The "new public management" (NPM) wave in public sector organizational change was founded on themes of disaggregation, competition, and incentivization. Although its effects are still working through in countries new to NPM, this wave has now largely stalled or been reversed in some key "leading-edge" countries. This ebbing chiefly reflects the cumulation of adverse indirect effects on citizens' capacities for solving social problems because NPM has radically increased institutional and policy complexity. The character of the post-NPM regime is currently being formed. We set out the case that a range of connected and information technology-centered changes will be critical for the current and next wave of change, and we focus on themes of reintegration, needs-based holism, and digitization changes. The overall movement incorporating these new shifts is toward "digital-era governance" (DEG), which involves reintegrating functions into the governmental sphere, adopting holistic and needs-oriented structures, and progressing digitalization of administrative processes. DEG offers a perhaps unique opportunity to create self-sustaining change, in a broad range of closely connected technological, organizational, cultural, and social effects. But there are alternative scenarios as to how far DEG will be recognized as a coherent phenomenon and implemented successfully.

New public management is dead. Long live digital-era governance

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Dreaming With BRICs: The Path to 2050

International Security Studies (ISS) has changed and diversified in many ways since 1945. This book provides the first intellectual history of the development of the subject in that period. It explains how ISS evolved from an initial concern with the strategic consequences of superpower rivalry and nuclear weapons, to its current diversity in which environmental, economic, human and other securities sit alongside military security, and in which approaches ranging from traditional Realist analysis to Feminism and Post-colonialism are in play. It sets out the driving forces that shaped debates in ISS, shows what makes ISS a single conversation across its diversity, and gives an authoritative account of debates on all the main topics within ISS. This is an unparalleled survey of the literature and institutions of ISS that will be an invaluable guide for all students and scholars of ISS, whether traditionalist, ‘new agenda’ or critical. • The first book to tell the post-1945 story of International Security Studies and offer an integrated historical sociology of the whole field • Opens the door to a long-overdue conversation about what ISS is and where it should be going • Provides a detailed institutional account of ISS in terms of its journals, departments, think tanks and funding sources

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The Evolution of International Security Studies

Collective action theory, which is widely applied to explain human phenomena in which public goods are at stake, traditionally rests on at least two main tenets: that individuals confront discrete decisions about free riding and that formal organization is central to locating and contacting potential participants in collective action, motivating them, and coordinating their actions. Recent uses of technologies of information and communication for collective action appear in some instances to violate these two tenets. In order to explain these, we reconceptualize collective action as a phenomenon of boundary crossing between private and public domains. We show how a reconceptualized theory of collective action can better account for certain contemporary phenomena, and we situate traditional collective action theory as a special case of our expanded theory.

http://ucsbsocialcomputing.pbworks.com/f/bimber,+et+al.pdf

Reconceptualizing Collective Action in the Contemporary Media Environment

New media have been widely used by radical groups of both Left and Right to advance their political projects. The aim of this article to provide a theoretical framework, through developing the concepts of public sphere and counter-public sphere, which allows us to understand the growing importance of alternative media in society and to indicate how this framework might generate questions for empirical research.

New Media, Counter Publicity and the Public Sphere

China's domestic politics and foreign policy have evolved considerably under President Xi Jinping. Domestically the regime has actively promoted the idea of the ‘China dream’ to restore optimism and enthusiasm about its future, particularly among young people. Yet it has also sought to differentiate the socialist China dream from any resemblance to the American dream. Its main emphasis is on making China ‘strong and powerful’ again. In foreign policy, the leadership has become more active. While China has pursued a more robust policy in the South China Sea, it has also launched two extremely ambitious long-term projects to expand land and maritime transport links between China and Europe, termed the ‘one belt, one road’ initiative. They aim to promote development of western China, but if successful, they should also help to transform economic relations across large parts of Eurasia. In geopolitical terms, they will expand China's shadow over regions of the world where hitherto its presence has been relatively modest. They should strengthen links with Europe, as well as with other countries along the routes, to counterbalance potentially conflictual relations with the US. However, success will require active and enthusiastic cooperation from many neighbours. For that reason the risks are as great as the ambition.

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Westward ho—the China dream and ‘one belt, one road’: Chinese foreign policy under Xi Jinping

The Internet, democracy and democratisation, Peter Ferdinand paradoxical partners - electronic communication and electronic democracy, Beth Noveck democratising democracy - strong democracy, US political campaigns and the Internet, Jennifer Stromer-Galley revitalising the party system or zeitgeist On-line? virtual party headquarters and virtual party branches in Germany, Christoph Bieber the politics of African America On-line, Rohit Lekhi the neo-Nazis and Taliban On-line, Peter Chroust the Internet in Indonesia's new democracy, David T. Hill, Krishna Sen the electronic republic? the role of the Internet I promoting democracy in Africa, Dana Ott, Melissa Rosser Tibet, democracy and the Internet Bazaar, John Bray.

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The Internet, Democracy and Democratization

This article examines the long-term trends of foreign policy convergence of Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (brics) to determine the similarity of their positions on world issues, as they seek to ‘insert’ themselves more fully into global decision making. The analysis is based upon their votes in the UN General Assembly. The article compiles two indexes of voting for the period 1974–2011. Both demonstrate a high and now growing degree of cohesion among brics. Their voting is broken down by pairs to show common themes and the major issue divergences, and how often individual states voted with others. Nuclear disarmament and human rights are the two areas that reveal persisting divergences between these states.

Rising powers at the UN: an analysis of the voting behaviour of brics in the General Assembly

This article argues that 2003–4 were decisive years in Russo-Chinese relations. Uncertainties over Russia's commitment to supply China with much needed energy revived deep-seated anxieties about the whole future of their relationship. However, by the autumn of 2004 they had launched plans for strengthening the partnership and widening mutual popular understanding. It also argues that this coincides with new efforts to view their foreign policies through the lens of constructivism, instead of realism. The article then looks at developments in bilateral economic relations and in the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, before adumbrating their wider advocacy of multilateralism, linking this to converging relations with India. Finally, it argues that relations with the US will continue to have a significant impact on the direction and closeness of this bilateral relationship. It is still a partnership rather than an alliance. Russia and China may sometimes put a higher priority on their relations with the West rather than on each other. Yet they are also looking at other potential emerging powers and how they can bend that process of emergence to their advantage.

Sunset, sunrise: China and Russia construct a new relationship

The International Monetary Fund was the international financial institution that was most alien to the Chinese government when it embarked upon its economic reforms at the end of the 1970s, because financial markets were neglected in China's centralized plan. Therefore, China's increasing cooperation with the IMF illuminates the extent to which China has changed through 'socialization' into the norms of global governance more generally. The article examines the evolution of China's involvement with the IMF and argues that in many respects it has embraced those norms. Even though its political economy still substantially diverges from western prescriptions, many features are compatible with the (original) 'Washington Consensus'. But China remains wary of becoming too dependent on possible IMF assistance; it tries to preserve its freedom of manoeuvre. Although the IMF has attempted to acknowledge China's growing global importance by increasing its voting rights, this has failed to keep pace with change in the global economy. China is thus attracted by the possibility of additional ways of pragmatically increasing its leverage over global decisions, for instance through regional financial cooperation in Asia.

Peter Ferdinand

Papers

Westward ho—the China dream and ‘one belt, one road’: Chinese foreign policy under Xi Jinping

The Internet, Democracy and Democratization

Rising powers at the UN: an analysis of the voting behaviour of brics in the General Assembly

Sunset, sunrise: China and Russia construct a new relationship

China and the IMF : from mimicry towards pragmatic international institutional pluralism