A policy to promote the world's economic development with migration

This paper proposes a scheme of large-scale migration from poor countries to rich ones to speed up economic development and raise the world's economic level. The key behavioral mechanism is non-school learning; as the migrants and their children take on the culture of the rich country, they acquire the skills and attitudes necessary for modern industrial production. Rich nations will not voluntarily open their borders to such immigration. A change in the international system is therefore suggested, giving power of taxation to an international body. This body would then hold an auction among the rich countries for immigration contracts. Though the present international system makes no provision for such policies, it makes sense to discuss and analyse the policies now, to be ready for possible future changes and perhaps to help stimulate changes in the international level.     

Blurring the International-Domestic Politics Distinction: Danish Representation at EC Negotiations

This article explores the extent to which Danish membership of the European communities has blurred the traditional distinction between international and domestic politics. Based on data concerning the pattern of representation of Danish ministries at EC negotiations, the article finds a strong decentralization of negotiation competences among ministries and a spread of negotiation responsibilities across hierarchical levels, types of organization, and types of civil servants. The conclusion is that this blurring tends to maximize the influence of domestic interests and that it accounts for much of the immobility of EC decision-making.     

Democratic Innovations to the Rescue? Political Trust and Attitudes Toward Democratic Innovations in Southwest Finland

It is difficult to govern when citizens are unsupportive of the political system. This problem is relevant for municipalities formed through municipal mergers since new political entities need to build political trust. Democratic innovations provide possible solutions to increase citizens’ confidence, but it is unclear whether distrusting citizens demand these opportunities for involvement. This study examines the link between political trust and support for democratic innovations in Southwest Finland with a survey of 2000 respondents in 14 municipalities. The results suggest that distrusting citizens are less supportive of democratic innovations; hence it is unlikely that they increase political trust.     

Sexting girls: technological sovereignty and the digital

This essay explores the contemporary fact of girls sexting. Instead of theoretically granting girls a form of technological sovereignty while sexting as sexual empowerment, it pauses to take a selfie of the adult subjects – parents, educators, and sex-positive feminists and queers – attached to this form of agency for girls. If sexuality remains an alluring reparative trap by offering, through a reverse discourse sustained by the plasticity of girlish whiteness, a way of transforming girls as objects into subjects, this essay problematizes that gesture as a racially normative one, reading it further alongside the relation of technology to sexual difference. To speculate on how the scenography of sexting could be seen differently by adults, this essay suspends the search for authentic meaning and knowledge, following an intuition that we cannot presently see anything behind the image of the sext. After examining how criminal law breaks the tension in the definition of “the girl” between vulnerability and agency by extending objectification through child-pornography law, the essay takes a speculative turn with feminist readings of the question of modern technology to consider the analytic and pedagogical purchase of the non-sovereignty of the girl who sexts.     

Balancing Governance Capacity and Legitimacy: How the Norwegian Government Handled the COVID-19 Crisis as a High Performer

This essay addresses how the Norwegian government has handled the coronavirus pandemic. Compared with many other countries, Norway has performed well in handling the crisis. This must be understood in the context of competent politicians, a high-trust society with a reliable and professional bureaucracy, a strong state, a good economic situation, a big welfare state, and low population density. The Norwegian government managed to control the pandemic rather quickly by adopting a suppression strategy, followed by a control strategy, based on a collaborative and pragmatic decision-making style, successful communication with the public, a lot of resources, and a high level of citizen trust in government. The alleged success of the Norwegian case is about the relationship between crisis management capacity and legitimacy. Crisis management is most successful when it is able to combine democratic legitimacy with government capacity.     

Can budget ambiguity crowd out intrinsic motivation? Longitudinal evidence from federal executive departments

While some scholars have assessed how various features of organizational structure shape intrinsic motivation, the role of budgets and, in particular, programme funding has been overlooked. To address this gap in the literature, we examine how programme funding decisions impact employee motivation. Referencing previous work, we hypothesize that funding choices that emphasize some programmes over others signal clearer organizational goals for employees, thereby increasing intrinsic motivation. In contrast, departments that do not use their budgets to signal clear goals can run the risk of reducing their employees’ intrinsic motivation. We empirically investigate this hypothesis within the context of the US Federal executive departments, constructing a longitudinal dataset (2010–15) from multiple sources. Findings support our hypothesis. Employees in departments that more evenly fund their programmes report lower levels of intrinsic motivation.     

Contracting Out Local Services: A Tale of Technical and Social Services

Governments face a fundamental choice between in‐house production and contracting out for the delivery of services to citizens. This article examines the importance of ideology, fiscal pressure, and size for contracting out in technical and social services. The analysis builds on a panel data set covering municipal spending on services in all 98 Danish municipalities. The authors find that contracting out is shaped by ideology in social services but not in technical services, which indicates that social services are the contemporary ideological battlefield of privatization. The analysis further reveals that economically prosperous municipalities are more likely to contract out social services, whereas contracting out of technical services is not influenced by economic affluence. Finally, larger municipalities contract out more in technical services but less in social services, demonstrating that the size effect is contingent on the transaction cost characteristics of the service.     

Organizing for Crisis Management: Building Governance Capacity and Legitimacy

What makes a well‐functioning governmental crisis management system, and how can this be studied using an organization theory–based approach? A core argument is that such a system needs both governance capacity and governance legitimacy. Organizational arrangements as well as the legitimacy of government authorities will affect crisis management performance. A central argument is that both structural features and cultural context matter, as does the nature of the crisis. Is it a transboundary crisis? How unique is it, and how much uncertainty is associated with it? The arguments are substantiated with empirical examples and supported by a literature synthesis, focusing on public administration research. A main conclusion is that there is no optimal formula for harmonizing competing interests and tensions or for overcoming uncertainty and ambiguous government structures. Flexibility and adaptation are key assets, which are constrained by the political, administrative, and situational context. Furthermore, a future research agenda is indicated.     

Size matters: the need for human-scale economic institutions for development

Current mainstream development thinking, with the exception of a few areas like microcredit, tends to favour size over substance. This article aims to challenge the belief that large-scale companies, markets, and institutions are the most effective means of ‘delivering development’. We argue that, by designing institutions to meet different needs at different scales, long-term sustainable development outcomes are more likely. Through an analysis of ‘new economics’ thinking, we look specifically at how the concept of subsidiarity could be applied to development thinking at the community and business levels, and we draw on some examples of where the concept is already manifest in practice, such as energy and commodity production.