A Geographic Information Systems (GIS) Analysis of Spatiotemporal Patterns of Terrorist Incidents in Iraq 2004–2009

As terrorism on all scales continues, it is necessary to improve understanding of terrorist and insurgent activities. This article takes a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) approach to advance the understanding of spatial, social, political, and cultural triggers that influence terrorism incidents. Spatial, temporal, and spatiotemporal patterns of terrorist attacks are examined to improve knowledge about terrorist systems of training, planning, and actions. The results of this study aim to provide a foundation for understanding attack patterns and tactics in emerging havens as well as inform the creation and implementation of various counterterrorism measures.     

欧盟气候变化政策的演变

欧盟的气候变化政策起源于欧洲环境保护运动,其形成经历了一个循序渐进、不断深化的过程。欧洲环境运动的发展为欧盟气候变化政策的形成提供了早期基础;围绕着《京都议定书》的谈判和履行议定书中欧盟提出的各项承诺,该政策正式形成。在后京都时代,欧盟又提出了气候变化扩展政策,该政策成为欧盟参与国际气候变化谈判的主要依据与基础。哥本哈根会议后,欧盟出台了“后哥本哈根国际气候政策：行动起来重振全球气候变化谈判”的政策文件,明确了欧盟后哥本哈根气候变化谈判战略。     

Intra-urban landscapes of priority: the Soviet legacy

Based on the urban experience of the Soviet Union, this article explores the value of the so-called priority approach for understanding the mechanisms that contributed to the creation of the spatial structure of the Soviet/socialist city. The changes in priority status that the various urban functions were subject to are highlighted. It is then proposed that these variations were instrumental in the formation of the internal functioning and social differentiation of the Soviet/socialist city and, to the extent that the pre-1991 urban fabric persists, of its post-Soviet successor. Finally, the authors propose a new model of the development of the Soviet/socialist city, fusing the priority approach with an extensive survey of previous scholarly work within the field.     

Linking Policy Networks and Environmental Policies: Nitrate Policy Making in Denmark and Sweden 1970-1995

The policy network literature has provided important insight into the way in which public policy is made in Western societies. Most network studies have focused on processes within networks and have paid little attention to the conceptualization of policy outcomes and the theoretical link between network type and policy type. This article defines and categorizes environmental policy and suggests a proposition on the link between network types and environmental policy types. It is argued that the existence of tight and closed policy communities in sectors subject to environmental regulation is associated with the introduction of low cost environmental policies. In contrast, open and loose issue networks are associated with high cost environmental policies.     

Organizing Democracy: How International Organizations Assist New Democracies

Scholars in the environmental security tradition have sought to explicate the links between environmental scarcity (or degradation) and the onset of different forms of political violence and how these are mediated by institutional mechanisms. The Malthusian trap here is not a direct deterministic relationship, but rather a possibility, where environmental scarcity when it coincides with socio-economic processes of rent-seeking and exclusion triggers political conditions ripe for violent struggles. This a priori attention to scarcity as causal mechanism blurs our understanding why violence occurs in some and does not in other places. Our research strategy is therefore different: we study a case of non-violent relations between resource users under conditions of environmental scarcity (due to drought) and political instability and look into the crucial role of local institutions in governing competing resource claims. Our case from the violence-prone Somali Region, Ethiopia analyses how agro-pastoralist communities develop sharing arrangements on pasture resources with intruding pastoralist communities in drought years, even though this places additional pressure on their grazing resource. A household survey investigates the determinants for different households in the agro-pastoralist community, asset-poor and wealthy ones, to enter into different types of sharing arrangements. Our findings suggest that resource sharing offers asset-poor households opportunities to stabilise and enhance their asset-base in drought years, providing incentives for cooperative rather than conflicting relations with intruding pastoralists.     

Policy Network Creation: The Case of Energy Efficiency

What can broadly be described as a policy community has been established with the central purpose of co-ordinating policy implementation in the field of energy efficiency in domestic buildings. A complete understanding of the processes of policy network formation cannot be achieved in this case without a thorough analysis of the construction of cognitive structures which influence the behaviour of actors and underpin the policy network. Discourse analysis is an effective means of studying cognitive structures. An understanding of the creative and unpredictable role of agents such as ministers is also important, suggesting that the study of policy network formation can be enlightened by a historical institutionalist approach that involves a role for agency as well as structural influences. The formation of the energy efficiency policy network is studied in the context of a critique of an earlier 'economic' institutionalist case study of policy network formation.     

Network Formation During Disasters: Exploring Micro-Level Interorganizational Processes and the Role of National Capacity

Despite common assumptions about the processes associated with interorganizational network formation, the resulting structures and relevant factors often vary. This variation suggests that there are likely contextual or meta-network variables that moderate the influence of well-established micro-level mechanisms. Because much of the existing research on disaster response networks relies on single case studies, the role of meta-network variables in shaping network formation remains unexplored. We look to fill this gap by comparing network formation patterns in multiple countries that vary in their disaster management capacity. This article uses social network analysis to analyze the formation of response networks after earthquakes in Indonesia, Haiti, and Japan. This study contributes to existing literature by examining how transitivity, homophily, and brokerage vary in their salience under different macro-level constraints. The results suggest that national response capacity may influence the jurisdictional level at which bridging and bonding strategies take place.     

