Nation-building projects through new capitals: from St. Petersburg to Yerevan and Astana

The aim of this article is to provide a comprehensive explanation for the reasons behind governments’ decisions to relocate and build new capital cities. The process of capital-building is not a mere phenomenon of urbanization; rather it is a process of “text inventing” for nation-building projects. To emphasize implications for identity behind city constructions, the paper will discuss urbanization practices of Soviet Yerevan and post-Soviet Astana. However, to verify the validity and generalizability of the proposed argument, the article will also briefly provide historical analysis of relocation of capitals from Moscow to St. Petersburg, and from Istanbul to Ankara. The reconstruction of the capital of Soviet Armenia, Yerevan, in the 1920s is important in understanding the role of utopias in initiating identity transformations. The central conceptual premise of the article is Samuel Huntington’s theoretical concept of a “torn country” and the redefinition of civilizational identity. One reason capitals have been relocated and new capitals have been built throughout history is a need to initiate a long-term transformation of identity.     

In the Shadow of the Ombudsman: Civil Society and the Struggle for an Independent Human Rights Institution in St Petersburg,Russia

Abstract

National Human Rights Institutions (NHRIs) have become hallmarks of good governance and democracy. Although many countries have an NHRI, it remains unclear how they operate on the regional level in political systems where democracy malfunctions and human rights are under pressure. Drawing on interviews, this essay examines how Russian nongovernmental organisations (NGOs) established a shadow Ombudsman—the Human Rights Council (HRC)—to protest against the appointment of an Ombudsman in St Petersburg and put pressure on authorities to inaugurate a new and independent Ombudsman. Although we would expect relations between the Ombudsman and NGOs to deteriorate when civil society is under pressure, this essay finds that political repression and the persona of the current Ombudsman, Alexander Shishlov, have brought civil society and the Ombudsman closer together.     

The Cyberterrorism Threat: Findings from a Survey of Researchers

This article reports on a recent research project exploring academic perspectives on the threat posed by cyberterrorism. The project employed a survey method, which returned 118 responses from researchers working across 24 different countries. The article begins with a brief review of existing literature on this topic, distinguishing between those concerned by an imminent threat of cyberterrorism, and other, more skeptical, views. Following a discussion on method, the article's analysis section then details findings from three research questions: (1) Does cyberterrorism constitute a significant threat? If so, against whom or what?; (2) Has a cyberterrorism attack ever taken place?; and (3) What are the most effective countermeasures against cyberterrorism? Are there significant differences to more traditional forms of anti- or counterterrorism? The article concludes by reflecting on areas of continuity and discontinuity between academic debate on cyberterrorism and on terrorism more broadly.     

Testing Claims about Large Land Deals in Africa: Findings from a Multi-Country Study

Abstract

Despite much research on large land deals for plantation agriculture in Africa, reliable data remain elusive, partly because of limited access to information and practical and methodological challenges. International debates are still shaped by misperceptions about how much land is being acquired, where, by whom, how and with what consequences. This article aims empirically to test some common perceptions through an analysis of findings from research conducted in three African countries: Ethiopia, Ghana, and Tanzania. The article presents new evidence on the scale, geography, drivers and features of land deals, relates findings to data from earlier research and international efforts to monitor land deals, and outlines possible ways forward for ongoing monitoring of the deals.     

Vulnerability to Multidimensional Poverty: Findings from Households in Melanesia

This paper examines vulnerability in two Melanesian small island developing states: Solomon Islands and Vanuatu. With large proportions of the population living semi-subsistence lifestyles in rural areas, consumption poverty is notoriously difficult to measure. The paper therefore departs from the standard approach and assesses household vulnerability to multidimensional poverty. The paper employs cross-sectional data from a household survey. Results indicate that vulnerability is more widespread than poverty and that vulnerability stems more from excess volatility in expected wellbeing than a particularly low expected level of wellbeing, per se. Results point to a pressing need for formal social protection policies to be implemented.     

Eastward bound: A case study of post-soviet labour migration from a rural Ukrainian town

This case study uses ethnographic interviews and survey data to explore temporary work migration from Komsomolsk, a rural town in central Ukraine. At the time of the Soviet collapse, experts expected temporary work migrants to orient toward labour markets in Western Europe but our data show that in 2002 the majority of temporary migrants made trips to Russia and parts of the former Soviet Union from Komsomolsk. Women were less likely than men to engage in temporary work migration, yet those women who did migrate for work were more likely to migrate west. Men, particularly older, ethnically Russian men, sought work in the east. Ethnographic data indicate language skills and knowledge of the Russian labour market influenced migrants' choice of destination. Social contacts, such as recruiters from Russian construction firms, helped to bring Ukrainian workers east. Survey data show that younger ethnic Russians and ethnic Ukrainians from all age groups were more likely to seek work within the country or in Western job markets than in Russia.     

The Moroccan system of labour institutions: a class-based perspective

Abstract

The relevance of workers’ mobilisations in the 2011 Arab uprisings and – more recently – in the Algerian movement for democracy and social justice has encouraged a renewed interest in labour–state relations in the region. This article presents a class-based perspective on labour institutions, taking Morocco as a case study. In contrast to institution-based approaches, this research argues that it is problematic to treat the trade unions as analytical proxies for the working class, because this heuristic move conceals how class struggles – from below and from above – can transcend and transform labour institutions. The article proposes a framework to study labour–state relations, highlighting the relative autonomy of union officials from workers and vice versa. In this way, it shows how, in the neoliberal phase, the Moroccan state increased inducements to the unions while decreasing those to the workers and maintaining significant constraints on workplace organising. To use a simplified formulation, the regime included the unions to exclude the workers. In such a context of low union representativeness, the dangers of reducing the working class to the trade unions emerge clearly.     

