Abstract The problem of “horizontal neglect” is fundamental to decentralization. However, while individual local authorities may lack incentives to consider the benefits and costs that their actions have on others, they are not always indifferent to these spillover effects. The study focuses on a clear case of horizontal neglect, namely the tendency of local authorities to overspend prior to merging. By employing a survey experiment involving Norwegian local elected officials, the article demonstrates that horizontal neglect can be alleviated through informal institutions, specifically through prosocial norms and the framing of decisions in a way that encourages officials to consider the impact on other jurisdictions. Priming local politicians with reminders of their broader responsibilities reduces both horizontal neglect and the overspending effect of social norms that stem from local politicians’ opposition to the merger of their own municipality.
Ibrahim A. Elshaer, Alaa M. S. Azazz, Chokri Kooli
et al.
This research explores the extent to which Green Human Resource Management (GHRM) practices in the Egyptian hotel sector contribute to the adoption of Circular Economy (CE) practices and, eventually, organizational resilience. Using a sample of 402 employees from green-certified Egyptian hotels, the current study applied Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM) on the data collected. The results show the positive effect of GHRM on the adoption of a circular economy that significantly enhances both internal and external organizational resilience. In addition, high Green Organizational Culture (GOC) strengthens the positive relationship of GHRM with the adoption of a circular economy. From this work, some empirical evidence is provided to show that circular economy practices can play a partial mediating role between GHRM and organizational resilience. These findings also present valuable insights for hotel managers and policymakers on how to achieve sustainability and resilience by means of integrated GHRM and circular economy strategies.
Political institutions and public administration (General)
José Luis Ros Medina, Daniel Barragán, Edgar A. Ruvalcaba-Gómez
La transparencia es un concepto ampliamente estudiado en las Ciencias Sociales, aunque su rigor conceptual no siempre ha sido suficiente. Uno de los aspectos en los que quizás ha habido más deslices teóricos en relación con la transparencia es precisamente su evaluación. A nivel metodológico, este trabajo incluye un repaso teórico y experiencial de la evaluación de la transparencia con el objetivo de proponer un Índice de Transparencia de las Universidades Latinoamericanas. A pesar de que ha habido experiencias de evaluación concretas en este ámbito, hasta ahora ninguna de ellas ha tenido un enfoque regional ni ha sido sostenible en el tiempo. En particular, el índice propuesto evalúa la publicación de información en seis áreas vitales para transparentar: información institucional y de gobierno, planificación y rendición de cuentas, personal, estudiantes, información económica y financiera y resultados científicos y académicos. La propuesta se basa en la necesidad de contar con una herramienta que permita evaluar de manera rigurosa y sistemática la transparencia en las universidades de la región, que pueda ser aplicada posteriormente.
Political institutions and public administration (General), Accounting. Bookkeeping
Gram panchayats (GPs), being constitutionally mandated and closest to the people, can anchor the responsibility of localising the implementation of the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and achieving them by the year 2030. In this article, published reports have been used for analysing state-wise status of SDGs achievements and their correlations with attainments in areas of poverty-reduction and other developmental indicators. Also, progress made by GPs on various metrics related to SDGs has been corroborated with other relevant metrics. For effective functioning and service-delivery capacity of panchayats, it is necessary that they are sufficiently empowered with functions and responsibilities as per aspirations of the provisions of the 73rd Constitutional Amendment, 1993, strengthened with basic infrastructure and technical manpower to harness the full potential of digitisation and also incentivised for augmenting their own sources of revenue.
Siti Aisyah, Adisthy Shabrina Nurqamarani, A.M. Wibowo
et al.
