NEGLECTED FACES OF EUROPEANIZATION: THE DIFFERENTIAL IMPACT OF THE EU ON THE DISMANTLING AND EXPANSION OF DOMESTIC POLICIES

The objective of this article is to clarify the extent and the conditions under which the European Union (EU) induces changes in the policy arrangements of its member states. For an accurate measurement of our dependent variable, we distinguish between EU-induced policy expansion and EU-induced policy dismantling. We argue that the extent to which European requirements lead to an expansion or dismantling of national policy arrangements is crucially affected by the respective governance logic underlying the regulatory activities at the European level, that is: (1) compliance with EU rules; (2) competition between national administrative systems to achieve EU requirements; and (3) communication between regulatory agents across national levels arranged in an EU legal or institutional framework. To illustrate our theoretical argument, we develop hypotheses on the likelihood and direction of national policy change under these three modes of governance, in addition, providing empirical examples from different policy areas.     

International financial governance in hard times: tracing the transformations

This article reviews the tenets of the intellectual consensus on how to organize the international financial system that came to crystallize at the end of the 1990s and the contestation of such a consensus in the aftermath of the global financial crisis of 2007–09. Illustrating the path of ideational transformation from the early 1990s until the present time, the article builds on recent constructivist works in international political economy that take economic ideas held by agents as the principal unit of analysis. In doing so, it brings to the surface both the substantive changes that had taken place in the principles underlying the governance of the international financial system and the dynamics of ideational change. Specifically, the article suggests a shift away from a governance project based on the dispersion of supervisory authority and finds that new policy ideas of regulation and political centralization have all been conceived with negative reference to the past.     

Central banks under stress: Reputation,accountability and regulatory coherence

This symposium homes in on an area of public administration that has been through a period of significant change in the last ten years. Since the global financial crisis, central banks have expanded their operations in financial markets, buying up vast quantities of assets as part of expansive monetary policy strategies. They have also played a leading role in the reform of financial regulation and have been entrusted with enhanced authority to supervise financial institutions. This activity has taken place amid heightened political contestation, with central banks increasingly viewed as the quintessence of a technocratic mode of governance that eschews traditional democratic control. The purpose of this symposium is to consider how central banks’ reputation, accountability and regulatory roles have changed since the financial crisis, and what those changes tell us about the balance of power between independent regulatory agencies and elected policy‐makers.     

The circulation of public officials in a fragmented system: Urban governance networks in Paris

Fragmentation and specialization—two characteristics of governance—have increased the number and variety of actors involved in the governing process, which can influence policy outcomes and legitimacy. To date, studies on governance or policy networks usually focus on one policy field and one moment in time. In this article, we analyse the dynamic aspect, thus how governance networks change over time, and examine whether the fragmentation and specialization of the governance system is mirrored in the circulation of public officials. Our case is the urban governance system of the Paris region, which is characterized by high fragmentation along policy fields and territory. The data show that Paris is governed by three sub‐systems that largely correspond to the different territorial levels of governance, but also to different types of organizations. Generally, territorial fragmentation seems to be stronger than policy field fragmentation. This structure is quite stable across time.     

NEW GOVERNANCE ARRANGEMENTS AT THE INTERSECTION OF CLIMATE CHANGE AND FOREST POLICY: INSTITUTIONAL,POLITICAL AND REGULATORY DIMENSIONS

This article investigates emerging governance arrangements at the intersection between forest management and climate policy. The authors deploy the symposium's three‐dimensional framework to describe and evaluate developments within two distinct policy sectors (forestry/climate change adaptation and mitigation) at several levels of governance (bi‐national, national, and sub‐national) to explore the nature and operation of the emerging governance arrangements, and assessing and measuring change within these arrangements over time. Drawing on four contemporary case studies from the US and Canada, New Zealand, British Columbia and Alaska, the authors discern little evidence of a generalized, linear trend from ‘government to governance’. Instead, they conclude, across institutional, political and regulatory dimensions of governance, a more variegated and diverse picture emerges. Their analysis also lends support for the Trubek and Trubek (2007) hypothesis that emerging governance arrangements typically interact with extant ones through modalities of rivalry, complementarity and transformation.     

