Sustainable citizenship for a technological world: negotiating deliberative dialectics

Incorporating the notion of sustainability is the biggest challenge for citizenship in a technological era. Existing conceptions of citizenship have not been able to grapple with compounded ecological, economic, cultural, and moral threats facing modern technology-infused societies. Nor has increased public participation, engagement, and dialogue resolved polarized positions on issues such as what constitutes quality of life or what is meant by the integrity of nature. This paper draws on the scholarship of both sustainability and citizenship to propose a framework of sustainable citizenship that seeks to emphasize shared values through a deliberated clash of ideas. Such a framework involves a negotiation of the dialectics of rights and responsibilities, state and non-state, public and private, human and non-human nature, universal and particular, and democracy and capitalism. The paper illustrates how sustainable citizenship can be applied to deal with contentious political and policy issues of new and emerging technologies.     

Strengthening family planning stewardship with a total market approach: Mali,Uganda, and Kenya experiences

To improve overall market sustainability, governments and their donors are ramping up efforts to strengthen stewardship in developing country health markets. Key stewardship functions include generating intelligence that enable policymakers, ministerial leaders, and program managers to develop evidence‐based policies and strategies to improve the resource management, supply, and use of health products and services. The total market approach (TMA), an analytic and policy framework, generates market intelligence and improves evidence‐based decision‐making, and also strengthens other stewardship functions, such as building and sustaining partnerships, strengthening tools for implementation, aligning government policy with market interventions, and ensuring accountability/transparency. TMA evolved in response to the phase out of donor support for reproductive health (RH) and family planning (FP) programs and the need to improve coordination among public, private, nongovernmental organizations, and civil society to achieve greater equity, health impact, and market sustainability. To assess TMA's role in strengthening the stewardship of RH/FP markets, this article reviews three countries that applied TMA principles: Mali, Uganda, and Kenya. It identifies how TMA processes influenced stewardship functions and assesses to what degree these processes have contributed to concrete actions to improve market efficiency and sustainability.     

Transparency in transnational governance: The determinants of information disclosure of voluntary sustainability programs

The rise of “new” transnational governance has intensified debates about a lack of accountability in global politics. Reviewing the mechanisms through which transparency can foster accountability beyond the state, this article explores the determinants of information disclosure in the field of transnational sustainability governance. Examining the institutional design of 113 voluntary sustainability programs, we find a positive correlation between the involvement of public actors and information disclosure. In contrast, the role of civil society is more ambiguous. There is no statistical support for arguments linking non‐governmental organization participation to increased transparency. At the same time, our analysis reveals a robust correlation between civil society‐led metagovernance and information disclosure. Moreover, we find that crowding has a negative effect on transparency, whereas normative peer pressures have no influence. At a broader level, the analysis reveals a lack of “deep transparency” among transnational sustainability governors. This limits the scope for transparency‐induced accountability in this policy domain.     

Community Commitment in Special Districts

ABSTRACT

Special districts now constitute about 42% of all U.S. jurisdictions, yet little is known about them. Some critics are concerned that special districts and their staffs have insufficient community commitment. This study, based on a national survey of senior managers in large special districts, examines activities and programs of special district managers that foster community building and engagement, including correlates of these. Study results reveal that special districts are committed to their communities and several strategies and conditions are associated with increased community commitment, such as jobs that focus on community interactions, service type, and ethics management, as well as, to a lesser extent, graduate degree qualifications and charters that specify the role of managers in promoting the public interest and in relation to the board.     

Bouncing back: A commentary on resilience in sustainability narratives

Resilience is an increasingly common element in the sustainability and sustainable growth narratives of a growing number of companies and organisations. At the same time, a number of meanings are claimed for resilience and the relationship between resilience and sustainability has been depicted in a number of ways. With these thoughts in mind, this short commentary paper outlines the characteristic features of the concept of resilience, provides some illustrations of how a number of companies and organisations are harnessing the concept as an integral part of their sustainability strategies and policies, offers some general reflections on the application of the concept, and concludes with some thoughts on how public relations and communications professionals can contribute to resilience planning.     

