Subnational Economic Nationalism? The contradictory effects of decentralization in Peru

Across the third world, transnational corporations (TNCs) and subnational governments (SNGs) are coming into new forms of contact as a result of liberalization and decentralization. Despite scholarly expectations that subnational governments will respond by seeking out foreign direct investment, in much of Latin America these governments are confronting rather than courting transnational corporations. Conceptualizing this phenomenon as ‘subnational economic nationalism’, the article explores both how subnational governments are challenging neoliberalism and why these challenges often fail to subvert neoliberal outcomes. By examining two struggles against transnational capital that had different outcomes but that took place within a single subnational jurisdiction (Arequipa, Peru), the article argues that decentralization can work at cross purposes. While voters are increasingly demanding that elected subnational officials adopt nationalist positions vis-à-vis TNCs, these same officials often seek financial support from TNCs so that they can compete successfully in the subnational elections that have been introduced by political decentralization.     

Civil society and spaces for natural resource governance in Kenya

Abstract

In the Kenyan context of new resource discoveries and an ambitious devolution programme, and what is argued to be a shrinking of civic space globally, the role of civil society organisations (CSOs) working on natural resource governance is critical. The resilience, space and capacity of civil society to engage in the policy process, from community-based organisations to national non-governmental organisations, all shape outcomes in terms of legislation, policy and management of scarce resources. Drawing on interviews with CSOs from across Kenya, following the new 2010 constitution and devolution programme, this article explores how new negotiated spaces of participation around resource governance have emerged in Kenya. Using multidimensional frameworks to analyse power relations, it explores how Kenyan CSOs are cautiously redefining roles, offering expertise when devolved governments struggle, and standing up to powerful interests of corporate lobbies with varying degrees of success.     

Global Pressures,National Policies,and Labor Rights in Latin America

This paper examines the impact of countervailing external pressures on labor rights in 17 Latin American countries. On the one hand, these countries have been urged to reform their labor laws and practices to comply with international labor standards, including protections for the collective rights of workers. On the other hand, they have been pressured to adopt more flexible labor markets, which often undermine collective labor organization. After dividing the countries by the type of political regime that prevailed when the pattern of relations between labor and the state was being established, the paper presents and explains the results of indices created to measure two outcomes: labor standards and labor market flexibility. It then analyzes the impact of four types of external actors (the ILO, national governments pursuing trade agreements, multinational corporations, and international financial institutions) on these outcomes, both de jure and de facto. The paper's main finding is that these actors have had an impact on labor outcomes in the region, but that their influence is heavily mediated by domestic factors, particularly historical legacies of state-labor relations.     

MANAGING PUBLIC CONSULTATION: A CONCEPTUAL FRAMEWORK AND EMPIRICAL FINDINGS FROM BELGIAN CASE STUDIES

This article addresses the question of how governments can set up and manage, in an increasingly complex policy environment, processes of public consultation that lead to good outcomes. Drawing upon insights of democratic theory and literature on network and interactive governance, the article discusses the organization and outcomes of public consultation processes. The analysis of four Belgian cases shows that the absence of open process rules does not prevent good outcomes. Second, the level of managerial autonomy is positively correlated with the intensity of process design and management. Third, cases with intensive process design and management have better overall results. These findings question some normative assumptions in the literature, positing the need for open process rules regarding entrance, scope of discussion, and interaction. Intensive process design and management with rules properly accommodating the policy situation is possibly a better means of achieving good results than rule openness. These findings challenge the need for legislation stipulating in detail who needs to be consulted, about what, and how.     

Europeanization, Whitehall Culture and the Treasury as Institutional Veto Player: A Constructivist Approach to Economic and Monetary Union

This article examines Europeanization in Whitehall, using EMU as a case study. It argues that how the EMU policy community has developed within Whitehall, and its outcomes, cannot be captured using a narrow, rationalist game-theoretic frame-work. Although strategic behaviour is important, as Dyson and Featherstone (1999) argue, the primary question is how Whitehall players have defined British interests, formed a collective identity and given a specific meaning to the EMU game. The article applies a cultural approach to Whitehall, focusing on the macro structures of belief within which EMU policy is made.     

The legacy of subalternity and Gramsci’s national–popular: populist discourse in the case of the Islamic Republic of Iran

Drawing on Laclau’s concept of populist discourse and Gramsci’s ‘national–popular collective will’, and using the case of Iran, this article puts forward the idea of the legacy of subalternity in the context of post-revolution governments. The concept of ‘national–popular collective will’ facilitates an understanding of how the popular subject is constructed and the meanings embedded in that process. It is argued that Islamic Republic elites articulate a populist discourse that constructs the ‘self’ (the Islamic Republic) as synonymous with ‘the people’. Embedded in this discursive construction is a legacy of subalternity that goes back to the 1979 Revolution’s populist discourse.     

