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This lecture begins with some preliminary reflections and definitional prescriptions about the nature, content and purpose of the administrative sciences – what they consist of and what purposes they serve. This is followed by a brisk journey through time, starting in the first half of the 18th century, outlining the development of the administrative sciences, using a road traffic metaphor to describe how the volume and complexity of the subject has grown in response to industrialization and globalization. The lecture draws in particular on the rather peculiar pattern of development in the author's own country – the UK – as a basis for some more general observations. The 'road' that is followed is not a straight one and the author has been very selective in the landmarks that he has chosen to point out along the way. The latter part of the lecture takes stock of where this journey has taken us and offers some tentative speculations about where the road might lead in the future. It concludes with some thoughts about how the diversity and volume of intellectual traffic that constitutes the administrative sciences might be managed – with special reference to the role of national and international institutes of public administration.

Almost four decades have passed since the Argentina-Brazil balance of power gave way to a Brazilian uncontested primacy in the Southern Cone. The peaceful and cooperative nature of this regional power transition poses an interesting puzzle for structural theories and those concerned with the US-China transition. Why do certain countries accept accommodation more leniently, like Argentina did? I offer an explanatory model and use process tracing to show that key cooperative turns in this bilateral relationship—during the late 1970s and early 1990s—required concurrent structural changes, both at the international and domestic levels. My conclusions suggest, against the prevalent narrative, that cooperation between Argentina and Brazil was not a product of democracy. Instead, peaceful power transitions take place when the costs of confrontation are high and social coalitions are largely redefined in the declining state.

In the area of disability studies, models have been at the centre of debates, influencing social policies, practices and legal frameworks. The former Ministry of Health and Social Welfare in the Kingdom of Lesotho was not an exception. In its efforts to tackle issues of disability, it produced The National Disability and Rehabilitation Policy: Mainstreaming persons with disabilities into society in 2011. This policy document is rooted in the social model and seeks to address long-standing problems and challenges of people with disabilities in the Kingdom. Using ideas from Foucault, particularly the technologies and regimes of power, which work through language and practice, this article examined ways in which people with disabilities are constituted through state knowledge and government policies, and concluded that these constructions form the basis for alienation and marginalisation in society.

We aim to estimate the power distribution in the Council of the European Union-both a priori and a posteriori. With respect to the latter, our analysis suggests that several previously used indices are ill-suited for this application. By introducing minimal modifications, we propose a new index and compare it with previous constructions in a unified framework. Empirically, we find that that all countries gain a priori voting power in the Council as a result of Brexit. We rely on data from the Chapel Hill Expert survey to compute a posteriori power and find that it is more unequally distributed than a priori power. Specifically, a posteriori power is almost exclusively held by relatively few rather populous states (yet not the United Kingdom). As regards Brexit, France appears as the main benefactor in terms of gaining a posteriori power; Poland loses substantive power in several areas but remains one of the most powerful EU member states. ; ISSN:1432-217X ; ISSN:0176-1714

1 Development of the Tractor -- 2 Thermodynamic Principles of Internal-Combustion Engines -- 3 Internal-Combustion Engine Cycles -- 4 Fuels and Combustion -- 5 Engine Design -- 6 Electrical Systems -- 7 Engine Accessories -- 8 Lubrication -- 9 Human Factors in Tractor Design -- 10 Traction -- 11 Mechanics of the Tractor Chassis -- 12 Hydraulic Systems and Controls -- 13 Transmissions and Drive Trains -- 14 Tractor Tests and Performance -- Appendixes -- A Standards for Agricultural Tractors -- B Standard Graphical Symbols -- C Agricultural Tractor Tire Loadings, Torque Factors, and Inflation Pressures—SAE J709d -- D Conversion Factors.

With the purpose of providing assistance to government efforts in justice sector reform and modernization, the World Bank conducted two surveys. The first survey was conducted in 2010 in order to collect baseline information on perceptions of the court and prosecutorial performance and expectations from the reform implemented in January 2010. The second, follow-up, survey was conducted in 2013 in order to identify the impact of the first four years (2010 - 2013) of reforms and the expectations from the new national strategy of reform for the period 2014-2018. The surveys aimed to measure perceptions of judicial performance against five core values (efficiency, quality, fairness, accessibility, and integrity - independence and presence of corruption), and to compare the views of multiple stakeholders (court services users - general public and business sector, court services providers -judges, prosecutors and providers of court administrative services, and lawyers as intermediaries between users and providers of court services). The survey also focused on costs of judicial services, with respect to perceptions of accessibility of court services, and views of cost, with respect to quality of the delivered services, from the point of view of users with experience with court cases. Surveys can map experiences, perceptions, and expectations from the point of view of various stakeholders, thus providing an indication of the judiciary's popular legitimacy that cannot be measured in other ways. The introductory section contains an overview of perceptions of the five dimensions of judiciary performance across survey groups and across time. The second section on quality, besides perceptions of overall quality of judiciary services, encompasses the perceptions of fairness, integrity (presence of corruption and independence) and impartiality, and public trust in judiciary, while the cost issue is presented in the section on accessibility. Third section presents access to judicial services. Perceptions of performance of court administrative services alongside the five dimensions by users and providers of the services are presented in a separate section four. Section five is perceptions of the reform launched in January 2010 and new national judicial reform strategy for the period 2014-2018. The final section deals with the perceived role of media in shaping the public opinion on judiciary system in Serbia.

Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the understanding of the role of abstract forms of power in organizational change by exploring the role of such forms of power in the recent structural transformation of an iconic Australian Intellectual Property law firm. The research literature reflects relatively few studies on the increasing complexity of power dynamics in organizational and institutional arrangements.


Design/methodology/approach
The complexity of the investigated phenomena led to the adoption of three qualitative methods in order to access the specific forms of data that were perceived to be relevant to answering the research question ("How did abstract power dynamics influence the nature and outcomes of the firm's structural transformation?"). Ethnography was used in the attempt to discern, through participation and observation, the assumptions that manifested in action and/or inaction; phenomenology in the exploration through unstructured interviews with 41 staff members and 4 clients of the firm, of their interpretation and "sense-making" of their "lived experience" of "what was going on" in the firm; and narrative enquiry in establishing a narrative of critical events, and their impact on "what was going on" in the firm, including those that had occurred over the years prior to this research initiative.


Findings
The research shows the effects of contradicting forms of abstract power (namely, hegemonic (ideological) power, dominant institutional logic and structural power) as the firm struggled to address challenges to its existence. The impact of these forms of power upon the partners' apprehension and interpretation of the emerging challenges to the firm's business performance remained inconspicuous throughout the period of transformation. However, these contradictory forms of abstract power insidiously created tensions within the organization which were poorly addressed, resulting in organizational dysfunction and destructive sectarian conflict. The results show that the inability of partners to discern the nature of the forms of power which were influencing their responses to the crisis was a consequence of under-developed collectively reflexive capabilities and an absence of collaborative problem-solving practices. This resulted in a negative outcome for the firm.


Research limitations/implications
The research has significant implications for collective endeavor in global business operations that are becoming increasingly complex. In particular, the complexity of power relations, as insidious ideological forces supported by ubiquitous technologies threaten to subsume agentic power in ways that domesticate and neutralize it, requires the development of sophisticated forms of collective ways of "working with power" – capabilities that include the ability to demystify the abstract forms of power that can shape the experience of social realities as "inevitable and natural." Further research into these forms of power, and the surreptitious role they play in organizational arrangements, is an important requirement. With respect to limitations, as the research is located in the interpretivist research paradigm, the issue of interpretation is problematic. A strong effort was made to limit unwitting interpretive bias but the possibility of such bias cannot be ruled out, especially as, in some cases, the data are an interpretation of prior interpretations of events and/or experiences (as, e.g., in the interview data).


Practical implications
Working constructively with various forms of power is becoming a critical capability within organizations. This has implications for the relational and communicative skills that underpin effective collaboration of staff and other stakeholders. Such collaboration needs to include the collective ability to make explicit through critical dialogue the surreptitious influence of abstract forms of power upon the prevailing organizational arrangements and routines. To achieve this, these forms of power have to become demystified through constructive critique of the taken-for-granted aspects of everyday organizational life. This has important implications for leadership development practices and educational programs.


Social implications
Unless leaders develop the ability to make the influences of abstract forms of power more conspicuous, and develop collaborative capabilities to work with insight into their management, they run the risk of agentic power becoming subsumed and neutralized by such forms of power. This has important implications for organizational agency and, especially, for the creative agency of the individuals who work within organizations. On a broader scale, it has implications for institutional arrangements and for the critical apprehension of global ideologies.


Originality/value
Studies of abstract forms of power are relatively rare in the research literature. This is probably a result of the long-standing dominance of positivism, with its realist ontological assumptions and its objectivist epistemological assumptions. In exploring the influence exerted by abstract forms of power on the inability of the partners of a professional services firm to apprehend their situation more accurately, and to interpret their strategic options with greater insight, this research makes an original contribution to the understanding of the influence of abstract power dynamics in organizational change, and in organizational arrangements more generally.