Joined-Up Government in the West beyond Britain: A Provisional Assessment

Author(s):  
Perri Six

In many western countries, politicians and senior civil servants are working on the improvement of the coordination and integration of the activities of many government departments and agencies. This chapter offers some hypotheses that determine the differences in the style of governments in some countries in terms of their coordination and integration or ‘joining-up’ styles. In this chapter, particular attention is directed on the difficult relationship relating to cross-national trends in horizontal coordination and integration within the client level and privacy concerns. The chapter also offers a short discussion on the ways in which horizontal relationships might be arranged between regulators with different responsibilities within the same jurisdiction for different aspects of work in the same organizations. Before offering a better explanation of the differences in the styles of coordination and integration between countries, the chapter considers some explanations derived from literatures on the subject of ‘joined-up’ government that accept or reject rationales that support or fail to explain the geographical variance of joining-up. After taking a look at some prevailing explanations on the varying styles of coordination and integration, the chapter presents the neo-Durkheimian institutionalist explanation which is non-circular and which provides a more detailed account of the geographical and historical differences of ‘joined-up’ government. The chapter concludes with some provisional conclusions on the politics of administrative coordination and the politics of ‘joined-up’ government.

Religions ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 12 (7) ◽  
pp. 480
Author(s):  
Frank G. Bosman

The story collection known in the West as The Arabian Nights or One Thousand and One Nights, is famous, among other things, for its erotic playfulness. This eroticism was (and is) one of the key reasons for its continuous popularity after Antoine Galland’s French translation in 1704. The Arabian Nights includes, besides traditional, heterosexual acts, play, and desires, examples of homoerotic playfulness—even though we must tread lightly when using such Western concepts with an oriental text body such as this one. The homoerotic playfulness of The Arabian Nights is the subject of this article. By making use of a text-immanent analysis of two of the Nights’ stories—of Qamar and Budûr and of Alî Shâr and Zumurrud—the author of this article focuses on the reversal of common gender roles, acts of cross-dressing, and, of course, homoerotic play. He will argue that these stories provide a narrative safe environment in which the reader is encouraged to “experiment” with non-normative sexual and gender orientations, leaving the dominant status quo effectively and ultimately unchallenged, thus preventing the (self-proclaimed) defenders of that status quo from feeling threatened enough to actively counter-act the experiment.


2017 ◽  
Vol 17 (2) ◽  
pp. 78-91 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lesley Dingle

AbstractIn this paper Lesley Dingle provides a detailed account of the historical development of the public international law collections at the Squire Law Library in Cambridge. She explains the close involvement of the academic lawyers and the librarians, past and present, in developing an important collection which reflects the significance of the subject at Cambridge's Faculty of Law. Finally, she brings things up-to-date by detailing the extent of the electronic provision which benefits the modern scholar in this discipline.


Author(s):  
Marie V. Lebour
Keyword(s):  
The West ◽  
Open Sea ◽  

Several Gobius species and also Aphya and Crystallogobius are common near Plymouth, from up the estuaries in the neighbourhood of Saltash to the west and Chelson Meadow to the east, as far as the open sea, well beyond Rame Head and the Eddystone Lighthouse. It has, however, always been difficult to determine the young of the various species as they usually differ very little from one another and it is hoped that the following notes may be a help in the elucidation of the subject.


2012 ◽  
Vol 11 (4) ◽  
pp. 526-557 ◽  
Author(s):  
David Pettinicchio

Abstract Over the last ten years, several western countries have recognized gay marriage either by providing gay couples the same rights as heterosexual couples, or by allowing civil unions. Other western countries have not. What accounts for this variation? This paper reviews and analyzes the key demographic, institutional and cultural arguments found in the literature on the legalization of gay marriage – especially as these pertain to cross-national comparison – and raises questions about assumptions regarding the extent to which there is variation on these variables across western countries. I argue that institutional and cultural explanations are only meaningful in explaining legalization when their combinations are specified in order to shed light on favorable (or unfavorable) circumstances for policy outcomes.


