Managing governance complexity and knowledge networks in transparency initiatives: the case of police open data

Public organisations are often described as being subject to types of complexity that result from the interorganisational structure of governance networks. Transparency programmes add another level of complexity due to increased information openness. However, neither the nature of this complexity nor the network management approaches needed for transparency programmes has been conceptually developed. To address this gap, this article brings together governance complexity theory and knowledge management theory. An empirical model is tested using the case of police open data with regression analysis and 22 expert interviews. The results show that institutional and environmental complexity such as budget pressures, legal-normative constraints, and task complexity exert a negative influence on police information openness. However, network knowledge management practices including developing mission focus on people and communication and overcoming organisational boundaries through interorganisational collaboration can counteract these problems of complexity.     

(Re)categorization as Resistance: Civil Society Mobilizations Around the Preah Vihear Temple

This paper deals with civil society mobilizations and resistance in relation to a world heritage site—the ninth-century Khmer temple Preah Vihear, which is located in the northern province of Cambodia and borders eastern Thailand. In particular, the paper explores resistance in terms of (re)categorizations from a historical and discursive–materialistic perspective. The field of resistance studies has mainly been preoccupied with entities such as texts, signs, symbols, identity, and language. In this article, however, we bring in physical and material entities in order to display the ways in which matter is of importance in the (re)construction of discourses and thereby for resistance.     

Cortisol Stress Response Variability in Early Adolescence: Attachment,Affect and Sex

Attachment, affect, and sex shape responsivity to psychosocial stress. Concurrent social contexts influence cortisol secretion, a stress hormone and biological marker of hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenal axis activity. Patterns of attachment, emotion status, and sex were hypothesized to relate to bifurcated, that is, accentuated and attenuated, cortisol reactivity. The theoretical framework for this study posits that multiple individual differences mediate a cortisol stress response. The effects of two psychosocial stress interventions, a modified Trier Social Stress Test for Teens and the Frustration Social Stressor for Adolescents were developed and investigated with early adolescents. Both of these protocols induced a significant stress reaction and evoked predicted bifurcation in cortisol responses; an increase or decrease from baseline to reactivity. In Study I, 120 predominantly middle-class, Euro-Canadian early adolescents with a mean age of 13.43 years were studied. The girls’ attenuated cortisol reactivity to the public performance stressor related significantly to their self-reported lower maternal-attachment and higher trait-anger. In Study II, a community sample of 146 predominantly Euro-Canadian middle-class youth, with an average age of 14.5 years participated. Their self-reports of higher trait-anger and trait-anxiety, and lower parental attachment by both sexes related differentially to accentuated and attenuated cortisol reactivity to the frustration stressor. Thus, attachment, affect, sex, and the stressor contextual factors were associated with the adrenal-cortical responses of these adolescents through complex interactions. Further studies of individual differences in physiological responses to stress are called for in order to clarify the identities of concurrent protective and risk factors in the psychosocial stress and physiological stress responses of early adolescents.     

The European Union’s trade and investment policy in Asia: new challenges and opportunities in a changing global environment – or: following individual roadmaps

Asia is Europe’s largest trading partner and EU-Asia trade relations have undergone a rapid change since the global financial crisis. On a global scale, the new multilateral trade agreements such as the now stalled Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) involving European Unions’ (EU) major trading partners such as Japan, Singapore and Vietnam also have the potential to change the trade equations. In this paper, we evaluate the new EU trade policy which has been designed to ensure that the EU benefits from the changing global trade scenario and also look at the steps which have been taken by the EU to promote trade relations with its major trading partners in Asia in the predicted ‘Asian century’. We look into the Free Trade Agreements, which are being negotiated with its Asian partners and seek to understand the reasons which have resulted in delays in their signing and negotiations. We evaluate new policies pushed forward by its Asian partners such as the One Belt One Road policy by China and Japan’s policy of securing a large number of trading agreements in the America. Moving ahead, we also shed light on the indirect factors that may influence the success of EU trade negotiations in Asia such as the EU policy on granting China market economy status and the commencement of the ‘Brexit’ process. Lastly, we try to present a list of immediate priorities for EU in Asia, which will ensure that it secures a toehold in trade with the region. All in all, it is shown that the EU has not one and the same approach for all Asian countries but it negotiates flexibly and individually country by country. Because of this “country by country approach” the EU is also not ready to enter into general EU-ASEAN trade negotiations again.     

Organizational reform and the rise of trust funds: Lessons from the World Bank

Over the past two decades, earmarked funding to international development organizations through special-purpose trust funds has increased greatly. This paper studies the incentives for trust funds from the perspective of multilateral agencies, notably the World Bank. A theoretically intriguing type of funds are so-called “pass-on funds,” in which one unit hosts the fund, then passes on its resources to another type of unit for implementation. Each unit has different preferences for the specific types of activities to be supported by the fund. Interviews with World Bank staff and complementary documents demonstrate the rationale for pass-on funds and the associated division of labor between fundraising network units and implementing regional units. While pass-on funds reflect an efficient division of labor between functionally specialized units, they increase the misalignment between sector-specific global priorities and country-specific needs. Organizational reform drove the sudden explosion of pass-on funds around the millennium turn, facilitated by growing availability of donor monies for specific sectors and by lenient internal regulation. Organizational reform undermined budget autonomy of sector units, causing those units to seek new funds in their areas of expertise. A number of reform features also reduced administrative budgets of country units, increasing their demand for pass-on funding grants. The results contribute to the emerging literature on earmarked funding and highlight the need to consider international organizations as heterogeneous actors.     

Multicultural Institutions,Distributional Politics,and Postelectoral Mobilization in Indigenous Mexico

Contrary to the predictions of “power sharing” to mitigate ethnic conflicts, multicultural rights recognition can actually increase the frequency of local postelectoral mobilizations. This article demonstrates that the adoption of an ethnic rights regime for electing local government representatives may actually increase conflict if these multicultural laws are not carefully circumscribed to avoid violating human rights. Focusing on the 1995 multicultural rights reforms in Oaxaca, it presents evidence that legal changes purportedly implemented to recognize indigenous rights actually increased postelectoral disputes due to conflicts between county seat communities and peripheral population hamlets over access to funding by the central government. Based on this finding, the article addresses normative implications of “power‐sharing” multiculturalism, recommending that multicultural laws be implemented only together with legal mechanisms to solve postelectoral disputes.     

The nature of political advising to prime ministers in Australia,Canada, New Zealand and the UK

Political advisors to heads of government occupy such a privileged sphere of influence that their role is a source of consternation among democratic idealists. Interviews with advisors to prime ministers of Australia, Canada, New Zealand and the UK inform a small body of comparative literature about political advising in the Commonwealth. The authors find that first ministers consider input from many advisors and therefore the counsel of any one advisor is of limited impact. Further research is needed to understand the extent to which these agents project the power of the executive office and make decisions on the principal's behalf.