Aligning top‐down and bottom‐up in development planning: The case of Bhutan

Effective planning makes a vital contribution to developmental success. It is generally perceived as being either centralized (top‐down) or decentralized (bottom‐up). Centralized planning dominated the early development decades, but disappointing results greatly lessened its appeal and paved the way for participatory and decentralized planning. Both types of planning are evident today, but the question has arisen as to whether top‐down and bottom‐up planning can be successfully combined into one effective, efficient, and popular system. This question is examined through the case of Bhutan where central planning was introduced at the outset of the country's push for modernization and today leads the way in the country's pursuit of Gross National Happiness (GNH). However, central planning has been complemented with decentralized participatory planning at the subnational levels. Success in aligning the two planning modes has been achieved by incremental development of the planning system, orientation to the unifying national vision of GNH, a powerful central planning agency, actors at all levels who are able and knowledgeable in their planning roles, and processes that are well organized and proven to work to the satisfaction of all participants.     

The participatory principle in development projects: the costs and benefits of cooperation

Many development theorists and practitioners, including those in key agencies like the World Bank and UNDP, now see participation as critical to successful project implementation, and strongly support cooperative organizational systems. This article cautions against undue optimism about such forms of organization, and attempts to explain their limited success when they compete with private firms by applying rational choice theory to behaviour in cooperative systems. It examines the relevance of assumptions of self interest, opportunism and bounded rationality in such solidaristic organizations, then uses them to calculate the costs and benefits of using participatory systems. It shows that these costs are likely to outweigh the benefits in large organizations unless participatory processes are effectively associated with managerial autonomy, appropriate incentives, sanctions and hierarchies. © 1996 by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

When top‐down meets bottom‐up: Local adoption of social policy reform in China

Authoritarian local leaders face two driving forces in social policymaking: top‐down pressure from the regime and bottom‐up motivations derived from local conditions. Existing studies recognize the importance of both forces, but remain unclear as to how they interact and which of them is more influential in driving local policy adoption. Focusing on two health insurance integration policies in China, we find that when the policy entails substantial class or distributive conflicts and bureaucratic friction, top‐down pressure for compliance is a dominant driver for local policy adoption; when the policy does not entail such conflicts or bureaucratic infighting, bottom‐up motivations based on local economic geography together with top‐down pressure drive local adoption. We find support for this argument from an analysis of an original city‐level data set in China from 2004 to 2016. This study has implications for social policy reform, decentralization, and government responsiveness in authoritarian countries with multilevel governance.     

Making social science research applicable: The case of agricultural extension research in Egypt

One problem in the management of agricultural research is the integration of research and extension. The links between research and extension are tenuous for many reasons, including institutional and administrative factors that thwart collaboration; geographic isolation of extension staff; differences in status, prestige and educational attainment between extension workers and researchers; and motivational issues impeding stronger ties between extension and research personnel. This article argues that the problem with much research intended for extension audiences is that it is supply driven and not demand driven. Using a social science research unit within the Agricultural Research Center of the Egyptian Ministry of Agriculture as a case study, this article analyses the research produced by the unit and assesses its potential usefulness for extension. It then attempts to show why it does not reach this potential. Among the reasons are that the researchers lack experience and background in rural issues and agricultural extension; research results lag behind extension's need for the information; and there is no plan to disseminate the results to the extension community after research is completed. The article offers some suggestions for overcoming such barriers, including involving extension in the design of research projects and holding seminars on research results after projects are completed; changing the incentives for researchers to do more applied research; and diversifying the methods and disciplines used to conduct the research.     

The benefits and costs of the Section 8 housing subsidy program: A framework and estimates of first‐year effects

This paper provides estimates for a comprehensive set of social benefits and costs associated with the federal Housing Choice Voucher ( Section 8 ) program. The impact categories for which we provide empirical estimates include the value of the voucher to recipients; additional services and public benefits induced by voucher receipt; improvements in children's health, education, and criminal behaviors; the costs of voucher provision; the labor supply impacts on voucher recipients; and community effects. These estimates rest largely on empirical analyses of the effect of voucher receipt on several recipient and taxpayer behaviors and outcomes that occur in the first year of voucher receipt. The analysis distinguishes benefits and costs accruing to program participants, nonparticipants—including taxpayers and property owners—and society as a whole. Our analysis suggests that the program is likely to meet the efficiency standard of positive net social benefits. © 2011 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Public–private partnerships and developing‐country agriculture: Evidence from the international agricultural research system

This study examines the role of public–private partnerships (PPPs) in promoting pro‐poor productivity‐enhancing technological innovation in the international agricultural research system. The study examines the extent to which PPPs are being used to overcome market and institutional failures that otherwise inhibit the development and dissemination of technologies targeted specifically to small‐scale, resource‐poor farmers in developing countries. Drawing on a survey of 75 PPP projects in the international system, findings suggest that while PPPs are changing the way the system manages its research agenda, few partnerships lead to joint innovation processes with the private sector. This indicates the need for closer examination of organizational practices, cultures, and incentives in the international agricultural research system. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Transaction costs and inter‐jurisdictional cooperation: an application to land use collaboration