‘We are this hybrid’: Members’ search for organizational identity in an institutionalized public–private partnership

There has been significant scholarly interest in organizational hybridity, the combination of multiple institutional logics in one entity. However, the extant research has mainly studied the implications for organizations and individuals, neglecting the challenges for organizational members as a collective. To mitigate, this article examines how members of a British institutionalized public–private partnership grapple with the question of what their organization may be, highlighting the confusion they are experiencing and their attempts to overcome it. Drawing on the concept of organizational identity (theorized as the outcome of collective sensemaking), the analysis identifies two mechanisms that recursively connect the organization and its members. Relational positioning draws on possible configurations of institutional logics and associated identity resources while discursive framing captures members’ hopes and expectations. The main contribution of this article is a better understanding of collective sensemaking in hybrid organizations in the light of institutional complexity.     

The role of local government in rural communities: culture-based development strategies

ABSTRACT

This paper discusses local development and various governance strategies that local governments can use to engage actors in rural communities and resources from a broader environment to achieve desired socio-economic outcomes. We ask: How can local governance vary in rural communities? How can governance arrangements lead to contrasting socio-economic outcomes? Our conceptual framework combines a typology of local governance roles with socio-economic outcomes associated with neo-endogenous development theory. We explore culture-based development projects from three rural communities. We find that local governance strategies vary between relatively similar rural communities and that they represent compromises in terms of socio-economic outcomes. Local government in rural communities can act strategically through use of local networks. Local governance here is best understood as an emergent quality of the local context, history, institutions, culture, and, power relations. Therefore, governance strategies in rural contexts should be based on careful reflection on potential roles, trade-offs and desirable outcomes.     

Political Consensus and Fiscal Outcomes

It is becoming difficult to maintain consensus in a period of economic austerity, and this possibly challenges the ability of democratic institutions to take decisions on tough economic questions. In order to find out how political consensus influences fiscal outcomes, this article sets out to analyse the association between political consensus and public expenditure growth. The results show that political consensus is positively associated with both budgeted and actual expenditure growth, but also negatively associated with budget overruns. This indicates that political consensus comes at a cost, while at the same time politicians may be better at sticking to budgets if political consensus exists. The analysis is based on a pooled regression analysis of the local governments in Denmark in the years 2008 and 2009 using a data set combining survey data with administrative data on the local governments.     

Financing the capital budget: change and transition

The changes in intergovernmental finance which occurred in the 1980s have impacted the traditional roles of state and local governments in many areas. The changing roles of such governments in the financing of infrastructure and public capital investments have been particularly pronounced. Their growing responsibilities in infrastructure finance has led to an enhanced emphasis on capital budgeting and on developing new initiatives in the capital financing arena. This article explores the impact of such changes on the strategies that are and will, probably, be employed by state and local governments to finance future capital acquisitions in a changing economy and intergovernmental fiscal environment.     

Moroccan Diaspora in France and the February 20 Movement in Morocco

ABSTRACT

This article analyzes the links between the so-called 20 February 2011 Movement in Morocco and the Moroccan migrant organizations in France. The research examines how the 50-year-long history of these organizations shapes Moroccan migrants' political experiences and their ties to homeland in order to explain why they do not play a significant role in the events unfolding in Morocco in 2011. To this end, concepts such as diaspora and transnationalism are mobilized to grasp how activists are connecting to places and territories and reducing the distance between them, while preserving a certain unity in their collective action.     

State Involvement and Forest Co-Governance: Evidence from the Indian Himalayas

This article contributes to the literature on collective action around environmental co-governance by statistically analyzing original data on the experiences of 95 communities in the Indian Himalayas. We compare the performance of co-governance versus indigenous governance institutions, taking into account the causal influence of five classes of independent variables. Our analysis suggests that close involvement of government officials is negatively associated with efforts to manage forests sustainably. We identify contextual conditions that help explain why involvement of state officials has adverse consequences on resource governance outcomes. Our findings are relevant for studies of decentralization policies related to natural resource management that governments are currently pursuing in more than 60 countries.     

Local elected administrators’ career characteristics and revenue diversification as a managerial strategy

Local governments have endeavoured to be fiscally better prepared against adverse economic downturns, and revenue diversification (RD) is considered one of such efforts. This study examines how Korean local governments have utilised diversification as a managerial strategy between 2007 and 2010. Focusing on local elected administrators’ (LEAs’) previous career, it reports that local governments with administrators with business experiences diversify revenues more than those with politics-turned administrators. It further finds that the effects of socio-economic and institutional factors are moderated by administrators’ career characteristics. Based on such evidence, theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Integration or Building Resilience: What Should the Goal Be in Refugee Resettlement?