The Governance Narrative: Key Findings and Lessons from the Erc's Whitehall Programme

This article provides a personal interpretation of the key findings of the Economic and Social Research Council's Whitehall Programme. I tell the distinctive story of 'governance'— of fragmentation, networks, unintended consequences and diplomacy — challenging the dominant, managerial account of change in British govern-ment since 1979. I present a view of the world in which networks rival markets and bureaucracy as ways of allocating resources and co-ordinating policy and its implementation.     

The labour market in a dual economy: Another look at colonial Rhodesia

A labour market model is developed for the formal sector of a labour surplus economy, allowing for monopsony power by firm owners and an inelastic supply of labour with respect to the wage rate. This inelasticity arises even though the wage rate in the traditional sector may be ‘fixed’ due to surplus land, and the supply of labour to the traditional sector responds quite positively to an exogenous increase in the (implicit) wage rate there. This labour supply function is derived from a simple utility maximisation model incorporating the spatial aspects of temporary migration to the formal sector.     

Pi Alpha Alpha activities and effectiveness: results from a national survey of chapter advisors

Pi Alpha Alpha (PAA) is the national academic honor society for public administration. This study presents the results of a comprehensive survey of PAA Chapter advisors focusing on inductee characteristics, induction requirements, chapter activities, chapter officers, and suggestions for improving PAA chapter effectiveness. NASPAA sponsored the survey and provided relevant logistical support. The results indicate that PAA is meeting its major objectives, but several areas require attention including enhancing the activity mix, improving recruitment practices for chapter officers, and a dedicated means for disseminating information on chapter activities through a newsletter and a chapter directory.     

Toward managerial artistry: Appreciating and designing organizations for the future

This article suggest that change be taken seriously; that we accept environmental change as ubiquitous, as more differentially defined perceptually. A classification of contextual changes is offered which, since it includes discontinuous change, goes beyond conventional thinking. For each type of contextual change the associated archetypical organizational forms and thematic managerial concerns and competencies are outlined. We suggest that organizations in the future should be configurations of forms because of multiple contextual circumstances, and that such configurations will require a mix of managerial competencies and the meta-competency be termed managerial artistry.

In general, the human mind is conservative. Long after an assumption is outmoded, people tend to apply it to novel situations. ---Daniel J. Isenberg

One should never underestimate the stimulation of eccentricity. ---Neil Simon, Biloxi Blues

Change is thematic in the contemporary literature on organizing and management. This literature is anything if not prolific about the management of change. Until quite recently, research and advice about the management of organizations has reflected an ideology of gradualism. Effective organizational change was seen to proceed by small, incremental adjustments. The environments of organizations was presumed to be stable or growing. Lately, supposedly having entered what Drucker⁽¹⁾ termed the “age of discontinuity,” organizational change is seen as requiring managers to choose between organizational extinction or immediate and radical transformation.⁽²⁾ These two theses, incrementalism and transformation, however, no doubt oversimplify the circumstances facing contemporary and future managers. A somewhat more refined and encompassing model of change and its concomitants is surely needed so that more appropriate organizations are created and more responsive managerial competencies are developed.

We will not detail either the nature or the extent of change in the modern world for this has been done by so many others.^(3,4,5,6,7) Everything is supposedly changing more or less--globally, nationally, industries and organizations, people, everything! And as if that weren’t enough, we also hear repeatedly that the absolute rate of change in our world is likewise increasing. Of course, reflecting all of this change, the tasks and responsibilities of managers everywhere are also changing. For many of us, the constant drum beat of change, change, change has a numbing quality and it becomes difficult to retain the idea of change in our minds. For others of us the change refrain proves overwhelming and we retreat to the relative comfort of simplifying images and slogans. A certain amount of loose metaphorical talk prevails about “catching and riding the wave of change”⁽⁸⁾ or about having to cope with conditions of “permanent whitewater”⁽⁹⁾ or even “thriving on chaos” .⁽¹⁰⁾ Somehow the presumptions of stability has jump-shifted to quantum, revolutionary change.

What if we took change seriously? What if we believed that managing change really was at the core of management? These are the aims of this essay. We will argue that the simple, bipolar conceptions of environmental change are inadequate; that the environmental conditions in which organizations find themselves discontinuous change, and that they are neither homogenous nor absolutely objectively real. We will also argue that management's proclivity to believe there is a one best way to manage, once we know what we are up against, is even more fallacious than before, and that there are new as well as old ways of bundling managing. To take change seriously thus promotes managerial artistry, those competencies of appreciation and design and facilitation of appropriately refined organizational forms. Managerial artistry thus brings proactive choice to the forefront as executive become more aware of the possibilities in organizational environments and their associated structures and competencies.

This essay will proceed in four sections. In the first we will sketch the range and nature of four alternative organizational environments. Second, we will outline the organizational designs associated with each type of environmental circumstance. The third section then examines designs and the managerial competencies and concerns that seem to be needed for each environmental alternative. Last we will comment on the implications of what has been outlined for the managerial artistry of the future.