The purpose of this study is to measure whether organizational performance in the education sector could be improved through a learning and growth perspective, which involves constructs of human capital, information capital, and organizational capital. This research uses a quantitative approach with the survey as a data collection method and the structural equation model as the analysis method via Smart PLS software to measure the relationship between human, information, and organizational capital with organizational performance, from the perspective of learning and growth. This study concluded that human capital (HC) and Informational Capital (IC) simultaneously have a strong relationship to organizational performance (OP) with Organizational Capital (OC) as a mediating variable. Directly, HC and OC have a significant relationship with OP. While IC has a weak relationship with OP. These results conclude that without HC and OC, IC is a variable that functions to encourage and utilize HR work to form OC and OP. These findings strengthen the theory about the importance of human resource management in the education sector through aspects of meeting the needs of knowledge development, and skill competencies that keep up with developments. This finding also strengthens the theory that claim that learning and growth factors influence organizational performance along the internal process, financial, and customer per- spectives.
Political science, Political institutions and public administration (General)
Recensión del libro colectivo dirigido por Bernabé Aldeguer Cerdá y Gema Pastor Albaladejo, Democracia, gobierno y administración pública contemporánea. Madrid. Tecnos 2020. 408 pp.
Political institutions and public administration (General)
Karen Elliott, Kovila Coopamootoo, Edward Curran
et al.
Financial inclusion depends on providing adjusted services for citizens with disclosed vulnerabilities. At the same time, the financial industry needs to adhere to a strict regulatory framework, which is often in conflict with the desire for inclusive, adaptive, and privacy-preserving services. In this article we study how this tension impacts the deployment of privacy-sensitive technologies aimed at financial inclusion. We conduct a qualitative study with banking experts to understand their perspectives on service development for financial inclusion. We build and demonstrate a prototype solution based on open source decentralized identifiers and verifiable credentials software and report on feedback from the banking experts on this system. The technology is promising thanks to its selective disclosure of vulnerabilities to the full control of the individual. This supports GDPR requirements, but at the same time, there is a clear tension between introducing these technologies and fulfilling other regulatory requirements, particularly with respect to “Know Your Customer.” We consider the policy implications stemming from these tensions and provide guidelines for the further design of related technologies.
Information technology, Political institutions and public administration (General)
Ahmad Robi Ulzikri, Robi Cahyadi Kurniawan, Himawan Indrajat
Penelitian ini dilatarbelakangi adanya keterlibatan pimpinan tertinggi (rais aam) Pengurus Besar Nahdlatul Ulama (PBNU) Ma’ruf Amin yang ditunjuk sebagai calon wakil presiden mendampingi petahana Joko Widodo dalam pemilihan umum tahun 2019. Permasalahan penelitian muncul ketika publik meragukan soliditas antara elemen struktural NU dan elemen kultural NU (kiai kampung dan pondok pesantren) termasuk di Bandar Lampung. Maka, tujuan penelitian ini adalah untuk mengetahui bagaimana budaya politik warga NU kota Bandar Lampung dari kalangan pengurus struktural dan kalangan pondok pesantren dalam momentum Pemilihan Presiden dan Wakil Presiden tahun 2019. Penelitian ini dianalisis menggunakan teori budaya politik Gabriel Almond dan Sidney Verba. Metode penelitian kombinasi dengan model concurrent embedded digunakan dalam penelitian ini, yaitu sebuah metode penelitian dengan menggabungkan antara pendekatan kualitatif dan kuantitatif di mana data kualitatif lebih dominan. Hasil penelitian ini menunjukkan bahwa: pertama, tipe budaya politik warga struktural NU adalah budaya politik partisipan, karena memiliki kognisi, afeksi, dan evaluasi terhadap seluruh aspek yang meliputi sistem sebagai objek umum, objek-objek input dan output, serta pribadi sebagai objek dalam sistem dalam konteks Pemilihan Presiden dan Wakil Presiden tahun 2019. Hasil kedua, warga kultural NU dari kalangan kiai dan santri pondok pesantren memiliki transisi tipe budaya subjek ke partisipan, hal itu karena, kelompok ini memiliki penilaian yang baik pada objek-objek input, akan tetapi masih memiliki kekurangan dalam partisipasi individu. Sejumlah faktor yang mempengaruhi budaya politik keduanya meliputi tingkat pendidikan, ketokohan, serta nilai-nilai yang menjadi pedoman keduanya dalam bertindak. Hasil penelitian dengan pendekatan budaya politik dapat disimpulkan bahwa elemen NU struktural dan NU kultural di Bandar Lampung memiliki soliditas dalam memenangkan pasangan Joko Widodo dan Ma'ruf Amin dalam Pemilu 2019
Political science (General), Political institutions and public administration (General)
Stefanie Sievers-Glotzbach, Julia Tschersich, Nina Gmeiner
et al.
