Cross-border metropolitan governance: the multi-faceted state power

Metropolitan regions have become one of the most appropriate scales to define efficient governance networks for economic and territorial development. The state still is the key actor of these partnerships. Yet the question remains whether cross-border metropolitan regions represent a new point of reference that puts state power in question or whether they only reorganize it. The centrality of state power will be examined by looking at two networks of actors (public transport and territorial marketing) working at the Eurometropolis Lille–Kortrijk–Tournai. The results reveal that a triple-faceted state power has emerged to define and organize cross-border metropolitan management.     

Bridging the divide between parent states and secessionist entities: a new perspective for conflict management?

This paper departs from the contested nature of the border that separates each side in secessionist conflict – the parent state considers this as an internal administrative line; the de facto state, conversely, sees this as an international border. The argument made builds upon the theoretical aspects of the bordering practices in the current literature, and then examines three cross-border cases – Mainland China-Taiwan, Cyprus-Northern Cyprus and Moldova-Transnistria, to demonstrate different patterns of cross-border interactions and their achieved outcomes. It questions why border-crossing practices have either brought about normalization in degrees, or with a questionable value? This paper makes the conclusion that although border-crossing practices have normalized relations between adversaries, they have also simultaneously brought along self-perpetuating separation as most of the divisions still persist today. Redefining borders and facilitating cross-border interactions has only had a limited contribution to conflict management.     

Netzwerkstruktur, Handlungslogik und politische Räume: Institutionenwandel in europäischen und nordamerikanischen Grenzregionen

This paper is a contribution to the debate on political order and governance in a “debordered world” beyond the “Westphalian system”. It is based on empirical information about the development and change of political institutions in cross-border regions in Europe and North America in the 20th century. First, it is shown that the nation state is loosing its gate keeper role at the end of the century and that various sub-national actors institutionalise independent cross-border links or participate on an equal footing. Therefore, the pattern of interaction is changing from formal hierarchies to networks. Nevertheless, if we define hierarchies and networks as modes of governance, we cannot conform such a change since the mode of interaction has not changed over the years. There does not exist and never has existed any other mode of interaction as “negotiated agreement”. What has changed is the institutional logic for finding such a cross-border agreement. Whereas older institutions were designed to find a common solution by using a technocratic-deductive logic, younger institutions use a symbolic-inductive logic (mainly in Europe). In North America they are based either on a rationalistic-evolutionary logic (at the US-Mexican border) or on a discursive-constructivist logic (in the Pacific Northwest). Also in respect to the much proposed tendency towards “deterritorialization” of political orders we find strong differences between the continents: Whereas in Europe even the younger institutions are based on “spaces of place”, in North America the more recent institutions are much more oriented towards “spaces of flows”.     

跨域治理中的政府行为及其互动机制研究--基于广佛地铁建设和水污染治理的案例比较

随着区域一体化的发展,地区间联系愈发密切,传统的行政区划界限逐渐被打破,公共事务日趋复杂化、多元化与无界化,大量区域性公共问题出现,跨域治理作为新的治理模式应运而生。研究跨域治理中政府的动机、机制及行为对于有效解决区域公共问题意义重大。广佛同城化作为我国城市间合作的先行者,在两市基础设施、产业发展、环境保护等方面展开了跨域治理的大量实践探讨。以广佛地铁建设与跨界水污染治理为例,通过执行动力、协调难度与作用机制等三个维度的分析框架,解释跨域治理效果背后的机理与原因,可以发现议题属性是影响跨域治理效果的基础前提;不同层级政府部门的动机诉求导致执行动力强弱程度的差异,影响跨域治理的正式达成与治理进程;政府主体的结构复杂程度与职责分工清晰程度决定治理协调难度;跨域治理中政府主体的行为策略内含政府间的权力作用机制,纵向-横向权力作用机制的强弱程度影响跨域治理的运行效果。     

情境预防视阈下首都社区安全治理——基于北京市23个社区的调查分析

情境预防理论表明首都社区安全治理绝不能仅依赖警察为主体的国家强制力,而应通过社区情境的优化来达到"无为而治"的社区治理效果。基于对北京市23个社区的调查分析,发现社区物理环境显著影响着社区安全度,楼房社区-自住平房-公寓-出租平房形成自高至低的社区安全梯度,因此情境预防应融入社区物理环境的规划-设计-建设-维护流程。另外,社区社会情境同样显著影响着社区安全度,社会治安综合治理机制与社区警务机制作为安全网络的双重支柱,应由压力型体制下单向执行转向双向互动网络,而基于互联网与物联网的社区大数据平台应构成社区神经系统与实时自动监测系统。     

