Patrick Moray Weller

• Griffith University

The climate and economic vulnerabilities of SIDS are now well established and widely accepted by IOs. But the idea that small size creates specific vulnerabilities is not restricted to these policy arenas. Indeed, once the idea that being small is a unique condition is accepted, it is no great leap of imagination to consider how other policy areas...

Climate change is the policy issue most commonly associated with the influence of small states and SIDS in particular. It is therefore a ‘most likely’ case (Eckstein, 1975) for their influence. Climate change magnifies the common dilemma for small states – that they have to fulfil the minimum requirements of modern statehood with limited resources...

This book has sought to explain the interaction between IOs and small states and how it has changed over the last three decades in particular. We used SIDS as a proxy for small states as they represent the smallest of the small; if these states want to be involved, however marginally, in the activities of IOs, then the findings on their strategies...

On 11 July 2018 the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) met to debate the nexus between climate change and security. In total, 19 countries participated in the discussion. In addition to the president (Sweden) and the permanent members, statements were invited from countries for whom climate change is already having a significant impact, includi...

This path-breaking book shows the efforts that small states have made to participate more fully in International Organizations (IOs). It highlights the challenges created by widened participation in IOs and develops a model of the dilemmas that both IOs and small states face as the norms of sovereign equality and the right to develop coincide.

The long-standing assumption in the IR literature is that small states have very little influence in IOs. Or, if they do appear to have influence, their impact is a chimera that masks the power of larger ‘system influencing’ states who are the ones really determining outcomes. If this is correct, why do small states participate in IOs at all? The c...

IOs are facing serious challenges in continuing their active role in managing collective problems, whether being climate change, migration, cybersecurity, pandemics, or economic and financial stability. Diagnoses range from: ‘the growing gap between yesterday's structures and today's problems’ (Goldin, 2013: 3); that the large, rich, and powerful s...

The emergence of a distinct SIDS grouping and identity in relation to climate change is a ‘most likely’ case for their influence on IOs. It is an issue on which they hold the moral high ground as the first and worst effected: the canaries in the coal mine. A much higher threshold for their influence is whether similar strategies would be successful...

This path-breaking book shows the efforts that small states have made to participate more fully in International Organizations (IOs). It highlights the challenges created by widened participation in IOs and develops a model of the dilemmas that both IOs and small states face as the norms of sovereign equality and the right to develop coincide.

Multilateralism and the institutions of global governance are premised on two norms: the sovereignty equality of states and the right to development. This book considers how actors interpret these norms when practicing diplomacy by examining the interaction between international organisations (IO) and the proportion of their membership who should b...

In the concluding chapter, we consider what these interactions amount to for both small states, IOs and the LIO writ large. We argue that while SIDS only represent a fraction of the world’s population and economic wealth, and absorb only a very small proportion of IOs time and resources, their participation is nevertheless significant because of wh...

In Chapter Five we focus on the three Bretton Woods institutions: IMF, the World Bank, and WTO. Both IMF and the World Bank have recognised the condition of SIDS and tailored projects and programmes for them. Likewise, gaining recognition of the challenges facing the SVEs at the WTO provided some small states with an opportunity to present their in...

Chapter Two tells the story from the IOs perspective. We first outline how the widening participation of members in processes and practices have led IOs to pursue throughputs as a means of enhancing their legitimacy. We then discuss the different features of throughput legitimacy as applied to the participation of SIDS in IOs: promoting norms and p...

In Chapter Three we distinguish between different motivations for why small states participate in IOs: sovereign recognition; resource extraction; and the maintenance of a permissive liberal order. We then outline how the competent performance of vulnerability enables them to achieve these goals, albeit recognising that participation is always dyna...

Chapter Six focuses on the WHO and WIPO. SIDS have only rarely been active in these IOs despite persistent efforts, by other states, IO leaders and the secretariat, to include them. We explain their absence in similar terms to their stalled efforts in the economic institutions—capacity deficits, existing rules and traditions, and the absence of fri...