Capacity to Sustain Sustainability: A Study of U.S. Cities

Why do some governments implement more sustainability practices than others? Based on a national survey of U.S. cities, this article finds moderate levels of sustainability efforts and capacity in U.S. cities; about one‐third of the sustainability practices identified in this article have been implemented. The authors conclude that, first, capacity building is a useful conceptual focus for understanding sustainability implementation in U.S. cities. Capacity building involves developing technical and financial support and increasing managerial execution. Second, sustainability is strongly associated with managerial capacity, which includes establishing sustainability goals, incorporating goals in operations, and developing a supportive infrastructure. Third, getting stakeholders involved furthers the capacity for sustaining sustainability efforts. Citizen involvement is strongly associated with securing financial support for sustainability.     

Empirical examination of public debt sustainability in African economies: A panel data analysis

This study intends to investigate public debt sustainability across 29 Sub-Sahara African (SSA) economies, employing various econometric specifications, for the sampled years 1996–2020. The study employs Bohn's (Are stationarity and cointegration restrictions really necessary for the intertemporal budget constraint? Journal of monetary Economics, 54(7), pp.1837–1847.) framework of sustainability as the baseline model to assess public debt sustainability across the sampled Sub-Sahara African economies. As additional tests of public debt sustainability in order to support the baseline findings, the study also employs panel unit root and timeseries unit tests. The baseline findings from the OLS, panel quantile and instrumental panel quantile regressions show that public debt is sustainable across the panel of SSA economies. The positive and statistically significant response of primary balance under the Bohn's framework of sustainability manifest that the intertemporal budget constraint is not violated in the sampled economies. The consistency in the estimates under the OLS, panel quantile and instrumental panel quantile regressions also show that the estimates are robust throughout the estimation process. Also, utilizing the panel unit root test for public debt sustainability, the findings show that public debt is stationary over the sampled years which implies that intertemporal budget constraint holds and that public debt is sustainable across the sampled SSA economies. However, the timeseries analysis indicate that although majority of the SSA economies have sustainable public debt ratios, four countries namely Uganda, Sudan, Togo and Cote d'Ivoire have unsustainable public debt ratios. The study has important policy implications in terms of prudent public debt management and fiscal management for the sampled SSA economies.     

Public Participation and Environmental Policy: What Factors Shape State Agency's Public Participation Provisions?

Public participation is becoming increasingly common in environmental decision making. While researchers have focused on understanding why individuals get involved and the impact of their engagement, less is known about the forces that shape agency and legislative decision making regarding participation. This paper uses multinomial logistic regression to explore the determinants of public participation provisions in state hazardous waste programs over time. The results suggest that states with more liberal citizenry, higher levels of manufacturing, and urban areas are more likely to formalize the participation provisions in their hazardous waste programs. Comparatively, states with fewer Democratic representatives are more likely to informally engage in public participation procedures in their states programs.     

The Attitudes of Senior Public Servants in Australia and New Zealand: Administrative Reform and Technocratic Consequence?

This article is in the tradition of comparative international research conducted over recent years into changing political-bureaucratic role relations. Its focus is the attitudinal orientation held toward various dimensions of their work by senior public servants in Canberra and Wellington. In particular, it is concerned to gauge officials' tolerance for pluralistic politics, their programmatic commitment, democratic sensibilities, and identification with conventions of ministerial responsibility. The study draws on and develops into four the two categories of public servants identified by Robert D. Putnam during the early 1970s in Western Europe. The information generated may be used as a baseline for future surveys of a similar type, which could identify changing patterns of distribution among the four basic categories: Political Bureaucrats, Classical Bureaucrats, Traditional Bureaucrats, and Technocrats. The present survey shows some significant differences between senior public servants in the two cities. In particular, those in Canberra are less programmatically committed than their Wellington counterparts, and considerably more “elitist” in their attitudes to popular involvement in policymaking. In both capitals officials are proactively rather than reactively orientated, a finding that may run counter to reformers' beliefs in the predominance of “Sir Humphrey Applebys.” The article goes on to relate the survey findings to major public sector changes that have taken place in both cities since the data for this article was collected. It speculates that, especially in New Zealand (but perhaps less so in Australia), these changes will see the emergence of more strongly technocratic attitudes among top public officials. Such attitudes may not sit easily with expectations that senior public servants be both politically accountable and managerially orientated. Finally, the four categories used in this study are related to the “images” of political-bureaucratic role relations developed in other comparative research.     