From environmental policy concepts to practicable tools: Knowledge creation and delegation in multilevel systems

The problem‐solving capacity and problem‐generating potential of multilevel systems entail the need for the delegation of authority. When the problem concerned is about how to put an abstract policy concept into a practicable policy tool, the choice of the respective delegation trajectory depends on the policy models or the policy‐relevant knowledge that the respective political levels can supply. When regarding the European Union (EU) level as the starting point of knowledge creation and delegation trajectories, and concentrating on transaction costs, policy knowledge and models generated at the international level provide the most cost‐effective solution. Only when the international level is not able to provide further policy knowledge and innovation does the EU delegate its definitional authority, first downward to the member states and then sideways to EU agencies. We illustrate the plausibility of our dynamic understanding of multilevel governance by using Environmental Policy Integration as an example.     

“Let's organize”: The organizational basis for stable public governance

This study carries two distinct contributions to extant literature. Theoretically, it introduces an organizational approach to the study of public governance. Empirically, it demonstrates how the organizational architecture of government represents a stable and systemic capacity for public governance across time. The study establishes how stability serves as an enduring feature of public governance and how this is anchored in the organizational architecture of government systems. Moreover, structured flexibility is illustrated by how the civil service adapts to both international organizations and societal stakeholders. Theorizing the organizational dimension of public governance, this study also introduces a design tool that may be useful for deliberately (re)structuring public governance. Empirically, these arguments are probed by a sizable dataset with 13,173 observations across 40 years, consisting of nine surveys of civil servants at ministry and agency levels. The data enables a long-term perspective on government civil servants over nearly half a century, thus allowing for a comprehensive study of the organizational basis for public governance.     

From democratic socialism to neoliberalism: the metamorphoses of the people's national party in Jamaica

Why are leftist parties in government abandoning their state-led, redistributive economic development models in favor of market-determined neoliberal ones? Conventional explanations emphasize conditionality of international financial institutiosn. This argument, though, fails to account for differences in economic policy choices across countries or within a country over time. Analyzing the social democratic People's National Party of Jamaica during two periods when it accepted IMF-mandated neoliberal economic reform measures (1977–80 and 1989-present), an alternative approach is presented to illuminate why and how leftist governments switch economic policy programs. The two time periods show that IMF conditionality might be a necessary motivation for the adoption of neoliberal economic measures, but it is not sufficient motivation. I argue that the actual policies the PNP governments employed reflect changes in the relative influence of competing factions within the party. This approach, focusing on domestic actors rather than international ones to account for economic policy shifts, highlights the ways in which politicians can manipulate institutional rules to change the relative weight of different factions within the party to gain support for policy decisions that contradict the party's traditional social democratic ideology.     

Corruption in post-conflict Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo: a deal among friends

Since the late 1990s international state builders have paid increasing attention to fighting corruption in both Bosnia-Herzegovina and Kosovo. On the surface this effort has brought significant results, since both countries have adopted legal frameworks modelled on the best practices of Western democracies. In practice, however, corruption remains rampant. This disappointing outcome has several explanations: in reviewing the empirical evidence we consider the two countries as cases involving heavily assisted transition from both socialism and war, highlighting how collusive practices between political and criminal interests have played a role in establishing formally liberal but substantively ‘hybrid’ institutions. We argue that the spread of corruption has been implicitly legitimised by international actors, who have pressured local parties to accept the formal architecture of good governance, including anti-corruption legislation, while turning a blind eye to those extra-legal structures and practices perceived as functional to political stability.     

