ASEAN as the ‘regional conductor’: understanding ASEAN's role in Asia-Pacific order

This paper analyses ASEAN's prominence in regional order negotiation and management in Southeast Asia and the Asia-pacific through the lens of social role negotiation. It argues that ASEAN has negotiated legitimate social roles as the ‘primary manager’ in Southeast Asia and the ‘regional conductor’ of the Asia-Pacific order. It develops an English School-inspired role negotiation framework and applies it to three periods: 1954–1975 when ASEAN's ‘primary manager’ role emerged from negotiations with the USA; 1978–1991 when ASEAN's role was strengthened through negotiations with China during the Cambodian conflict; and 1991-present when ASEAN created and expanded the ‘regional conductor’ role. Negotiations during the Cold War established a division of labour where great powers provided security public goods but the great power function of diplomatic leadership was transferred to ASEAN. ASEAN's diplomatic leadership in Southeast Asia provided a foundation for creating its ‘regional conductor’ role after the Cold War. ASEAN's ability to sustain its roles depends on maintaining role bargains acceptable to the great powers, an increasingly difficult task due to great power rivalry in the South China Sea.     

The States Come Marching In: Examining State Agency Influence on Federal Rules

Amidst congressional gridlock, administrative rulemaking is the main pathway for environmental policy making. Scholars have assessed the role of the institutions of government (the president, Congress, and the courts) and key interest groups (i.e., business and environmental interests) in shaping rulemaking outcomes. What is missing from this literature is an assessment of the role of key implementers, state environmental agencies. This research fills this gap by assessing the role and impact of state government agencies in three case studies of rulemaking at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA). Based on original interviews and a public comment analysis, this research suggests that state agencies play an active and influential role in EPA rulemaking. And, in some cases, state agencies wield more influence than other interest groups. Interviewees argued that this influence stems from these agencies’ unique voice as an implementation collaborator. As a result, researchers should incorporate an assessment of the role of these interests to more effectively explain regulatory outcomes at the EPA and potentially across the bureaucracy.     

Responsive bureaus,equity, and regulatory negotiation: an empirical view

Rulemaking agencies commonly delegate the implementation and enforcement of rules to affected parties, but they rarely delegate rulemaking authority. Regulatory negotiation is an example of this uncommon behavior. Compared to conventional rulemaking, regulatory negotiation is thought to be an attempt to make bureaucracy more responsive to affected stakeholders, especially when the rulemaking concerns politically complicated and technical issues. However, negotiation, while it may make bureaucrats more responsive, may also be less fair in that it is likely to result in relatively more responsiveness to interests supported by those with greater resources. This study presents empirical evidence that compares negotiated to conventional rulemaking processes at the Environmental Protection Agency in respect to both responsiveness and equality. The results uphold the expectation that negotiating rules appears more responsive than the conventional rule‐writing process. Furthermore, the results show inequality in both processes; outcomes of negotiated rules may be more unequal than outcomes of conventionally written rules. © 2002 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Explaining Responsiveness in Collaboration: Administrator and Citizen Role Perceptions

Between 2003 and 2006, researchers facilitated a collaborative learning process with representatives of Los Angeles neighborhood councils and officials from city agencies. In two cases, each involving a large city agency, the quality of responsiveness on the part of agency officials to participating citizens was substantially different. This study considers the reasons why agency officials differed in their responsiveness. Using an inductive qualitative and quantitative content analysis across three sources of data, the study develops theory pertaining to bureaucratic responsiveness to citizens in collaborative processes. Specifically, the case findings are generalized to theory through seven propositions for future study. The study's key finding is that administrator and citizen perceptions of their own and the other party's roles may influence the quality of responsive behavior in collaborative activity. The propositions identify subfactors or contingencies that may allow administrators to be more responsive to citizens in collaborative processes.     

Economy,state and civil society

The paper identifies a double crisis of agency facing socialists-the inability of the state to act effectively as the agent of society as a whole, and of the party adequately to represent the diversity of people's interests. It argues that this crisis can be resolved by the development of civil society, enabling the exercise of social control over the state and the economy.

An institutional framework for participatory economic democracy is then outlined, based on the author's model of 'negotiated co-ordination'. The model incorporates market exchange, since enterprises use their existing capacity to meet market demand, but not market forces, since interdependent investment decisions are not taken separately by enterprises acting independently, but collectively through negotiation involving all those with an interest in their combined outcome.

The model is constructed on this basic principle of self-government-that decisions should be taken by those affected by them. The conclusion reached is that the dual crisis of agency can be resolved by the development of civil society, but that a role remains for the state, in resolving residual conflicts of interest when negotiation fails to produce agreement, and for political parties, in promoting alternative perspectives on the distribution of resources, rights and responsibilities.     

