Contemporary Reform Research Articles

The Evolution of Corporate Law in Post-Colonial India: From Transplant to Autochthony

The essential thesis of this paper is that while Indian corporate law began as a legal transplant from England, it has been progressively decoupled from its source with subsequent amendments and reforms being focused either on finding solutions to local problems or borrowing from other jurisdictions. To that extent, decolonization has had a significant effect of radically altering the course of Indian corporate law. Current Indian corporate law not only represents a significant departure from its colonial origins, but the divergence between Indian law and English law as they have developed since independence has been increasing. While the Indian lawmaking process indulged in close cross-referencing of English legal provisions during the colonial period and immediately thereafter, the more contemporary legislative reforms pay scant regard to corporate law in the origin country that initially shaped Indian corporate law. This offers valuable lessons. First, even though India is considered to be part of the “common law” family, corporate law has evolved somewhat differently from the origin country, England. In that sense, it casts significant doubt on the assumption that all countries within a legal family bear similarities. On the contrary, each host country may follow a trajectory that is different from that followed by the origin country of corporate law. Second, it supports the proposition that legal transplants can be challenging unless the local conditions in the host country are similar to that in the origin country. Variations in economic, social, political and cultural factors may bring about dissonance in the operation of a transplanted legal system. Third, a comparison of the historical colonial experience in the functioning of the transplanted legal system and the more contemporary experience in the post-colonial period suggests fragility in the foundations of the transplant.

Ecological modernisation, industry policy and the Australian automotive industry, 2007–13

Ecological modernisation (EM), in theory and practice, has increasingly become central to contemporary state environmental reform agendas. EM's allure lies in its central tenet that the contemporary institutions of capitalism can be ecologically adapted to achieve ‘win–win’ economic and environmental outcomes. How government policy can best accomplish this aim is contested, however, with weak and strong EM approaches advocating different roles for the state in facilitating ecological restructuring. The latter approaches argue that for EM processes to be successful, state intervention via ecological industrial policy is required. This article makes a unique contribution to the industry policy and EM debate by assessing the manner in which EM was conceptualised and implemented within the Australian government's automotive industry policy between 2007 and 2013. This analysis raises issues about the institutional capacity of states to pursue either weak or strong forms of EM.生态现代化在理论上和实践上日益成为当代国家环境改革的中心议题。环境现代化所以诱人在于其核心原则：当代资本主义体制生态上可以取得经济、环境的双赢结果。不过政府政策如何实现这一目标确是挑战，生态现代化有强、弱二途，政府在促进生态重构时扮演不同的角色。按强势思路，要想生态现代化成功，需要国家通过生态产业政策进行干预。本文对2007至2013年澳大利亚政府的汽车产业政策形成和实施的方式做了评估，希望以此对产业政策以及生态现代化的辩论有所助益。本文还提出了国家实施强、弱生态现代化的体制能力的问题。

‘You need to bond with the ones you train’: mixing epistemic cultures in medical residency training

This paper addresses contemporary reform in postgraduate medical education that aims to standardise training. The reforms are guided by public policy interventions to increase quality of care, objectify performance, and to prepare residents for changing health care needs. This paper draws on an ethnographic study in the Netherlands, studying how new training standards have been incorporated in everyday gynaecology and surgery residency training. Perceiving educational science as a new epistemic culture alongside the traditional professional authority-based epistemic culture, the paper examines how both epistemic cultures have interweaved, fabricating a new training culture that assembles both traditional and ‘new’ elements.

On the concept of the academic community in the conditions. Of contemporary transformations of the institution of the university

The concept of “academic culture” represents an unfairly neglected research topic in anthropology and other social sciences. Even though it was given some theoretical attention in sociology during the 20th century, the concept of academic culture remains something which is, in its general meaning considered self-explanatory. Usually viewed as a static and highly formalized agglomeration of ideas and behaviors, academic culture is rarely directly considered as a dynamic process which is susceptible to influences from the “outside world”. The paper considers the idea of “academic culture” as a changeable and incoherent category, and the processes of identification of the members of the “academic community” with a supposed “culture” as fluid and multidimensional. The emphasis in the paper is put on the kinds of influence which contemporary reforms of the university and the new modes of governance which are developing have on the functioning of the university. These kinds of changes directly refer to the changes in the external and internal relationship towards academic work as well as the “academic community”, and some of the changes which were spotted in different academic contexts are considered relevant for the wider understanding of identity changes which members of academic communities go through today.

