Corporate Governance of Nonprofit Organizations: Cooperation and Control

Abstract

This article explores the limits of institutional economics regarding the cooperation of boards of directors and executive directors of nonprofit organizations. The normative separation of power between these central actors resulting especially from arguments derived from institutional economics is being reflected using the analytical approach from the resource-based view and empirical evidence based upon group and motivational theory. After analyzing the board’s role and the individual board member’s role within a nonprofit organization, the paper explores the limits to decision-making within governing bodies. The paper shows why a unitary board can improve the quality of decision-making within nonprofit organizations by raising the incentives for the executive director to act as desired. The paper also explores the impact of trust and different types of control upon the key actors within the governance process in order to derive the suitable form of control from that analysis.     

The Flypaper Effect Revisited: Intergovernmental Grants and Local Governance

Abstract

Local governance arrangements shape the incentives of local actors, which may in turn influence fiscal choices. By emphasizing the role of local government institutions in local fiscal choices, we seek to bridge between median voter and Leviathan models prevalent in the literature. We then offer some preliminary evidence to support this explanation by empirically testing several propositions regarding the flypaper effect in intergovernmental grants. One limitation of the median voter model is that the model does not consider political institutions and their influences on government expenditures. In this study, we attempt to capture the influence of political dynamics in determining public expenditures by considering institutional variables. Test results show that the political institutional variables could be one of the explanation variables for the flypaper effect.     

Women's Capabilities and the Right to Education in Bangladesh

The World Bank promotes women's education because it is an input into human capital. In the capabilities approach, education is a force that enables women to have expanded choices. Using data from in-depth interviews conducted in two villages in 1996 and 2000, we examine how rural Bangladeshis perceive women's education and to what extent those perceptions concur with the World Bank's instrumentalist view and with the capabilities approach. Parents educate their daughters because women's education is valued in the marriage market, and marriage is the best way to secure their daughters' well-being. Schooling has also enhanced women's capabilities by increasing their earning potential.     

Governance and disorder: neoliberalism and violent change in Jamaica

Structural adjustment policies (SAPs) facilitate the hollowing out of the traditional roles performed by states. As a consequence, private entities (some perverse) offer services the state is incapable of or unwilling to provide. Beginning in the 1980s, SAPs plunged neighbourhoods in Latin America and the Caribbean into socioeconomic, and political disorder. This paper assesses the relationship between neoliberal reforms to the Jamaican state and the metamorphosis of violence since the mid-1980s. Neoliberalism transformed violence in Jamaica by increasing inter-gang conflicts, shootings and gang-related murders in Kingston’s garrisons. It also transformed political enforcers into community dons who use violence as a tool for business transactions in the international drug trade, and as a method of gaining local respect and authority.     

美国新兴技术治理的理念与实践

在中美科技博弈的背景下,新兴技术治理的实际效能兼具重要的经济价值和国际政治意涵。同时,新兴技术的高度不确定性对美国既有技术治理体系和能力提出全面挑战。美国新兴技术治理表现出明显的保护主义和技术民族主义倾向,服从并服务于其国家安全战略。新兴技术的革命性导致美国技术治理能力全面滞后于技术发展速度;国内治理体系碎片化且缺少有效协调机制的现实,制约着新兴技术治理的实际进程;全球范围内技术治理安全化的倾向严重阻碍着技术治理的国际合作,也阻碍美国与盟友之间的合作。拜登政府积极致力于实现美国技术治理体系和能力的现代化,试图采取多边主义策略对中国新兴技术发展进行限制和封锁;极有可能在坚持刚性措施的同时突出强调弹性措施在未来美国新兴技术治理中的优先等级;试图通过重建总统科技顾问委员会以及审查政府科学诚信政策等手段,重塑科学及科学家在新兴技术治理中的核心地位,突出“技术怀疑论”并对新兴技术发展采取更为严格的审查和监管措施,并可能重新确立基础研究在新兴技术治理中的基础性作用。     

Municipal Service Delivery: The Role of Transaction Costs in the Choice between Alternative Governance Mechanisms

Service provision by local governments can be delivered using in-house bureaucracies, private firms, and partnerships with other governments or the not-for-profit sector. This production decision has been a major focus of discussion among scholars, practitioners and political agents for the last quarter of a century. The transaction costs framework is an important tool to analyse decisions regarding the production of local services. In this paper, the authors employ this framework to analyse service delivery in Portugal and find that service characteristics and the local political environment play a key role in local officials' choice among the three governance mechanisms to deliver public services.     