In Chapter Four we take the ‘most likely’ case for SIDS influence: climate change. We show how the competent performance of vulnerability and the quest for throughput legitimacy have enabled SIDS to become champions of progressive action on this issue. We show how the label SIDS has enabled them to do so, both in the UNGA and UNFCCC processes but a...

The Marshall Islands (RMI) is one of the world’s smallest sovereign states, which should mean they are peripheral to global climate negotiations. Yet, they have recently played a crucial role in negotiating the Paris Agreement and emissions reductions at the International Maritime Organisation (IMO). The success at Paris is well documented. Here we...

For decades, the world's smallest states – the structurally weakest members of the multilateral system – have been considered incapable of influencing international organisations (IOs). So, why has the label small state risen to prominence over the last two decades and become institutionalised as a formal grouping in multiple IOs? Drawing on more t...

The unequal participation of member states in IOs is said to undermine IOs’ legitimacy as global actors. Existing scholarship typically makes this assessment by reference to a combination of input – the interests IOs serve – and output – the decisions they take – factors. Not enough attention is paid to how IOs have responded to these concerns. We...

This article analyzes what the Westminster system actually means for civil services in historical context and contemporary practice. It explores the way in which practitioners, both politicians and civil servants, interpreted Westminster's implications and used them as justification, defense, and sometimes camouflage for their administrative choice...

The Standing Committee of the State Council (SCSC) is the principal government institution in China and is often referred to as the Chinese Cabinet. This article seeks to explain how the SCSC fulfills two functions that are required in all government executives: coordination and the resolution of disputes. It describes the membership of the SCSC, i...

This chapter argues that to understand the role of the policy professionals in government today, the best strategy is to contrast their role forty or more years ago with what it is now. It contrasts the Australian policy advisory system in 1972, when the Whitlam Labor government came to power, with the system in 2013, when the Abbott Coalition gove...

The Private Government of Public Money, published by Hugh Heclo and Aaron Wildavsky, was a study of the working of the Treasury in Britain. Even if some of the detail is now dated, their bold and innovative approach, portraying Whitehall as a community, was an antidote to the rather formal descriptions that had been the standard early accounts. Thi...

In this research note, the authors briefly report the results of an exercise measuring the relative research performance of Australian universities in the field of international relations (IR). The findings are based on counting articles in the leading journals in the field, as determined by the Excellence in Research Australia (ERA) journal rankin...

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Providing policy advice is often the epitome of a public service career, the opportunity to have a direct influence on policy. Yet there is a wide range of circumstances in which policy advice might be sought, requiring different information, timetables and depths of analysis. This will necessitate the development of a number of skills and be depen...

This Note examines the performance of political scientists in Australian Research Council Discovery grants from 2000 to 2012. It then provides a profile of the political science profession across Australia's universities.

Prime ministers often have to work with prime ministerial aspirants, senior ministers who regard themselves as possible successors. But can these challengers seize the job when the prime ministers are reluctant to stand down? Using evidence from Canada, Britain and Australia, the article explores the conditions in which successions have taken place...

For the Department of the Prime Minister and Cabinet (PM&C) the year 1987 can now be seen as pivotal in marking a clear end to a period of transition in coordinating structures in the Australian Public Service (APS) that had lasted roughly 20 years. The abolition in 1987 of the Public Service Board, formerly a powerful coordinating agency, is the m...

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Rod Rhodes spent 25 years as the Editor of Public Administration before he retired from that role at the end of 2010. These essays in his honour are intended to celebrate the achievement of those 25 years and reflect on his contribution to the worlds of public administration and political science. Rod has now consolidated the standing of the journa...

Drawing on extensive interviews with current and former ministers, ministerial staffers, and senior officials, this in-depth examination offers insight into the Australian political and democratic processes. Exploring the lives of Australia’s federal ministers at work, this revealing account investigates how a new ministry learns and adapts to the...

This article presents a comparison of research quality in political science among Australian universities. Two sources are used to assess the output of high-quality political science scholarship. The first looks at publication totals in leading journals, using the hierarchy of journal quality from the Excellence in Research Australia program. The s...