Reinforcing Success

Since 1966 when we began our careers in special education, we and others in our cohort have seen substantial changes in our discipline. In our personal experience, we had the opportunity to work together in situations that led us to focus on practices and procedures that produced better outcomes for our students, and better outcomes for students became our primary metric for assessing educational recommendations. Regardless of the rationale, theory, or appealing argument for them, we wanted to know whether a proposed procedure helps students with disabilities succeed. Sometimes those procedures need to be employed in special places. We explain how we came to this perspective, why we hope that perspective does not get lost amid contemporary reform efforts, and what we hope it will mean for the future.

How the states shaped the nation: American electoral institutions and voter turnout, 1920-2000

The United States routinely has one of the lowest voter turnout rates of any developed democracy in the world. That rate is also among the most internally diverse, since the federal structure allows state-level variations in voting institutions that have had-and continue to have-sizable local effects. But are expansive institutional efforts like mailin registration, longer poll hours, and no-excuse absentee voting uniformly effective in improving voter turnout across states? With How the States Shaped the Nation, Melanie Jean Springer places contemporary reforms in historical context and explores how state electoral institutions have shaped voting behavior throughout the twentieth century. Although reformers often assume that more convenient voting procedures will produce equivalent effects wherever they are implemented, Springer reveals that this is not the case. In fact, convenience-voting methods have had almost no effect in the southern states where turnout rates are lowest. In contrast, the adverse effects associated with restrictive institutions like poll taxes and literacy tests have been persistent and dramatic. Ultimately, no single institutional fix will uniformly resolve problems of low or unequal participation. If we want to reliably increase national voter turnout rates, we must explore how states' voting histories differ.

A Diagnostic Approach to Performance Management: The Case of the Performance Management and Delivery Unit of Malaysia

Previous performance management reforms in Malaysia reflected contemporary administrative reforms in the public services of developed countries. They applied across the public service with the view to modernizing public administration and improving public service delivery. The latest performance management reform in Malaysia, under the umbrella of the government transformation program (GTP), takes on a diagnostic or problem-solving approach to service delivery reform. This article uses a case study methodology to assess the implementation of the performance management system under the GTP.

New directions in education? A critique of contemporary policy reforms

This paper draws on facets of Foucault's theoretical resources to critique current education policy reform from within the Australian State of Victoria, namely the Department of Education and Early Childhood Development's (DEECD) discussion paper New directions for school leadership and the teaching profession. Implicit in the reform effort is decentralization, including penalties for “underperforming” classroom teachers and “ineffective” teacher education courses. Principals will hold a pre-eminent rank in the reforms proposed as they are charged with their oversight and implementation, including intervening in the education and preparation of pre-service teachers.

On the charter question: black Marxism and black nationalism

This article brings two black intellectual traditions to bear on the question of charter schools: black Marxism and black nationalism. The authors examine the theoretical and rhetorical devices used to talk about charters schools by focusing on how notions of ‘black liberation’ are deployed by the charter movement, and to what end. The authors first use a black Marxism lens to illustrate the character of the racial and economic relationships facilitated by charter schools. Next, the authors use historical methods to contextualize the liberation discourse of school choice proponents within a black nationalist history of school reform. The authors conclude that ‘choice’ rhetoric makes claim to the black freedom struggle without addressing its most enduring commitments to social justice and self-determination, ultimately perpetuating dependency by oppressed people upon their oppressors. The study identifies the limitations of contemporary critical theory to excavate several dimensions of racism in educational policy and highlight the need for scholars to draw on black intellectual traditions to evaluate the theoretical and historical significance of contemporary educational reform.

On the Problem of Russian Administrative Reform Implementation

The paper deals with some aspects of a contemporary russian administrative law reform. Special attention is paid to the legal questions of E-Governance and administrative procedure.

“There Was No One Coming With Enough Power to Save Us”: Waiting for “Superman” and the Rhetoric of the New Education Documentary

Abstract The critically acclaimed 2010 documentary film Waiting for “Superman” depicts American public education as a fundamentally flawed system and argues that privately managed charter schools are the best solution to our country’s education crisis. This essay argues that Waiting for “Superman” is significant because of how successfully its argument for charter schools appealed to a broad and politically diverse audience. After tracing the rhetoric of contemporary pro-privatization education reform from the Reagan administration’s 1983 A Nation at Risk report to current pro-charter-school reform efforts, this article aims to demonstrate how the film’s populist overtones, packaged in a traditionally liberal medium, work to strategically conceal the filmmaker’s neoliberal agenda.

