Governing kidnap for ransom: Lloyd's as a “private regime”

Kidnap for ransom raises significant governance challenges. In the absence of formal regulation and enforcement, insurers have created an effective private governance regime to facilitate smooth commercial resolutions. Controlling ransoms is paramount: “supernormal” profits for kidnappers create kidnapping booms and undermine the market for insurance. Ransom control requires cooperation, but there are high transactions costs in enforcing a collusive agreement. The Coasean prediction is that a single firm will form to internalize the externalities arising from lax insurance and mismanaged ransom negotiations—or a government must order the market. There is indeed a single source of kidnap insurance: Lloyd's of London. Yet, within the Lloyd's market several insurers compete for business. Lloyd's is a club providing private governance: Its members issue standard contracts, follow the same regime for kidnap resolution, and exchange information to stabilize ransoms. Lloyd's, therefore, combines aspects of Coase's “single firm” and “government” solution to the externalities problem.     

Public choice in private markets

He has written widely on social and economic issues.     

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.     

Governing complex societal problems: The impact of private on public regulation through technological change

When addressing complex societal problems, public regulation is increasingly complemented by private regulation. Extant literature has provided valuable insights into the effectiveness of such complex governance structures, with most empirical studies focusing on how public regulation influences private regulation. Conversely, the impact of private on public regulation is less well studied. Here, we investigate this impact with a focus on technological change as possible mechanism. Based on a case study of energy efficiency in buildings in Switzerland, we find evidence of a symbiotic interaction between public and private regulation that leads to ratcheting-up of regulatory stringency. We identify technological change as the mechanism linking private and public regulation. We discuss the relevance of our findings for governance literature and regulators.     

The role of ECB communication in guiding markets

Public Choice - Economists and central bankers nowadays believe that forward guidance has become more important in a world in which key interest rates have hit their effective lower bounds (ELB)....     

Market making via regulation: The role of the state in carbon markets

Proponents as well as critics of carbon trading underestimate the institutional and political underpinnings of evolving carbon markets. Based on institutionalist approaches, this paper argues that the strong embeddedness of carbon markets explains why certain characteristics (positive and negative) materialize. Focusing on the actors who initiate and who influence carbon markets, this article also shows that currently only states and intergovernmental agreements provide the necessary regulation for carbon markets to exist and to work. Today, neither market actors nor NGOs nor public private partnerships have the political power to set up, regulate or capture evolving market structures. Thus, whether or not market‐based instruments bring about the desired results depends on good public regulation, which is – at least up to now – represented by the state. Four instances of the commodification of carbon serve as illustrations: the European Union Emission Trading System (EU ETS); the Clean Development Mechanism (CDM); the voluntary market; and new sectoral approaches, particularly Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Degradation (REDD+).     

Governing public–private partnerships: A systematic review of case study literature

Governance plays a critical role in determining the success and failure of public–private partnerships (PPPs). We conducted a systematic review of case study literature on PPP governance and developed a governance framework consisting of 21 issues in four groups: institutional, organizational, contractual, and managerial. Then, we investigate the dynamics of governance issues, including the relative importance, interrelationships, and connections with PPP success and failure. Results suggest that PPPs should emphasize cooperation, trust, communication, capability, risk allocation and sharing, competition, and transparency in their governance. We also found that the governance practice of emphasizing dominant and direct factors and ignoring recessive and indirect ones has hindered PPPs’ success.     

The role of the state in enabling private sector development: an assessment methodology

There are many ideas about how the state can and should enable private sector development. However, most of these ideas are not derived from the private sector itself. Participatory policy research has so far been confined to public sector development contexts. This article provides some background information about the garment and textile industry in Zimbabwe. It then describes one pioneering attempt to develop and assess an enabling state assessment methodology in this context, for possible use in the private sector more generally. The methodology described consists of a series of participant‐developed checklists, around the predetermined themes of the policy, agency and enterprise environments. These checklists were explored through the use of semi‐structured dialogue, using visual methods such as impact diagramming, Venn diagramming, master charts and problem trees, in the context of enterprise‐based meetings and two subsequent workshops. The article summarizes the main constraints and recommended actions identified by the participants. The participants, the researchers and the author also assess each step of the methodology.These steps include: developing an agenda; designing the process; identifying a target population and research team; developing and applying the methodology; analysing the results and documenting the process. Lessons are also drawn from this assessment for each stage of the methodology. This article concludes with a discussion about the transferability of the methodology and the need to experiment with other methodologies. The final section also draws out the differences and similarities between this and other types of participatory policy research. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

The private safety net: The role of charitable organizations in the lives of the poor

Abstract

As welfare reform unfolds, nonprofit social service agencies will increasingly be called upon to help fill the gap between what unskilled and semiskilled mothers can earn in the low‐wage labor market and what they need to meet their monthly expenses. This article draws on in‐depth interviews with low‐income single mothers and multiyear observational studies of two nonprofit social service agencies.

Using these data, the authors show what kinds of resources these agencies provide low‐income single mothers, how mothers mobilize the resources available, to what degree agencies actually contribute to mothers’ cash and in‐kind resources, how agencies distribute their resources, and what effect agencies’ distribution practices have on these women. The analysis shows that although nonprofit social service agencies are a crucial part of many low‐income mothers’ economic survival strategies, they cannot come close to substituting for the eroding public safety net.     

