Agency in earth system governance: refining a research agenda

In the face of global environmental change, a key question for the social sciences is how to organize the co-evolution of societies and their natural environment. In this context, a new long-term research program, the Earth System Governance Project, proposes several key issues to be examined: architecture, agency, adaptiveness, accountability, and allocation and access. The contributions to this special issue have focused on the analytical problem of agency. For example, they have examined newly emerging or understudied agents of global environmental governance, or offered a fresh assessment of agency in the context of existing governance mechanisms such as the Clean Development Mechanism. This concluding article outlines several insights provided by the contributions to this special issue regarding four key questions underlying the study of agency in global environmental governance. First, they call attention to the ingredients or processes that characterize agency in the first place and thus distinguish actors from agents. Secondly, the authors highlight the differences among agents and how they interact with each other. Thirdly, they point toward variation in the ways that agents may acquire authority. Finally, the contributions to this special issue suggest that there may be several approaches to evaluating agency, with different consequences. Thus, taken together, the contributions to this special issue provide a starting point for broadening our understanding of agency in earth system governance.     

Creating Constituencies: Presidential Campaigns, the Scope of Conflict, and Selective Mobilization

We investigate how material and symbolic campaign appeals may motivate segments of the electorate to be more engaged with the unfolding presidential campaign; this engagement is a first step toward bringing these populations into an electoral coalition. We pair two massive new data collections—the National Annenberg Election Study capturing public opinion across an entire campaign and The Wisconsin Advertising Project recording and cataloging the political commercials aired by campaigns—to examine how the candidates’ choice of issues affects who gets into the game. We find evidence that appeals to symbolic interests are more likely than appeals to material interest to selectively engage targeted groups.     

An Evaluation of Six Brief Interventions that Target Drug-Related Problems in Correctional Populations

Finding brief effective treatments for criminal justice populations is a major public need. The CJ-DATS Targeted Intervention for Corrections (TIC), which consists of six brief interventions (Communication, Anger, Motivation, Criminal Thinking, Social Networks, and HIV/Sexual Health), were tested in separate federally-funded randomized control studies. In total, 1,573 criminal justice-involved individuals from 20 correction facilities participated (78% males; 54% white). Multi-level repeated measures analyses found significant gains in knowledge, attitudes, and psychosocial functioning (criteria basic to Knowledge, Attitude, and Practices (KAP) and TCU Treatment Process Models). While improvements were less consistent in criminal thinking, overall evidence supported efficacy for the TIC interventions.     

A Better “Best Interests”: Immigration Policy in a Comparative Context

This conceptual article examines the role and limitations of the best interests standard in international and domestic policy, with a particular focus on how the standard is implicated in the treatment of unaccompanied minors in the United States. Motivated by emergent interdisciplinary scholarship on global youth and informed by a comparative consideration of best interests across other professions, we propose a new model of best interests. This model calls for a multidimensional recognition of youths’ family‐, community‐ and decision‐making contexts; acknowledgment of youths’ rights; and a commitment to speaking with, rather than for, young people. What results is a novel and dynamic understanding of best interests with relevance to scholars, practitioners, and policymakers.     

Attachment Models in Incarcerated Sex Offenders: A Preliminary Italian Study Using the Adult Attachment Interview

A group of sex offenders (clinical group: n = 19) was compared to a nonclinical sample matched by age, years of education, and gender (control group A: n = 19) to verify a higher incidence of insecure attachment models among sex offenders. In addition, we tested whether sex offenders were characterized by specific childhood experiences, compared to control adults (control group B: n = 19) with the same secure/insecure attachment classification. Results showed significant differences between offenders and control adults on both the AAI continuous score and the distribution of the two-way attachment classifications. Furthermore, sex offenders reported more intense experiences of rejection by the father figure and abuse in the family context during early childhood compared to not offenders subjects with the same attachment classification.     

Risk and Protective Factors for Adolescent Relationship Abuse across Different Sexual and Gender Identities

Journal of Youth and Adolescence - Little is known about the characteristics and context of adolescent relationship abuse victimization across youth of different sexual and gender minority...     

Linguistic justice in IP policies: evaluating the fairness of the language regime of the European Patent Office

Alternative intellectual property laws relating to the use of languages in IP organisations can result in an asymmetric distribution of costs of patenting between innovators. We present a framework for the characterisation and evaluation of the fairness of the language regime of the European Patent Office (EPO), which is currently based on three official languages: English, French and German. We estimate that the costs of access to patenting procedures borne by English-, French- or German-speaking applicants are at least 30 % lower than those borne by European applicants whose first language is not one of the current official languages of the EPO. In order to correct language-related cost asymmetries, we explore two possible alternative language regimes. In both cases, we introduce a centralised system of financial compensation that covers translation costs borne by European applicants whose first language is not one of the official languages of the EPO. In the first alternative, financial compensation is covered by savings on current translation costs at the granting stage. In the second alternative, the number of official languages is increased to five and financial compensation is funded by an increase in filing fee and by partial savings on translation costs at the granting stage. We show that both alternatives could substantially reduce language-related costs asymmetries among European applicants. In addition, we show that the five-language alternative would reduce the global costs of access to patenting procedures borne by all European applicants. Thus, more multilingualism can be cheaper than less multilingualism, provided that “implicit costs” are taken into account. We conclude discussing under which conditions the alternative language regimes proposed could have a positive impact on the effectiveness and the cost-effectiveness of the EPO language regime.     

Skilled unemployment and the creation of academic spin-offs: a recession-push hypothesis

Push factors associated with necessity entrepreneurship are largely neglected in the academic entrepreneurship literature. We link research on technology transfer to the literature on opportunity and necessity entrepreneurship, showing that the rate of academic spin-off creation is positively associated with the skilled unemployment rate. This longitudinal study of 559 spin-offs launched between 1999 and 2013, which controlled for several university- and context-level factors, showed that a higher level of unemployment reduced the probability of academic spin-off creation up to a threshold, beyond which the effect was reversed. By contrast, the relative skilled unemployment level was related positively to the probability of academic spin-off, particularly high-tech spin-off, creation. The relationship between the level of skilled unemployment and the creation of high-tech spin-offs was moderated positively by university research orientation and regional research and human capital intensity.     

Economic Power Foundations of Cities in Global Governance

This study provides evidence that city government participation in global governance networks is explicable by the larger power hierarchy of cities in the global economy. Extant research on city government participation in global governance networks, or “transnational municipal networks (TMNs)” such as United Cities Local Governments, has largely ignored the relevance of research showing city-level connectivity to corporate and other economic networks among world cities. In this latter tradition of research, the level of a city’s connectivity to such economic networks is understood as commensurate with the hierarchical power it holds in the global economy. Using a sample of UK and Chinese cities, this study shows that patterns of participation in a range of TMNs are explained by varied measures of city-level connectivity to economic networks. Interpreted through structuration theory, findings suggest that city participation in global governance is shaped and stratified by city-level hierarchical power within the global economy.