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Since the first archival material became accessible in 1989 & 1990, knowledge about the Soviet camp system has grown considerably. The sources from within the Gulag bureaucracy itself now make it possible to clear up questions which were disputed for decades. In the early 1950s, at the peak of the camp system, 2.5 million people were in incarcerated, from 1930 to 1953, there were in all 20 million victims of repression. The significance of forced labor in the Soviet economy must be corrected downward. Its share of energy & industrial production never exceeded 8-10 percent. Its hallmarks were low productivity & disorganization. Although the personnel files of the Ministry of the Interior & the secret police remain closed, initial studies about the perpetrators in the NKVD & Gulag nomenklatura have appeared. Of those who survived the Great Terror 1937-1939, none has ever been prosecuted. Adapted from the source document.

PurposeThe present paper seeks to examine the recent changes in public management in Malaysia in relation to new public management and assess their impacts on administrative performance and service delivery.Design/methodology/approachThe scope of the paper is limited to the period of 1981 till the present date. The paper is mainly based on secondary sources of information, and it uses a combination of descriptive and analytical methods.FindingsThe paper shows that although reforms are steps in the right direction, their impacts so far have been modest. Despite reforms and a few improvements they have made in service provisions, the public bureaucracy in Malaysia continues to suffer from inefficiency, corruption and a host of other problems.Originality/valueThe paper shows the gap between rhetoric and reality of public management reforms in Malaysia. It is expected to be of great value to all those interested in public management – be they in academia or in policy circles.

In Indonesia, positions in the Civil Service are subject to hidden market transactions. The demand for stable sources of income is high, and lack of transparency makes sales possible by government officers in core positions. The recent decentralization reforms have blurred borders of responsibility and lines of reporting in the bureaucracy and facilitated increasing rent-seeking at local levels. The article reports from a study of payment for government positions in an urban and a rural district in a province in Indonesia, Nusa Tenggara Barat. The survey reveals that prices for positions are rising and vary among departments in accordance with available opportunities to boost their income. Prices are higher where many projects are available and the compensation is good. The article concludes that current practices are unethical and hurt the society and that increased transparency in employment procedures must be in place before things can get any better. (Contemp Southeast Asia/GIGA)

We use a panel of 4979 cross-border and domestic takeovers to test the relation between host country corruption and premiums paid for local targets. Host country corruption is negatively associated with target premiums, after correcting for other governance related factors such as political stability, legal systems, and financial disclosure standards. We estimate that deterioration in the corruption index by one point (on a ten point scale) is, on average, associated with a reduction of 21% of local targets' premiums. Our results do not support the notion that local corruption constitutes a significant market barrier to foreign investors. It rather represents a discount on local takeover synergies, which affects foreign and domestic acquirers alike. However, we find that the major effects of corruption can alternatively be explained by government effectiveness, pointing towards an endogenous relationship between bribery and bureaucracy.

Population, employment and economic capacity continue to concentrate in and around large urban centres. If geography (measured as proximity to large centres of population) increasingly matters in the knowledge economy, then there may be no future for periphery locations. This paper critically reviews and refutes this hypothesis by looking at the world's small islands. Handicapped by size and distance, they are unable to generate scale dynamics nor to regularly access any neighbouring, large metropolitan centres. Nevertheless, jurisdictional resourcefulness resulting from sovereignty or subnational autonomy fosters compensatory policy capacity. Demand for niche-technology manufactures and craft-based, labour-intensive or place-specific services is likely to persist. Cyclical migration strategies allow islanders seeking work or education off island to tap the metropole and re-inject resources to reinvigorate the periphery. Remittances, aid, bureaucracy and other ''rents'' can provide significant fiscal resources necessary for survival. ; peer-reviewed

Grounded on a series of first-hand interviews with Chinese government officials, this book examines China's accession to the World Trade Organization, providing an 'inside' look at Chinese WTO accession negotiations. Presenting a systematic political economy model in analyzing Beijing's decision-making mechanisms, the book argues that China's WTO policy making is a state-led, leadership driven, and top-down process. Feng explores how China's determined political elite partly bypassed and partly restructured a largely reluctant and resistant bureaucracy, under constant pressure from an increasingly globalized international system. By addressing China's accession to the WTO from a political analysis perspective, the book provides a theoretically informed and intriguing examination of China's foreign economic policy making regime. The book highlights contemporary debates relating to state and institutionalist theory and provides new and useful insights into a significant development of this century.

In Indonesia, positions in the Civil Service are subject to hidden market transactions. The demand for stable sources of income is high, and lack of transparency makes sales possible by government officers in core positions. The recent decentralization reforms have blurred borders of responsibility and lines of reporting in the bureaucracy and facilitated increasing rent-seeking at local levels. The article reports from a study of payment for government positions in an urban and a rural district in a province in Indonesia, Nusa Tenggara Barat. The survey reveals that prices for positions are rising and vary among departments in accordance with available opportunities to boost their income. Prices are higher where many projects are available and the compensation is good. The article concludes that current practices are unethical and hurt the society and that increased transparency in employment procedures must be in place before things can get any better.

The Australian Ex-Prisoners of War Memorial was unveiled in Ballarat to great fanfare in February 2004. Struggling to overcome serious setbacks in order to raise the necessary funds to construct the $2 million memorial over more than a period of four years, the memorial, listing the names of all Australian prisoners of war from all conflicts was judged by the Federal Government to be nothing but a 'local' memorial rather than a 'national' memorial. The article investigates whether this issue is at all associated with the ambiguity and difficulty of incorporating prisoners of war into the Anzac legend or whether there were other factors at hand deciding the official 'national' status of the first war memorial to list the names of all Australian prisoners of war. The importance of this issue reveals how government bureaucracy and party politics can influence the future and potential public significance of a war memorial.