Dysfunctional state institutions,trust, and governance in areas of limited statehood

Areas of limited statehood where the state is absent or dysfunctional are rarely ungoverned or ungovernable spaces. The provision of rules and regulations, as well as of public goods and services – governance – does not necessarily depend on the existence of functioning state institutions. How can this be explained? To begin with, we identify functional equivalents to state institutions that fail to govern hierarchically. Moreover, we focus on informal institutions based on trust that are endogenous to areas of limited statehood. Personalized trust among community members enables actors to overcome collective action problems and enhances the legitimacy of governance actors. The main challenge in areas of limited statehood, which are often characterized by social heterogeneity and deep social and cultural cleavages (particularly in post‐conflict societies) is to move to generalized trust beyond the local level and to “imagined communities among strangers,” despite dysfunctional state institutions. We propose two mechanisms: First, the more group‐based identities are constructed in inclusive ways and the more group identities are cross‐cutting and overlapping, the more they lead to and maintain generalized trust. Second, experiences with fair and impartial institutions and governance practices – irrespective of whether state or non‐state – also lead to generalized trust beyond the local level and allow for the upscaling of governance.     

Who is responsible for what? Clarity of responsibilities in multilevel states: The case of Spain

There is a theoretical disagreement between the classical normative positive view on decentralisation, which states that the fragmentation of power shifts policy more closely into line with citizens' preferences, and a more recent critical view that states that decentralisation blurs attribution of responsibility. This disagreement can only be resolved by refining the understanding of specific institutional designs. The theoretical claim in this article is that the relation between multilevel governance and clarity of responsibilities is contingent upon the type of decentralisation in place. To test this proposition, individual data from an asymmetrically decentralised system – the Spanish State of Autonomies – are used. Results show that the relationship between decentralisation and clarity of responsibility has a u‐shape. Responsibility attribution is clearer in regions with high and low levels of decentralisation, where one level of government clearly predominates over the other, than in regions with a more intertwined distribution of powers.     

Governing disorder: the Australian Federal Police and Australia's new regional frontier

Abstract

The Australian Federal Police has in recent years become an important actor in both the implementation and design of Australian-led state building interventions in Australia's near region of Southeast Asia and the South Pacific. The article focuses on the recent expansion of the Australian Federal Police as a way of understanding the emergence of a new partly (and strategically) deterritorialized, ‘regional’ frontier of the Australian state. Within this new frontier, whose fluctuating outlines the Australian Federal Police not only polices but also to a considerable extent shapes and reshapes, as one of the primary expert agencies on identifying and managing transnational security risks, Australian security is portrayed as contingent on the quality of the domestic governance of neighbouring states, thereby creating linkages between the hitherto domestic governing apparatus of the Australian state and those of other countries. This allows for the rearticulation of the problems affecting intervened states and societies – indeed, their very social and political structures – in the depoliticized terms of the breakdown of ‘law and order’ and the absence of ‘good governance’, which not only rationalizes emergency interventions to stabilize volatile situations, but also delegitimizes and potentially criminalizes oppositional politics. The Australian Federal Police, however, does more than merely provide justification for intrusive state transformation projects. Its transnational policing activities open up a field of governance within the apparatus of intervened states that exists in separation from international and domestic law. The constitution of such interventions ‘within’ the state leaves intact the legal distinction between the domestic and international spheres and therefore circumvents the difficult issue of sovereignty. As a result, police and other executive-administrative actors obtain discretionary ordering powers, without dislodging the sovereign governments of intervened countries.     

New Governance, the Internet, and Country Code Top-Level Domains in Europe

Much academic work on governance in recent years has explored responses that states have made to sectors of the economy, usually historically well rooted nationally, that have been subject to globalizing pressures. Less work exists on responses that are being made to new parts of the economy emerging outside the nation state with inherently global characteristics. The Internet—and specifically its naming and addressing system—provides an example of how the state has aimed to assert public interest governance authority in a system initially absent of its influence. This article explores the nature and consequences of this activity in the process contributing to the study of the Internet and governance. Working within the limitations but also the opportunities created by policy norms developed at the global level, the article finds that the state has been instrumental in the development of novel public–private governance systems for Internet country code Top-Level Domains.     

Quality of government and regional competition: A spatial analysis of subnational regions in the European Union

Building on previous work on competition networks and governmental performance among British local governments, this article investigates the diffusion of government quality across subnational regions of Europe through strategic interaction with neighbouring regions or competitor regions more generally. The article demonstrates the presence of spatial interdependence using standard spatial regression models and controlling for common explanations of quality of government. In particular for regions with high levels of autonomy from the national government, there is clear adjustment in government quality to be seen in response to disparities with competitor regions. The article further investigates the intensity of this geographical effect separately in the north and south of Europe in order to estimate the potential for virtuous or vicious cycles of good governance in the two regions, respectively. It is found that while regions in the north develop relatively independently of each other but respond to competitive pressure across Europe, in the south regions demonstrate a higher level of local interdependence, increasing the possibility of virtuous cycles – but also of vicious ones.     

