Christine Bellamy

Principles of methodology : research design in social science

PART ONE: FOUNDATIONS: WHAT METHODOLOGY IS AND DOES Inference and Warrant in Designing Research Methodology and Social Science Knowledge Testing, Confirming and Falsifying Perspectives on Findings from Social Research PART TWO: DESIGNS: THE MAIN TYPES OF RESEARCH DESIGN Types of Research Design Variable-Oriented Research Designs Case-Based Research Designs Comparative and Case-Oriented Research Designs Concept Formation PART THREE: ACHIEVEMENTS: WHAT RESEARCH MAKES INFERENCES TO Why Ideas about Explanation Matter for Methodology Basic Forms of Explanation Mechanisms, Contexts and Trajectories Warranting Explanations Between-Case and within-Case Strategies Interpretation Warranting Interpretations PART FOUR: SYNTHESIS: COMBINATIONS AND TRADE-OFFS Combining Research Designs Trade-offs in Research Design

New information and communications technologies and institutional change

A major thrust in public service computing in the late 1990s is the building of electronic bridges between the large‐scale computer systems which have been embedded into the complex bureaucratic structures of late twentieth‐century government. This process includes the development of electronic links between government functions, across departmental boundaries and, even, across tiers of government. Increasingly, it also involves electronic data exchange with customers and suppliers. Contextualizes these changes in the managerialist agendas of contemporary government, and explores the significance of informational politics in institutional and managerial change, by examining a particularly ambitious and sensitive case, the co‐ordination of computerization in the criminal justice system. In this way, it contributes to the critique of technicist accounts of technology‐induced change, by proposing and developing a theoretical perspective on the interaction of technology, information and institutional dynamics in the “information polity”.

Joining‐Up Government in the UK: Towards Public Services for an Information Age

The reform of public services has preoccupied managers for several decades. Nevertheless, it is my contention that the present reform agenda has some plausible claims to be different from much that went before. The vision that has come to the fore in the Australian federal government’s Clients First Program (Information Technology Review Group 1995), in the Clinton/Gore administration’s Access America report (Government IT Services 1997) andthe recent British White Paper, Modernising Government (Cabinet Office 1999) not only promotes the ‘client orientation’ in public administration, but also reflects a belief in the crucial contribution to be made by information and communication technologies (ICTs). This is a vision for an information age (POST 1998). It is being driven by the conviction that public management has too often been modelled on business ‘as it was in the age of US Steel, not the age of Microsoft, Apple, Wal-Mart and Federal Express’ (Gore 1993:xiii).

Reinventing government in the information age

In September 1992, the Head of the Home Civil Service, Sir Robin Butler, made some well‐publicised comments about developing more purposeful relationships between Whitehall and academe. A group of academics and public servants later met under the aegis of the ESRCs Programme on Information and Communication Technology to discuss the implications of central governments current programmes of management change. This article presents the academic organizers’ analysis of a range of issues which emerged from this meeting.

Exchanging information with the public: From one-stop shops to community information systems

There is growing interest in new ways in which states interact with citizens, and public services respond to their customers. This interest stems from many sources and has arisen in many different contexts. What these agendas have in common, however, is that they are all predicated on new flows of information between government and citizens that may be facilitated by the innovative application of information and communication technologies (ICTs). This article reports on current research into these innovative developments in English local government, from which it is possible to develop a more systematic, empirically-based understanding of the impact of new ICTs on local political and economic development.

Implementing Information-Age Government: principles, progress and paradox:

make sure that government services are brought forrvard using the best and most modern techniques ... especially electronic information-age services (PM and Cabinet Office: 1999: Introduction by the Minister for the Cabinet Office). By 2002, the UK will have achieved the goal of becoming the best environment in the world for e-commerce. [A] key indicator of success will be that ... a higher wor/J~ 6 c’M~~r c ~ ~ ~ :~’cafc’ q/’~MCc~~ !// &e ~af /u’ /: /’ percentage of total government services may be transacted through e-commerce networks than in any other G7 country (PIU, 1999: para. 1. 12.). As these quotations show’, the present Labour Government has nailed its strategies for governmental reform firmly to the conviction that ’modem government’ should be ’electronic government’, fit for an ’information age’. Since it came to power in 1997, it has developed an increasingly coherent programme for an e-government future. This programme is being asked to bear

Telematics and community governance: issues for policy and practice

The changing processes and practices of governing have led to the emergence of an increasingly complex environment in which a plethora of organizations and agencies can be involved in the governance of local communities. The successful forging of these systems of community governance depends on the capacity of the actors within the system to develop and manage complex and flexible networks of relationships. Telematics ‐ the integrated use of information and communication technologies ‐ are increasingly recognized as fundamental to the development and maintenance of these systems and networks. Approaching the subject from a local authority perspective, explores how the formation, maintenance and management of the organizational and political networks involved in community governance can be facilitated by telematics. Discusses some of the most important policy issues which emerge.

Alive and Well? The ‘Surveillance Society’ and the Coalition

The new Coalition government in the UK seems to be determined to reverse the ‘surveillance society’ which many observers claimed to have emerged under the previous Labour government. This short article reviews the reasons why the ‘surveillance society’ became a major issue in the last years of the New Labour government, and, in the light of recent policy statements, questions whether the libertarian thrust of the Coalition’s political programme can, in practice, be carried through consistently into departments’ policies.