Contextual Factors Influencing Collaboration Levels and Outcomes in National Forest Stewardship Contracting

The number of policies promoting collaborative processes in national forest management has increased considerably over the past decade but do mandates alone increase the levels of collaboration in national forest management? Collaborative governance literature identifies the importance of the situational context for the emergence and performance of collaboration but does not identify the role of specific attributes and processes. This article presents a comparative case‐study analysis of factors influencing levels of collaboration in USDA Forest Service stewardship contracting processes. Incorporating concepts from the collaborative governance literature and Institutional Analysis and Development framework we found policy and administrative guidance alone will not increase the use of collaborative processes associated with stewardship contracts. A combination of existing agency‐community planning efforts, leadership, and agency support were essential for collaboration to materialize. Top‐down policy direction meant to increase the use of collaboration to achieve natural resource management objectives must incorporate opportunities to establish these conditions.     

Expecting something special? Developing assumptions of involvement organised interests as a source of regulatory quality in the European Union

Organised interests play a double role in policymaking: as representatives of societal interests and as policy experts adding to regulatory quality. The former of these 2 roles has been examined over and over again, whereas the latter has almost completely evaded scholarly interest for a number of reasons. One reason is that it demands a focus on output rather than on traditional darlings such as representation, input legitimacy, or influence. Another is that it demands an interdisciplinary approach as regulatory quality—that which the involvement of organised interests seek to furnish—is a concept that includes elements from both law and political science. The question of how to design involvement of organised interests in order to support regulatory quality, however, is a question with both academic and practical relevance. Building on an empirical study, this paper attempts to spur theorising to address this relevant question. The result is 4 assumptions that describe the relationship between involvement of organised interests and regulatory quality.     

Getting a Seat at the Table: Capital,Capture and Expert Groups in the European Union

European Commission expert groups provide powerful platforms from which interest organisations can steer the EU consultation process and weigh in on policy outcomes. Commission decision-makers and bureaucrats rely heavily on expert groups to provide expert policy advice on highly technical issues in the early stages of the policymaking process. Interest organisations provide this advice in order to have their voices heard at the EU level. But whose interests are being represented in these expert groups? Which types of interest organisations, in other words, get a seat at the table and why? This article, using data on over 800 expert groups and nearly 3,000 interest organisations, argues that expert group membership is largely a function of superior resources, EU-level interests and existing institutionalised ties to decision-makers. Far from simply addressing the Commission’s need for expertise, expert group membership is more a story of capital and capture.     

Opening the Black Box of Administrative Reform: A Strategic-Relational Analysis of Agency Responses to Termination Threats

ABSTRACT

How do public agencies respond when reform proposals threaten downsizing, reduction in functions, or termination? Agency survival during administrative reform is conventionally explained by structural characteristics, informed by the hardwiring thesis derived from the politics of the U.S. federal government. Parliamentary systems provide greater opportunity for agency reform, but there is little evidence of how agencies respond to such proposals or how proposals are altered prior to decision. We consider agencies as active participants in the reform processes, using strategic-relational theory to analyse their strategizing. The article employs detailed empirical evidence on 12 agencies subject to reform by the UK government between 2010 and 2013. We identify three archetypical defence strategies—technical expert, network node, and marginal adaptor—and argue that coding agency strategies alongside structural analysis can help better explain reform outcomes.     

The unseen hands: Collaborative instrumental leadership in the British renegotiation case

The article contends that an important but overlooked explanation for the European Union's resilience in the past decade in the face of several existential crises has been the informal instrumental leadership roles played by EU institutional actors collaborating with each other. In this article, a theoretical framework is developed that can explain why EU governments, facing a crisis, would choose to informally delegate leadership tasks to a set of EU institutional actors. A three-part mechanism of collaborative instrumental leadership provided by institutions is devised that explains why governments informally delegate leadership tasks to EU institutions, and the effects of this informal delegation. The core of the article is a process-tracing case study that explores how collaborative instrumental leadership actually works. The case selected is the British renegotiation of their terms of membership in 2015–2016. While the case has become more-or-less forgotten because the shock ‘no’ vote in the June 2016 Brexit referendum made its terms moot, the deal included quite exceptional reform proposals in which the EU bent over backwards to accommodate the United Kingdom, perhaps even going beyond the bounds of the EU Treaties themselves in the issue of immigration. Given this, analysing how collaborative instrumental leadership supplied by institutions contributed to producing the ambitious deal can shed light on the processes whereby intractable problems in the EU have been solved in the past decade.     

