holds the Lattie & Elva Coor Presidential Chair at Arizona State University, and is Director of the University’s School of Public Affairs.  The 2011 Levine Prize Committee was comprised of Anthony B.L. Cheung, Hong Kong Institute of Education (Chair);  Kimberley Isett, Columbia University; and Kutsal Yesilkagit, University of Utrecht.  The Committee says World Rule “has made a significant contribution to the understanding of the complex nature of global governance.”  More details about the 2011 Levine Book Prize are available here.

In the current issue of Governance (24.3, July 2011), Moshe Maor of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem develops a more sophisticated method for thinking about the significance of organizational reputations.  In a comparative study of drug safety regulation, Maor finds two types of regulators: those that have a reputation for expertise in pre-approval of new drugs, and those that have a reputation for providing timely warnings about dangerous drugs already on the market.  “The type of reputation an organization has plays a key role in determining its behavior,” Maor says.  He shows that the first type is more likely to downplay announcements about the withdrawal of dangerous drugs, while the second type emphasizes such decisions.  These regulatory choices have “important implications for public health,” Maor adds: the citizens of countries with the second type of “guardian regulator” are generally more aware of decisions to withdraw drugs from the market.  Read the article: Organizational Reputations and Observability of Public Warnings in 10 Pharmaceutical Markets.

Much has been written about the role of political parties in channelling citizen demands on government.  In the current issue of Governance (24.3, July 2011), Nicole Bolleyer of the University of Exeter takes a different perspective, examining the role of political parties in integrating complex governmental apparatuses.  Bolleyer’s three-country study finds that parties “facilitate communication and coordination between different decisionmaking arenas,” compensating for the fragmentary tendencies of “increasingly specialized” governmental processes.  But this does not necessarily imply improved coordination between policy arenas: under certain conditions, says Bolleyer, parties might use this “connectedness” to reinforce cross-jurisdictional conflict.  Read the article: The Influence of Political Parties on Policy Coordination.

Professor Peter Aucoin, a highly regarded Canadian scholar of public administration, passed away on July 7 at the age of 67.  Peter was a long-time member of the Governance editorial board and contributor to the journal, beginning in its first volume in 1988.  Maclean’s Magazine has posted a brief note.  Nova Scotia Premier Darrell Dexter has also offered his condolences.  “Nova Scotia, and Canada, has lost one of its most respected all-round political scientists of this generation,” said Premier Dexter.

In recent writings about governance reform, says Harvard University professor Merilee Grindle, “recipes are out.  So are ‘one size fits all’ and idealized end states.”  In the current issue of Governance (24.3, July 2011), Grindle says that scholars and practitioners are moving to a new emphasis on “situationally-determined responses to specific problems.”  But this new approach has its own challenges: Can we prove that contextually-sensitive diagnostics are actually more effective?  Can new methods be explained easily to important constituencies?  And how will this new approach mesh with the political imperative to have a simple, compelling story about reform?  Read more: Open access to the commentary.