Organization ◽  
2017 ◽  
Vol 24 (3) ◽  
pp. 330-354 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patrizia Zanoni ◽  
Annelies Thoelen ◽  
Sierk Ybema

Much literature on the cultural industries celebrates ethnicity as a source of creativity. Despite its positive connotation, this discourse reduces ethnic minority creatives to manifestations of a collective ethnic identity automatically leading to creativity, creating a paradox of creativity without a creative subject. Approaching creatives with an ethnic minority background as agents, this article investigates how they self-reflectively and purposely discursively construct ethnicity as a source of creativity in their identity work. Empirically, we analyze interviews with well-established creatives with an ethnic minority background active in Belgium. Most respondents construct their ethnic background as ‘hybrid’, ‘exotic’, or ‘liminal’ to craft an identity as creatives and claim creativity for their work. Only few refuse to discursively deploy ethnicity as a source of creativity, crafting more individualized identities as creatives. Our study contributes to the literature on power and ethnicity in the creative industries by documenting ethnic minority creatives’ discursive micro-struggle over what is creative work and who qualifies as a creative. Specifically, we show their counterpolitics of representation of ethnicity in the creative industries through the re-signification of the relation between the ‘west’ and the ‘other’ in less disadvantageous terms. Despite such re-signification, the continued relevance of the discourse of ethnicity as a key marker of difference suggests that ethnicity remains a principle of unequal organization of the creative industries.


2020 ◽  
Vol 0 (21) ◽  
pp. 0-0
Author(s):  
Merve KURT KIRAL ◽  
Emel AKIN

Spaces are conditioned by social conditions; on the other hand, social structure is affected by spaces. Arcades, the subject of this article, first appeared in Europe in the 18th century as a result of an increase in trading activities. The arcades in Ankara, which were started to be built in the 1950s together with increasing trading activities, contributed to the urban economy with intense activities of shopping, re-determined social and urban relations as essential places of everyday life and became distinctive urban buildings with their original building typologies and the function of maintaining public continuity in the area of private ownership. Aim: This study aims to study the process in which passages emerged and to analyze their spatial features and, in particular, to examine the spatial formation of the distinctive passages in Ankara on the basis of their causation. Method: In the article, spatial features of the passages in the West were mentioned, and the conditions of the period in which the passages in Ankara were built were briefly explained. Spatial analysis of the passages found in the research area were conducted, and the formation of these passages were analyzed together with their reasons. Results: Of the 31 arcades in Ankara, 27 were built between 1950 and 1980 on and around the Atatürk Boulevard in Yenişehir/Kizilay. As of the mid-1950s, new planning decisions which were made one after the other in the built-up area re-shaped the Boulevard and its surrounding as the existing buildings were demolished, allowing to construct new buildings with arcades or stores in their entrances. Their interior designs and connections to the streets are different from the arcades in the West. Conclusion: The present subdivision system and new planning decisions applied in property order shaped the passages which were peculiar to Ankara.


Author(s):  
M. Klupt

Will immigrant minorities change the Western world? Two decades ago this question seemed irrelevant as it was expected that the West will change the world in its image. Today, the same question is perceived as rhetorical. The answer is obvious, and the dispute is merely over directions, extent and possible consequences of future changes. The center of this dispute is the multiculturalism – the concept, policy and praxis praising diversity of cultures and denying any of them a vested right to dominate not only in the world at large, but even in a particular country. The assessment of its perspectives presupposes a variety of research approaches in view of its complexity. In the present article only one of them is be used for the analysis focused on the employment of immigrant minorities from the world's South. The viability of such approach is based on two circumstances. Firstly, the employment indexes considered in ethnical context belong to the most important characteristics of ethno-social structure of a society. Secondly, the availability of broad statistical information about employment allows for resting upon empirical data, possibly avoiding a needless bias toward purely theoretical constructions.


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