A Framework for Assessing Power in Collaborative Governance Processes

The growing use of collaborative methods of governance raises concerns about the relative power of participants in such processes and the potential for exclusion or domination of some parties. This research offers a framework for assessing power that considers authority, resources, and discursive legitimacy as sources of power and considers the participants, the process design, and the content of collaborative governance processes as arenas for power use. A case study of a collaborative governance process is presented and analyzed using the power framework. Implications for the design of collaborative governance processes are discussed, including the benefits of a multidimensional definition of power, tools for managing power imbalances among participants, and strategies that participants can use to participate more fully in collaborative governance processes.     

Negotiated rulemaking in practice

Until recently, parties interested in rulemaking by federal agencies were forced to voice their views primarily through adversarial procedures. An alternative, negotiated rulemaking, was proposed by the Administrative Conference of the United States (ACUS) in 1982. Since then, negotiated rulemaking has been used four times by federal agencies. The four completed negotiations show that negotiated rulemaking permits affected interests to retain greater control over the content of agency rules, while ensuring fairness and balance. It also permits agencies to obtain a more accurate perception of the costs and benefits of policy alternatives than can be obtained from digesting voluminous records of testimonial and documentary evidence presented in adversarial hearings. This article summarizes the results of a recently completed report prepared by the author for the Administrative Conference. It reviews the genesis of negotiated rulemaking, presents a framework within which to understand dynamics of the negotiation process and related administrative law issues, and presents recommendations for future agency use of negotiated rulemaking recently adopted in substance by the Administrative Conference.     

The new architects: Brazil,China, and innovation in multilateral development lending

Recent academic works have shed light upon the motives and negotiation dynamics leading to the creation of the New Development Bank (NDB) and Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB). We know less about their day‐to‐day activities and if (and if so why) they are being innovative in the field of multilateral development lending. This article evaluates novelty in the two banks. It uncovers and suggests an explanation to the puzzle of why the NDB appears more innovative (in terms of institutional design, staffing, and lending policy guidelines) than the AIIB by exploring the cases of China and Brazil. The two countries played central roles in the set‐up of each the AIIB and NDB. Drawing on extensive field research, the article proposes that their preferences and capability to engage in institutional innovation depend on interests, status, economic power, and regulatory capacity.     

Innovation and public space: The developmental possibilities of regulation in the global south

Important product and process innovations are often developed in “public spaces” that promote collaboration and provide shelter from market competition. Given that most collaborative spaces are costly to establish, the possible implications are bleak for economically strapped developing countries. This paper highlights a less conspicuous – if not unknown – source of collaborative space: the regulatory process. Regulators can induce innovation by promoting collaboration across organizational, sectoral, and disciplinary boundaries in the interest of regulatory compliance. This paper documents the innovative consequences of efforts to regulate the use of lead‐based glazes in the Mexican ceramics industry and reconsiders several recent studies of upgrading in other countries that appear to have been driven, at least in part, by the regulatory process. Drawing on these cases, this paper makes four primary points: (i) that innovation in regulatory spaces is more common than previously acknowledged and is producing meaningful improvements in product quality and working conditions in developing economies; (ii) that promoting innovation in these regulatory spaces is an important developmental tool for countries that are “regulation‐takers” and have many low‐tech sectors; (iii) that this dynamic extends current conceptions of regulatory discretion, as well as development literature on state‐society synergies; and (iv) that establishing collaborative public spaces as a common conceptual framework is a critical step toward understanding the consequences of social regulation on upgrading.     

Knowledge for Governance,Governance of Knowledge: Inclusive Knowledge Management in Collaborative Governance Processes

ABSTRACT

Different ways of knowing (WOKs) present in governance processes easily give rise to controversies and conflicts and forestall collective action. To resolve these conflicts it is necessary to understand what constitutes a WOK and how we can organize inclusion through collaborative governance. This paper argues that WOKs contain different knowledge elements: they contain different bodies of factual knowledge, formulate specific knowledge questions, and prefer different methods and knowledge institutes. WOKs also encompass different frames, interpretations, or normative perceptions of reality. And finally, different WOKs make use of different sources and types of organizing capacity.

Realizing successful collaborative governance processes means organizing inclusion of these different components of knowledge. This paper investigates the implications of this knowledge diversity for realizing collaborative governance processes and the challenges for inclusive knowledge management—through an in-depth case study of a collaborative governance process between the Netherlands and Flanders.

We conclude that realizing inclusion between various WOKs and their knowledge components contributes to the overall success of a collaborative governance process. However, managing inclusive knowledge is as much a matter of conscious strategies as it is the result of an emergent interaction process between stakeholders, experts, and officials within various WOKs. Furthermore, although knowledge inclusion facilitates successful negotiation between stakeholders, it doesn't guarantee a successful outcome of these negotiations.     