Quitrent Tenure and the Village System in the Former Ciskei Region of the Eastern Cape: Implications for Contemporary Land Reform of a Century of Social Change

Both quitrent tenure and the village model of settlement in the former Ciskei region of the Eastern Cape have been through a sequence of changes since their introduction and gradual entrenchment following the conquest of local African chiefdoms during the nineteenth century. Initially planned around mission stations west of the Kei River, in what became the Ciskei, quitrent was extended to some districts in the Transkei as well. Under the Glen Grey Act (1894), nuclear families were provided with indivisible individual plots, heritable only by the oldest male son. Over time, complex local politics and social dynamics evolved around this landholding system. This article examines developments over the years, especially following the 1936 Native Land and Trust Act, which brought the reserve areas of the Cape Province in line with those in other provinces. By the mid twentieth century most quitrent villages of the Ciskei were re-planned under countrywide ‘betterment’ planning, mainly because they were deemed to be heavily congested, ecologically vulnerable and difficult to administer. Their rehabilitation and re-planning created new residential plots, enabling the National Party government to foster a supposedly more egalitarian system by granting rights to hitherto landless families. The processes paralleled intense villagisation and the inception of ‘tribal authorities’ in the Ciskei, as it was brought under the homeland system in the apartheid years. How do we understand these wide-ranging historical processes that have shaped relationships to land in these villages? How have potential solutions to unequal land rights been articulated and negotiated at local level? What challenges have confronted post-1994 land reform policy in resolving uneven access to land within these settlements? These are the questions that this article explores.

Liberal Learning, Professional Training, and Disciplinarity in the Age of Educational “Reform”: Remodeling General Education

Reform efforts undertaken in the name of the college- and career-readiness agenda reflect a different understanding of a balance between liberal learning, professional training, and disciplinarity that has long existed in general education programs. This article examines the different interpretations of this balance in general education and contemporary reform efforts, considering the implications of these reforms by examining their possible effects on writing education. It concludes by positing that “remodeling” (not restructuring) general education through a framework that draws on the idea of “communities of practice” (Etienne Wenger, Communities of Practice, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1998) might represent a strategy for rethinking the balance between liberal learning, professional training, and disciplinarity.

By right of service: the military as a pathway to earned citizenship

In this article, I use the civic republican tradition as a theoretical lens to examine how Mexican-Americans in a transnational community have drawn on their wartime service to demand equal treatment as citizens and legal residence as immigrants. I interpret this account through a frame of “Tejano republicanism” originating in the historical experience of civil rights groups led by South Texas veterans. Originating as Texas-based US citizen-only groups, the League of United Latin American Citizens and the American G.I. Forum's struggle for equal rights evolved to include a broader nationwide pan-Latino constituency including unauthorized immigrants by the 1970s. Today, both groups support military service as a pathway to citizenship for all unauthorized immigrants in the spirit of their founding generation's struggle for civil rights. But unauthorized immigrants who want to follow this pathway to citizenship can no longer do so, as they are barred from enlisting. To respond to this new challenge, I apply my historical and normative account of earned citizenship to analyze and critique current US policies governing immigrant enlistment and the Development, Relief, and Education for Alien Minors (DREAM) Act's military service provision. As a whole, this article serves as a work of applied political theory with implications for the contemporary US immigration reform debate.

“Where Do You Draw the Line?”

This study explores the importance of food and the negotiation of kosher laws in the context of strategies to maintain an individual and collective Jewish identity among a British Reform Jewish community in a non-metropolitan area. Based on interviews with active members of the local synagogue, it explores the challenges to maintaining Jewish life in a small, disparate community remote from any major Jewish settlement. In the interview data, food emerges as a major point of reference for defining identity and for positioning members of the community in relation to religious traditions. Food observance further serves as a means of defining boundaries within as well as outside the community. This discussion raises several important issues: the place of religious observance in modern societies, the question of membership and boundaries of communities, the diversity of contemporary Jewish Reform observance and, finally, the specific role of food and foodways in negotiating these challenges.