Adaptive governance for the Internet of Things: Coping with emerging security risks

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a disruptive innovation known for its socio-economic potential, but also for generating unprecedented vulnerabilities and threats. As a dynamic sociotechnical system, the IoT comprises well-known cybersecurity risks and endemic uncertainties that arise as IoT adoption increases and the system evolves. We highlight the impact of these challenges by analyzing how insecure IoT devices pose threats to both consumer protection and the Internet's infrastructure. While recent regulatory responses are starting to target IoT security risks, crucial deficiencies – especially related to the feedback necessary to keep pace with emerging risks and uncertainties – must be addressed. We propose a model of adaptive regulatory governance that integrates the benefits of centralized risk regulatory frameworks with the operational knowledge and mitigation mechanisms developed by epistemic communities that manage day-to-day Internet security. Rather than focusing on the choice of regulatory instruments, this model builds on the “planned adaptive regulation” literature to highlight the need to systematically plan for a knowledge-sharing interface in regulatory governance design for disruptive technologies, facilitating the feedback necessary to address evolving IoT security risks.     

Cyber insurance and private governance: The enforcement power of markets

In the last half decade, cyber insurance has emerged as a multi-billion-dollar industry with the authority to set and enforce standards of security behavior. Although cybersecurity has become a concern of national policymakers, insurers appear to have supplanted the state to play an influential role in governing some aspects of client behavior. This paper explores private governance by cyber insurance firms and evaluates two competing explanations for its emergence – either that the private sector advanced to set and enforce cybersecurity standards for financial gain, or that the state retreated from its responsibility to regulate and private sector actors filled the gap only as necessary. To find an answer between these explanations, this article develops a single outcome case study of the American cyber insurance industry. Following a theoretical introduction to private governance and its manifestation through insurance, the article examines the insurance process and its application in cybersecurity, the key role of standards, and the mechanism of enforcing those standards. The article concludes by identifying key elements of this market-based enforcement and discussing implications for crafting effective private governance in other domains and public policy.     

The Bordered World of Cross-border Cooperation: The Determinants of Local Government Contact Networks within Euroregions

The article discusses the determinants of local government contact networks within cross-border cooperation organizations (Euroregions). Relying on social capital theory, a combination of social network and qualitative analytical tools are applied on data from two Scandinavian and two East Central European cases. The analysis reveals that, even in favourable circumstances, contact networks are thin and Euroregions fail to develop into truly integrated political spaces. The analysis also shows that contact patterns on one side of the border, determined primarily by inter-municipal cooperation, will matter for how contact networks are formed across the border. The findings are important, as membership in a Euroregion is expected to foster cross-border political relationships that could have possible spillover effects in terms of encouraging policy cooperation outside the framework of the Euroregion, which in turn would enhance the likelihood of well-functioning cross-border governance spaces.     

Mediterranean regionalism from territory to trains: spatial politics and planning of macro-regions and transport networks in Spain

The contested planning of European macro-regions and Trans-European Transport Network (TEN-T) exemplifies the complexities of spatial politics, territorial and relational. What stratagems – discursive and cartographic – may regional actors employ in the process, and what can we learn from them? In context of European Union integration policies, we explore Spanish regional politics – discursive and cartographic – surrounding planning of cross-border regions and a TEN-T “Mediterranean Corridor” (and its alternatives). The contested remapping of macro-regions and transport networks reveals the role of spatial planning in the vertebració (structuration in Catalan) of European territory in distinct ways, as Mediterranean regionalism shifts from territoriality to trains.     

Making sense of multilevel governance and governance coordination in Brazil: The case of the Bolsa Verde Programme

Brazil is an example of a challenging governance context par excellence: continental size, multi-levelled governance structures and diverse administrative cultures meet with ambitious, large-scale policy needs and objectives. The multilevel governance approach is applied here to analyse implementation and governance coordination of the Bolsa Verde Programme (BVP). Through a close reading of the narratives told by three programme officials – and zooming in on jointly exercised governance functions known from the metagovernance approach – we analysed how BVP’s programmatic governance coordination was made sense of. The analysis showed that our interviewees were well aware of the shortcomings of the governance coordination in BVP, understood as rather hierarchical, centrally driven and often tackling challenges of vertical multi-actor coordination in a reactive ad-hoc manner. However, since the implementers have been able to creatively and skilfully solve governance coordination challenges, possibilities for developing more systematic and inclusive (meta)governance approaches seem feasible.     