What is an archive, and how does it relate to our sense of history and, moreover, to our sense of the present? This question stands at the interstices of bureaucracy, historiography, and memory. Needless to say, it is also a highly political question. This article deals with the politics of archives, specifically as it manifests itself in Turkey. My aim in looking at the problem of archives is to further raise questions about the relation of history, memory, and truth. The politics of archives is a significant topic today, not only in Turkey, but also, for example, in many post-communist countries, regarding which past records of the old totalitarian regimes should be made public in the age of so-called democracy. In this respect, archives are not only the concerns of historians who are interested in recovering the past, but also of political rulers who aim to frame the past for present purposes.

We examine the dynamics of Senate advice and consent for executive branch nominations from 1885 to 1996 using multinomial logit and hazard analysis. We add to the literature by considering the importance of elections on the process. In particular, we assess how presidential mandates might influence the duration and success of nominations to the executive branch. The analysis captures political nuances previously unconsidered that follow from the different ways that nominations terminate, whether through confirmation, rejection or withdrawal by the president, or expiration. As shown previously, divided government matters, especially during periods of ideological polarization in the Senate. Nominations fail more of ten and take longer. However, perceptions of electoral mandate strengthen the president's position vis-à-vis the Senate, smoothing the president's path to a more effective transition and staffing of the federal bureaucracy.

"Seit Ende der achtziger Jahre wird unter der Bezeichnung Good Governance eine Konzeption diskutiert, die inzwischen zu einem zentralen Paradigma der Entwicklungspolitik avanciert ist. Die Weltbank definiert Good Governance folgendermaßen: 'Good governance is epitomized by predictable, open, and enlightened policymaking (that is, transparent processes); a bureaucracy imbued with a professional ethos; an executive arm of government accountable for its actions; and a strong civil society participating in public affairs; and all behaving under the rule of law'. (World Bank 1996: VII). Neben der Weltbank operieren auch der Internationale Währungsfonds (IWF) und die Organisation für ökonomische Zusammenarbeit und Entwicklung (OECD) mit der Good Governance-Konzeption. Als die bedeutendsten transnationalen Geberinstitutionen auf dem Feld der Entwicklungspolitik üben sie einen nachhaltigen Einfluss auf die inhaltliche Bestimmung und praktische Reichweite von Good Governance aus. Der vorliegende Aufsatz befasst sich deshalb mit deren Good Governance-Konzeption. Zunächst kommen jene Faktoren zur Sprache, die für den Aufstieg dieser Konzeption verantwortlich sind. Danach richtet sich der Blick auf die Kernkomponenten von Good Governance und Mechanismen zu deren Implementierung. Abschließend wird die Kritik an der Good Governance-Konzeption der großen Finanzinstitutionen untersucht. Im Mittelpunkt steht die Frage, welchen Beitrag Good Governance zu den Debatten über Entwicklungsstrategien leisten kann." (Textauszug)

Scholars have long suspected the blanket description of bureaucrats as "budget maximizers" is simplistic and inaccurate. This article provides empirical grounds for questioning that description and enhances our understanding of bureaucratic fiscal preferences. Bureaucratic preferences for expansion are distributed along a continuum. A typology of agency heads' expansion preferences is developed and related to Downs's typology of bureaucrats. Data from eight surveys of state agency heads (1964–98) enable us to trace administrators' preferences for expansion over four decades. These preferences vary substantially in any single survey year and reflect trends across these years. Notably, a substantial proportion of agency heads opted for no expansion in their own agency's programs and expenditures or in the state's overall budget. This typology challenges conventional conceptions of bureaucrats' maximizing preferences, advances alternative interpretations about budget minimizing, and fills an important gap in budget and bureaucracy theory.

Why is contracting used more frequently under some circumstances than others? What is its impact on spending for core mission and on service quality? These questions are explored with data from more than 1,000 Texas school districts. The evidence for a recent three‐year period shows that contracting is negatively related to spending on school districts' central task and is not positively associated with district performance. Why, then, do districts contract? While several variables are associated with the degree of contracting, the most interesting is the relative size of a district's bureaucratic staff. Furthermore, the relationship between contracting and bureaucracy is reciprocal: Each is associated with subsequent growth in the other. The dynamic suggests an updated version of Parkinson's law. These findings indicate the need for researchers to probe the causes and consequences of contracting more thoroughly to help public managers assess this important option.

A White Paper issued by the Labour government--under Prime Minister Tony Blair--in January 2003 outlines potentially sweeping changes in how British universities might be funded and regulated. These changes would build on three major paradigm shifts and experiments in system building in higher education in the United Kingdom since World War II: the creation and subsequent collapse of a binary system of higher education that included both universities and polytechnics; a decrease in governmental funding and an increase in regulations; and the introduction of student fees into the previously exclusively government-funded higher education sector. The Labour government's new White Paper proposes both to increase funding and to diversify the sources, and more controversially, to allow universities to set their own fees. At the same time, it continues to rely on an accountability and regulatory bureaucracy, and incentive funding, to encourage enrollment growth and to expand access to underserved populations.

Some strategy authors suggest that in an emerging market a local conglomerate enjoys certain potential advantages over a smaller focused firm. It can leverage its corporate image to build customer loyalty and raise funds from the capital market. It can mobilise resources from within the group companies to invest in enhancing the corporate image, in developing its own management‐training centre, and for liaison with the government and bureaucracy. It can also avoid retrenchment of surplus employees by transferring them across the group companies. The authors, however, contend that many of the advantages mentioned above cannot be realised in practice and the top management finds it difficult to effectively manage a large conglomerate. They suggest a model, which will help a conglomerate decide which businesses to retain or divest. They also highlight certain strategies adopted by Indian firms to combat foreign competition in the domestic market.