基于目标模式的政府采购治理工具运用

政府采购制度现存的诸多突出问题,已经影响了政府采购的高效运行及其宏观调控作用的发挥,特别是政府采购领域中存在的各种寻租行为,更是在很大程度上影响了社会公众对政府采购的信任度,降低了政府的形象,因此迫切需要对政府采购进行认真治理。为此,需要认真分析环境变化对政府采购治理目标模式的影响,并选择现代治理工具,对政府采购进行有效地治理。本文深入分析了现阶段我国政府采购治理的宏观环境,明确适合我国国情的政府采购治理目标模式,并对政府采购治理的三大工具及其运用进行了初步探索。     

参与城市治理:中国城市管理变革的新路径

中国城市正经历着城市化和全球化交织在一起的变革过程,预计这个变革过程在未来20年里还将加速。当前我国城市管理变革的关注点是改变原有城市管理以单一科层制为基础的行政性行为,拓宽城市管理的主体和手段,以城市治理的目标创新城市管理的内容。本文在对当前城市治理理论研究的评估分析基础上,提出基于政府、企业和社会组织互动的参与城市治理模式,并指明这一模式正是当前应对复杂适应系统管理挑战的新路径。     

全球海洋治理与构建海洋命运共同体

当前世界海洋战略形势正发生深刻变革,海洋地缘战略竞争不断加剧,海洋"公地悲剧"日益严峻,在此形势下,中国提出构建海洋命运共同体的倡议。构建海洋命运共同体的内涵十分丰富,主要包括构建海洋安全共同体、海洋发展共同体和海洋责任共同体三方面要旨。构建海洋命运共同体,既是世界海洋文明发展的时代要求,也为解决当前全球海洋治理难题提供了中国方案。然而,构建海洋命运共同体在现实中面临国际认知赤字、海洋二元秩序障碍、海洋地缘战略争夺阻力等严峻挑战。为此,中国应着力完善构建海洋命运共同体的知识话语体系,推动海洋命运共同体的多边主义制度化建设,打造多元参与的协同治理格局。     

IN IT FOR THE LONG HAUL? POST‐CONFLICT STATEBUILDING,PEACEBUILDING, AND THE GOOD GOVERNANCE AGENDA IN TIMOR‐LESTE

Statebuilding after conflict often entails liberal peacebuilding measures. The end of the UN mission in post‐conflict Timor‐Leste in December 2012 provides a unique opportunity to investigate statebuilding in practice. The liberal peacebuilding agenda has met with stiff academic resistance—mainly from the critical theorist camp—and is questioned as an appropriate measure of …statebuilding success. We deploy instead the good governance (GG) agenda as a hybrid local‐liberal guide. Drawing on field work, interviews, and secondary documents, we investigate what we see as four key, intertwined and overlapping aspects of GG: state capacity including the establishment of a state bureaucracy, participation and the engagement of civil society, institution building and rule of law, and corruption control and transparency. We note GG provides a useful policy heuristic, while abstract “one‐size‐fits‐all” liberal peacebuilding models, which avoid the complexities of machinery of government issues, the time taken to develop institutions, and historical and contextual environments of countries, are likely to face severe problems. New states may be dependent on external forces to maintain monopoly of violence. The reversibility and uncertainty of statebuilding and the decades‐long commitment needed by international agencies are noted. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Civil society participation in global governance: Insights from climate politics

A rather unique feature of global climate negotiations is that most governments allow representatives of civil society organisations to be part of their national delegation. It remains unclear, however, why states grant such access in the first place. While there are likely to be benefits from formally including civil society, there are also substantial costs stemming from constraints on sovereignty. In light of this tradeoff, this article argues for a ‘contagion’ effect that explains this phenomenon besides domestic determinants. In particular, states, which are more central to the broader network of global governance, are more likely to be informed of and influenced by other states' actions and policies toward civil society. In turn, more central governments are likely to include civil society actors if other governments do so as well. This argument is tested with data on the participation of civil society organisations in national delegations to global climate negotiations between 1995 and 2005. To further uncover the underlying mechanisms, the article also provides an analysis of survey data collected at the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) negotiations in Durban in 2011.     