Mixed Welfare Systems and Hybrid Organizations: Changes in the Governance and Provision of Social Services

Abstract

The provision and governance of personal social services is nowadays often thought as a matter of finding the right balance between market principles and state regulation. However often, personal social services depend as well from a third resource and mechanism of governance: It is the impact of the social capital of civil society, which makes itself felt not only by resources such as grants, donations, and volunteering, but as well by networking and social partnerships. A number of crucial changes in welfare and service provision have led to a situation, where service systems and service units, rather than being part of a clear-cut sector, have increasingly to be seen as hybrids, combining varying balances of resources and mixes of governance principles usually associated with the market, the state, and the civil society.     

Developing Business Education Infrastructure in Eastern Europe: Albanian Experience

Abstract

Because of its unique characteristics, Albania is faced with severe challenges. Business education is no exception. The baggage of its tragic past, under a ruthless communist dictatorship, especially the isolation of its people from free thought for almost 50 years, still lingers in people's thinking and behaviors. Generally, the Albanian schools system is well developed and there is a tradition of sound education. However, Albanian institutions of higher education are ill prepared to provide modern business education to the future leaders. The University of Nebraska—Lincoln (UNL), under the leadership of the first author, has helped modernize business education infrastructure in Albania through multiyear funding from the United States Agency for International Development and Soros Foundation. This article reports several important initiatives for business education launched by UNL: (1) the first ever MBA and MPA (Master of Public Administration) programs in Albania at the University of Tirana; (2) training more than 5000 university faculty, entrepreneurs, and government officials; (3) establishment of Business Assistance Centers at four universities; (4) development of Students in Free Enterprise (SIFE) chapters at most universities in Albania; and (5) focused training for faculty research, teaching methods, teaching evaluations, curriculum development, and outreach services.     

The Social Outcomes of Education and Feedbacks on Growth in Africa

Most of the effects of education included in the complete model presented here are shown to be consistent with those found in the mainstream of the research on each outcome using microeconomic data. This, however, is a first effort to estimate net education effects more comprehensively, beyond just growth and health effects on other key measures of development in Africa, and also a new view of indirect feedbacks on economic growth and of externalities. After developing the conceptual framework, the regression estimates are presented together with a discussion of the net direct and indirect effects of education on each outcome. These are shown to improve infant mortality, increase longevity, strengthen civic institutions and democratisation, increase political stability, and increase investment in physical capital, which in turn have positive delayed feedback effects on the economic growth process. The effects also lower fertility rates and population growth rates but the latter occurs only after long delays because of the short-term positive effects of education on health. There are significant net education effects reducing poverty, inequality and crime, the latter after netting out negative externalities from growth and white-collar crime. Education effects reducing poverty and substituting skills for extractive exports also contribute to environmental sustainability. Simulations solve the complete model endogenously and iteratively over time for all of the direct and indirect (largely externality) effects. They reveal that indirect feedback effects including those on non-market outcomes are larger than the direct effects. Some effects are immediate, but many of the lags are long. So policy options for a continent in crisis that consider these lags are considered.     

The American University in Bulgaria and U.S. Agency for International Development Relationship

Abstract

Upon recognizing a need for a center of western oriented university education, an initiative committee including representatives from the Republic of Bulgaria, the city of Blagoevgrad, and the University of Maine obtained support from philanthropist George Soros's Open Society Institute and the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) to start a university in Bulgaria in 1991. The hallmark of its existence was that its programs would be oriented toward teaching democratic values through the American liberal arts tradition. Instruction would be in English so it could draw on students throughout the region if they were proficient in English. The university has grown from a small enrollment of 208 students to over 700 students in several disciplines in the humanities and social sciences. As the American University in Bulgaria (AUBG) has become a regional institution, the AUBG–USAID relationship has been crucial. Now it is beginning to offer an EMBA program and has developed an excellent reputation through its graduated students.     

Improving Competency-Based Education through Empirical Evaluation: A Mixed Methods Study of A Masters of Public Administration Program

ABSTRACT

This study is focused on the problem of the mismatch of competencies of Masters of Public Administration (MPA) graduates in Russia and current Russian public servants. A mixed methods approach was used to analyze quantitative (n = 734) and qualitative data about the real-world competencies of local, regional, and federal government officials in comparison to what MPA graduates get from their education. The comparison of competency models of MPA graduates and government officials indicated that the most of the competencies are useful in public administration practice, but there is still lot to change in the approach of compiling the content of MPA educational standards and educational programs.     

Education for a culture of peace: the culture of peace news network as a case study

The Culture of Peace News Network, an internet news service, is analyzed in the framework of a general approach to education for a culture of peace. Its format reflects the eight program areas for a culture of peace as adopted by the UN General Assembly. Among its other operating principles are universality of news with all cultures and regions of the world given equal priority, requirement that reflection be accompanied by action and that news should be positive and open to debate, that ‘slow news’ is as important as ‘fast news,’ and that readers should participate by writing as well as reading. The Network has yet to achieve its goal of forcing commercial media to consider actions for a culture of peace as newsworthy, but it is suggested that this will depend on the growth of the global movement for a culture of peace which remains rather small at the present time.     

