Implementing Environmental Sustainability in Local Government: The Impacts of Framing,Agency Culture,and Structure in US Cities and Counties

This article focuses on the organizational factors of environmental sustainability implementation in local government. We investigate the interactions, as well as direct and indirect impacts, of the framing of environmental sustainability and organizational culture and structure on implementation outcomes. We use a survey of 217 city/county planners and managers in 146 randomly selected American mid-sized cities and counties. The survey was specifically designed to tease out organizational features and their impacts. We model these impacts using structural equation modeling. We find that horizontally and vertically integrated organizational structure supports two essential dimensions of organizational culture: innovation adoption and consensus building. These cultural traits positively impact the framing of environmental sustainability at the core of organizations’ logic, which in turn significantly supports implementation outcomes. These findings provide important insights into city/county managers seeking to promote sustainability, and provide a base for future studies of the organizational factors of implementation.     

Effective HRM Implementation by Line Managers: Relying on Various Sources of Support

We explore one of the key underlying mechanisms that mediate the HRM–performance link, namely HRM implementation by line managers. The purpose of our study is to examine the role of various sources of support in explaining effective HRM implementation by line managers. Results indicate that HR, supervisor, and coworker support are relevant in explaining line managers’ HR role performance. In addition, younger line managers and those with greater supervisory experience are found to perform better in their HR role. Hence, organizations should consider developing a broad support network to ensure effective implementation of HRM by line managers.     

Escalation,Emulation, and the Failure of Hybrid Warfare in Afghanistan

In this article, I argue that hybridization is a contingent result of the dynamics of some conflicts but not others. In particular, faced with opponents with great power, weaker powers seek a situation of asymmetry to gain victory. Drawing on within-case analysis of the conduct of war during the past thirty years in Afghanistan, I demonstrate that what we now consider to be “hybrid” represents an important continuity and strategic option in Afghan warfare. Still, the analysis also demonstrates that choosing “hybrid” has not been a strategy that has worked. Hezb-i-Islami's rather limited attempt for conventionalization of the war against the forces of Dostum and Massoud in 1992 failed and the Taliban's more far-reaching attempt for conventionalization has so far also failed to reap strategic success. This suggests that the threat of hybrid war is inflated.     

Taxation and presidential approval: separate effects from tax burden and tax structure turbulence?

Previous research has established that taxation may impose significant electoral costs on politicians. This literature, however, focuses exclusively on the effect of the tax burden. In this paper, we test the hypothesis that both the level of the tax burden and the change in the tax structure affect the US president’s approval ratings (over the 1959–2006 period). Our results support this proposition. Specifically, we find a negative impact from the magnitudes of the tax burden and the deficit as well as from changes in the tax structure on presidential approval ratings.     

Land tenure,land law and development: some thoughts on recent debates

This paper offers a discussion of some of the features of recent land tenure debates and policies. It argues that two different orientations can be discerned: one that tends to regard land primarily as an economic asset and another that rather takes a (human) rights orientation and emphasises food and shelter security. These different orientations can be seen to be related to contrasting conceptualisations of extra-legality and different ranges of policy options when it comes to the legalisation or formalisation of land tenure and the acknowledgement of arrangements alternative to Western style individual ownership.     

Land tenure legislation in a pluri-cultural and multi-ethnic Society: The case of Bolivia

After considering notions of social justice as they are related to concepts of ‘development’, this article seeks to provide a regionally differentiated overview of the evolution of land tenure in Bolivia and the way arrangements for land tenure legalization have been contested and negotiated over time. It will show how the colonial ‘reciprocity pact’, which entailed recognition of indigenous tenure systems came under attack from liberalizing policies during the second half of the nineteenth century. The 1953 agrarian reform brought new arrangements and new agrarian policies that formally aimed at modernization. Yet another reform, in 1996, under the aegis of neoliberalism, brought a formal recognition of indigenous tenure systems which, however, has not yielded very satisfactory outcomes. This is due to a one-sided emphasis on tenure that disregards broader community organization and a slow and biased implementation favouring the traditionally dominant sectors.     

The agrarian question in Peru: Some observations on the roads of capital

Under the military governments of Velasco (1968–75) and Morales Bermùdez (1975–80) one of the most important agrarian reforms of South American history took place in Peru. According to Alain de Janvry [1981] this reform involved a shift from a junker‐road to a farmer‐road toward the development of capitalism in Peruvian agriculture. In the first part of this study de Janvry's approach to the ‘agrarian question’ and his evaluation of the Peruvian reform will be discussed. It will be argued that he overestimates the importance of farmer‐type capitalism and pays too little attention to the cooperatives established during the reform. Focusing the discussion on the co‐operatives in the coastal region it will be argued that these enterprises can be understood, to an important extent, as a form of simple commodity production. In the final part of the article a case study of the cotton producing co‐operatives in the province of Ica will be presented.     

The resilient state: new regulatory modes in international approaches to state building?

‘Resilience’ has quickly risen to prominence in international security and development circles. In recent years it has found its way into political discourse on state building and state fragility, triggering a vast but often conceptually indistinct examination of the subject. Given its meaning in policy publications and guidelines, ‘resilience’ tends to eschew a static conceptualisation of statehood, turning instead to a more dynamic, complex and process-oriented rendering of state–society relations. This illustrates a conceptual shift from ‘failed states’ to ‘fragile states and situations’. It also transforms the concept of ‘failed state’ as a mere threat perception – with ‘stability’ as its logical other – into ‘fragility’ as a particular form of social and political risk. This paper analyses the concepts in 43 policy papers, focusing on the nexus of ‘resilience’ and ‘fragility’ in international state building, and assesses potential consequences. What does ‘resilience’ – as the opposite vision to ‘fragility’ – in fact mean? What is the practice derived from this chimerical state of states?