Promiscuously Partisan? Public Service Impartiality and Responsiveness in Westminster Systems

Public servants in Westminster countries are being drawn into the limelight bydemands from their political masters that they publicly defend policies. Critics suggestthese conditions undermine the capacity and willingness of senior public servants tomanage the enduring Westminster tension between serving elected governments andremaining nonpartisan. Interviews with senior officials from Australia, Canada, andthe United Kingdom challenge this pessimistic view, showing that officials consistentlystress the importance of not “crossing the line” when dealing with their elected masters.Two exploratory case studies are presented—one of an Australian ministerialdepartment (Treasury) and another of a Canadian quasi-autonomous agency (StatisticsCanada)—in which public servants faced pressure to defend controversial governmentpolicies. These cases show how contemporary public servants actively interpret,establish, and defend the line between appropriate responsiveness and inappropriatepartisanship in Westminster systems

Instances and connectors : issues for a second generation process language

This work is supported by UK EPSRC grants GR/L34433 and GR/L32699Over the past decade a variety of process languages have been defined, used and evaluated. It is now possible to consider second generation languages based on this experience. Rather than develop a second generation wish list this position paper explores two issues: instances and connectors. Instances relate to the relationship between a process model as a description and the, possibly multiple, enacting instances which are created from it. Connectors refers to the issue of concurrency control and achieving a higher level of abstraction in how parts of a model interact. We believe that these issues are key to developing systems which can effectively support business processes, and that they have not received sufficient attention within the process modelling community. Through exploring these issues we also illustrate our approach to designing a second generation process language.Postprin

Re-visiting Meltsner: Policy Advice Systems and the Multi-Dimensional Nature of Professional Policy Analysis

10.2139/ssrn.15462511-2

Electoral stability and electoral change: the case of the catholic party in the Netherlands

Catholics in the Netherlands are unique. For a period of 45 years 85 percent or more of Dutch Catholics continuously voted for a single party—the Catholic party. Then in 1967 support began to decline so that by 1972 only 38 percent of Dutch Catholics were still voting for this party. No other West European country offers a similar example of long term consistency and sudden change on the part of a bloc of voters. The aim of the study is to account for this unusual pattern of electoral stability and decline. Two competing explanatory frameworks are evaluated, the party identification and subcultural influence models. The former is rejected. The evidence suggests that party identification was not important in linking Catholics with the Catholic party. It was found that the loyalties of Catholics lay primarily with the Church and the Catholic subculture—not with the party. Support for the party was a by-product of subcultural cohesion and the drop in support after 1963 was a result of subcultural fragmentation. The importance of subcultures in influencing voting behaviour has long been recognized; however, the internal organization and dynamics of the subcultures themselves have received much less attention. In part this study attempts to redress the balance by examining the factors responsible for both the cohesion and the disintegration of the Dutch Catholic subculture. For data the study relies on material from Catholic party archives, newspapers, interviews and the secondary analysis of aggregate and survey data. The first section of the study outlines the role of the Dutch Church in creating a miniature society within a larger society. Bishops and clergy were affected by an ideology which stressed the importance of insulating Catholics from non-Catholic influences. This insulation was achieved largely through the use of organization and the rigorous application of sanctions. Rank-and-file Catholics obediently joined organizations like Catholic trade unions and the Catholic broadcasting organization, subscribed to Catholic newspapers and at election time voted for the Catholic party. At the same time the Church and Catholic institutions provided their clientele with spiritual, social and economic rewards which were equal to, and often greater than, those provided by competing blocs. The second section is concerned with the changes within the Dutch Church which occurred during the 1960s. The bishops radically altered the boundaries of the subculture, suggesting that Catholics could now decide for themselves questions of religious belief and politics. Many Catholics decided to no longer vote for the Catholic party. The Catholic party in turn, racked by internal conflict and no longer enjoying the blessing of the Church, was incapable of finding an alternative basis of support. In 1976 the party merged with the two major Protestant parties to form a single Christian Democratic party. The theoretical contributions of the study are twofold. One theme in the literature on electoral behaviour argues that party-system stability is a function of the degree to which the sense of identification with the parties is rooted in mass public consciousness. The case of Dutch Catholicism demonstrates that a cohesive subcultural bloc can provide a stable and robust basis of support for a political party, making high levels of party identification, unnecessary. Secondly, the study suggests that in party systems of the kind found in the Netherlands, subcultures can vary greatly in their cohesion. It points to the role of leadership, ideology and organization in sustaining or altering the consistency of blocs over time and by implication the success and stability of political parties.Arts, Faculty ofPolitical Science, Department ofGraduat

The determinants of working-class conservatism : a cross-national comparison

The study focusses on the phenomenon of 'working-class conservatism', support for right-wing or centre parties on the part of certain segments of the working-class. This mode of voting behaviour is analysed in three West European countries; Great Britain, West Germany and Italy. In the introduction a number of explanations are examined which could conceivably account for the phenomenon. It is suggested that explanations centred around the notion of 'embourgeoisement' of the working-class (the process whereby 'affluent' workers come to identify with the middle-class thus voting 'conservative') contain certain weaknesses. It is argued that immediate subcultural influences such as the family, the church and the work-place are still most important in explaining the working-class vote for 'conservative' parties. An explanatory model is developed which emphasizes the influence of a worker's social environment as the chief determinant of his voting behaviour. Hypotheses derived from this model, as well as alternative hypotheses related to the 'embourgeoisement' argument are tested through secondary analysis of survey data collected in the late 1950's and early 1960's. The results of the study suggest that in all three countries 'working-class conservatism' can be explained largely in terms of the subcultural influences outlined in the model. Level of income attained by workers may have some independent effect in West Germany and Great Britain. In these two countries conservative parties are somewhat more successful in retaining the loyalties of conservative workers in the low and high income categories compared to those in the medium categories. However this does not mean a confirmation of the 'embourgeoisement1 argument. Most 'affluent conservative workers', it is argued, arrived at their conservative voting identity via early parental socialization. There are few defectors from left-wing parties to conservative parties among 'left' workers who attain a high level of income.Arts, Faculty ofPolitical Science, Department ofGraduat