Inter-Agency Cooperation to Raise Awareness on Human Trafficking in Vietnam: Good Practices and Challenges

Awareness-raising tactics are arguably the first priority in the prevention strategies in Vietnam at present. Awareness-raising campaigns are implemented through two kinds of communication methods: community-based activities and mass media. Although anti-trafficking activities in Vietnam have achieved some successful results, recent evidence suggests that a lack of clear progress in the areas of trafficking awareness-raising still remains. The quality and extent of collaboration between authorised agencies are key factors in anti-trafficking activities, including raising awareness on human trafficking. However, to date, there has been no systematic research on inter-agency cooperation in awareness-raising activities in Vietnam. This paper first reviews the nature of human trafficking and legal framework on raising trafficking awareness in Vietnam. The paper then presents successes and challenges of current inter-agency collaborative activities undertaken to implement the awareness-raising strategies.     

The regulatory style of environmental governance in China: the case of EIA regulation in Shanghai*

The body of literature that examines how institutional contexts affect environmental governance in advanced industrial countries finds that style of environmental regulation is country‐specific. In the pluralist form of democracy like the United States, environmental policy formulation involves bargaining and compromises among interest groups and regulation enforcement through relatively formal and legalistic means. In the corporatist form of democracy like Sweden and Great Britain, in contrast, environmental policies are more accommodating to divergent societal interests and tend to be less formal in their enforcement. These variations in regulatory style have been attributed to differences in basic constitutional structures, regime types and cultures. How do institutional contexts affect the style of environmental regulation in China, which is both a non‐democratic and developing country? This article examines China's regulatory style by focusing on environmental impact assessment (EIA) regulation in Shanghai. The Shanghai EIA system is analyzed in terms of policy ideology, policy content, regulatory process, public participation and policy consequences. It is shown that China's being a single‐party regime with a ‘rule of persons’ tradition has heavily shaped its environmental governance. Based on Shanghai experience, China's style can be characterized as formal in requirement, agency‐dominated in the regulatory process, legalistic in enforcement, and informal politics as the substance of regulation. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Beyond deterrent enforcement styles: Behavioural intuitions of Chinese environmental law enforcement agents in a context of challenging inspections

This article extends the study of regulatory enforcement on three levels. First, it separates enforcement style elements during inspections and sanction decision‐making work, creating a more realistic measurement. Second, it focuses on how these elements function in a context where it is hard in practice to achieve deterrence. Third, it assesses how agents view the effectiveness of combinations of style elements in such a context. To do so, it uses survey and interview data with street‐level environmental officials in Guangzhou, China. It finds that the agents studied practise enforcement that goes beyond deterrence and uses education and persuasion more effectively. It finds that the behavioural assumptions of these agents are to a large extent in line with the available regulatory literature, although agents are very unlikely to have consulted such studies. Therefore, the article concludes that law enforcement agents can develop nuanced and appropriate behavioural intuitions through their everyday work experiences.     

Managing the Re‐Entry Process of Returnee Government Scholars in an Emerging Transition Economy – An Embeddedness Perspective

This paper reports the findings of a study that investigates the factors affecting the re‐entry and readjustment process of returnee government scholars in Vietnam. These returnee scholars were originally sent overseas to study as part of changes introduced by the Vietnamese government to develop its domestic talent pool. Using the perspective of home country embeddedness, we find that career and community embeddedness factors, together with readjustment factors, have an effect on returnee scholars’ career and life satisfaction in their home country. These factors subsequently affected their intention to stay or re‐expatriate. The study contributes to public sector change management theory by examining factors affecting the re‐entry process of returnees within an emerging transition economy. It also adds to the limited studies on understanding and managing the re‐entry processes and state‐led diaspora strategies among returnee government scholars from emerging transition economies and their effectiveness.     

Nonprofit Policy Advocacy under Authoritarianism

Despite the increasing volume and significance of research on nonprofit advocacy, most studies have focused on the phenomenon only in Western countries. This article expands the scope of the literature by examining the advocacy activities of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) in authoritarian China. This article focuses on three aspects of advocacy behavior: advocacy investment and use of insider and outsider tactics. Data analyses of an original nationwide survey of 267 environmental NGOs and semistructured interviews with 30 highlight how resource and institutional factors—government funding, government affiliation, foundation funding, and peer collaborations—shape NGO advocacy in China. The findings also suggest ways in which institutional actors may enhance NGOs’ capacity for policy advocacy.     

Turning a Chinese Kid Red: kindergartens in the early People's Republic

To win the hearts and minds of the Chinese people, Chinese Communist leaders launched a series of educational reforms to instill new socialist ideas and nationalistic fervor in kindergarteners immediately after the founding of the People's Republic of China in 1949. Under the strong influence of Soviet advisers and through a number of methods (games, singing, storytelling, site visits), Chinese kindergarteners were taught the nobility of labor, the sacrifice of soldiers, the grandeur of Tiananmen Square, the wise leadership of Chairman Mao Zedong, and the evilness of enemies. However, contrary to the conventional view, this article argues that Chinese education officials and kindergarten teachers never blindly followed Soviet educational models. They appropriated Moscow's techniques to suit their domestic needs, which included promoting nationalist feelings among children to consolidate the Chinese Communist Party's legitimacy and power. Ultimately, Chinese kindergarteners were turned into Party loyalists, not admirers of a foreign socialist model. Although the Party encountered difficulties in recruiting reliable teachers to implement its policies, it was able to impose nearly total control from above over the political content of kindergarten education. Under the one-party system, Chinese children were only taught what the Communist leaders wanted them to learn.     

Community participation and local government capacity in Vietnam: Conditions for coproduction

With Public Administration Reform in Vietnam comes more local government responsibility for policy making. Building on the results of a multiple case study research on housing and infrastructure upgrading projects in four cities of Vietnam, it has been confirmed that the community participation and local government capacity in urban housing and infrastructure upgrading projects are positively related. The level of community participation in urban housing and infrastructure upgrading projects is influenced by local government capacity, and in turn, it has effects on the outcomes. There are some important aspects for the enhancement of the level of community participation. These are effective leadership, the financial resources aspect, and communication/information exchange. Moreover, based on the patterns of community participation in urban upgrading projects, it has been found that participation is strongly supported by government actors in these four cases, and a process of coproduction between the local government and the affected communities has taken place.     

Distributive and procedural justice in interpersonal and intergroup situations: Issues,solutions, and extensions

This paper addresses theoretical issues relating to distributive and procedural justice. Specifically, comparisons are made between interpersonal and intergroup situations. Within the realm of distributive justice, two reinterpretations of the ingroup allocation bias are offered. One reinterpretation states that people show this bias to prevent being exploited by the outgroup. The other reinterpretation states that the bias can be regarded as a measure of the perceived worth of the ingroup in relation to the outgroup. The related issue of the procedure used for allocating resources is addressed by extending Tyler and Lind's (1992) Relational Model of Authority to all ingroup members in both interpersonal and intergroup situations. Reinterpretations and extensions offered in this paper lead to new theoretical insights and to several suggestions and predictions for future empirical research.