See No Evil,Hear No Evil? Assessing Corruption Risk Perceptions and Strategies of Victorian Public Bodies

This paper critically examines qualitative survey data from 36 Victorian public sector bodies on their perceptions of corruption risks, and strategies to mitigate these risks, as well as the integrity mechanisms in place. The findings indicate that even though corruption does not seem to be prevalent in these bodies it is not on their radar either, though fraud prevention was significantly present. The paper identifies international best practices of integrity management and inculcation of public service ethos in developed countries, and stresses three vital elements or pillars that combine both the ‘values’ and ‘compliance’ based approaches. These pillars are as follows: (1) specific corruption prevention programs and strategies that are additional to but complement existing anti‐fraud programs; (2) targeted anti‐corruption training, both for employees and for the public; and (3) effective leadership engagement and commitment to an ethical culture (Tone at the Top).     

Interactive governance and implementation effectiveness in India's National Health Insurance Program

Many public sector programs, such as those directed at public health, are often multiagency tasks where structural incongruity in the program design is liable to emerge over time from changing operational requirements. Yet, successful implementation remains possible because of the interactions and relationships between implementation parties that encourage cooperation and collaboration despite incongruence in the program design. We examine how the dynamics of these interparty relationships influence implementation success in a comparative study of India's National Health Insurance Scheme. We find that implementation parties exhibiting support and complementarity in their interactions created a virtuous cycle of continually encouraging better performance and vice versa. Thus, our findings exhibit a distinct functionary role of interparty interactions and relationships for eliciting effective implementation and governance. The analysis also showcases the need for policy makers and policy designers to be cognizant of the inadvertent introduction of structural inconsistencies and veto points into program designs and their potential influence on implementation outcomes.     

Volunteer Involvement in Local Government after September 11: The Continuing Question of Capacity

The 1990s witnessed extensive promotion of volunteerism and the creation of a federal and state infrastructure to support government voluntary activities. What has been the impact on local governments? This article reports on a 2003 survey of volunteer involvement in Georgia local government, which followed a similar 1990 study and provides a rare opportunity to examine long‐term trends in public volunteerism. Volunteerism in Georgia cities and counties has increased during the past decade, with 81 percent of all jurisdictions now reporting some volunteer engagement. The events of September 11, 2001, have had a small but generally positive effect on volunteer utilization. However, political and labor resistance to government volunteers has not been resolved. And the increase in public managers' concerns that they lack the funding or staff to utilize volunteers suggests that governmental capacity remains the principal obstacle to greater volunteer involvement in local governments.     

The situational public engagement model in a municipal watershed protection program: information seeking,information sharing,and the use of organizational and social media

In an extension of the situational theory of publics, we tested a situational engagement model to answer how situational factors affect public engagement via both communication behaviors and the use of social media and organizational media. As part of the evaluation of a collaborative stormwater outreach and education campaign, a campus‐wide survey, assisted by a large public university's public affairs office, was conducted to identify key predictors of public engagement in a watershed protection program. A path analysis for the proposed situation engagement model revealed that problem recognition was the key to predicting both information seeking and sharing. The path analysis also yielded a significant association between communication behaviors and public engagement, mediated by the use of organizational media in seeking information on the issue. Further, the analysis showed a significant direct effect of involvement on engagement. The current study provided a preliminary framework that explains individuals' environmental behaviors in today's participatory and user‐generating media environment. Theoretical and practical implications were discussed. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Understanding voluntary program performance: Introducing the diffusion network perspective

Voluntary programs have rapidly become a means for the public, private, and third sectors to regulate and govern complex societal problems. Following the rapid and widespread emergence of these programs, scholars have been active in mapping, exploring, and interrogating their design and performance. Considerable advances have been made in describing program design and context conditions, and the actors involved in the voluntary program that relate to program performance. Less is known, however, about how these conditions affect program performance. Starting with one of the dominant theories on voluntary programs, the club theory perspective, this article seeks to understand how different program design conditions interact to affect the performance of 26 voluntary programs for low carbon building and city development in Australia, the Netherlands, and the United States. Applying qualitative comparative analysis, the study finds that the club theory perspective has limited explanatory power for this specific set of cases. Iterative rounds of analysis indicate that a diffusion network perspective is the best complementary perspective for explaining the performance of this set of programs. The article concludes that, in situations of a non‐homogeneous market of voluntary program participants, a focus on the programs’ diffusion networks helps to explain their performance. This has implications for the design and implementation of such programs.     

Public housing desegregation: What are the options?

