Suchergebnisse

The course of a life can be altered by the smallest decisions; the most innocuous events can turn out to have the greatest of consequences. On a Sunday afternoon in 2004, local politician Peter Carroll invited four men into his Folkestone home and promised to help them fight for the right to settle in the country they had served. Five years later, the Gurkhas of Nepal welcomed Peter as a national hero. A losing election battle against the Conservatives in his constituency and a local protest to save village post offices were the only campaigning experience that Peter could bring to the table

In weighing Britain's decision to seek membership of the European Economic Community Australian scholars have focussed attention on its adverse impact on Anglo‐Australian and EU‐Australian relations, and the emphasis that Australia thereafter placed upon economic relations with Asia. This article identifies a consequence of Britain's decision which has largely escaped attention: the part it played in stimulating Australia's successful 1969 application for membership of the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development. Although Australia's interest in the increased access to West European decision‐makers that the OECD would provide dates to the latter 1940s and 1950s, the British application for membership of the EEC added particular weight to those arguing that Australia should seek OECD membership. It led to an extension of Australian activities in Western Europe which was not extinguished by the growing emphasis on relations with the Asian region.

Regulatory impact assessment systems bring evidence to bear on how to improve the quality of new or modified regulations. In the last 30 years they have become increasingly common in OECD countries. Regulatory proposals put forward by government agencies are now required to have a firm evidence base that clearly supports the new or modified regulation. However, in all jurisdictions actual practice has shown that the performance of the impact assessment systems has been very limited, with proposed regulation continuing to offer little in the way of a rigorous and convincing evidence base. This paper explores the reasons for the poor performance of evidence-based approaches. Reasons include the varying levels of ministerial and head of department/agency commitment, poor integration of impact assessment systems with existing policy development processes, variable capacity for rigorous, evidence-based policy in departments, and a lack of data on which evidence-based policy can be developed.

The aim of this paper is to examine a case study of policy learning and policy transfer involving the New South Wales government in regard to threatened species conservation. The case study is unusual in that it demonstrates, at the sub-national level, a complex web of policy learning and transfer relationships involving international, national and sub-national sources, and, hence, the substantial role that learning and transfer have in policy development processes for state governments in Australia. In general, the type of learning and transfer that took place was partial, with specific ideas, principles, concepts and processes being derived from a number of differing sources, but often modified, in a process of policy reinvention, rather than simply copied.

The broad aim of this paper is to examine and comment on the development of public private partnerships (ppp) in an international context, concluding with suggestions for further research. The first section offers some working definitions. Section two reflects my attempt to provide a first, broad answer to my initial research question, what is the prevalence of such partnerships, taking a historical perspective. Section three focuses on the questions of what are the expectations of government and business in regard to ppp and what is their prevalence in more recent times. The final section highlights some of the findings of this initial research survey and suggests types of research questions that could be addressed.