Metagovernance and Control of Multi-level Governance Frameworks: The Case of the EU Structural Funds Financial Execution

Using as an empirical base the 2006–08 reform of the European Union Structural Funds financial execution, this paper explores control mechanisms of multi-level governance frameworks. The empirical evidence provides a representative case of initial metagovernance deficit and the subsequent, relatively successful, institutional response reinforcing metagovernance. The purpose is to clarify the conceptual dimensions of metagovernance, setting it in a categorical scheme that identifies forms of exercise of political power: government, governance and multi-level governance. Specifically, the paper argues for a conceptualization of metagovernance that highlights a sense of sovereignty by which governmental entities vested with legal legitimacy advance public interests.     

Patrolling Public Schools: The Impact of Funding for School Police on Student Discipline and Long‐term Education Outcomes

As police officers have become increasingly common in U.S. public schools, their role in school discipline has often expanded. While there is growing public debate about the consequences of police presence in schools, there is scant evidence of the impact of police on student discipline and academic outcomes. This paper provides the first quasi‐experimental estimate of funding for school police on student outcomes, leveraging variation in federal Community Oriented Policing Services (COPS) grants. Exploiting detailed data on over 2.5 million students in Texas, I find that federal grants for police in schools increase middle school discipline rates by 6 percent. The rise in discipline is driven by sanctions for low‐level offenses or school code of conduct violations. Further, I find that Black students experience the largest increases in discipline. I also find that exposure to a three‐year federal grant for school police is associated with a 2.5 percent decrease in high school graduation rates and a 4 percent decrease in college enrollment rates.     

Subsuming the ground: how local realities of the Fergana Valley,the Narmada Dams and the BTC pipeline are put to use on the Web

Abstract

Studies of the use of information and communication technologies (ICTs) by non-governmental organizations (NGOs) seek to come to terms with a particular problem of political globalization. While global forums are widely attributed the capacity to put in place the conditions for the resolution of local issues, at the same time these sites are seen to place unacceptable restrictions on the articulation of the issues from localist perspectives. ICTs occupy a special position with respect to this dilemma, as they are both seen to be part of the problem, a factor in the enrolment of NGOs in global governance networks, and part of the solution, as instruments of alternative, translocal forms of political organization. This piece shows how a particular style of Web analysis, informed by actor-network theory, demonstrates the need to complicate certain assumptions that inform both these critical and these constructive perspectives. In a series of exercises of network analysis on the Web, we open up for questioning the assumption of the ‘primacy of the local’ on which these perspectives tend to rely. We suggest that the role of ICTs in the globalization of NGO practices should rather be understood in terms of the reformatting of issues for transnational networks. In our interpretations of issue networks on the Web, we argue for the importance of taking more seriously the ways in which the Web highlights the practical constraints on issue articulation faced by NGOs. By way of conclusion, this paper draws attention to the fact that Web studies present a notable extension to the sites studied by actor-network theory and related approaches in assemblages studies, as it compels consideration of the media circulations characteristic of publicity.     

Autocratic adaptation: The strategic use of transparency and the persistence of election fraud

Why would an autocrat want, or at least make it appear to want, to reduce election fraud? In recent years, non-democratic rulers have surprisingly begun to embrace fraud-reducing technologies, like web cameras or transparent ballot boxes. The reason for this is found in the relative ease by which one type of fraud can be replaced with another. With the help of new fraud identification techniques, I argue that the installation of web cameras in polling stations changes how fraud is conducted. Web cameras do not reduce fraud, but rather make certain blatant forms of fraud, like ballot box stuffing, more costly. Autocrats then substitute for other types of fraud, such as fabricating the vote count out of view of the cameras.