Commons approaches in the seed sector are multi-faceted: They span from traditional seed systems, i.e. seed sharing networks, to recent anti-enclosure movements that resist intellectual property rights on varieties, like organic breeding initiatives. This paper derives a conceptualization of ‘Seed Commons’ at the local and regional level, based on a comprehensive transdisciplinary research process that integrates diverse types of knowledge, both from practitioners (German and Philippine seed initiatives, companies and NGOs), and the scientific community. As a result, we identify four core criteria that characterize diverse Seed Commons arrangements at local and regional scales: (1) collective responsibility, (2) protection from private enclosure, (3) collective, polycentric management, and (4) sharing of formal and practical knowledge. Discussing these Seed Commons criteria in the context of different Commons approaches, we find that Seed Commons transcend the distinction between traditional (natural resource) Commons and New Commons approaches, by integrating biophysical, informational and cultural elements in their collective governance. Reaching beyond resource characteristics, the Seed Commons criteria reflect practices of Commoning, which aim to fulfill social functions such as farmer empowerment and food sovereignty.
Political institutions and public administration (General)
Student support of the necessitous, able and talented. The Administration of the Youth Education Fund 1952 – 1970The article aims to examine the formation and administration of the Youth Education Fund (Ungdommens uddannelsesfond) in the period from 1952 to 1970. In the study, a number of qualitative and quantitative sources encompassing historical statistics, minutes from the board of the Youth Education Fund and parliamentary discussions are used, some of them for the first time in research. The fund was established in 1952, at the instigation of the Youth Commission and funded with new revenues that accrued as a result of the newly lifted ban on sports betting. The fund provided publicly financed and means-tested grants and loans to students enrolled in tertiary education. The main objective of the fund was to promote social mobility in the education system by mitigating the need for students to earn a regular income in the labour market. In terms of organization, the fund was centred around a board consisting of seven members, five officials from the central administration and two student representatives. The board was responsible for allocating the support funds in lump sums to educational institutions that were eligible for student aid. The support funds were administered by local stipend committees. The study shows that the Youth Education Fund was characterized by a large degree of organizational stability throughout the period. However, it also suffered from a lack of coordination between its different administrative components, especially between the board and the various stipend committees. Previous research concludes that the political impact of the Youth Commission in general was negligible. However, the evidence from the present study suggests that this assertion does not extend to the Youth Education Fund, as many of the recommendations of the Youth Commission in this policy field were transferred into actual political initiatives. One source of weakness in this study is the lack of information on the administrative praxis in the stipend committees. In spite of this limitation, the study adds to our knowledge of the political and administrative roots of the current Danish Students Grants and Loans Scheme (SU).