Chrik Poortman, an international civil servant, worked for the World Bank for more than three decades. This profile uses his career and experiences to illustrate the functions and roles played by World Bank staff at each level of its "flat" hierarchy and the capacities needed to face challenges that are unique to their ilk. Each section explores a...

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The Bank is a bank because it offers financial assistance to developing countries. It is nonetheless more than a bank because it offers its client countries a bundle of services. While the management has emphasized that the Bank is a knowledge bank, its staff are aware their comparative advantage is the combination of knowledge, expertise, finance,...

In no other sector has the Bank had a greater impact than in electric power. “Its successes, by and large, are not the result of groping and pioneering followed by conceptual breakthroughs, but are due rather to the relative ease oftransferring technology ofpower generation from more developed to less developed countries if foreign exchange is made...

All organizations face a question of control. There is no shortage of arguments that the Bank is run exactly as the Articles of Agreement state: “The Executive Directors shall be responsible for the conduct of the general operations of the Bank, and for this purpose, shall exercise all the powers delegated by the Board of Governors” (Article V, Sec...

The World Bank is always good for an argument. Whatever the company, views are likely to be strongly held. They will range from outright condemnation to reluctant skepticism to ecstatic approval.

In 1997, Wolfensohn identified ‘the cancer of corruption;’ he declared that corruption and poor governance undermined social and economic development. This recognition of governance as important for development was partly a response to the external criticism that the Bank had ignored corrupt political processes in its client countries.

The experienced Bank officer who turned the familiar adage on its head had worked across three regions over 20 years. He was not an economist and had participated in and watched many aspects of the Bank’s activities, a broader range than many of its critics. He has a point. After all, what is the Bank? When critics and observers talk of the Bank, t...

The most common picture of the Bank is its impressive building in Washington, D.C., a block away from the White House and three blocks away from the U.S. Treasury. The edifice symbolizes its authority, while its location suggests its allegiance. Meanwhile, from its creation, the Bank has been trying to position itself as a global institution indepe...

As an international development institution, the Bank has to find the right mix of skills to develop the complex array of assistance it provides to its clients. It needs country experts, mainly economists and loan officers, who are expected to understand the macro-political and economic systems in a country, and sector specialists in many fields: a...

Over 60 years, the International Bank of Reconstruction and Development (IBRD) has changed significantly. It has expanded into the World Bank Group (WBG), which contains five institutions: IBRD, International Development Association (IDA), International Financial Corporation (IFC), Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency (MIGA), and International...

The Bank must be among the most evaluated of institutions. It is evaluated ex ante and ex post, internally and externally. “I sometimes wonder,” stated the then MD Shengman, “if there is anything we do in the Bank Group that is not evaluated!” (Zhang 2003:91). In addition, constant dialogue among colleagues and with borrowing officials provides inf...

On October 26, 2006, a crowd offormer and current Bank staffpacked the area outside the Preston Auditorium in the Bank’s main complex to attend the farewell for Christiaan Poortman, universally known as Chrik. ‘The pain, the anger, and the anguish were just unbelievable,’ recalled one former Bank staffer. ‘Meanwhile, there was this pride for this m...

The first half of the 20th century was not fertile ground for a discipline such as politics. Australian society was practical, pragmatic and little interested in intellectual knowledge for its own sake. Elton Mayo, before departing for more appreciative environments, wrote in 1920: An ignorant hard-headed practicality dictates every public estimate...

The World Bank is one of twin institutions established to stabilise the post-war international economic structure and provide development assistance. It has been subject to much criticism. This article considers some of these criticisms and examines the structure and operation on the World Bank. It concludes that there is an alternative image of th...

This article seeks to understand the operations of the World Bank by examining one particular group of players – the country directors (CDs). It argues that the analysis of international organizations (IOs), by focusing on the behaviour of their principals (states), as principal-agent analysts do, or on organizational cultures, as the constructivis...

