Governance And Accountability

The following has two assignments namely;

1.Governance And Accountability

(choose ONE of the following topics) 1. Assess critically the implications of public-private partnerships (PPPs) for issues of transparency and accountability. In formulating your response draw upon evidence from one or more cases. 2. Examine and assess critically Mulgan’s (2003, p.150) argument that the non-profit sector ‘provides the clearest illustration of the need to limit accountability for the sake of other values’. You are encouraged to look at, say, a particular organisation, field of activity or such to help give your study both a solid empirical foundation and analytic depth. 3. Governance and accountability in emerging democracies: i. Imagine you are advising and training a newly formed government in an emerging democracy. Traditionally, government has been run via a network of patron-client relationships. Critically assess the challenges you would face in assisting this government to improve accountability and transparency. OR ii. What series of steps would be required in assisting a government (both politicians and public servants) in an emerging democracy to transition from a largely opaque, hierarchical governance system to a more transparent and accountable system? 4. ‘New Public Management reforms [since the 1980s] have worked to both increase and decrease accountability and transparency.’ Discuss critically. 5. ‘While the accountability mechanisms of publicly listed companies resemble those of democratically elected governments, in practice, these mechanisms are often largely ineffective.’ To what extent do you agree with this statement? 6. Drawing on a specific case (or a couple of cases) assess critically the role of the media today in holding government to account, in the process identifying key pressures and/or processes at work to both enhance and diminish the media’s role as the fourth estate. 7. Patrick Weller has called ministerial advisers the ‘black hole’ of government because they are often unknown to the public and largely unaccountable to the parliament. Explore and assess critically the accountability of ministerial advisers within Australian government today. 8. Journalist Adele Ferguson said in November, 2015, ‘The truth is if we want whistleblowers to provide information, they need to be treated as heroes instead of pariahs.’ Compare and contrast the role and treatment of whistleblowers in both the public and private sectors of Australia.

2.Political competition

choose one (and only one) of the questions below to answer: 1 Evaluate the Australian party system: how does it "work"? To what extent does it work effectively? 2 Evaluate the cartelization thesis: What does it mean for how parties and party systems operate and perform? 3 Does Australia have a cartel party system? 4 If you could redesign a major Australian political institution (e.g., the electoral system, parliament), how would you set it up and why? 5 What is "constitutional engineering"? Why is it so difficult? 6 How should we understand the relationship between electoral systems OR lawmaking systems OR jurisdictional systems and good governance? 7 A new democracy is choosing its first constitution and you have been asked to give advice on its new constitutional design. What attributes of the country should you consider consider and how would these influence your recommendation?-what differences matter for the choice of constitutional structures?