Abstract

This paper examines policy and programmatic options for the desegregation of low‐income public housing. Desegregation is a strategy for relocating public housing residents or units to communities that offer a better quality of life. This paper considers the likelihood of achieving desegregation, given the factors that created segregation, by exploring the role of past and present policies and programs in producing segregation and the effects of efforts to ameliorate it.

The major finding is that public housing segregation is firmly entrenched in many major cities, and attempts to reverse it have produced marginal changes. Although the federal government has ceased to play a major role in perpetuating racial segregation, it has not taken a strong, consistent, and clear stand on desegregation policy. Some innovative desegregation programs with promising outcomes are currently under way, but it is unlikely that public housing segregation will be abated in the future.     

Public–Private Partnerships in Urban Infrastructures: Reconciling Private Sector Participation and Sustainability

The speed and scale of urbanization provide serious challenges for governments all over the world with regard to the realization, maintenance, and operation of public urban infrastructures. These infrastructures are needed to keep up with living standards and to create conditions for sustainable development. The lack of public funds and the inefficiencies of public service provision have given rise to initiatives to stimulate private parties to invest their resources in public urban infrastructures. However, private sector participation creates a whole range of new challenges. The potential benefits are countered by concerns about the compatibility of the private sector's focus on short-term return on investment with the long-term perspective needed to realize sustainability targets. On the basis of a review of literature on experiences with private sector participation in urban infrastructure projects, this article identifies governance practices that help or hinder the reconciliation of private sector participation in urban infrastructure projects with the objective to increase the sustainability of the urban environment.     

Australian Rural Local Governments and Environmental Sustainability: An Evaluation of Progress

Local government is often characterised as being well-placed to enact a successful agenda for environmental sustainability because of its closeness to both people and the environment. The purpose of this article is to examine the extent to which this assumption is correct in terms of local government environmental policies and programs in rural Australia. Using case studies with eight local government authorities in Queensland and New South Wales, the article documents three different positions on a continuum of environmental engagement. These are 'disengaged', 'moving towards engagement' and 'engaged'. The article concludes by arguing that the resource constraints facing rural local councils limit their capacity to engage with environmental management.     

Incentivizing self‐regulation: Federal vs. state‐level voluntary programs in US climate change policies

How does program sponsorship influence the design of voluntary programs? Why and how do voluntary programs on climate change sponsored by the state and federal governments in the United States vary in their institutional design? Scholars emphasize the signaling role of voluntary programs to outside stakeholders, and the excludable benefits that induce firms to take on non‐trivial costs of joining voluntary programs. Scholars have noted several types of benefits, particularly reputational benefits programs provide, but have not systematically studied why different programs emphasize different types of benefits. We suggest that excludable benefits are likely to take different forms depending on the institutional context in which program sponsors function. We hypothesize that federal programs are likely to emphasize less tangible reputational benefits while state programs are likely to emphasize more tangible benefits, such as access to technical knowledge and capital. Statistical analyses show the odds of a voluntary program emphasizing tangible benefits increases by several folds when the program is sponsored by the state as opposed to federal government.     

Can participation be induced? Some evidence from developing countries 1

Influenced by Amartya Sen, over the last decade, The World Bank has allocated nearly US$80 billion to local participatory development projects targeting poverty, improved public service delivery, and strengthened social cohesion and government accountability. But the success of these programs is hindered by both endogenous local factors and flawed program design and implementation. Two especially important local obstacles are (1) entrenched interests of political agents, civil bureaucrats, and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) with either incentives to resist or capabilities to appropriate program resources, and (2) poverty and illiteracy, as the poor and illiterate participate less and benefit less from participatory projects than do the wealthier, more educated, and more connected. After reviewing hundreds of participatory projects, three lessons are clear for program planning. First, contextual factors like inequality, history, geography, and political systems (among others) are important. Second, communities do not necessarily have a ready stock of ‘social capital’ to mobilize. Third, induced participatory interventions work best when supported by a responsive state – donors cannot substitute for a non-functional state, and successful programs combine enlightened state action from above with social mobilization from below. Future participatory development projects would benefit substantially from revised planning and considerably more attention paid to evaluation and monitoring. Project managers have historically paid little attention to context, monitoring, or evaluation, in part because The World Bank’s operational policies did not provide incentives to do so. Donor agencies should also exercise greater patience and allow for flexible, long-term engagement to facilitate contextual and programmatic learning, including learning from failure.