Did they ‘Read Before Burning’? The Coalition and Quangos

Attitudes to quangos are paradoxical. On the one hand they are perceived to be undemocratic, unaccountable organisations, while on the other they are seen to improve effectiveness, limit political interference and increase public confidence in government. This paradox is reflected in the behaviour of political parties, which generally adopt a harsh line towards quangos in opposition, but come to rely on these bodies in office. Ahead of the 2010 general election it was, however, noticeable that the Conservative party rejected this dynamic by promising to pursue ‘a more sophisticated approach’. This article explores the Coalition government's subsequent ‘public bodies reform programme’, assessing its progress against recommendations contained within the Institute for Government's Read before Burning report of July 2010. It concludes that while the Coalition has addressed long‐standing concerns about the day‐to‐day governance of public bodies, it has failed to resolve a set of broader and strategic (metagovernance) issues.     

al Qaeda and Global Governance: When Ideology Clashes With Political Expediency

In recent years, statements by al Qaeda leaders have included references to topics often associated with global-governance proponents’ critique of the state. This article examines the organization's attitude toward symbols of global governance, giving particular attention to its view of the United Nations as the foundation for global governance, and to the manner in which al Qaeda approaches the central questions of environmental threats and human rights. The organization is seeking to insert itself into the discourse of global governance and use it in an instrumental manner; it focuses on anti-Western narrative and seeks to expose the existing order as designed by Western powers, particularly the United States, for self-serving reasons. However, the article argues, notwithstanding al Qaeda's reputation for sophistication in manipulating public opinion, the organization's references to global governance underscore the limitations its rigid ideology imposes on its messaging efforts. Even though adopting the global governance discourse is in line with the group's effort to improve its image, al Qaeda's extremist ideology limits its ability to take full advantage of the benefits this discourse offers.     

Security governance in Europe: a return to system

The security governance literature has developed in four waves: the first is dedicated to matters of definition; the second to conceptual debate; the third to matters of application in the European setting and the fourth to how well the concept works in extra-European regions and at the global level. For all this effort, security governance as a concept remains problematic: it still has some way to go before it obtains clear definitional precision, conceptual clarity and a secure standing as concept in Security Studies. We address some of the theoretical and methodological difficulties common to the literature and argue that security governance has become overly preoccupied with agency and has thereby neglected structure. It has, in other words, obtained an actor-centered focus and so tended to conflate security governance as an analytical category with the specific actions of security actors. It has thus moved forward little in its ability to determine how and why security actors behave in the aggregate and whether that behavior reflects wider systemic properties. We thus ask in a third section whether it is worth returning to systemic thinking on security governance especially in the European context where the concept has had its most sophisticated application.     

Political Leadership and its Role in Achieving Good Governance in Kazakhstan

This article examines the role political leadership plays in achieving good governance in Kazakhstan, a post-communist country in Central Asia. Since its withdrawal from the USSR, Kazakhstan maintains an authoritative political leadership, where President Nazarbayev, his trusted “inner-circle,” and the stalwarts of the Nur Otan party effectively rule the country. Opposition political parties are weak and disorganized, and their leaders are not quite capable of mobilizing favorable public opinion. The finding of the study suggests that the Kazakhstani political leadership has limited success in achieving good governance in Kazakhstan.     

Records Management: A Key Element for Effectiveness,Accountability and Development in the Greek Public Administration

Records management is a fundamental activity of public administration. Public records are a crucial component of the most human actions. They form the basis of any political and legal system and secure human rights. Records Management Systems provide information for planning and decision making, promote the government accountability, improve servicing citizens and ensure the organizations' enactments legitimacy. This article presents and evaluates the records management practices of the core Greek Public Administration by conducting a survey concerning the Greek Ministries and trying to find out in what level the records management initiatives are embedded in the business culture and applied by the Greek Public Agencies.