Correspondence

The viability and desirability of a finance-led growth regime is first assessed against the historical evidence about the many alternative regimes that have been proposed as successors to Fordism. A purely hypothetical model is then built by assembling various hypotheses derived from the observation of current American trends. The imposition of financial norms, such as shareholder value, requires a new and coherent architecture for the mode of governance of firms, the form of competition, the wage labour nexus and the objectives of monetary policy, public budget and tax system. According to the model, any requirement for increased profit has a variable macro-economic impact on wages and economic activity according to the size of accelerator effects and the relative importance of wage and profit in income formation. The stability of an equity-based regime depends on monetary policy which controls financial bubbles and thus the diffusion of finance may push the economy into a zone of structural instability. The next major financial crisis may originate in the USA whose economy approximates most closely to the model. But, the so-called American 'new economy' combines diverse but interdependent structural transformations: diffusion of Information and Communication Technologies, search for new rules for competition, increased flexibility in wages and employment, shift from manufacturing to services. Finance is an element in, but not the whole of, this complex emerging regime.     

网络反腐的现实困境与多元反思

随着互联网的发展,网络反腐日益兴盛,在推进我国反腐倡廉建设中发挥着巨大作用。同时网络反腐也面临诸多困境,如网络反腐非理性化、缺乏法律规范、查处具有偶然性、容易泄露反腐机密和受理解决的机制尚未形成等,严重制约了网络反腐的规范化和制度化进程。因此,引导网民理性反腐、加快网络反腐立法、加强网络舆情监测、建立网络反腐信息处理与反馈机制、实现网络反腐与制度反腐的有效对接和建设反腐倡廉网络监督员队伍等成为规范网络反腐的必然选择。     

Knowledge generation,political action and African development: A polycentric approach

ABSTRACT

Knowledge generated to meet societal needs is the bedrock of development. Africa's development crisis is marked by the persistent gap between the application of intellectual rigours and political action. Despite abundant development potential (human and natural resources, and scientific knowledge), coupled with reform declarations and commitments by African leaders over the past four decades, development remains illusory. This article examines the relationship between key development players (African public officials and African scholars), and how generated knowledge is applied to respond to the needs of African citizens. Using the Institutional Analysis and Development (IAD) framework (otherwise known as new institutionalism) this article examines weaknesses in the interaction of knowledge, political action and development, while at a local level African citizens, through shared strategies and problem-solving interdependency, are effectively transforming indigenous knowledge inherited from their parents to confront daily challenges. The article suggests ways of bridging the gap between development players by proposing an African Development Institutional Mechanism (ADIM) aimed at enabling key development players to operate in synergy.     

Shadow chairs as monitoring device? A comparative analysis of committee chair powers in Western European parliaments

Recent work on coalition governance claims that government parties use the chairs of parliamentary committees to ‘shadow’ ministers and thus to monitor coalition partners. This argument rests on the assumption that committee chairs enjoy special powers to extract information from ministries and to affect policy-making in committee. To test this assumption, the paper develops the first comparative measure of committee chair powers in fifteen Western European democracies. The analysis shows that most committee chairs have very limited formal powers and that the share of shadowing chairs does not increase when committee chairs are more powerful. Both findings cast doubt on the interpretation of shadow chairs as a monitoring device. We sketch an alternative explanation according to which coalition parties employ the shadowing strategy in order to increase public visibility and to counteract issue ownership by the minister’s party.     

Friendly neighbor or Trojan Horse? Assessing the interaction of soft law initiatives and the UN climate regime

Current global climate governance is characterized by increasing institutional proliferation. Within the last 5 years several non-legally binding initiatives have emerged, including (i) the Asia-Pacific Partnership on Clean Development and Climate and various other public–private partnerships working on the policy implementation level and (ii) the Group of Eight Gleneagles Dialogue on Climate Change, Clean Energy and Sustainable Development, and Major Economies Meeting on Energy Security and Climate Change as high-level political processes. As a first step toward analyzing the relationship between these parallel initiatives and the UN climate regime, this article looks at the negotiations of four UN-hosted climate meetings in 2007–2008, providing an examination of the interaction of ‘soft law’ climate initiatives and the ‘hard law’ UNFCCC/Kyoto Protocol process. The methodology of the study is based on participatory observations in the negotiations and document analysis of country and stakeholder positions. The analysis shows that the current multitude of processes in global climate governance entails potential institutional interaction. Deliberations of the key actors give some support to the claims of non-UN soft law being used to exert influence on the negotiations on a future climate regime within the UN context.

