The Trudeau government and GIC appointments in Canada

PurposeAccording to the traditional view of public administration, a critical component of good policy formulation is the provision of frank and fearless advice to elected decision-makers. This advice can be provided by permanent public officials or by the people selected by the elected governments to fill key and continuing posts. However, there are major questions as to whether new Governor-in-Council (GIC) appointment processes rooted in new public governance (NPG) are yielding the expected results promised, such as less partisanism, as a consideration for appointment.Design/methodology/approachThe paper uses a mixed methods approach to examine the GIC process as it is used in Canada. In using these methods, the authors employed interviews with senior officials, governmental documents review and expert validation interviews to triangulate its main findings.FindingsThe paper uses the case of the revised appointment process for GIC appointments in Canada and suggests that the new arrangements do not deliver on merit-based criteria that ensures independence is protected between political executive and senior bureaucratic officials. Although new processes may be more open and transparent than past processes, the paper suggests that such processes are more susceptible to partisan influence under the guise of being merit-based.Research limitations/implicationsThe research was limited to one country context, Canada. As such, it will be necessary to expand this to other Westminster countries. Testing whether manifestations of new public governance in appointment processes elsewhere will be important to validate whether Canada is unique or not.Practical implicationsThe authors are left to wonder if this innovation of merit-based appointments in the new administrative state is obscuring the lines of accountability and whether it forms the basis for good policy advice despite promises to the contrary.Social implicationsTrust in the government is affected by decisions behind closed doors. They appear partisan, even when they may not be. Process matters if only to highlight increased value placed on meritorious appointments.Originality/valuePrevious studies on GIC appointments have generally been to explore representation as a value. That is, studies have questioned whether diversity is maintained, for example. However, few studies have explored appointment processes using institutional approaches to examine whether reforms to such processes have respected key principles, such as merit and accountability.

The Evolutions, Transformations, and Adaptations in Beirut’s Public Spaces

Beirut, Lebanon, has been a nexus for the east and west, has undergone episodes of conflict including the civil war between 1975 and 1989, and still witnesses instability to the present. This status has affected its everyday life practices, particularly as manifested in its public spaces. Over time, Beirut’s population has reflected the ability to adapt to living with different states of public spaces; these include embracing new public space models, adjusting to living in the war-time period with annihilated public spaces, and establishing a reconnaissance with post-war reintroduced, securitized, or temporary public spaces. Lefebvre’s space production triad serves to distinguish among spaces introduced through planning tools, from spaces appropriated through immaterial space-markers, or spaces established through social practices. This article provides an overview of the evolution of Beirut’s public spaces, starting with the medieval city and through into the 19th century, before examining the impact of instability and the conditions leading to the emergence of social spaces in the post-war period. It particularly highlights public spaces after 2005—when civic activism played an important role in raising awareness on the right to inclusive public space—by referring to literature, conducting interviews with public space protagonists, and addressing a questionnaire survey to inhabitants. The cases of Martyrs Square, Damascus Road, and the Pine Forest are presented, among other spaces in and around Beirut. The article reflects on the ability of some public spaces to serve as tools for social integration in a society that was segregated in the bouts of Beirut’s instability.

From Bureaucratic Discipline to Self-Actualization: Using Marx and Foucault to Critique the Demand for Better Work Rather Than Less Work

This essay brings together Karl Marx’s alienation critique with Michel Foucault’s theoretical work on technologies of power to examine the demand for self-actualizing work. I argue that many of the themes in Marx’s writings appear frequently in the human relations management literature and are later incorporated by New Public Management. However, Foucault’s work is shown to complement and extend Marx’s initial alienation analysis, and then to highlight the reliance of human relations management on disciplinary technologies. Lost in the demand for better work is a more radical vision of harnessing machinery to bring about a post-work society.

Portal for Employees in the Public Sector

The need to reduce public spending has led Portugal to make administrative reforms. To that end, it called on the so-called e-government, using ICT as a mechanism to increase the quality and transparency of public services while lowering costs and operationalizing new public policies. Although administrative decentralisation is enshrined in the Constitution of the Portuguese Republic, only recently has it been prioritised as one of the great objectives of the administrative reforms of the state. To this end, the transfer of the necessary financial and human resources are foreseen. This will imply the implementation of human resources management strategies and mechanisms that avoid surplus or shortage of human resources, both in Central and Local Administration. Therefore, in this chapter, the creation of the “Portal for Employees in the Public Sector” is proposed as a shared management tool.