Food Safety Regulation and the Conflict of Interest: The Case of MeatSafety and E. Coli 0157

The Food Standards Agency (FSA) aims to remove the longstanding conflict of interest between producers and consumers which is thought to lie at the heart of the rising number of food safety problems of recent years, to restore consumer confidence, and to protect public health. This paper sets out firstly to understand what the conflicts are, how they arise and their implications for food safety, and secondly to provide some means of evaluating the proposals for the Food Standards Agency. It does this by examining the current food safety regulatory regime as it relates to e. coli 0157, one of the problems that gave rise to the FSA and an exemplar of the problems of meat safety, and places it in its wider economic context.
The results show that the financial pressures on the food industry were such that food hygiene was largely dependent upon external regulation and enforcement. But the deficiencies in the conception, design and implementation of the Food Safety Act, which was fundamentally deregulatory and privileged producer interests, permitted the food safety problems to grow. The case also, by illustrating how the interests of big business predominate in the formulation of public policy at the expense of the public, reveals how the class nature of the state affects public policy and social relations. Without addressing these issues, the problems they give rise to will remain. While the case is based on experiences in Britain, the problem of food safety and the issues raised have an international significance.     

Central coercion or local autonomy? A comparative analysis of policy instrument choice in refugee settlement policies

Although existing literature on central–local governance includes comprehensive studies on how constitutional and financial frameworks regulate local government autonomy, this study seeks explanations for the introduction or absence of central coercion within these frameworks. The analysis studies six processes of policy instrument choice with different outcomes in Norway, Denmark and Sweden in the field of refugee settlement. It finds that a uniform perception of crisis and political compromises make political parties abandon their political–ideological standpoints relating to central–local governance. Additionally, the success and failure of political strategies of obfuscation and of dividing the opposition help to explain the different outcomes. The study reveals differences in the political salience of central–local governance in three countries that have systematically been categorised in the same groups in central–local studies. Consequently, more studies on how and why local autonomy is regulated within national frameworks are necessary to understand the actual autonomy that local governments enjoy.     

The professional politics of the austerity debate: A comparative field analysis of the European Central Bank and the International Monetary Fund

How do different professional structures shape the economic ideas that international economic organizations use to prescribe policy recommendations or derive legitimacy and authority for them? The comparative professional field analysis proposed herein deploys a novel combination of content, network and regression analysis to uncover the precise role of different qualifications, experiences and hierarchies in shaping the economic expertise invoked by the European Central Bank's and the International Monetary Fund's main policy documents, with a specific focus on debates over fiscal consolidation in the wake of the global financial crisis of 2008. The findings challenge much of the scholarship about how economic ideas diffuse across professional domains and where change on macroeconomic policy in international economic organizations is likely to come from. As such, the article should be of interest to scholarship on international bureaucracies, the politics of professional knowledge and the international political economy of fiscal consolidation.     

Limits of regulatory governance change in the post-developmental state: Korean telecommunications market restructurings from a comparative perspective

This study explains the limits of institutional transformation in Korea from the developmental state to a post-developmental state, in terms of regulatory institutions instead of developmental institutions. The Korean state has taken advantage of the government's discretionary policy changes and power formed by both informal state institutions and informal policy networks, while the regulatory state has placed a special emphasis on social consensus as well as political support for changes of market institutions. New market rules and laws have also been inefficient and ineffective for fair market competition. Limits of regulatory governance change have occurred due to misalignments between informal regulatory institutions in the developmental state and formal regulatory institutions in the post-developmental state. State managers have created discretionary state intervention in policy implementation, politicized the roles of regulatory agencies, and brought ministry-type regulatory state institutions back in. The establishment of effective market institutions has failed due to informal market institutions (unfair and illegal market practices) that have interfered with the policy implementation of new formal market regulations.     

THE GOVERNANCE OF FINANCIAL REGULATORY REFORM: THE AUSTRALIAN EXPERIENCE

The dominant perspective in the literature linking governance, globalization and public policy argues that globalization undercuts state capacity, weakening a government's ability to effectively regulate its domestic affairs. This paper shows otherwise with special reference to the Australian experience in financial regulation. It challenges the conventional wisdom that the Australian state is weak and cannot adopt anticipatory industrial policies. This paper argues that the adoption of the ‘twin peaks' model of financial regulatory arrangements is an example of the existence of government‐led steering in Australia which can adopt a proactive approach to financial regulation by steering and coordinating policy networks. ‘Governance through hierarchy’ in the financial services industry may be a function of the government's political entrepreneurship; its skill in setting and implementing an agenda; and an ability to create new policy communities and networks.     