• The costs and benefits of inter‐jurisdictional cooperation and how these impede strategic alliances among jurisdictions is an issue of growing importance worldwide. The reason is the potential cost savings, efficiency increase and economic development benefits that can be realized through cooperation. The literature has increasingly mentioned transaction costs as obstacles that mitigate cooperation and as a key component of cooperation costs, which must be outweighed by cooperation benefits in order for communities to perceive advantageous strategic alliances. However, a framework is lacking in the literature for evaluating the implications of transaction costs for inter‐jurisdictional cooperation. This paper develops a framework for evaluating the nature and dynamics of transaction costs and their implications for inter‐jurisdictional cooperation, with an application to land use. A simple cost function model is used to explain the costs and challenges associated with managing coordinated, cooperative or consolidated relationships, and the dynamics of such costs. The analysis highlights the importance of such things as degree of complexity, inter‐party diversity and the relative sizes of collaborating partners. An application to land use cooperation in Michigan suggests that policies to eliminate transaction costs could help reduce the barriers to cooperation of various types.

Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Structure,culture and passivity: a case study of women in a semi‐state organization

Much of the Irish semi‐state sector is still characterized by permanent employment within male‐dominated hierarchical structures. This case study focuses on a rural semi‐state organization with a statutory obligation as regards the economic, social and cultural development of a particular geographical area. Documentary material showed that it was highly skewed in gender terms, with men holding the overwhelming majority (93 per cent) of the higher positions, and women the overwhelming majority (89 per cent) of the lower positions. Such patterns are by no means atypical as regards state and semi‐state structures. Drawing on qualitative material from taped focus group sessions with roughly 80 per cent of the women employed in this organization, the article illustrates the multifaceted ways (structural, cultural and individual) in which women's position at the lower levels of that organization was maintained. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Regulatory harmonization and agricultural biotechnology in Argentina and China: Critical assessment of state‐centered and decentered approaches

The international harmonization of technology‐related regulations seeks certain norms across diverse contexts. Harmonization efforts are based primarily on the promulgation of state‐centered command and control forms of regulation, though they may also be accompanied by the diffusion of more plural approaches that are decentered from the state. We contrast the ways in which the “proper” use of transgenic cotton seed technologies is understood in harmonizing regulations with the way this technology is used in practice in regions of Argentina and China. We find divergence that poses challenges for both state‐centered and decentered approaches to harmonization. While state‐centered approaches are blind to some critical processes on the ground, decentered strategies are found wanting in situations where norms remain deeply contested amongst actors situated in very uneven power relations. In both cases, we find that establishing and securing norms that are socially just and environmentally sustainable means attending much more explicitly to the political economies in which technological practices actually take root.     

Redistribution of revenues under a prototypical prospective payment system: characteristics of winners and losers.

A variety of prospective payment programs have been implemented over the past decade in attempts to contain the rapidly escalating costs of providing hospital care. Eventually the hospital bills of most Americans are likely to be reimbursed on the basis of preset prices. In this simulation study the most important of the existing cost-containment programs, Medicare's Prospective Payment System, is extended to all hospital patients in order to estimate the revenue redistributions likely to take place as more and more comprehensive prospective rate-setting programs are enacted. After discussion of the methodology and results of the empirical section, the study considers several major policy issues facing the hospital industry and the likely responses by the industry.     

Reciprocal causation in a model of the vote: Replication and extension

Page and Jones, and others, have argued that recursive models of the vote fail to take account of the inherent complexity of the decision processes involved and that estimates from these models are prone to errors, which result in understatement of the amount of policy voting. They propose a causal structure, in which reciprocal influences are modeled explicitly, and estimate its parameters with partially independent samples from two presidential elections. Their model, however, is restricted to presidential contests and omits economic issues. Similarly, the literature on economic voting has ignored the presence of potential reciprocal influences on economic policy attitudes. This paper develops a novel measure of economic issue preferences, modifies the earlier model to include both economic and social issues, and tests the model on data from an independent sample of voters in the 1978 congressional elections. Estimates from the elaborated model generally comport well with the results obtained by Page and Jones, and the findings show a higher degree of economic issue voting than most previous studies.     

Business virtual system in the context of e‐governance: Investigation of secure access to information resources

Contemporary digital age proposes different opportunities in the public, social, private, and business areas based on remote access to distributed resources placed in virtual, cloud, educational, governmental, business, smart, and so forth environments. In this reason, the e‐governance is realized on the basis of digital communications between different parties that requires strong protection of the information resources and personal data. The digital sustainability is an important task for e‐governance in the digital world. Article deals with principles of correct protection of the information resources (including in the cloud) by using strong procedures for access regulation of the external clients. Organization of Information Security Management System for identification, registration, authentication, and authorization of the requests is discussed. An investigation of the proposed functionality is made on the basis of stochastic analytical modelling by using the apparatus of Markov chains and statistical processing and interpretation of the obtained results.     