Changing institutional culture in the wake of clerical abuse – the essentials of restorative and legal regulation

The Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse completed its final report in December 2017 after five years of hearings. The Royal Commission was the culmination of pressure from a series of public inquiries about institutional sexual abuse and sustained advocacy from victims and survivor support groups. The Commission made recommendations designed to change institutional leadership, governance and culture. The challenge is to have that change embedded in institutional culture. This paper considers how this might be done in a specific institution, the Catholic Church given that more than two-thirds of reported abuse in faith-based institutions occurred within its ranks. Regulatory theory suggests effective regulation must be responsive to past institutional behaviour. In the case of the Church, the task is profound given its strong self-protective culture which has long shielded abusers. The form of regulation must provide a balance where criminal sanctions loom large in the background while redress processes proceed in the foreground to repair both the harm suffered by survivors and renew Church culture.     

Chronicling National Assembly committees as markers of institutional change

This article examines changes to the National Assembly for Wales committees and how they act as markers that help explain the dynamics of a significant and contemporaneous constitutional journey. It uses as its backdrop recent constitutional and political change in the UK, particularly that initiated by devolution. Uniquely, we draw upon management theory as well as political science to explain why changes in the focus, identity and profile of Assembly committees represent significant markers or reflectors of constitutional shifts. We suggest that examining key components within the internal architecture of parliaments at different stages of development offers an additional and complementary level of institutional analysis. Our review of the Assembly committees reveals that they have reflected the pace and shape of change in Welsh devolution, and that shifts in their profile and operation offer another insight into devolution, whilst also reflecting wider institutional and political change.     

渐进式整合:基层干部绩效考核的统一化逻辑

基于渐进主义的分析视角,通过考察G省西北部L县H乡2013—2018年改革个人工作考核体系的动态发展过程,研究基层政府在解决冲突繁杂的事务和多元考核对象的复杂情境与压力型体制下,如何不断调适和修正基层干部考核制度,形成以"渐进式整合"为特质的干部考核制度的演化路径,探求其深层的制度理性。我们发现,为解决现行基层治理和考核制度的合法性危机和有效性困境,基层政府会在外部环境和内部因素的双重影响下,不断在考核体系中纳入和巩固原本游离于体系之外的人员要素,如聘用人员、上级派驻的驻村干部,以及本应在考核体系之内却并未发挥效用的构成要素,如结果兑现、群众参与,最终形成自下而上的基层干部考核统一化整合框架,制度变革体现了理性选择的适当性逻辑。考核机制放弃了标准化、形式化和向上对标,采取了简单化、操作化和向下对标的松散耦合结构,体现了干中学的组织学习过程。它强化了干部考核制度的合法性基础,部分地缓解了基层治理的悬浮性问题,扭转了形式主义和痕迹主义带来的组织行为异化现象,有助于激活基层干部创新性发展、激发干部前瞻性行动、激励干部创造性干事。     

Institutional memory,institutional capacity: narratives of failed biomedical encounters in East Africa

Abstract

This paper focuses on a series of failed medical encounters that took place in East Africa in the 1950s and after, and explores how the organizations involved ? the Kenyan Division of Insect Borne Diseases, the East African Medical Survey, and the Tanzanian National Institute of Medical Research ? chose to document and remember these events. The examples focus on medical encounters characterized by disagreements and miscommunications that stymied productive work. In each case, failures were remembered in very stylized and restructured ways that stressed the validity of the science and the valor of the scientists while drawing on tropes of African communities as irrational and superstitious. Capacity is built and maintained by having a functional institutional memory, which includes recounting failure and an ability to integrate knowledge from failure, leading to new approaches. It is found that remembering failures in such stylized forms systematically diminished the functionality of their institutional memory.     

制度变迁背景下东北装备制造业集群的演进——以瓦房店轴承产业集群为例

与浙江、江苏和广东等地日趋成熟的轻型加工业集群相比,东北装备制造业集群的发展还处于起步阶段.近年来,推动产业集群发展已成为振兴东北老工业基地的重要举措,然而,东北装备制造业集群有其鲜明的特点,在推进产业集群发展的过程中照搬国内外的做法将难以奏效.为此,选择东北地区具有代表性的瓦房店轴承产业集群为研究对象,通过实地调研和深度访谈,理清了产业集群萌芽、发展和成熟的演进过程,利用核心企业的技术外溢是该产业集群的原动力,市场化进程拉动了中小企业的发展,由此产生的竞争压力迫使核心企业逐步转向高端产品,进而拉动整个产业集群技术水平的提升,核心企业和周边企业间竞争互动形成的"拉-推作用"推动着集群的持续发展;在此基础上,研究了制度变迁对装备制造业集群演进的作用机制,研究表明,以大企业为核心的产业聚集为发展东北装备制造业集群提供了一条有效途径,而产业集群的后续发展还需要社会信用体系的进一步完善.