This article analyzes the management of European Union (EU) business by the Irish core executive. More specifically, it investigates the demands placed by EU membership on the Irish system of public administration and how the system has responded to these demands. Employing an institutionalist analytical framework, the article maps the formal and informal organisational and procedural devices or structures used to manage EU affairs in Ireland, as well as dissecting the key relationships that govern this management process and the role of the domestic agents actively involved in the EU's governance structure, the cadre or boundary managers.The article also explores in a dynamic way the development of the capacity for the management of EU affairs in Ireland over time. Using the concepts of path dependency and critical junctures, we illuminate how key system-management decisions became locked-in over time and we isolate the triggers for significant adaptational change, be they domestic or external. Adaptation to EU business in Ireland was path-dependent and consisted of gradual incremental adjustment. This system of flexible adaptation generally served Ireland well as the EU's policy regime expanded and evolved, but in response to the shock rejection of the Nice Treaty by the electorate in 2001, significant formalisation of the Irish system occurred with the establishment of new processes and rules for managing relations between the core executive and the EU.

A language barrier prevents us from understanding how other cultures look at public administration, as "semantic fields" differ between languages. These differences can never be fully grasped, but what we can do is study what happens when a particular concept crosses the border. In this article we select a concept, public-private partnership, that in recent times migrated from one administrative order, the United States, to another, Poland. We follow this concept on its migration to see how it changes and to find out what these shifts in meaning tell us about the differences between the two social realities involved.

Local government political leaders have a hard job these days. More and more they are confronted by citizens demanding transparency and a say in the production of social goods. Challenging the hegemony of local government, they connect their resources to come up with grass roots solutions. Fear of litigation claims and an increase in the complexity of policymaking and administration and fiscal scarcity render local administrations risk averse.How to effectively structure the frontline between local government and local communities? Open and collaborative governance approaches hold the promise of developing to mediate these tensions, but what are the implications for the way local democracy, local government and local administration work? This article looks at the ugly face of trust in collaborative and open governance on the basis of a comparative casestudy from Apeldoorn (The Netherlands). The article identifies and analyses patterns of (a lack of) open governance and offers alternative models to the organization of the frontline between local government and society.

As the world tries to recover from a global financial crisis and the trust of citizens in their institutions is lower than ever, the question of effective governance is not merely an academic one 1 . In the face of unavoidable 'izations' -statization, constitutionalization, privatization and globalization, which occur consecutively or simultaneously across different contexts 2 , it is pertinent to ask where the locus of authority is, or alternatively, where authority is transferred to, and where the locus of accountability lies. In this world, one thing is certain -the nation-state government is not effective enough to provide for all the needs of a society, and the term 'governance' signals two important developments that have a major impact on law and public policy: "1) government does not have a monopoly on public authority and resources; and 2) contemporary governments govern most effectively in concert with others" 3 . Until now, effectiveness was usually related to outcomes -the impact of a government's programs on society -and efficiency measured the quality and quantity of goods and services provided by the government 4 . It seems, however, that effectiveness has come to entail much more than citizens'/clients' satisfaction and the attainment of a government's

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