The present historical moment may seem a particularly inopportune time to review Bowling Alone, Robert Putnam's latest exploration of civic decline in America. After all, the outpouring of volunteerism, solidarity, patriotism, and self-sacrifice displayed by Americans in the wake of the September 11 terrorist attacks appears to fly in the face of Putnam's central argument: that \"social capital\" -defined as \"social networks and the norms of reciprocity and trustworthiness that arise from them\" (p. 19)'has declined to dangerously low levels in America over the last three decades. However, Putnam is not fazed in the least by the recent effusion of solidarity. Quite the contrary, he sees in it the potential to \"reverse what has been a 30to 40-year steady decline in most measures of connectedness or community.\"' As an example of how the current \"war on terrorism\" could generate a durable civic renewal, Putnam points to the burst in civic practices that occurred during and after World War II, which he says \"permanently marked\" the generation that lived through it and had a \"terrific effect on American public life over the last half-century.\" 3 If Americans can follow this example and channel their current civic

Bowling alone: The collapse and revival of American community

This is a study in industrial sociology; it a partial report, to be followed by another, of an investigation of singel factory seen in the light of Max Weber's theory of bureacracy.

Patterns of Industrial Bureaucracy.

Is 'Europeanization' as disappointing a term as it is fashionable? Should it be abandoned, or is it useful for understanding European transformations? Five uses are discussed and it is argued that research need not be hampered by competing definitions as long as their meaning, the phenomena in focus, the simplifying assumption used, the models of change and the theoretical challenges involved, are clarified and kept separate. The research challenge is one of model building, not one of inventing definitions. While it is premature to abandon the term, its usefulness may be more limited than its widespread use could indicate. Europeanization may be less useful as an explanatory concept than as an attention-directing device and a starting point for further exploration.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/JCMS403.pdf?abstractid=369690&mirid=5

The Many Faces of Europeanization

The Fall of Public Man

A new public administration movement is emerging to move beyond traditional public administration and New Public Management. The new movement is a response to the challenges of a networked, multisector, no-one-wholly-in-charge world and to the shortcomings of previous public administration approaches. In the new approach, values beyond efficiency and effectiveness—and especially democratic values—are prominent. Government has a special role to play as a guarantor of public values, but citizens as well as businesses and nonprofit organizations are also important as active public problem solvers. The article highlights value-related issues in the new approach and presents an agenda for research and action to be pursued if the new approach is to fulfill its promise.

Public Value Governance: Moving Beyond Traditional Public Administration and the New Public Management

In various guises, public value has become extraordinarily popular in recent years. We challenge the relevance and usefulness of the approach in Westminster systems with their dominant hierarchies of control, strong roles for ministers, and tight authorising regimes underpinned by disciplined two-party systems. We start by spelling out the core assumptions behind the public value approach. We identify two key confusions; about public value as theory, and in defining 'public managers'. We identify five linked core assumptions in public value: the benign view of large-scale organisations; the primacy of management; the relevance of private sector experience; the downgrading of party politics; and public servants as Platonic guardians. We then focus on the last two assumptions because they are the least applicable in Westminster systems. We defend the 'primacy of party politics' and we criticise the notion that public managers should play the role of Platonic guardians deciding the public interest. The final section of the article presents a 'ladder of public value' by which to gauge the utility of the approach for public managers in Westminster systems.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/pdf/10.1111/j.1467-8500.2007.00553.x

The Limits to Public Value, or Rescuing Responsible Government from the Platonic Guardians

Public Sector Management in Australia: New Challenges, New Directions

Part 1 The problems: administration under stress dilemmas - efficiency, economy, effectiveness, ethics, equity, accountability, size. Part 2 The design of the public sector: why are structures important? governmental bodies quasi-governmental bodies inter-governmental bodies alternative forms - contracting, privatization. Part 3 Tools of management: corporate management - lessons from the private sector? financial control systems co-ordination and decentralization planning and policy design policy delivery and agency discretion marketing services personnel management and industrial relations management review processes. Part 4 The impact of management: performance measurement and evaluation a new accountability?.