Establishing Effective Performance Appraisal Practices in the Ghana Civil Service

Performance appraisal system is one of the most popular tools used in contemporary reform programmes by governments to enhance efficient and effective performance in the public sector.However, appraising employee performance is considered a controversial management practice anywhere it is being practiced because the successful implementation of effective performance appraisal system faces numerous challenges and obstacles. It is however inspiring to note that, the human resource system can become more effective by having a valid and accurate appraisal system used for rating performances of employees.In spite of the numerous efforts to improve the performance management system, it is evident that, the system lacks impetus to improve the performance of the Ghana Civil Service. Considering the crucial role Performance Appraisal play in employee performance strategy, this study sought to discover the extent to which Civil Servants consider the existing performance appraisal system as effective and efficient. The study was also to discover the various challenges confronting the effective implementation and utilization of performance appraisal in the Civil Service in order to provide recommendations for the better.The study adopted a case study design from the Office of the Head of the Civil Service (OHCS) and the Ministry of Education (MOE). It however, solicited the views of other Civil Servants from various Ministries, Departments, and Agencies (MDAs) through the Civil service Training Centre (CSTC). The study also used a descriptive survey because it involved collection of data, which informed the answers to the problem stated.The population for the study was the staff of the above-mentioned institutions that have gone through the appraisal exercise for at least once. The sample size for the study was 200 employees (60 from the OHCS, 80 from the MOE, and 60 from other MDAs through the CSTC ). Out of the 200 questionnaires that were distributed, 173 responded. The study relied on both primary and secondary sources of data and the researcher collected the data for the study, through the administering of questionnaires to the respondents in both senior and junior staff categories. Interpretation of quantitative data was done mostly by the use of tables/ figures and the data gathered from the in-depth interviews were analysed in a narrative form using the research questions raised for the study in relation to the main sections of the interview guide and the questionnaire. Data were analysed with the use of the Microsoft excel programme. The findings of the research have revealed that the current performance appraisal system in the Civil Service does not fulfill the aspirations of the employees, because it is characterized by certain flaws, which need to be addressed. Employees believe that the current PAS cannot help achieve organizational strategic goals and objectives; there is a negative general perception about the PAS; performance monitoring and feedback is poor; results from the appraisals are not judiciously used; performance is not linked to rewards and sanctions and finally, employees are hugely dissatisfied with the current PAS. Consequently, employees cannot be sufficiently motivated to put in their best. All these factors have worked against the effective implementation of the performance appraisal system in the Ghana Civil Service.Based on the findings, it was recommended that clear-cut performance appraisal objectives should be set out and made known to all concerned. Objectives should be developed jointly between the supervisor and the employee. Appropriate stakeholders need to set up a monitoring system to ensure that due process is followed by both appraisers and appraisees. Communication between supervisors and subordinates need to be improved drastically. Additionally, performance measures of individual organizations should be directly related to the overall mission and strategic goals of the entire Civil Service, particularly in terms of goals and objectives. Also, it is very crucial that appraisal reports are used judiciously. More also, appraisers and appraisees must be adequately trained on effective implementation of the PAS. It is important that various MDAs under the umbrella of the Civil Service develop different sets of performance appraisal systems that will cover specific task and job-holders since their job descriptions differ. Finally, review and appeal procedures should be adhered to in order to promote fairness and satisfaction by participants for higher motivation that may lead to higher performance and productivity in the Ghana Civil Service and government business as a whole.

NOT SO ‘ARM'S LENGTH’: REINTERPRETING AGENCIES IN UK CENTRAL GOVERNMENT

Administrative decentralization to government agencies (so-called ‘agencification’) has attracted much attention in recent years, increasingly for its longevity or evolution after the ‘high’ managerialism of the 1980s, and largely through a neo-positivist epistemology. Drawing on techniques of narrative and discourse analysis, and a model of incremental ideational change, this article identifies the necessity of supplementing those existing large-N analyses of agencification's expansion and decline with qualitative attention to the endurance of policy meaning. It demonstrates how the original foundations of managerialism, civil service empowerment and decentralization from the UK's seminal ‘Next Steps’ agency programme are eschewed in contemporary reform discourse, where agencification is instead advocated as centralized, politically proximate and departmentalized governance. This substantial reinterpretation of the arm's-length concept not only challenges existing claims of continuity in UK administrative policy, but also demonstrates the utility of interpretive methods for exploring longevity in public management more widely.