Understanding the Field of Public Policy in the Context of Public Administration Evolution

Public policy is classified as a major field in public administration. Therefore, to understand the context of public policy as a field, it is essential to explore its root developments in public administration from epistemological and chronological perspectives. This chapter is a review study referring to main scholarly works including books, academic articles, and studies. The chapter first helps researchers and students in comprehending the evolution of public administration in its four main stages including classical public administration, new public administration, new public management, and new public governance. Second, the chapter presents a general overview of the evolution of the public policy field with particular attention paid to the concepts of Harold Lasswell who is seen as the father of public policy. The chapter then discusses different definitions of public policy. Various classifications of public policy are also investigated. The chapter ends with a critical discussion of the stages model (heuristics).

Adolescents, poverty areas, violence, and public health: an intersectional perspective

ABSTRACT Objectives: to discuss the influence of urban poverty on the context of violence among adolescents from an intersectional perspective. Methods: the original research, of the action research type, analyzed data from 13 workshops. The participants were adolescents from both sexes, from 15 to 17 years old, from a public school in a peripheral neighborhood of São Paulo, SP. The methodological proposition of intersectional analysis guided the interpretation of the empirical material. Results: the intersection of class and gender may increase the (re)production of violence in some men. The intersection of race/color, social class, and territory contributes to the construction of narratives that naturalize inequality and, thus, justify discrimination. Final Considerations: there is necessity of new public policies that consider the social contexts and experiences of the subjects that stem from the articulation of social markers.

Alternative Approaches to The Reform of Higher Education: Manageralism VS. New Public Service

The article is devoted to the analysis of alternative approaches applicable to modern reform of higher education. Last three decades, the set of management technologies of the new public management (NPM) has significantly transformed higher education, introducing application some elements of quasi-markets and metric systems of performance indicators. Their large-scale use was reinforced by the ideology of new manageralism, which builds confidence among managers in effectiveness of their application in higher education. However, the experience of their practical implementation has given rise to negative effects and problems associated with emergence of institutional traps. These traps have become serious obstacles to development of modern higher education. The possible alternative when adjusting development in this sphere can be the concept of “the new public service”, which has been implemented in recent years within civil service reform. This new approach is based on cultivating the set of ethical values and principles that promote openness, transparency, democracy and cooperation between bureaucrats and consumers of public services. Due to some specifics of professional activity in the academic environment, its principles and values can be successfully applied in higher education too. The article offers an interpretation of application of this approach in the context of expanding project education and cultivating key values of the academic community in context of management of higher education.

A New Airport in Mexico: Feasibility of Socialist Style Infrastructure in a Private Capital Economy

This paper is based on the positive correlation between projects of infrastructure developed by the government, and the indicators of general well-being of populations in adjoining areas where such constructive changes have been effected. To study the multifactorial effects of the development of a welfare state, we have studied the economic projections associated with the construction of AIFA (Felipe Angeles International Airport), a new airport in Mexico, which was undertaken completely as a government-funded project and developed as a national infrastructure project by the military establishment. Information on projected investments and downstream investments and local employment from the Secretary of Agrarian Development and Tourism (SEDATU) and the Secretary of Public Finances (Forbes) for the new airport AIFA are compared and analyzed with similar projects in other privately developed infrastructure projects and their calculated impact in order to suggest how well-being (achieved through such indices as employment and the generation of micro-enterprises) would pan out for the economy in the State of Mexico, where the new public-funded projects are envisioned. Projections based on available information suggest that the construction of a public infrastructure module can be achieved under economic constraints, focusing on lower spending from the public budget; however, there is a lack of information and transparent policy decisions to indicate growth for entrepreneurs in the local economy, and neither any projected information on opportunities of further private or public investments associated with the airport. A socialist-style public investment project, engineered by the state military, may need more transparency and engagement on behalf of entrepreneurs.