The Future of Leadership in Public Universities: Is Shared Leadership the Answer?

Leadership of public universities has come under fire—from scandals, from funding, from students, from every direction. Top‐down leadership of institutions of higher education has been described as a “disease.” Shared governance—a mechanism of faculty representation in the leadership and decision‐making processes—a seeming alternative, has been described as “a recipe for paralysis.” In this article, the authors proffer shared leadership as a potential elixir for leading public institutions of higher learning, unleashing creative potential, focusing on pressing strategic imperatives, and enabling sustainable systems that leverage true talent to maximum effect. It is time to move beyond the moribund myth of top‐down heroic leadership and beyond the bureaucratic, political quagmire of the current state of affairs in shared governance. Is shared leadership the answer?      

The Pirates' Curse: Economic Impacts of the Maritime Piracy

During the last decades, the activities of pirates have increased exponentially in Eastern Africa, with their attacks becoming considerably more violent. In addition to the intrastate and interstate conflicts, the lack of state capacity and the presence of terrorist groups, maritime piracy represents a serious and sustained threat to economic security. Indeed, from an economic point of view, pirates affect international trade through an increasing insecurity related to the prompt delivery of the goods transported. The aim of this work is to explore the main works on maritime piracy analyzed in quantitative economics.     

EU-Professionalismus als transnationales Feld

The article scrutinizes the emergence and expansion of EU-related professions and forms of occupation from a field-analytical perspective. Starting from the observation that the EU is not just an influential political actor, but also an expanding area of work, expert involvement and job specialization the paper discusses various forms, dimensions and loci of the ongoing “professionalization” of Europe. It is shown that the expansion of EU-related professional activities is not just a phenomenon of Brussels and the “Eurocracy”, but has expanded into the member states and various areas of occupational activity and expertise. The EU professionalization is conceptualized as a transnational field of specialization and professionalization which produces own principles, forms of knowledge and resources which are used and reproduced by experts and specialists. The field perspective allows identifying common principles, but also the variance and transnational dimension of EU affairs.     

South European Healthcare Systems under Harsh Austerity: A Progress–Regression Mix?

This article addresses the question of whether the economic crisis provides a politically opportune time to drastically curtail public healthcare in South Europe or whether, instead, there are signs of longer-term reform strategies for potentially balancing fiscal targets with the quest for enhanced value and health outcomes, when eventually growth resumes. After a brief examination of the profile of healthcare systems in Greece, Italy, Portugal and Spain prior to the crisis, we comparatively assess the mix of retrenchment, restructuring and recalibration strategies. The effects of the austerity-driven reforms on current (and expected) health outcomes are also briefly analysed. We conclude with reflections on the future of public healthcare in South Europe.     

INSTITUTIONAL LAYERING IN GOVERNING HEALTHCARE QUALITY

Since the 1980s, regulated markets and New Public Management have been introduced in the public sector across the world. How they have affected existing governance mechanisms such as self‐regulation and state regulation has remained largely unexplored, however. This article examines the origins and consequences of institutional layering in governing healthcare quality. Dutch health care, where a market‐based system has been introduced, is used as a case study. The results show that this market‐based system did not replace but modified existing institutional arrangements. As a result, hospitals have to deal with the fragmentation of quality demands. Using the concept of institutional layering, this study shows how different arrangements interact. As a consequence, the introduction of a certain policy reform will work out differently in different countries and policy sectors. Our ‘archaeological’ study in this layering can be seen as an example of how such incremental change can be studied in detail.     

Natural Resources,Development Strategies,and Lower Caste Empowerment in India’s Mineral Belt: Bihar and Odisha During the 1990s

Despite having equally vast endowments of natural resources and similar socioeconomic profiles, the Indian states of Bihar and Odisha pursued markedly different development strategies during India’s first decade of economic liberalization. Whereas Bihar turned away from its natural resource sector and adopted policies of social empowerment, Odisha courted private investment in extractive industries and aggressively pursued market reforms. To account for this divergence, we argue that the social composition of political power in each state directly shaped the strategies that leaders embraced towards the natural resource sector and overall development. This paper makes contributions to the writings on natural resources and the political economy of India. We show that the presence of abundant natural resources does not necessarily result in a predictable pathway of sectoral and economic policy outcomes. Instead, social factors can be a powerful determinant of how resource-rich states approach their economies.