Public sector management in Australia

In this monograph, we present a collection of papers from the ANZSOG conference on collaboration held in 2007. We have been able to draw on a range of perspectives – practitioner and scholarly – to offer a collection focused on the issue of collaborative governance in Australia. Our contributors consider the drivers, challenges, prospects and promises of collaboration, from a conceptual and a practical perspective. We believe this provides a rich resource for readers who are interested in the issue of collaboration in the public sector, and more specifically in public policy.Throughout the monograph, our contributors draw on their personal experience, their research and their visions for change to offer important insights into the potential of collaboration and the fiercely stubborn impediments to this ideal. You will note that there are differences of opinion, which, of course, are to be expected; we hope they will help in feeding the continuing debate about collaborative governance.We have organised the monograph in four key sections. In the first, ‘Setting the scene’, there are six chapters, which provide an introduction for readers to a range of issues including the dimensions and drivers of collaboration, why governments are interested in collaboration, the Australian experience, the notions of collaborative advantage and collaborative inertia, what is meant by success in collaboration and the role of the community sector in collaborative governance.In the second part, ‘The reality of collaboration’, we draw on the experience and research of experts to consider success, failure, challenges and questions that arise from attempts at collaboration. In the eight chapters in this section, a range of examples is provided by the authors and many point to traps and lessons that will be of considerable interest and value to readers.In the third part, ‘Collaboration abroad’, there are two chapters that provide an international perspective. Drawing on experience and research in the United Kingdom and British Columbia, in Canada, the authors in this section give us a window into developments in other parts of the world, offering promise and words of warning.In the final part, ‘Collaboration: rhetoric and reality’, the concluding chapter of the monograph seeks to examine the reality of collaboration in public policy. In this chapter, the author questions whether there is much evidence of true collaboration, raising the possibility that all the collaborative talk has yet to translate into much collaborative action.Together, these sections offer readers the opportunity to consider collaborative governance in public policy from a range of perspectives, and to engage in the current debate about the value of collaboration.One of the most important changes since the conference is, of course, the change of government and, along with many of our readers, we are keen to observe what will happen under the leadership of the new Prime Minister, Kevin Rudd. There is certainly a lot of talk, especially about intergovernmental collaboration, but will the Rudd Government be able to ‘walk-the-walk’? Only time will tell.We thank all of our contributors for their efforts in preparing their chapters for the monograph, in particular Peter Shergold, who was prepared to write a postscript after his move from the public service to academia. We especially thank John Butcher who, as usual, works tirelessly to ensure that the ANZSOG monographs are of the highest possible quality.

https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/Delivery.cfm/SSRN_ID1927672_code348345.pdf?abstractid=1927672&mirid=1

Collaborative Governance: A new era of public policy in Australia?

We challenge the usefulness of the ‘public value’ approach in Westminster systems with their dominant hierarchies of control, strong roles for ministers, and tight authorizing regimes underpinned by disciplined two-party systems. We identify two key confusions: about public value as theory, and in defining who are ‘public managers’. We identify five linked core assumptions in public value: the benign view of large-scale organizations; the primacy of management; the relevance of private sector experience; the downgrading of party politics; and public servants as platonic guardians. We identify two key dilemmas around the ‘primacy of party politics’ and the notion that public managers should play the role of platonic guardians deciding the public interest. We illustrate our argument with short case studies of: the David Kelly story from the UK; the ‘children overboard’ scandal in Australia; the ‘mad cow disease’ outbreak in the UK; the Yorkshire health authority's ‘tea-parties’, and the Cave Creek disaster in New Zealand.

/pdf/bringing-the-politics-back-in-public-value-in-westminster-awt36oiqv8.pdf

John Wanna

Papers

The Limits to Public Value, or Rescuing Responsible Government from the Platonic Guardians

Public Sector Management in Australia: New Challenges, New Directions

Public sector management in Australia

Collaborative Governance: A new era of public policy in Australia?

Bringing the politics back in: public value in westminster parliamentary government