Governing sustainable palm oil supply: Disconnects,complementarities, and antagonisms between state regulations and private standards

The global palm oil value chain has grown in complexity; stakeholder relationships and linkages are increasingly shaped by new public and private standards that aim to ameliorate social and environmental costs while harnessing economic gains. Regulatory initiatives in the emerging policy regime complex struggle to resolve sector‐wide structural performance issues: pervasive land conflicts, yield differences between companies and smallholders, and carbon emissions arising from deforestation and peatland conversion. Identifying opportunities for more effective governance of the palm oil value chain and supply landscapes, this paper explores disconnects, complementarities, and antagonisms between public regulations and private standards, looking at the global, national, and subnational policy domains shaping chain actors’ conduct. Greater complementarities have emerged among transnational instruments, but state regulation disconnects persist and antagonisms prevail between national state regulations and transnational private standards. Emerging experimental approaches, particularly at subnational level, aim to improve coordination to both enhance complementarities and resolve disconnects.     

Rehearsing Citizenship: The Governing of Juvenile Delinquency in Colonial Malaya

This article traces the sudden problematisation and governing of juvenile delinquency in British colonial Malaya in the decade preceding independence in 1957 whereby a juvenile court system, a network of institutions for delinquents, and a series of training and disciplinary practices were set up to rehabilitate the delinquent in order to turn him into a responsible citizen. Drawing on the analytics of disciplinary and ethical practices conducted by Michel Foucault, it is argued that the governing of juvenile delinquency in colonial Malaya may be seen as a fundamental element of a wider assemblage of normalising techniques seeking to recast subjectivity from that of immature individuals into active and responsible self-governing ones, and that these techniques were highly dividing in that they produced not only what is taken to be good citizens but also delinquents. It is shown that Malaysian independence, far from leading to a break with these power-laden practices of citizenship, instead leads to their further development, dispersal and institutionalisation.     

执政体制:概念、结构和特征

构建科学的执政体制,是党的执政能力建设的重要内容,是实现科学执政的基础条件。党的执政体制就是党在执政过程中政党、国家和社会政治团体之间政治权力的配置、设置及其形成的规章制度和行为规范的总和。党的执政体制结构指党与其他政治主体之间所形成的政治关系体系,包括党与国家政权的关系、党与民主党派的关系、党与人民群众的关系等。党的执政体制具有阶级性、整体性、动态性的特征。     

Governing peacekeeping: the role of authority and expertise in the case of sexual violence and trauma

Abstract

The surprising authority of gender expertise on sexual violence within post-Cold War peacekeeping can be understood by tracing how sexual violence became linked with political torture and combat violence in peacekeeping security rationality. The linkage emerged from the development of Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder (PTSD) theory within anti-Vietnam war activism, which gained international authority during the 1980s. Post-Cold War narratives of ‘multi-dimensional’ peacekeeping as the policing and rehabilitation of perpetrators and victims for self-government drew on PTSD expertise on ‘integrity violations’, thus problematizing sexual violence. However, gender expertise should not be dismissed as providing ideological cover for imperialist projects: the contingent authority gender expertise has claimed has disrupted the peacekeeping narrative by representing peacekeeping operations as fostering flourishing sex industries in which integrity violations are a norm.     

Governing for the Mainstream: Implications for Community Representation

In this paper I begin by examining the role of extra-parliamentary institutions of representation within Australian democracy. I suggest that such institutions are an important supplement to majoritarian political institutions in ensuring that 'weak voices' are heard in the policy process. I then look at the impact of the Howard government on such extra parliamentary forms of community representation, drawing parallels with contemporaneous developments in Canada. I find that changes were in fact initiated under Labor governments, seeking to impose managerialist models on community-based representation. The further controls introduced by the Howard government have, however, seriously reduced the capacity of community-based peak bodies to represent their constituencies. These constraints create the danger of a less inclusive democracy, where the voices of those outside the mainstream can be ignored or misrepresented.     

Governing diversity: Dutch political parties' preferences on the role of the state in civic integration policies

This article analyses political debates about civic integration policies in the Netherlands, so as to identify different conceptions of the role of the state in ensuring social cohesion by governing diversity. Drawing on the literature on party systems, it presents an analysis of political party positions on the role of the state in civic integration along two dimensions: economic distribution on the one hand, and sociocultural governance on the other hand. I find that while the large majority of Dutch political parties adopt authoritarian positions on the sociocultural axis in favour of state intervention to protect Dutch culture and identity, their positions diverge significantly on the classic economic Left–Right dimension. The most contentious issue in Dutch civic integration politics is whether the state, the market or individual migrants should be responsible for financing and organising courses. Thus, this article proposes an innovative model for analysing the politics of citizenship, which enables us to comprehend how citizenship policies are shaped not only by views on how identity and culture relate to social cohesion, but also by diverging perspectives on socio-economic justice.     

Prison labor markets: The supply issue

Putting prisoners to work has widespread appeal, but the nature of prison labor markets suggests that prisoners may have little incentive to work. The inmate population exhibits sociodemographic and psychological characteristics that correlate highly with labor market difficulties. Moreover, work incentives are bounded by both a guaranteed minimum standard of living and severe restrictions on the uses of earnings; prison is essentially a ration regime The impact of these institutional arrangements also depends upon the duration of the prisoner's remaining sentence and expected remaining lifetime. Unfortunately, there is little evidence bearing on these concerns, and experimental analysis is proposed.