The Public Sector Reform Movement: Mapping the Global Policy Network

Public sector reform in both developed and developing countries has now become a routine matter of public policy—reform is almost continuous, if not always successful. While the role of international transfer agents such as the World Bank and the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) in promoting reforms has often been noted, there has been no comprehensive mapping of the global network on public sector reform. This article makes a first attempt to map the close to 100 organizations that make up a loose global network around public administration and governance. It then provides a brief history of the evolution of the network, and the key events that encouraged a substantial degree of coherence among its members. It examines the practices and tools that are specific to this global public policy network, and concludes with some observations on policy transfer models. The article shows that in trying to understand the dynamics of public administration reform, we need to pay greater attention to this network, its members, and its influence over national policy priorities.     

Political Violence and Excess Liquidity in Egypt

In this article we estimate a time-series model of excess liquidity in the Egyptian banking sector. While financial liberalisation and financial stability are found to have reduced excess liquidity, these effects have been offset by an increase in the number of violent political incidents arising from conflict between radical Islamic groups and the Egyptian state. The link between political events and financial outcomes provides a rationale for economic policy interventions by the international community in response to increases in political instability.     

GOVERNANCE FROM THE BOTTOM UP: COMPLEXITY AND DIVERGENCE IN COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE

This symposium article examines how the threefold governance framework of the symposium actually works across multiple policy sectors and multiple politically systems. It undertakes a comparative survey of governance‐related developments across three policy sectors: environment, education/higher education and forests. To control for differentiation in political structures, the article studies the policy sectors with respect to three political systems Canada, England and Germany, taking into account the role of the European Union, the federal systems and international actors. This broad macro comparative focus enables the authors to make one of the first empirical efforts to assess the presence and sweep of governance arrangements across both policy sectors and states; and to assess the degree of convergence around particular governance practices.     

The Linkage between Security,Governance and Development: the European Union in Africa

The international community currently favours an approach to development that stresses a triangular linkage between security, good governance and economic development. This approach clearly informs the European Union's agenda in Africa, which has progressively integrated governance and security elements. This paper will show that this agenda is at least as much determined by the bureaucratic and national affiliations of the concerned EU actors as it is by African realities and international trends. African security indeed triggers a competition between the different European institutions, eager to be the driving force for a policy that can offer some additional resources and autonomy. The consistency and the credibility of the EU security policy in Africa will therefore depend on the responses provided to these institutional rivalries.     

Multilevel governance and problem‐solving: Towards a dynamic theory of multilevel policy‐making?

In this article, we suggest that the governance of problems shapes the institutional dynamics of multilevel governance (MLG) polities. MLG arrangements—processes and institutions that enable policy‐making across different jurisdictional levels wherein both public authorities and non‐state actors are involved—can or cannot succeed in solving policy problems and at the same time they could create new problems. We argue that the problem‐solving capacity and problem‐generating potential of multilevel arrangements can result in further, downwards, upwards or sideways delegation of political authority, which in turn reconfigure the multilevel architecture of the political system following either centripetal or centrifugal tendencies. We illustrate our point with a stylized account of the dynamics of MLG in the European Union (EU) since the early 1990s. We conclude with some remarks about developing a more general theory of multilevel policy‐making.     

Understanding financial reporting fraud in Egypt: evidence from the audit field

This study expands our knowledge and understanding of financial reporting fraud in Egypt by drawing on the perceptions of experienced international and Big 4 auditors in that country. In particular, it explores (1) how common financial reporting fraud is in Egypt, (2) the perpetrators and victims of financial reporting fraud in Egypt and (3) how financial reporting fraud is committed and concealed in Egypt. The study sheds light on generic issues that could have implications for auditors and audit regulators. In addition, the study provides a detailed guide on how financial reporting fraud schemes are committed and concealed in Egypt, knowledge of which could help auditors design effective audit tests to assess fraud risk and help those charged with governance to design effective prevention and detection techniques. Egypt could be an attractive destination for international investors, therefore knowledge of the nature and victims of fraud in Egypt could help investors make informed decisions about where to invest their money. The results of this study could also help regulators in Egypt as well as World Trade Organizations determine where to focus their support and enforcement efforts.