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This article argues that the inability of the Commonwealth and State Governments in Australia to affect significant progress on water reform is largely a product of their inability to win the hearts and minds of rural communities; a failure to understand the importance of localism. Hitherto, the failure to bring the politics back in and integrate community voices into the process of policy development has proved the major obstacle to the achievement of a balanced social and environmental perspective in the Murray Darling Basin (MDB) and has served to reinforce traditional prejudices. This article makes four main contributions to the study of communities experiencing stress. Firstly, we present the case for deep local democratization in times of stress. Secondly, we build on a diagnostic tool – the Can do Like to Enabled to Asked to Responded to (CLEAR) model – to evaluate the effectiveness of the consultation process underpinning the Guide to the Murray Darling Basin Plan (MDBP) and apply it to the Forbes...

Policy transfer research has been something of a growth industry, reflected in the fact that Google Scholar identifies 17 articles on the subject with more than 100 citations. Of course, as an earlier issue of Policy Studies indicated, the concept and its use have not gone unquestioned. However, the contributors to this volume, for the most part, argue that the study of policy transfer has matured significantly over the last two decades. In order to substantiate this point, we engage here with the article by McCann and Ward which begins this volume. It is an excellent and important example of such a critique, but, in our view, they are a trifle unfair about what they see as the ‘mainstream’, political science approach to the study of policy transfer. As such, we briefly outline McCann and Ward's critique, before considering the later articles in this collection which indicate how these critiques have been, and are being, addressed in the mainstream policy transfer literature. Subsequently, we briefly cons...

Post-conflict reconstruction and stabilisation have focused upon the establishment of both strong states capable of maintaining stability and various forms of ‘Good Governance’. However, both presume the development of substantial security sectors and highly functioning administrative systems within unrealistically brief periods of time. The failure to meet such inflated expectations commonly results in the disillusionment of both the local populations and the international community, and, hence, increased state fragility and decreased aid financing and effectiveness. As such the authors re-frame the basic question by asking how stabilisation can be achieved in spite of weak state institutions during reconstruction processes. Based upon extensive field research in Afghanistan and other conflict-affected contexts, the authors propose a model of post-conflict stabilisation focused primarily on the attainment of legitimacy by state institutions. Finally, the authors examine how legitimacy-oriented stabilisat...

In a speech given in Chicago in April 1999, Tony Blair stated, on behalf of third-way social democracy, ‘we are all internationalists now, whether we like it or not. We cannot refuse to participate...

The arguments in this article proceed from the grounded empirical observation that over the past three decades the character of the British State has transformed from an industrial welfare state into a competition state. Hence, it is argued that successive governments, regardless of their traditional ideological complexion, have increasingly assumed the characteristics of what Michael Oakeshott would term an ‘enterprise association’. The core concern of government is no longer seen in terms of traditional conceptions of social justice and the public interest but in adjusting to, sustaining, promoting, and expanding an open global economy in order to capture its perceived benefits. It is further argued that Cameron's Conservatives look set to continue this trend if they win the next general election. Indeed the principles of the Competition State are more in keeping with the traditional pragmatism of Conservative statecraft, its acceptance of change and strong but limited government, and its emphasis on th...

First, if any individual points have been well made by previous writers, let us try to follow them up; then from the collection of constitutions we must examine what sort of thing preserves and wha...

The world of public policy is becoming increasingly small due to dramatic changes in global communications, political and economic institutional structures, and to nation states themselves. This article evaluates the implications of these changes and challenges for both the study and the practice of policy transfer and provides an understanding of the relationship between systemic globalizing forces and the increasing scope and intensity of policy transfer activity. It provides: an explanation of policy transfer as a process of organizational learning; an insight into how and why such processes are studied by policy scientists; and an evaluation of its use by policy practitioners. The article argues that the limits of policy transfer analysis as a descriptive, explanatory and prescriptive theory of policy change can be addressed through the development of a multi-level ‘action based’ approach to the study of policy transfer.

This article evaluates the Brown-effect ‘real’ and ‘potential’ on public services production in the UK. It is observed, rather unsurprisingly, that Gordon Brown's approach to public services reform is a logical extension of the New Labour modernisation project and represents the extension of new public management (NPM) methods articulated in the populist rhetoric of ‘choice’, ‘personalisation’ and ‘user’ engagement. It is argued, however, that while the adoption of NPM was an important phase in the modernisation of Britain's public services, it is simply unequal to the challenge of public service provision in an era of networked governance. This is because it privileges the role of technocrats, takes the politics out of public policy deliberation and its market orientation is at odds with the concept of public service. In consequence, the success of public service reform rests on the development of representative as well as technocratic networks which can meet the demands of both representative democracy ...

The concept of the Competition State differs from the Post-Fordist State proposed by regulation theory, which asserts that the contemporary restructuring of the state is aimed at maintaining its general function of stabilising the national polity and promoting the domestic economy in the public interest. In contrast, the Competition State focuses on the transformation of the state from within with regard to the reform of political institutions, functions and processes, in the face of processes of globalisation. It is argued that the state does not merely adapt to exogenous structural constraints; domestic political actors take a proactive lead in the process through both policy entrepreneurship and the rearticulation of domestic political and social coalitions, on both the right and the left, as alternatives are incrementally eroded. State intervention itself is aimed at not only adjusting to, but also sustaining, promoting, and expanding an open global economy in order to capture its perceived benefits. ...