The Role of Civic Engagement in Trisectoral Governance Approaches as Factors for Success in East German Municipalities

The demographic diminution and the special economic situation in the East necessitate flexible strategies that make use of all available on-site resources. This includes taking into account economic concerns in governmental and developmental strategies for the public sector as well as improved integration of ‘active citizens’, for whom the government must provide adequate basic parameters in order to assure lasting and effective participation. In this context, the following article presents the findings of a study on East German municipalities that clarifies the obstacles and specific potentials of a stronger cooperation between the various societal sectors that is characterised by trisectoral governance.     

From the Executive Board to the Classroom. What Debt Relief Means for Education in the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC)

ABSTRACT

This analysis re-assesses the IMF’s decision to grant debt relief to the DRC in 2010 based on the country’s poverty reduction and growth performance: would the IMF come to the same conclusion given the current knowledge available about the impact of the debt relief process on public governance and service delivery? First, it shows that, whereas the direct resource effect of this aid modality was minimal, the indirect effect was more significant: the conditionalities attached to the process helped to stabilize the economy and increased the overall budget of the Congolese state. This increased resource availability also sustainably percolated to the education sector. Second, however, the impact on social development was minimal: school enrolment increased but was hardly accompanied by extra budget per pupil, whereas more complicated challenges like disparities in access or quality of schooling were left untouched. The government’s strategy was also partly short-circuited by the electoral process.     

Nation,national remembrance,and education – Polish schools as factories of nationalism and prejudice

This article describes and attempts to explain the reasons for the conservative and nationalist character of Polish schools. The author uses data from surveys, analyzes political programs, postulates concerning education put forward by conservatives, and quotes poems emphasizing national identity from textbooks used at schools to teach reading skills. According to the author, it can be observed that nationalists build an atmosphere of aversion to immigrants, which affects racism in the school hallways. The article also presents the phenomenon of so-called school chambers of national remembrance, which are part of patriotic rituals practiced by Polish society. The author emphasizes that nationalism is the basis for changes in history programs of study, which are part of the educational reform implemented by the Law and Justice (Prawo i Sprawiedliwo?? – PiS) government. The cultural soft power, which is used to make reality more “national,” complements the administrative and political hard power of the PiS party – both tools are used to create an authoritarian-nationalist vision of social order.     

Inconsistency between educational attainment and literacy: The case of Russia

From the moment when wide spread of large scale assessments in sociology and economics began, the most commonly used indicators of peoples’ qualifications are the number of years spent in education and the possession of a high school/college/university diploma. But what if these formal indicators are unreliable under certain conditions and do not reflect actual literacy and competency of people? This article, drawing on data from the Programme for the International Assessment of Adult Competencies (PIAAC), questions accuracy of the basic educational indicators in Russia. There is a linear relationship between the possession of a formal graduation diploma and the measurement of PIAAC literacy of the able-bodied population in OECD countries, including the Eastern European ones. However, the analysis shows that in Russia there is an inconsistency between literacy and formal educational status. This fact in itself casts doubt on the effectiveness of formal education indicators in Russia. The social implications resulting from this inconsistency become apparent through an international comparison of research results. These ill effects have been documented in the areas of employment, education and social reproduction and in the social self-awareness of the Russian people.     

Authoritarian legality and informal practices: Judges, lawyers and the state in Russia and China

To participate in the global economy authoritarian states are pressed to offer international business a legal order that protects the interests of investors, customers, and sellers, but the creation of a modern legal order threatens to undermine the leaders’ control of public life. An increasingly common way to resolve this dilemma, I argue, is developing formal legal institutions that appear to meet world standards, while using informal practices to maintain control over the administration of justice when needed. In this paper I show how the governments of post-Soviet Russia (with its hybrid or competitive authoritarian regime) and the fully authoritarian People’s Republic of China as well, have used this approach in their relations with judges and defense lawyers in their respective countries. The analysis underscores the utility of investigating informal practices along with the reform of formal legal institutions, especially in the context of transition.     

Feminists and Technocrats in the Democratization of Latin America: A Prolegomenon

Women's movements made important contributions to ending the period of authoritarian rule in Latin America, but their participation in the reconstruction of democratic politics has been more limited than expected. This paper argues that the enormous influence exerted by technocratic elites in the democratization process in Latin America has represented an obstacle to the improvement of women's status in the region. Gender-biased assumptions and practices have been only partially addressed, in part because the policy-making process is under the control of economists, a professional group with a particularly unfriendly stand towards gendered analysis. It is suggested that reforms within economics may help in the task of making democracy more responsive to the demands of women.