1 This essay builds upon earlier reflections I have made on the same topic in my introduction, co-authored with Hervé Touboul . See Edward Castleton – Hervé Touboul, Retour sur 1848: peut-on en finir?, in: idem (edd .), Regards sur 1848, Besançon 2015, p . 7–31 . Ascribing National and International Meaning to 1848 Today There is something about the events of the European Revolutions of 1848 such that whenever those events are discussed, they can be endowed with a special immediacy capable of speaking to the present .1 2018 marked the 170th anniversary of those revolutions . In France, where I live, this commemoration was largely overshadowed by the 50th anniversary of the events of May-June 1968, deemed by the mainstream media and most major cultural institutions to be more relevant . Yet when I lectured to non-academic audiences in provincial France about 1848 for the 2018 commemoration, audiences invariably seemed to discover something in that year as equally important to understanding their own times as whatever happened in the summer of 1968 . In particular, I was repeatedly confronted by spontaneous comments and questions revolving around issues of political representation . These can be summarized more or less as follows . The problems France faces today are identical to those that arose when it first experimented with universal manhood suffrage subsequent to the declaration of the Second Republic . The elected elites care little for the people who elect them, whether they be authoritarian demagogic ,,outsiders“, members of a semi-professional political class of ,,insiders“, or ,,technocrats“ whose political actions focus singularly on reducing governmental balance sheets . In an era of resurgent anti-establishment populism on a global scale, stoked by widespread dissatisfaction with the democratic political process, this sort of interpretation is perhaps natural enough . Despite the fact that the electoral franchise is fully unrestricted in most countries, unlike in the France of 1848 when only men could participate in the political process, we live in an era wherein simply being able to vote does not seem like a panacea sufficient to solve increasingly polarizing social inequalities . In France currently, there is a general opinion that the public has had the wool pulled over its eyes for too long by its politicians . This feeling has been exacerbated by the fact that citizens recently elected a consummate ,,insider“ and previously unelected ,,technocrat“ to be president in 2017 who ran for chief executive as an ,,outsider“ representing change from the unpopular previous administration of which he was
Belgium was established in 1830 as a unitary state with a bicameral parliament, with symmetrical powers for the upper and the lower house. While federalism and bicameralism are often considered a pair, the Belgian system shows an inverse relationship. The Senate gradually turned into a house representative of the sub-states, but its powers declined inversely proportional to the level of decentralisation of the Belgian state. This paper inquires how the dismantling of the Belgian Senate fits in the increasingly devolutionary nature of the Belgian state structure. First, it nuances the link between bicameralism and federalism: bicameralism is an institutional device for federalism, but not by necessity, and only under specific conditions. The official narrative is that the Belgian Senate was reformed to turn it into a house of the sub-states in line as a federal principle, but in reality the conditions to fulfil this task are not fulfilled. Instead, the paper holds that bicameralism in Belgium is subordinate to the needs of multinational conflict management, and that complying with the federative ideal of an upper house giving voice to the collective needs of the sub-states would stand in the way of the evolution of the Belgian system towards confederalism based on two major linguistic groups.
Political institutions and public administration (General)
O/a leitor/a encontrará no presente número, intitulado "A Constituição Federal 30 anos depois: avanços, intermitências e desafios para as políticas educacionais", trabalhos com denso e distintos olhares acerca de níveis, etapas e modalidades da educação delineados pela nossa Constituição e que foram atentamente organizados pela professora Daniela de Melo Crosara, professora da Faculdade de Direito da Universidade Federal de Uberlândia (UFU). Na seção Demanda Contínua o Dossiê conta com o artigo "Políticas educativas en latinoamérica: hacia una comprensión de la globalización neoliberal", do professor Cesar Tello, docente em Ciências da Educação da Universidad Nacional de La Plata (UNLP) que contribui para a análise ampliada das políticas educativas no âmbito latino-americano e colabora com o processo de diálogo com a realidade internacional. No artigo "Programa Institucional de Bolsa de Iniciação à Docência (PIBID): um estudo exploratório", as autoras Elizabeth Gottschalg Raimann e Juliana Alves da Guarda, da Universidade Federal de Goiás, analisam o PIBID como política de formação de professores. O Número da revista conta, ainda, com a resenha do livro "Avaliar para aprender: fundamentos, práticas e políticas" de autoria do professor lusitano Fernandes Domingos, com resenha elaborada por Olenir Maria Mendes e Simone Freitas Pereira Costa.
Privatization has spread around the globe. While a number of studies find empirical evidence for the diffusion of privatization, it remains unclear what the relevant linkages between states are. This article analyses whether it is economic competition or political affinity that influences the diffusion of privatizing public utilities. The sample includes telecommunications, postal, and railway providers as the main network‐based utilities operating at the national level in 15 European countries from 1980 until 2007. The results of the spatial regressions clearly show that governments follow each other for economic reasons. Trading partners strategically interact when privatizing their national public‐utility providers to form strategic cross‐border company alliances and to avoid competitive disadvantages in the global market. This applies particularly to economies that are highly integrated in the international market. Surprisingly, political and ideological similarities do not seem to matter for the diffusion of privatization.