Suchergebnisse

This article examines how the Commonwealth Parliament of Australia seeks to hold responsible ministers directly and senior public servants indirectly accountable for the performance of departments and programs on the basis of published performance data and inquiries conducted by parliamentary committees. From the perspective of an outsider, the scrutiny process in the Australian parliament, although not without its problems, is more systematic and substantive than is the case in other parliamentary systems such as Canada. Creating a more meaningful dialogue in the Australian parliament on performance issues will depend more on changes to the intersecting cultures of the legislature, government and the public service than on organisational and procedural reforms to any of those institutions.

This article uses the concepts of leadership, influence, political friendship and trust to examine the role and impacts of successive governments of Manitoba within Canada's federal system. The place of regions – the West and the Atlantic provinces – is the focus of many studies. However, with the exception of Quebec and, to a lesser extent Ontario, there are not many case studies of how individual provinces approach and carry out their activities in federal-provincial and interprovincial forums across a variety of policy fields. In presenting a case study of the recent role of the province of Manitoba within various intergovernmental forums, this article hopes to encourage the development of a more province-specific approach to understanding the dynamics of intergovernmental relations based on the concepts of leadership, influences, political friendship and trust.

Continuity and Change in Canadian Politics: Essays in Honour of
David E. Smith, Hans J. Michelmann and Cristine de Clercy, eds.,
Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 2006, pp. 273.Festschrifts pose tricky problems for editors, publishers and
reviewers. Editors have to confront the sensitive issue of whom to ask to
contribute, how to nudge tardy contributors along and whether the honoree
will be pleased with the result. Such collections are seldom thematically
coherent enough to guarantee large sales, which is an issue for publishers
facing bottom-line calculations. Reviewers have to critically appraise
essays on which they are often not experts and they have to remember the
occasion for putting those essays between covers. Despite these problems
the genre persists, partly on the basis of tradition but also out of the
genuine desire to honour colleagues who have been outstanding scholars and
"citizens" in their professional fields.