The rise of the new public management in the 1980s led to recurring challenges to the administrative traditions of the public service in Australia, Canada and the UK. This article analyses how the heads of the public service articulate the traditions of 'constitutional bureaucracy' found in Westminster systems of parliamentary government and select...

This review, delivered in July 1995, was cornmissioned by the Department of the Prime Minister & Cabinet. It was designed to assess the procedures adopted in commonwealth—state reform processes and to draw front that analysis some basic lessons or insights that might assist future stages. The report is republished with only minor changes in style a...

Queensland has two prisons run by private companies; the first contract was signed in 1989. In 1995 a competitive tender for a new prison was won by the QCSC against two private providers. Further, there is now a belief that prisons should be run on commercial grounds. The principal agency, the Queensland Corrective Services Commission (QCSC) has b...

Public servants should identify their clients. As a statement of modern practice it seems unobjectionable. The emphasis of modern management has shifted from die inputs and processes to the outputs and recipients of government services. The language of the public sector has been infused with the rhetoric of the private, with discussion of customers...

This report examines the conditions of appointment and termination of departmental secretaries in the APS and considers the impact of these conditions on: the secretaries themselves; the potential pool from which secretaries are drawn; and the likely continuing influence on the way in which the APS operates. The report is based on reviews of the li...

Politicians need information. In recent years the practice of public servants briefing party committees has been expanded to help fill that need. In part this was due to the increased influence of caucus committees under the Labor government, but the practice has continued. Public servants provide information and explanations of policy to governmen...

The study of public policy must be concerned with political activity, with the development and content of policies, with the processes which shape them and the institutions which mould them. These factors simply cannot be readily separated. Whether individual studies concentrate on policy or processes or institutions, the drawing together of those...

International civil servants (ICS) are largely excluded from the analysis of International Organizations (IOs) because states are assumed to be the determining force in shaping their behaviour. Even principal-agent and constructivist analyses often treat an IO’s staff as a unit and are concerned primarily with states’ capacities to control IOs. Exa...

The growth in the number of ministers has led to problems in the organization of cabinet. In Britain, and in Australia under Liberal-Country Party government, a system of inner cabinets and outer ministers has been adopted. In Australia all ministers have their own departments - as dictated by the Constitution;those who are not full members of cabi...

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Political science is, we are led to believe, the study of power. Cabinet and the executive appear to be the epitome of national authority, but not of analysis. In Australia by contrast it seems that the study of power has not focussed on federal power, or at least power at the centre of national government. If the remit is to explore that centre th...

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Westminster Legacies examines the ways in which the Westminster system has been influential in shaping responsible government and democracy across Asia, Australasia and the Pacific. It devotes chapters to India, Pakistan, Nepal, Singapore, Malaysia, Australia, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Fiji and the small Pacific island nations. No Yes

Australia developed parliamentary democracy without any struggle for independence as colonial governments became self-governing in the 1850s and a federal nation was created in 1901. This article explores, among other things, the implications of those parts of the Australian system of government that differ from the British model from which it emer...

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This article will explore the proposition that cabinet government is dead by examining the different ways in which cabinet government is conceptualized and by suggesting that the lack of precision in the debates has undermined much of the criticism. It will seek to draw the strands of research together in a way that can emphasize how cabinet govern...

The Commonwealth government was born of compromise and reared on opportunism. The centenarian of 2001 is unlike the infant conceived by its progenitors in 1901. Its powers are greater, its influence more extensive. The number of departments has fluctuated. Seven departments in 1901 grew to a maximum of twenty-eight in 1985 and more recently was red...

Australia's traditions of governance tend to be pragmatic and to blend different ideologies. Its traditions are less dependent on political party ideologies, and more on competing conceptions of the significant problems and the way that they should be addressed. In this article we identify five principal traditions, namely: settler–state developmen...

This article revisits the country case studies and seeks to answer two questions. What are the strengths and weaknesses of an interpretive approach? What lessons can we draw from our analysis of public sector reform? To assess an interpretive approach, we discuss: the issues raised in identifying beliefs; the meaning of explanation; how to select t...