The article presents a qualitative study of 110 providers and administrators of refugee services from four countries: United States, Switzerland, Germany, and Iceland. Of the total participants, 28 were male and 82 were female. The sample consisted of 83 social workers who provided direct services to refugees and 27 administrators who managed the programs. The interviews occurred over a period of 3 years from January 2014 to January 2017. The participants described what they perceived to be the goals of resettlement and the successful outcomes of their work with refugees. Findings show that providers and administrators varied in what they believed to be the goals and outcomes, with three main differences emerging: (1) lessening the transition burden; (2) acquisition of language and securing self-sufficient employment; and (3) enhancing the integration of resilience within the refugee. These differences are discussed in terms of how they differ in resources required and in outcomes. The implications of these differences are addressed.     

BETWEEN STATE AND SERVICE INDUSTRY: GROUP AND COLLECTIVE WEDDINGS IN COMMUNIST SHANGHAI, 1949–1956

Abstract

Group weddings have commonly been associated with Republican China under Guomindang rule. Wedding ceremonies involving multiple couples, however, continued to be held in the People’s Republic of China throughout the 1950s and after. During the early 1950s, Shanghai’s commercial group wedding agencies marketed their services to local couples, and district governments organized what they termed “collective weddings,” hoping that couples would be more amenable to state marriage registration if they could participate in a ceremony. In 1956, the municipal government considered instituting a unified collective ceremony across Shanghai. By examining meeting minutes, letter exchanges, and records of internal government and business discussions, this article explores entrepreneurial and governmental attempts to standardize Shanghai’s group and collective weddings. Although commercial group weddings and state collective ceremonies served different purposes, their proponents faced similar organizational difficulties in the search for a standardized, economical wedding ceremony befitting “New China.”     

Resource powers? Minerals,energy and the rise of the BRICS

The rise of new economic powers has seen increasing attention focused on the international role of the BRICS countries. Importantly, a common feature uniting the BRICS is that they are all resource-rich, and many analysts (and some BRICS governments) have argued that natural resources are one of the key factors propelling the rise of the group. This article explores the BRICS’ emerging status as ‘resource powers’, examining how resource wealth underpins their economic development and foreign policy strategies, and thus contributes to their growing influence in international affairs. It is argued that through the use of nationalistic mining and energy policies, the BRICS governments have exploited natural resources for both domestic economic and international diplomatic objectives. However, there are several challenges and emerging risks facing the BRICS’ resource strategies, which mean that resource wealth is making a positive – though inherently limited – contribution to the growing international status of the group.     

Why (most) Indonesian businesses fear the ASEAN Economic Community: struggling with Southeast Asia’s regional corporatism

By the end of 2015 the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) had ushered in a common market, the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC). However, the groups most affected by it – small businesses – were bypassed in the decision-making process. They are the victims of a selectively inclusive state corporatism which member countries have transferred from their domestic political system to the regional level. In this article I argue that the decision to create the AEC was promoted by ASEAN governments together with foreign economic and local corporate interests. This coalition was able to frame the AEC in a way that small businesses perceived it as a win-win scheme. Empirically the article focuses on Indonesia.     

The Politics of Administrative Reforms in Ghana: Perspectives from Path Dependency and Punctuated Equilibrium Theories

Since 1957, various Ghanaian governments have made, and continue to make, attempts to reform the administrative state for development. In spite of this, not much seems to have been achieved over the years. Why has the passion of successive governments for reforming the administrative system failed to yield the desired outcomes? What is the nexus between regime turnover and frequent administrative reforms? Where do we want to go, and what will take us there or at least close to our intended destination? What approach is likely to maximize the chances of success and minimize those of failure? We argue that administrative reforms in Ghana have been consistently undermined by the discontinuity of reform initiatives undertaken by successive governments; the inability to have a “national agenda for development”; continuous reliance on expatriates as consultants and advisers; over-reliance on multinational institutions for financial support; and by the absence of a “developmental state.”     

HOW POLITICIANS AND BUREAUCRATS NETWORK: A COMPARISON ACROSS GOVERNMENTS

Effective public administration relies on the passage of information through interpersonal communication networks. While we have a vast research literature concerning formal structures and roles in organizations, including public agencies and government institutions, we know far less about the flow of information through semiformal, voluntary interactions. In this paper we use a large survey to explore the networking patterns of politicians and bureaucrats and to compare these with the more formal structural attributes of hierarchy and functional specialization. Social network analysis and standard quantitative measures are used to examine which actors are most central in advice and strategic information networks and how this varies across governments. The results suggest that the communication networks of politicians and bureaucrats differ substantially, with politicians being surprisingly peripheral in their patterns of interaction. Differences across governments are also observed with some municipalities being markedly more hierarchical, cross‐organizational, and externally focused in their networking behaviour.