News from Governance June 9, 2014
An International Journal of Policy, Administration, and Institutions

Co-Editors  Alasdair S. Roberts and Robert H. Cox  Book Review Editor  Clay Wescott 
What determines compliance with government policies?
 
Many government policies work only if citizens or corporations comply with their requirements.  But what determines whether citizens or corporations will comply?  In the current issue of Governance, R. Kent Weaver proposes a better framework for understanding compliance problems, and highlights the difficulties that arise when there is substantial variety within target populations.  Weaver applies the framework to Swedish and American case studies that highlight "how variations in barriers and target characteristics affect government responses to perceived policy failures."   Read the article.
How a new global gender-balance norm affects cabinet composition
 
The representation of women in cabinets and legislatures has increased sharply since the 1990s, although it still falls far short of parity with men.  What explains the recent shift?  In the current issue of Governance, Suraj Jacob, John Scherpereel and Melinda Adams argued that international norms have played an important role.  Their study relies on an original global database of cabinet ministers from 1979 to 2009.  "A gender-balanced decision-making norm has become embedded in the world polity," they argue.  But the norm still has limits: it is "more likely to generate gains in low-prestige cabinet positions than in high-prestige positions."  Read the article.
SOG sessions at IPSA's Montr�al conference
 
The next IPSA World Congress of Political Science will be held in Montr�al, Canada on July 19-24, 2014.  The IPSA Research Committee on the Structure and Organization of Government, the academic sponsor of Governance, has organized ten panel discussions at the Congress.  See the complete list of IPSA SOG sessions.
Call for papers: SOG in Bergen, February 2015
 
The IPSA Research Committee on the Structure and Organization of Government (SOG) invites paper proposals for a conference to be held at the University of Bergen, Norway, on February 19-20, 2015.  The conference theme is Accountability and Welfare State Reforms.  The deadline for submission of abstracts is September 15, 2014.  Obtain more details about the call for papers here.
Book reviews: Ghana's oil, and new perspectives on public service

 

In the current issue of Governance, Franklin Obeng-Odoom reviews Governance of the Petroleum Sector in an Emerging Developing Economy, edited by Kwaku Appiah-Adu.  The book "provides a one-stop shop account of some of the key issues relating to the governance of Ghana's young oil industry."  Read the review.

And Sarah Holsen reviews New Perspectives on Public Services: Places and Technology by Christopher Pollitt.  "Pollitt's goal," says Holsen, "is to explore how, in the face of technological change, the provision of public services shapes the places in which they are located, how the characteristics of places influences how services are provided, and how the location of government and its services impact the landscape of interaction between government and citizen." Read the review.
SOG project announces research positions

 

The Structure and Organization of Government Project (SOG-PRO) is a collaborative research programme that is recently jointly funded by the national scientific research foundations of the Netherlands (NWO), France (ANR), Germany (DFG), and the United Kingdom (ESRC). SOG-PRO aspires to develop and search for innovative ways to describe and understand the organizational dynamics at the level of central government. The project starts on 1 September 2014 and will run for three years. To this end the research teams are looking for highly qualified and motivated researchers at the postdoc and PhD levels.  Learn more.
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