Three roads to institutionalisation: Vote‐, office‐ and policy‐seeking explanations of party switching in Poland

Party institutionalisation is a central problem in political science. The literature tends to understand it as a syndrome and therefore has difficulty explaining variations. This article suggests a new approach based on the transaction between a legislative party and its deputies, the failure of which is observable in party switching. Three routes to institutionalisation are identified by appealing to the vote‐seeking, office‐seeking or policy‐seeking motivations of deputies. Poland has had a large volume of party switching, along with wide variation in the incentives facing differently‐motivated deputies. Survival analyses of switching in four Polish parliaments find that vote‐seeking is the most likely route to institutionalisation for Polish parties. Moreover, in this article a concrete hypothesis is established for comparative testing: legislative parties can survive as long as their popular support exceeds 40 per cent of their share in the previous election.     

State-led bricolage and the extension of collective governance: Hybridity in the Swiss skill formation system

This paper explores the extension of collective governance to sectors without collective governance tradition. We introduce the concept of state-led bricolage to analyze the expansion of the Swiss apprenticeship training system – in which employer associations fulfill core collective governance tasks – to economic sectors in which training had previously followed a school-based and state-oriented logic. In deindustrializing societies, these sectors are key for the survival of collectively governed training systems. Through a mixed-methods analysis, we examine the reform process that led to the creation of new intermediary organizations that enable collective governance in these sectors. In addition, we compare the organizational features of these organizations with the respective organizations in the traditional crafts and industry sectors. We find that the new organizations result from state-led bricolage. They are hybrid organizations that reflect some of the bricoleur's core policy goals and critically build on the combination of associational and state-oriented institutional logics.     

Reinventing government through on‐line citizen involvement in the developing world: a case study of taipei city mayor's e‐mail box in Taiwan

Since the 1980s, a global administrative reform movement is reshaping the relationship between citizens and state. A major concern is how government can be more responsive to the governed through citizen participation. However, the more citizens participate, the more costly it is to govern. And the application of new information and communication technology (ICT) seems to be a cure for this limitation. In this research, authors take the Taipei City Mayor's e‐mail‐box (TCME) in Taiwan as a case to illustrate the complex relationships among citizen involvement, e‐government and public management. After a series of empirical investigations, the authors show that although ICT can reduce the cost of citizen involvement in governing affairs, it cannot increase citizens' satisfaction with government activities without reforming the bureaucratic organisation, regulatory structure, and managerial capacities of the public sector. The results could be helpful to public managers in planning and evaluating online governmental services in the developing countries. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The Impact of Elections on Cooperation: Evidence from a Lab‐in‐the‐Field Experiment in Uganda

Communities often rely on sanctioning to induce public goods contributions. Past studies focus on how external agencies or peer sanctioning induce cooperation. In this article, we focus instead on the role played by centralized authorities, internal to the community. Combining “lab‐in‐the‐field” experiments with observational data on 1,541 Ugandan farmers from 50 communities, we demonstrate the positive effect of internal centralized sanctioning authorities on cooperative behavior. We also show that the size of this effect depends on the political process by which authority is granted: subjects electing leaders contribute more to public goods than subjects who were assigned leaders through a lottery. To test the ecological validity of our findings, we relate farmers’ behavior in the experiment to their level of cooperation in their community organization. We show that deference to authority in the controlled setting predicts cooperative behavior in the farmers’ natural environment, in which they face a similar social dilemma.     

Sustainable development challenges in a war‐torn country: Perceived danger and psychological well‐being

The laborer's physical and mental health, well‐being, and happiness are among the major indicators for measuring each nation's sustainable development. A conflictive and hostile external environment (war zone) poses considerable difficulty and psychological distress to workers and nonworkers. Therefore, working in such a physically dangerous business environment may hurt worker's well‐being and happiness that in turn may reduce the workers' productivity at the workplace. A high level of laborers' productivity in public and private sectors is essential for achieving sustainable development in the long term. Therefore, this paper examines the effects of perceived danger on employees' psychological well‐being in war‐torn Afghanistan, an issue being addressed for the first time. We tested the moderating role of social support from coworkers on this effect in order to have a broader vision of which individuals are healthier and happier in a physically dangerous working environment. Two survey data sets were collected from 190 employees working in various small private and public businesses in Herat, Afghanistan. Our results reveal the negative impact of perceived danger on employees' psychological well‐being and that employees who receive little or no social support from their peers feel the negative effects of a physically dangerous working condition even more acutely.