Congressional Attention and Opportunity Structures: The Select Energy Independence and Global Warming Committee

This article examines the role that overlapping committee jurisdictions play in fostering or hindering attention to environmental and energy issues in the U.S. Congress. The Select Energy Independence and Global Warming Committee, created by House Democrats in 2007 , and its chairman Rep. Ed Markey took advantage of opportunities within the existing jurisdictional arrangement to increase attention to these issues despite lacking any legislative authority. Data from the 110th and 111th Congresses show that the Select Committee held more hearings on climate change and alternative energy, and on environmental and energy policy generally, than any other committee. The committee also increased the range of sources informing debate on these issues by calling different witnesses than other committees. These findings have important implications for the relationship between institutional structure and agendas and for Congress' policy‐making role on energy and the environment.     

The Space Between: Demonization of Opponents and Policy Divergence

Prior research on policy conflicts indicates a tendency among policy actors to misperceive the influence of actors engaged in policy debates based on the degree of distance between their relative policy positions. This research develops a measure for assessing the degree and direction of the misperception effect. This measure is then utilized as a dependent variable to assess the relationship between theoretically relevant factors and the degree to which actors will exaggerate the influence of their opponents and allies. The research uses original survey data of policy actors engaged in the debate over hydraulic fracturing in New York. The results indicate misperceptions of relative influence are prevalent and most associated with the experience of a policy loss and holding relatively extreme policy beliefs. The findings provide new insight into factors that influence the demonization of political opponents. These insights are timely in the context of polarized debates over environmental and energy policy in the United States.     

Experimentalism in transnational forest governance: Implementing European Union Forest Law Enforcement,Governance and Trade (FLEGT) Voluntary Partnership Agreements in Indonesia and Ghana

Over the past decade, the European Union (EU) has created a novel experimentalist architecture for transnational forest governance: the Forest Law Enforcement, Governance and Trade (FLEGT) initiative. This innovative architecture comprises extensive participation by civil society stakeholders in establishing and revising open‐ended framework goals (Voluntary Partnership Agreements [VPAs] with developing countries aimed at promoting sustainable forest governance and preventing illegal logging) and metrics for assessing progress toward them (legality standards and indicators) through monitoring and review of local implementation, underpinned by a penalty default mechanism to sanction non‐cooperation (the EU Timber Regulation that prohibits operators from placing illegally harvested wood on the European market). This paper analyzes the implementation of VPAs in Indonesia and Ghana, the two countries furthest advanced toward issuing FLEGT export licences. A central finding is the reciprocal relationship between the experimentalist architecture of the FLEGT initiative and transnational civil society activism, whereby the VPAs’ insistence on stakeholder participation, independent monitoring, and joint implementation review, underwritten by the EU, empowers domestic non‐governmental organizations with local knowledge to expose problems on the ground, hold public authorities accountable for addressing them, and contribute to developing provisional solutions.     

Multinationals as global institution: Power,authority and relative autonomy

This article aims to inform the long‐standing and unresolved debate between voluntary corporate social responsibility and initiatives to impose binding legal obligations on multinational enterprises. The two approaches share a common feature: neither can fully specify its own scope conditions, that is, how much of the people and planet agenda either can expect to deliver. The reason they share this feature is also the same: neither is based on a foundational political analysis of the multinational enterprise in the context of global governance. Such an analysis is essential for providing background to and perspective on what either approach can hope to achieve, and how. This article begins to bridge the gap by illustrating aspects of the political power, authority, and relative autonomy of the contemporary multinational enterprise. The conclusion spells out some implications for the debate itself, and for further research.     

Network Governance as a Mechanism for Responding to Internet Violence

Jones, Hesterly and Borgatti (1997) proposed a general theory of network governance (GTNG), identifying conditions under which network governance is likely to develop and detailing four social mechanisms that protect and promote resource exchange and collaborative action within a network. This article applies their theory to the emerging problem of swatting—internet-based spoofing attacks that compel a SWAT response to a selected innocent victim. As this problem has not been addressed through traditional policy or law enforcement mechanisms, networks have emerged to respond to these attacks. The author details the parallels between these emergent networks and Jones et al.’s theoretical framework.     

The EU and the Global Order: Contingent Liberalism

Abstract

Politicians, diplomats and analysts commonly assume that commitment to multilateralism and liberal norms is part of the EU’s very DNA. Increasingly, however, the EU’s commitment to the liberal global order is more selective. We demonstrate the shift to a more contingent liberalism by examining the EU’s recent record in relation to four different challenges: international trade; US leadership; Russian actions in the eastern neighbourhood; and security in the Middle East. We speculate on what this may portend for the EU’s self-identity, European interests and the integrity of the prevailing global order.     

Contestation and Transformation. Final Thoughts on the Liberal International Order

Abstract

The liberal international order, the inseparable mix of US geopolitical power and ideational project of organising international relations along normative frameworks such as internationalism, institutionalism and democracy, is reeling under the pressure of profound systemic changes such as greater interconnectedness and multipolarity. Predictions abound that increasing great power competition, most visibly at play in geographical areas of contested orders, will eventually tear it down. However, even if major actors – the US included – display a selective, irregular and often instrumental commitment to the liberal order, they are still repositioning themselves in that order and not outside of it. In addition, conflict is not the default outcome of order contestation, as hybrid forms of governance are possible even in troubled regions. No doubt, the world of tomorrow will be less American-shaped and less liberal, but transformation is a more plausible future than collapse for the liberal order.     

Meta‐Governance of Partnerships for Sustainable Development: Actors' Perspectives from Kenya

The 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development promotes multi‐stakeholder partnerships (MSPs) as a means of implementation while at the same time putting renewed focus on the need for national‐level ownership and implementation. Despite the fact that an ever growing body of literature on the merits and drawbacks of MSPs delineates several success conditions for partnerships, efforts to translate this knowledge into national‐level meta‐governance for MSPs remain marginal to date. This study outlines the benefits the literature alleges for such “meta‐governance” frameworks, before it uses a country‐level study with a series of stakeholder interviews to take a closer look at national‐level context conditions and lessons learned with regard to two water partnerships in Kenya. Our findings suggest that to date the existing meta‐governance for partnerships in Kenya is rather weak and fragmented. Yet respondents support the view that MSPs could benefit from such a framework, in particular regarding local ownership of MSPs and the potential to scale successful cases. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

New directions for public service reform in developing countries

This paper argues that recent developments in practice and theory provide a more promising basis for public service reform in developing countries than we have had since at least the turn of the century. There have been significant instances of large‐scale reform success, such as Nepal's Public Service Commission and Malaysia's delivery unit, Pemandu, and also “pockets of effectiveness” in individual agencies in many countries. They contribute to a more fruitful and diverse repertoire of reform approaches than generally realized. Policymakers can draw on all those instances and types of reform, together with relevant rich country experiences, as they improvise and tailor responses to their always unique reform problems. Proceeding in this way helps reformers to expand the “reform space” available within the political economy. Donors can help reformers if they facilitate reform in the spirit of the Busan Partnership rather than impose their preferred models. In short, the new direction which this paper identifies can be stated as creative problem solving by local actors facilitated by sympathetic donors, building on examples of reform success and drawing on a repertoire of poor and rich country reform approaches.