Can private governance boost public policy? Insights from public–private governance interactions in the fisheries and electricity sectors

Based on the inductive analysis of two parallel cases of private environmental governance – private, market-driven fisheries governance and private, market-driven governance for electricity decarbonization – this paper uncovers a trigger for positive public policy spillovers from private environmental governance. It identifies circumstances that prompt groups of business actors working as private regulators to also take on a role as public policy advocates and supporters, revealing a potential for private governance initiatives that are targeted at a particular environmental problem to serve as a bolster for the public regulatory governance of that problem as well. Both private governance cases at the basis of this analysis feature groups of business actors seeking to meet voluntary sustainability goals through the tools of private governance (specifically, through flexing buyer power and private authority in an effort to reform environmentally problematic practices among particular groups of suppliers). In both cases, the business's inability to attain private sustainability goals though private governance means alone has given rise to business demand for facilitative public environmental policy and regulation. The analysis presented in this paper thus points to the occurrence of a particular and intriguing pattern of complementarity between private authority and public policy – one where public policy is called on to fill gaps left by private environmental governance and authority. And it identifies key conditions for such private-governance-driven recentering of public policy to occur, namely the presence of private supply chain greening goals and commitments that are economically, reputationally, and/or competitively critical for businesses to attain, combined with shortfalls in the capacity of businesses' private authority to bring about such attainment. The two case analysis further suggests the importance of ENGOs in identifying and activating some of the opportunities for leveraging shortfalls in private environmental governance to the advantage of public environmental policy and regulation.     

关于“中国国家治理”研究的方法论

科学考察中国国家治理,必须首先要搞清楚三个相互联系的方法论问题:一是,中国国家治理是处于一定的世界历史时空坐标系上的国家治理,中国现阶段的社会主要矛盾及其在当代世界历史中所处的位置,构成了这一世界历史时空坐标系。脱离开这一世界历史时空坐标系,关于中国国家治理的研究就会走入歧途。二是,新时代的中国国家治理越来越具有双重特性,即:国家作为治理对象和国家作为治理主体。国家作为治理对象与国家作为治理主体的有机统一,彰显了"新时代"中国共产党的领导、依法治国与人民当家作主的有机统一。中国国家治理体系和治理能力现代化的标准就蕴含在其中。三是,中国国家治理与全球治理既有区别又有联系。全面、正确地认识和把握中国国家治理与全球治理间的关系,对于科学考察中国国家治理至关重要。     

Coping with the Global Economic Crisis: The Regional Political Economy of Emergency Social Shock Absorbers in Italy

This article contributes to the debate on governing the global financial crisis, focusing on the regional governance of emergency social shock absorbers in Italy. The article seeks to make two related contributions. First, it argues that subnational governments have been the main drivers of change in labour market policies. Second, it shows that state–local governance elicited a path-altering system by ‘patching up’ a hybrid administrative structure and by ‘converting’ the traditional goals of social shock absorbers from income maintenance to welfare-to-work. The article provides qualitative evidence on the changing organizational bases of the labour markets of two large Italian regions: Lombardy and Emilia-Romagna. Evidence suggests that administrative innovation and path dependence intertwined in the governance of the global economic crisis in Italy, mitigating the entrenched distortions of labour market policies.     

“Because I am who I am and my mother is Scottish”: neoliberal planning and entrepreneurial instincts at Trump International Golf Links Scotland

Focusing on the establishment of the first European Trump Golf development – on the Menie Estate along the Scottish North Sea coast – the paper contends that neoliberal planning, understood as state interventions to allow individual entrepreneurs to realise their visions, reshapes both planning practice and the socio-ecologies governed by planning in problematic ways. Neoliberal mindsets here cause politicians to depart from previously established practices. The paper analyses how governance becomes tied up in questions of entrepreneurial freedom and with beliefs in the capacity of an individual entrepreneur to steer the fate of the region.     

国家建设与国家治理

中共十八届三中全会和四中全会所推出的“国家治理现代化”和“依法治国”概念,集中体现了新一届中央领导层治国理念的核心思想,也预示了未来中国政府改革的方向。从“国家建设”和“国家治理”的角度予以解读,并从国家运行“动力系统”和“制动系统”平衡、国家“上层制度”和“基础制度”构建、国家治理“传统方式”向“现代方式”转变的角度,说明国家治理改革的目标和任务,认为把“国家治理现代化”和“依法治国”作为施政理念,表明了执政当局对现代政治文明核心价值的认可,表达了执政党把中国送入法治轨道的意愿和决心。