Public Philanthropic Partnerships: The Changing Nature of Government/Foundation Relationships in the US

Relationships between foundations and the government in the United States have long been difficult with government attitudes ranging from hostile to at best indifferent in the past. American foundations have long claimed innovation as a distinctive function to perform in society in order to preserve their legitimacy. One hundred years after the rise of the large-scale American philanthropic foundation, however, the relationships between foundations and government have come into flux. Between demands from fiscally-strapped local governments and a new openness of state and federal governments to develop collaborative relationships, a variety of public-philanthropic partnerships have emerged that question the traditional roles and distribution of labor between philanthropy and the state. This article traces the historical development of the government/foundation relationship and discusses its changing nature using recession-induced ad hoc partnerships, the emergence of foundation liaison offices, and the Obama Administration’s Social Innovation Fund and Investing in Innovation program as examples.     

Politicians’ outside earnings and electoral competition

This paper deals with the impact of electoral competition on politicians’ outside earnings. In our framework, politicians face a tradeoff between allocating their time to political effort or to an alternative use generating outside earnings. The main hypothesis is that the amount of time spent on outside work is negatively related to the degree of electoral competition. We test this hypothesis using a new dataset on outside earnings of members of the German federal assembly and find that politicians facing low competition have substantially higher outside earnings.     

Transnational private governance between the logics of empowerment and control

Transnational private governance initiatives that address problems of social and environmental concern now pervade many sectors. In tackling distinct substantive problems, these programs have, however, prioritized different problem‐oriented logics in their institutionalized rules and procedures. One is a “logic of control” that focuses on ameliorating environmental and social externalities by establishing strict and enforceable rules; another is a “logic of empowerment” that concentrates on remedying the exclusion of marginalized actors in the global economy. Examining certification programs in the areas of fair trade, organic agriculture, fisheries, and forest management, we assess the evolutionary effects of programs prioritizing one logic and then having to accommodate the other. The challenges programs face when balancing between the two logics, we argue, elucidate specific distributional consequences for wealth, power, and regulatory capabilities that private governance programs seek to overcome.     

Participatory system dynamics modelling for dairy value chain development in Nicaragua

The use of system dynamics tools can add valuable insights when identifying and evaluating priorities for pro-poor value chain upgrading. However, to better understand the complex systems in agricultural value chains and to develop useful models, a participatory modelling process is important. This article highlights the group model building process of the dairy value chain in Matiguás, Nicaragua, one of a few examples of participatory model building in developing countries. The results confirm several benefits with participatory system dynamics modelling, including team learning, a greater understanding of the value of modelling, and a tool for decision-making and priority setting.     

Citizenship and Unauthorised Migration: a Dialectical Relationship

The relationship between citizenship and immigration law is often conceived as a conceptual dichotomy in which the former functions as the rhetorical domain of inclusion while immigration law does the dirty work of detention, deportation and snooping into peoples’ lives in order to uphold the inclusive values of the internal domain. States however employ a variety of practices of immigration control that infringe citizens’ rights and produce lasting dilatory effects on citizenship itself. Focusing on two specific case studies – racial profiling in identity checks carried out for immigration purposes and the standards of interpretation developed by the European Court of Human Rights in regard to the right to family life in expulsion cases – this article argues that current practices of immigration control result in a transformation of citizenship along racialised lines, which hollows citizenship's normative core of equality and liberty.     

Post-Conflict State Building: the debate on institutional choice

A significant theoretical and empirical question underlying much of the literature on post-conflict state building is which institutions offer the best prospect for peace and democracy in divided societies recovering from conflict. This debate is highly relevant for many developing countries. With much invested by third parties in post-conflict reconstruction and a mixed track record of success at best, the question explored by this article is whether consociational institutional designs—widely applied in policy practice and severely criticised in academic discourse—can accomplish the twin goals of peace and democracy in divided post-conflict societies. Examining the claims of supporters and detractors of consociationalism, the article finds substantial conceptual and empirical evidence that consociational institutions hold significant promise for building democratic states after conflict in divided societies.     

Inclusive Elite Bargains and the Dilemma of Unproductive Peace: a Zambian case study

This article seeks to contribute to recent debates on the link between political settlements and state building. It proposes a theoretical framework that centres on the alternative concept of ‘elite bargain’ and suggests that inclusive elite bargains can be expected to facilitate both peace and economic development. Yet a detailed case study of elite bargains in Zambia shows that all good things do not always go together. While inclusive elite bargains have indeed helped to avoid civil war, they have often constrained economic development—a dilemma of unproductive peace.     

Governance Barriers to Renewable Energy in North Africa

Solar power in the North African region has the potential to provide electricity for local energy needs and export to Europe. Nevertheless, despite the technical feasibility of solar energy projects, stakeholders still perceive projects in the region as risky because of existing governance issues. Certain areas of solar projects, such as construction, operation and management, are the most prone to governance risks, including lack of transparency and accountability, perceived as barriers for deployment of the projects. It is likely that large-scale foreign direct investment into solar energy will not eliminate existing risks, but might even increase them. Furthermore, the recent political changes in the region have addressed some governance risks but not all of them, especially bureaucratic corruption. Stakeholders recommend a broad set of measures to facilitate development of solar projects in the region, ranging from auditing of individual projects to simplification and unification of bureaucratic procedures.