Kenneth Wiltshire

Australia's New Federalism: Recipes for Marble Cakes

In July of 1990, the prime minister of Australia announced a program to achieve a closer partnership between the three levels of government. His concern was the degree of bureaucratic overlap in the Australian federation and the hindrances to mobility, portability, and uniformity which made the Australian economy more balkanized than Europe post-1992. The announcement capitalized on dissatisfaction with Australian federalism that had been growing in the 1970s and 1980s, and its timing coincided with a range of catalysts making the current climate favorable for change. The new federalism unleashed a process of review and reform across some forty program or subprogram areas over an eighteen-month period with a prime objective to attain role clarification for the three levels of government in shared functional areas, somewhat akin to the German horizontal model of federal role allocation. The process survived a political challenge that toppled the prime minister, aspects of the new federalism forming a key element of that challenge. Constitutional change is also part of the agenda and already the Australian experience holds a number of lessons for other federal systems.

Scientists and Policy‐makers: Towards a New Partnership

There is an urgent need to link social science research with policy making to address many key issues confronting countries across the globe. Policy makers need the benefit of social science research which is relevant, timely, transdisciplinary, methodologically capable of capturing global and local trends, swift to respond to fundamental issues, and offering findings which are clearly articulated, effectively disseminated, and oriented to outcomes. For this a new partnership is needed between social scientists and policy makers. We can gain a clearer picture of the nature of this desired partnership by probing the dichotomy between the world of science and the world of policy making. The experience of UNESCO and its programme Management of Social Transformations provides some valuable lessons.

Management of Social Transformations: Introduction

To address the key issues confronting communities across the globe, policy-makers need the benefit of social science research that is relevant, transdisciplinary, methodologically capable of capturing global and local trends, swift to respond to fundamental research questions, and offering findings which are clearly articulated, effectively disseminated, and oriented to outcomes. This was the challenge confronting Unesco at the beginning of the 1990s in the midst of substantial turbulence affecting the vast majority of its member states. Countries freed from totalitarian regimes, particularly in Eastern Europe, were urgently seeking to understand how to create vibrant democracies and market economies. Ecological threats of a magnitude which affected human existence in many regions cried out for new holistic approaches to sustainable development. Severe political and social tensions had arisen from mega-migration patterns on a scale seldom seen before, including vast numbers of refugees and itinerants confronting a lack of identity status and the normal conditions of citizenship. The growth of cities had given rise to a melange of crises in the human condition and exacerbated ecological pressure, particularly in the heavily populated coastal zones of the world.