Demotic humanitarians: historical perspectives on the global reach of local initiatives, 1940–2017

Abstract

This article focuses on over 70 years of demotic humanitarianism from a grassroots perspective. Using the archives of Hudfam and Elizabeth Wilson as well as more recent oral history of local nongovernmental organisations in the West Yorkshire region of the United Kingdom, this paper seeks to cast a new light on the complex network of humanitarianism enabled by local groups. The concept of demotic humanitarians will be used here to denote the modest scale of this work, but also the humanitarians’ self-perception as local agents of internationalism acting within localised networks. From the creation of Hudfam in 1942 (before Oxfam but in Huddersfield) to the birth of the Christian African Relief Trust or local partnerships with Ghana, this article shows how entangled in other social and political initiatives demotic humanitarians were.     

The Importance of Being Trusted: Transaction Costs and Policy Network Theory

Transaction cost economics is used to defend and develop policy network theory. Networks, like markets and hierarchies, are a form of governance structure. As one form of network, policy communities develop and survive because they reduce transaction costs that would otherwise threaten the exchange of resources between government and pressure groups. Policy communities alter outcomes and should be an important part of the explanation of public policy. Whilst of general relevance, the argument is illustrated with particular reference to the frequently hostile but ultimately successful negotiations between the British Medical Association and the Ministry of Health prior to the creation of the National Health Service in 1948.     

The Rationale Behind the Creation and Diffusion of Independent Regulatory Agencies: The Case of the Telecommunications Sector in Egypt

The creation and diffusion of Independent ^{1 1}Three different meanings of the regulatory state have been identified by Jordana and Levi-Faur (2004): the minimal, the prudent, and the overambitious meaning. The minimal meaning refers to the regulatory state as a field of study grouping scholars from different disciplines. The prudent meaning emphasises the tendency of modern states to use power and authority. An overambitious notion, the regulatory state developed to replace other state forms such as the welfare, developmental, and stabilisation state. Regulatory Agencies (IRAs) was greatly investigated in the context of the developed countries, particularly in Europe. Many scholars have provided different theories to explain the logic behind the formation and the spread of such agencies. These theories are important but not sufficient to explain the same phenomenon in the context of the developing countries wherein socio-economic and political environments are different. Adopting an institutional framework of analysis, and based on an in-depth qualitative documentary analysis and interviews with different stakeholders, this article investigates the creation and diffusion of the IRAs in Egypt particularly in the telecommunication sector. The findings show that the creation of the IRAs in the Egyptian telecommunications sector represents a rational response to the external isomorphic pressures exerted by international agency and can be explained on functional and practical grounds rather than any other factors of democratic governance or political uncertainties.     

The Tangled Webs of Westminster and Whitehall: The Discourse, Strategy and Practice of Networking Within the British Core Executive

In this paper we identify and seek to resolve a certain paradox in the existing litera-ture on networks and networking. Whilst earlier policy network perspectives have tended to emphasize the structural character of networks as durable, dense and relatively static organization forms, the more recent strategic network literature emphasizes the flexible, adaptive and dynamic quality of networking as a social and political practice. However, neither perspective has yet developed a theory of network formation, evolution, transformation and termination. In this paper, we seek to rectify this omission, advancing a 'strategic relational' theory of network dynamics based on a rethinking of the concept of network itself. We illustrate this perspective with respect to the policy process centred in and around Westminster and Whitehall, drawing on a series of semi-structured interviews with ministers and officials from four departments.     

NETWORK GOVERNANCE AND ENVIRONMENTAL MANAGEMENT: CONFLICT AND COOPERATION

In this article we propose structural preconditions for effective network governance, including network structures that can facilitate effective coordination of action (such as relational and structural embeddedness), and agreement among network actors about goals and actions. We illustrate circumstances in which these preconditions do not seem to be met through a case study of environmental governance of a major water resource – the Swan River in Western Australia. This governance system, since changed by legislation, did not exhibit embeddedness among its constituent organizations, and crucial relations involved contestation, with organizations apparently pursuing different goals. This paper demonstrates how advanced social network methods can be used to analyse a networked governance system.     

An Assessment of Collaborative Governance in a Network for Sustainable Tourism: The Case of RedeTuris

This article presents a case study of a cross-sectoral organizational network created to promote sustainable tourism in Rio de Janeiro. We briefly introduce the topics of collaborative governance and sustainable tourism, and then describe the focal network and the methods used for the research. Findings are discussed in terms of three themes: 1) key elements of collaborative governance; 2) aspects of the network formation and development process; and 3) features of the Brazilian context that may influence the network's likelihood of success. We conclude with a comment on the role of public managers in a network such as this.     