Queer Contingencies: Bifurcation and the Sexuality of Schooling

This article critiques the contemporary focus on same-sex attracted youth, “antihomophobia,” and “safe schools,” as well as the ways these foci structure the logics of the prevailing policy approach. The author examines how contemporary antihomophobic reform in education is sustained by a series of false dilemmas: that the political demands and investments of straights and nonstraights can be easily distinguished one from another; that the expression of homophobia is anathema to queer educative work; and that everything that is at stake in the messy confluence of sexuality, gender, and schooling can be made sense of by figuring the problem as a matter of being safe. Gesturing toward a queer social policy for schooling, this article critiques the “zero-tolerance” approach of antihomophobia education, arguing that it falsely bifurcates the social world of the school into homophobic/antihomophobic iterations, unsafe/safe versions, and straight/homosexual interests.

Neighborhoods Matter: The Role of Universities in the School Reform Neighborhood Development Movement

Where you find distressed neighborhoods, you will also find poorly performing public schools. Yet many contemporary school reform efforts ignore neighborhood-level factors that undeniably impact school performance. The purpose of this study is to use a case study approach with social institutional and urban school reform regime frameworks to demonstrate why school reform and the re-creation and redevelopment of distressed neighborhoods should occur simultaneously. At the same time, researchers will examine the role of higher education in catalyzing partnerships with so-called anchor institutions for the explicit purposes of simultaneously improving neighborhoods and reforming schools. By focusing on a federal Choice neighborhood initiative, the study will not only make the case for connecting school reform and neighborhood development but also present a model that demonstrates how this can happen. The study will also make a strong case for the university's unique role in fostering neo-collaborative structures fit to take on wicked problems of neighborhood distress and urban decline.

Autonomy and Accountability

The notion of school autonomy was one of the main concepts underpinning the Education Reform Act 1988, widely regarded as the most significant piece of educational legislation in the UK since the Education Act 1944. The strengths and limitations of the 1988 Act were debated in a special issue of this journal, edited by Michael Strain and Tim Simkins in 2008. Brian Caldwell was one of the first proponents of self-managing schools and his article in the Special Issue (Caldwell, 2008: 250) concludes that ‘self management of schools is an appropriate strategy given that each school contains a unique mix of needs, interests, aptitudes and aspirations’. Ron Glatter (2012), in the 40th anniversary issue of EMAL, acknowledged Caldwell’s influence (Caldwell and Spinks, 1988 ) in promoting school autonomy. However, Glatter (2012: 564) also discusses the paradox that, ‘despite the persistent and growing emphasis on autonomy, most school practitioners consider themselves significantly constrained by government requirements’. This is because enhanced autonomy has been matched, or exceeded, by tighter accountability frameworks and processes, ‘a high stakes accountability framework’ (Glatter, 2012: 568), including national inspections and performance ‘league tables’. Autonomy and accountability are opposing aspects of school system change; twin dimensions of the reform agenda. School leaders and governing bodies are free to decide how to implement reform but not whether to do so. Defying government prescriptions, or Ofsted requirements, is a high risk strategy. In the first article of this issue, Rob Higham and Peter Earley assess the coalition government’s view that contemporary reform will increase the autonomy of schools in England. They note the Department of Education’s (2010) claim that ‘the case for the benefits of school autonomy has been established beyond doubt’. One central aspect of this agenda is the rapid expansion of academies, which are independent of local government. The authors conducted a large-scale survey of headteachers, governors, and senior and middle leaders, with almost 2000 responses, 8 school case studies, 20 telephone interviews and 3 focus group discussions. Significantly, more than half the heads did not believe that academy status would increase their autonomy in practice. The authors conclude that school leaders ‘anticipated greater power over aspects of school management but not over the aims and purposes of schooling’. The second article, by Andrew Peterson, discusses school leaders’ perceptions of the impact of extended services in England, a key aspect of the previous (Labour) government’s educational policy. The author notes that this provision mirrors similar initiatives in Australia, Scotland and the USA, all designed to provide services to local communities. Drawing on interview data with school leaders in a large local authority, the author concludes that extended services impacted ‘positively and symbiotically’ on the nature and depth of their relationships with families and communities. Educational Management Administration & Leadership 41(6) 697–700 a The Author(s) 2013 Reprints and permission: sagepub.co.uk/journalsPermissions.nav DOI: 10.1177/1741143213499279 emal.sagepub.com