Pharmaceutical regulation in Denmark and the UK: Reformulating interest representation to the transnational level

Abstract. Common elements are recognised across Denmark and the UK in regulation of the pharmaceutical industry, which are attributed to the impact of associational action at the sector level. Our examination of arrangements for regulating medicine prices and information displays many of the hallmarks of neo-corporatism – namely negotiation with state agencies, compliance seeking among members, and policy implementation through acting as a Private Interest Government. During a period of economic internationalisation and directive international agencies, we show how business interests have reformulated to transnational levels, with associations, despite facing a greater complexity of interests to represent, having a strong impact upon regulatory outcomes. These have been neither wholly deregulatory or reregulatory, but partly reflect events at national levels. This may predict regulatory developments at the European level in other sectors.     

The European regulation of corporate social responsibility: The role of beneficiaries' intermediaries

Intended beneficiaries have an undeniable relevance to regulation. However, current research has focused mainly on the two‐party relationship between rulemaking and rule‐taking. We attempt to fill this gap by exploring the formal and informal roles that beneficiaries’ intermediaries played in co‐creating European Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) rules and associated practices between 2000 and 2017. By linking recent conceptualizations of regulatory intermediaries with the literature on critical political CSR, we offer a more dynamic and contextualized understanding of the roles of beneficiaries’ intermediaries. Specifically, we identify six micro‐dynamics through which they influenced the regulatory process. Notably, our findings highlight how the convergence of interests between three groups of beneficiaries’ intermediaries – the Non‐governmental organization–Investor–Union nexus – had a key role in reshaping CSR rules. We conclude that, in the European context, stronger and better‐coordinated beneficiaries’ intermediaries are crucial in order to achieve more effective corporate conduct regulation.     

Trust but verify? Voluntary regulation programs in the nonprofit sector

In this article we examine how information problems can cause agency slippages and lead to governance failures in nonprofit organizations. Drawing on the principal–agent literature, we provide a theoretical account of an institutional mechanism, namely, voluntary regulation programs, to mitigate such slippages. These programs seek to impose obligations on their participants regarding internal governance and use of resources. By joining these programs, nonprofit organizations seek to differentiate themselves from nonparticipants and signal to their principals that they are deploying resources as per the organizational mandate. If principals are assured that agency slippages are lower in program participants, they might be more likely to provide the participants with resources to deliver goods and services to their target populations. However, regulatory programs for nonprofit organizations are of variable quality and, in some cases, could be designed to obscure rather than reveal information. We outline an analytical framework to differentiate the credible clubs from the “charity washes.” A focus on the institutional architecture of these programs can help to predict their efficacy in reducing agency problems.     

Regulatory reform in the era of new technological development: The role of organizational factors in the public sector

What is the role of organizational factors in fostering regulatory reform in response to new technological development? Existing studies provide useful frameworks to understand regulatory reform in rapidly changing circumstances but still lack a systematic analysis of how organizational factors affect regulatory reform in the public sector. To fill this gap, we examine the impact of several institutional elements that are central to defining organizational characteristics, such as job tasks, bureaucratic autonomy, and organizational culture. We theorize that regulatory reform is more likely when public sector organizations are more receptive to external changes, which are determined by these characteristics. We leverage original surveys from over 1,000 civil servants in Korea, one of the front runners in new technological development, and find support for our prediction. We find that the implementation of regulatory reforms is more likely when (i) organizational tasks are relevant to scientific and technological development, (ii) higher levels of bureaucratic autonomy are granted, (iii) agency heads demonstrate stronger leadership, and (iv) organizational culture is less authoritarian. Our study makes clear contributions to the literature on public management and regulation theory, and has important implications for regulatory reform in the face of new technological development.     

Regulatory Agencies—The Challenges of Balancing Agency Autonomy and Political Control

In this article we focus on the dynamic interplay between increase in autonomy of regulatory agencies and political control of those agencies. The general research issues are the weak empirical foundations of regulatory reforms, the complex trade‐off between political control and agency autonomy, the dual process of deregulation and reregulation, the problems of role‐specialization and coordination, and the questions of “smart practice” in regulatory policy and practice. The theoretical basis is agency theories and a broad institutional approach that blend national political strategies, historical‐cultural context, and external pressures to understand regulatory agencies and regulatory reform. This approach is contrasted with a practitioner model of agencies. Empirically the article is based on regulatory reform in Norway, giving a brief introduction to the reform and agency context followed by an analysis of the radical regulatory reform policy introduced recently by the current Norwegian government. We illustrate how regulatory reforms and agencies work in practice by focusing on two specific cases on homeland security and telecommunications.