Innovation Policy as Performativity—the Case of Sweden

This article analyzes how the idea of “innovationism” in Sweden has generated a new kind of idea-driven policy around the creation of innovative regional policy. In contrast to similar policies in this area, this policy does not manifest itself through traditional instruments, but evolves through symbolic and ritual performances, in particular through events and conferences. The article asks how this emerging idea has changed the existing institutional formation of sponsoring industrially relevant research. The vision of concerted action between decision-makers within modern innovationism reinforces territorial identity, but it also tends to devolve responsibility to the regional level since concerted action on the national level is hard to obtain. What emerges is a system of governing at a distance where different actors perform their roles according to often academic ideas of innovationism. The study is based on two qualitative studies in Sweden entailing both documentary sources and semi-structured interviews.     

Waiting for Godot: Sustainable development,international trade and governance in environmental policies

The current environmental crisis calls for a sustainable style of development and draws attention to a new ecological dimension in social life that poses hitherto unforeseen challenges to the social sciences and to the everyday concerns of citizens, governments and private interests. Consequently, it is appropriate to attempt a critical overview of governance issues around the formation and implementation of environmental policies designed under the framework of sustainable development. After a brief introduction on how global perceptions about sustainable development have evolved, this article subsequently focuses attention on the main thrust of the emerging international environmental regime, and the multilateral environmental treaties embodied in it. Specific governance issues pertaining to environmental policies are also critically reviewed, particularly interrelations with the trade regime. The article concludes by spelling out some comments on research issues for the future, with a view to charting the environmental governance agenda lying ahead of us.     

Managing governance complexity and knowledge networks in transparency initiatives: the case of police open data

Public organisations are often described as being subject to types of complexity that result from the interorganisational structure of governance networks. Transparency programmes add another level of complexity due to increased information openness. However, neither the nature of this complexity nor the network management approaches needed for transparency programmes has been conceptually developed. To address this gap, this article brings together governance complexity theory and knowledge management theory. An empirical model is tested using the case of police open data with regression analysis and 22 expert interviews. The results show that institutional and environmental complexity such as budget pressures, legal-normative constraints, and task complexity exert a negative influence on police information openness. However, network knowledge management practices including developing mission focus on people and communication and overcoming organisational boundaries through interorganisational collaboration can counteract these problems of complexity.     

BLAMING THE VICTIM; THE ROLE OF DECISION-MAKERS IN THE OCCURRENCE OF ENVIRONMENTAL INJUSTICE

ABSTRACT

Past research on environmental justice concerns has focused primarily on the siting of hazardous waste facilities. Less research has been done on other aspects of environmental policy in which concerns of racial or other injustices arise. This study shows that environmental injustice is not limited to the sitting of hazardous facilities or the occurrence of pollution, but occurs also at the policy formation and implementation stages in other areas such as solid waste management. To study this issue, this study focuses on the implementation of the Illinois Solid Waste Management Act of 1988, in two counties in north-eastern Illinois, Kankakee and Will. In neither of the two counties were minorities included in the planning process, and out of a total of 91 advisory committee members, minority interests were represented by only one black male. At the same time racial minorities made up about 15 percent of the total population in the two counties.

The study shows that the main reason for this lack of representation is not a lack of environmental concern among blacks. Nor can it be explained by a lack of interest in participation in environmental decision-making among blacks. Rather, the study shows that the process is led by misconceptions among planners and decision-makers who generally believe that blacks are not interested in environmental issues and therefore not interested in participating in environmental decision-making. The conclusion of this study is that it is the belief held by local planners and decision-makers that there is a lack of interest in environmental issues among blacks, that produced a planning process in which the interest of minorities were not represented.     

THE FIGHT OVER DANISH NATURE: EXPLAINING POLICY NETWORK CHANGE AND POLICY CHANGE

The policy network approach is widely recognized for its ability to describe different networks. Adding the concepts ‘policy image’ and ‘cleavage in the party system’ makes it possible to explain policy network change as well as policy change. This argument is supported by a comparison of the Danish decision in 1960 to straighten Denmark's largest river, the Skjern River, to gain farmland, and the 1987 decision to restore the river and recreate the wild nature of the river valley. The fight over Danish nature has historically been a fight between a land reclamation network and a nature protection network – two networks trying to promote different policy images. Coupled with a new (environmental) cleavage in the party system, new policy images connected to the Skjern River decisions led to radical policy changes.     

Metaphors of Governance in Central and Eastern Europe: Multi-level,Asymmetrical or Variable Geometry?

Theories of multi-level and network governance have been applied to changes derived from processes of Europeanisation. These theories reflect vertical and horizontal interdependencies which may erode the power of the central state vis-à-vis supra-national and regional layers of governance. This paper suggests that through the enlargement process institutional adaptation has been uneven and led to the creation of a democratic deficit. It suggests that metaphors of asymmetry or variable geometry better reflect the reality of fluidity and dynamism in the distribution of powers at differing territorial levels in accession states.     

Currency crises in emerging markets: a comparative analysis of the mexican and turkish cases

The study aims to explore characteristics of currency crises in emerging markets. Two recent experiences in Mexico and Turkey respectively analyzed carefully to identify common elements in the development and eruption of the crises. Results of the study suggest that there are several background factors and triggers that were consistent in both cases. Finally a discussion of the policy implications of the findings concludes the study.