Decentralisation: does the New Zealand local government system measure up?

Decentralisation continues to be well received as a strategy for improving the governance of countries and delivering more responsive and efficient services. Cheerleaders include multilateral agencies like the World Bank and developed countries, like England, which seek to reverse years of centralisation. Evaluating the effectiveness of decentralised models raises the question of what it means to be ‘decentralised’, and how decentralisation itself is measured. This article describes the World Bank’s diagnostic framework for assessing decentralisation and applies the framework to the New Zealand local government system.&nbsp

The open government partnership: what are the challenges and opportunities for New Zealand?

In November 2013 New Zealand signed up to the Open Government Partnership (OGP), which was established in 2011 and comprises 63 nations. The OGP operates as a partnership on two levels: nationally, as a partnership between governments and civil society organisations to effect reforms in various areas; and internationally between nations sharing ideas and good practice and collaborating in areas of transparency, integrity and public safety.&nbsp

Relevant Logics Obeying Component Homogeneity

This paper discusses three relevant logics that obey Component Homogeneity - a principle that Goddard and Routley introduce in their project of a logic of significance. The paper establishes two main results. First, it establishes a general characterization result for two families of logic that obey Component Homogeneity - that is, we provide a set of necessary and sufficient conditions for their consequence relations. From this, we derive characterization results for S*fde, dS*fde, crossS*fde. Second, the paper establishes complete sequent calculi for S*fde, dS*fde, crossS*fde. Among the other accomplishments of the paper, we generalize the semantics from Bochvar, Hallden, Deutsch and Daniels, we provide a general recipe to define containment logics, we explore the single-premise/single-conclusion fragment of S*fde, dS*fde, crossS*fdeand the connections between crossS*fde and the logic Eq of equality by Epstein. Also, we present S*fde as a relevant logic of meaninglessness that follows the main philosophical tenets of Goddard and Routley, and we briefly examine three further systems that are closely related to our main logics. Finally, we discuss Routley's criticism to containment logic in light of our results, and overview some open issues

Non-Analytic Tableaux for Chellas's Conditional Logic CK and Lewis's Logic of Counterfactuals VC

Priest has provided a simple tableau calculus for Chellas's conditional logic Ck. We provide rules which, when added to Priest's system, result in tableau calculi for Chellas's CK and Lewis's VC. Completeness of these tableaux, however, relies on the cut rule

Picking up the pace in public services

Following the reforms of the public management system in the 1980s, legislative change and programmes of work to develop and shape the system have occurred at various times. The work programmes have tended to come and go, with mixed success, each designed around maintaining the strengths that accountability for outputs has brought to public sector agencies while increasing the focus on achieving outcomes

Changes in urban and environmental governance in Canterbury from 2010 to 2015: comparing Environment Canterbury and Christchurch City Council

This article compares the proximate but not parallel trajectories of Canterbury Regional Council’s (ECan) and the Christchurch City Council’s changing authority to manage the urban and natural environment from 2010 to 2015. We ask why the trajectories are so far from parallel, and speculate as to why the central government interventions were so different. The apparent mismatch between the justifications for the interventions and the interventions themselves reveals important implications on the national and local levels. Nationally, the mismatch speaks to the current debate over an overhaul of the Resource Management Act. Locally, it informs current discussions in Wellington, Nelson, Gisborne and elsewhere about amalgamating district and regional councils. • Ann Brower is a Senior Lecturer in Environmental Policy at Lincoln University. She holds a PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, and a master’s from Yale. Ike Kleynbos holds a Bachelor of Environmental Management and Planning degree from Lincoln University and is currently doing postgraduate studies at Lincoln

The policy worker and the professor: understanding how New Zealand policy workers utilise academic research

How do policy workers actually use academic research and advice? While there are several recent studies regarding this question from other Westminster jurisdictions, similar academic studies have been rare in New Zealand. So far, most of the local research in this field has been conducted by the prime minister’s chief science advisor and the Office of the Prime Minister’s Science Advisory Committee, with the particular instrumental purpose of improving the government’s ministries and agencies’ ‘use of evidence in both the formation and evaluation of policy’. However, none of these studies have asked how, and to what extent, policy workers in government are utilising academic research in their everyday work. • Karl Löfgren is Associate Professor in the School of Government, Victoria University of Wellington. Donatella Cavagnoli was a researcher with the School of Government, Victoria University of Wellington

Why departments need to be regulatory stewards

Some of the most important assets that the New Zealand government develops and maintains are not recorded on the Crown\u27s balance street. They are the regulatory arrangements that have been developed, introduced and refined over many years to protect the rights, safety, property and other interest of its citizens, residents and visitors, according to this report. Summary The latest Crown financial statements report that, at 30 June 2014, the New Zealand government held total assets valued at around $256 billion (New Zealand Government, 2014). These included a diverse range of physical, financial and other assets, such as national parks, highways, state houses, electricity generation plant and equipment, Kiwibank mortgages, shares, deposits, and the National Library and Te Papa collections. But some of the most important assets that the New Zealand government develops and maintains are not recorded on the Crown’s balance sheet. They are the regulatory arrangements that have been developed, introduced and refined over many years to, among other things, protect the rights, safety, property and other interests of its citizens, residents and visitors, allocate responsibilities for various risks, and otherwise help them transact or engage with each other on fair and efficient terms

Improving the implementation of regulation: time for a systemic approach

The importance of an ‘efficient and effective regulatory environment’ (Offices of the Ministers of Finance and Regulatory Reform, 2013) has never been more prominent in New Zealand than it is at the present time. The New Zealand Productivity Commission’s Regulatory Institutions and Practices report, which is both a product of and contributor to this enhanced prominence, noted that there is growing interest in regulation in New Zealand stemming from the increased importance of individual freedoms and human rights, the growing awareness of the impacts of both good and bad regulation, the way government now organises itself to provide services and implement policy, and the diversity of society and its range of attitudes to risk and expectations about government’s actions. There are many ways to enter into a discussion about an efficient and effective regulatory environment: for example, through the lens of boosting New Zealand’s productivity growth, international competitiveness and living standards (Minister of Finance and Minister of Regulatory Reform, 2009); in relation to the increasing focus on good public sector management, which includes regulatory system stewardship (Treasury, 2013); or by addressing the importance of avoiding, responding to and learning from regulatory disasters (Black, 2014). Discussions may or may not include philosophical perspectives on the place or volume of regulation. But, whatever the view on more or less regulation, or the entry point to the discussion (broad economic performance, regulatory stewardship or avoiding regulatory failures), we probably all agree that regulation that is in place should provide benefits that would not accrue in its absence, at reasonable cost

Regulatory systems, institutions and practices

Regulation is a fact of life. It affects the food we eat, the safety of our workplace, the goods and services we buy and sell and the quality of our natural environment. It plays an important role in guarding New Zealanders from harm, protecting our rights, and ensuring that markets work fairly and efficiently. However, when regulation is badly designed or implemented it can fail to provide these protections, or place unnecessary burdens on personal freedoms and business efficiency. So is the New Zealand regulatory system as good as it should be, and how could it be improved? • Steven Bailey is a director at the Productivity Commission and led the commission’s inquiry into regulatory institutions and practices. Judy Kavanagh is a principal advisor at the New Zealand Productivity Commission