The Formation of Large-scale Collaborative Resource Management Institutions: Clarifying the Roles of Stakeholders, Science, and Institutions

This article explores the emergence of collaborative institutional arrangements for managing natural resources in large-scale and complex resource settings, among numerous political jurisdictions and stakeholders. It examines four regional institutions in the United States: the Northwest Power and Conservation Council's Fish and Wildlife Program, the Chesapeake Bay Program, the CALFED Bay-Delta Program, and the Comprehensive Everglades Restoration Plan. While a wealth of literature has looked at the emergence of smaller-scale resource management institutions, and some literature has begun to look at the characteristics and successes of these regional institutions, theory is lacking to explain the formation of these regional institutions. We first introduce three relevant streams of literature—on common pool resources management, on policy entrepreneurs and social capital, and on science and information in policy change—to frame our analysis. The comparisons of the cases point to the importance of integrating key insights from the literature for understanding the formation of collaborative resource governance. We emphasize how science, leadership, and prior organizational experience interact in facilitating institutional change, particularly in the process of raising awareness about resource management problems. In tracing the formation of these institutions, we also identify how external institutional triggers can help spur collaborative governance.     

Explaining State Budget Punctuations: Policy Transparency,Political Institutions,and Electoral Incentives

What factors cause policies experiencing long periods of stability to be interrupted occationally by a short period of large changes? This study argues that electoral incentives might influence the search, supply, and processing of information on constituency issues, as well as the associated cognitive or institutional frictions, and thus determine the presence and variation of punctuated policies. This article develops and evaluates this claim within a systemic framework consisting of policy transparency, political institutions, and electoral incentives. For the purpose of identifying policy punctuations, this research uses the Generalized Pareto Distribution in the Extreme Value Theory. This study analyzes budget spending data collected from FY 1988 to FY 2008 for all 50 American states. This study finds that greater policy transparency is associated with larger spending stability. By contrast, greater gubernatorial competition is more likely to produce extreme spending changes. Electoral incentives shaped by public preference and political term limits have a profound impact on nonincremental policy changes. The impact of policy transparency is conditional on public preference, while that of electoral competition and legislative professionalism is moderated by political term limits. Particularly, a transparent policy consistent with public preference and legislative professionalism with term limits are more likely to give rise to punctuated policies, while gubernatorial (legislative) competition leads to less punctuated changes when governors (legislators) are subject to term limits.     

Economic Restructuring,Coping Strategies and Social Change: Implications for Institutional Development in Africa

Since the early 1980s, most African countries have experienced unsatisfactory rates of economic growth and profound changes in livelihood systems, which have affected the way their modern institutions function. However, when confronted with evidence of poor economic performance in countries undergoing adjustment, the international financial institutions often blame governments for their lack of political will in regulating the activities of bureaucrats and vested interests. They recommend policies aimed at restructuring public sector institutions through privatization, public expenditure cuts, retrenchment, new structures of incentives and decentralization. Despite efforts to implement these measures in a number of countries, the problems of low institutional capacity remain. Two key contradictions appear to explain why institutions have been largely ineffective in crisis economies in Africa: the growing contradiction between the interests of bureaucratic actors and the goals they are supposed to uphold; and the contradiction between the institutional set-up itself and what goes on in the wider society. To understand how these contradictions work, it is necessary to look more closely at the set of values and relationships that anchor institutions on social systems. The issues here are social compromise and cohesion; institutional socialization and loyalties; overarching sets of values; and political authority to enforce rules and regulations. The crises in these four areas of social relations, which are linked to the ways households and groups have coped with recession and restructuring, have altered Africa's state institutions so that it has become difficult to carry out meaningful development programmes and public sector reforms without addressing the social relations themselves.     

Examining the Potential of Indigenous Institutions for Development: A Perspective from Borana,Ethiopia

This article examines an institutional approach to development in which indigenous institutions are viewed as a resource for achieving development. It concentrates on indigenous natural resource management (NRM) institutions which have been seen by some development agencies to be a means to address the needs of people and the environment in a way that is also participatory. Using material from Borana, Ethiopia, the article describes the indigenous NRM institutions and examines the outcome of one attempt to work with them. In the process, it shows that partnerships between development agencies and indigenous NRM institutions are often fragile, and tend to dissolve when they fail to meet the preconceptions of the developers. Through an examination of this approach to development, the article also examines the usefulness of recent broad approaches to institutions.     

Policy Coherence and Policy Domains

Policy scholars generally agree that greater coherence of policies is desirable, but the concept is under-theorized and has received little empirical examination. This research examines the policy coherence of 18 policy domains and considers institutional factors that affect variation among them. There is considerable variation in coherence among substantive, regional, and identity-based policy domains. Greater degrees of policy coherence exist for policy domains that have dominant congressional committees or have more involvement of lead federal agencies. These findings extend what policy scholars know about policy subsystems in American policymaking to consideration of the coherence of policy domains.     

区域创新系统的管治框架演化——来自深圳和东莞的对比实证

本文在电子企业问卷调查的基础上,对比分析深圳和东莞的区域创新机制,并进一步从管治角度构建区域创新机制差异的理论框架,在中国转型的体制背景下阐释管治的演化逻辑。结果显示,改革开放初期自上而下的管治模式相对于自下而上的管治,在各自向网络化管治模式演化的过程中,由于先发制度优势和组织能力禀赋,更能顺利的推动工业基础薄弱地区向区域创新系统的转变。最后指出,演化视角分析必须注重时间和地理的特殊性。     

Smart specialization and institutional context: the role of institutional discovery,change and leapfrogging

ABSTRACT

Recent years have witnessed much experimentation with smart specialization strategies (RIS3) and entrepreneurial discovery processes (EDPs) in European regions. The EDP can be seen as an opportunity to address institutional questions. Because institutional patterns can explain why some policies are eventually successful while others are not, looking at the institutional context of regional economies can increase the effectiveness of regional policy. This article argues that the EDP functions as a framework to discover institutional patterns specific to a regional economy, and to define policies either consistent with existing institutions or aiming at institutional change. The article proposes a conceptual framework to understand and analyze the two institution-related roles of the EDP, first as an institutional discovery process and second as an institutional change process. The article builds on empirical case studies in two regions (Lower Austria, Austria and South Tyrol, Italy) and two small countries (Slovenia and Croatia). The case studies focus on how these regions or countries organized the EDP that eventually led to the formulation of their RIS3, and on the institutional dynamics of the EDP in discovering and changing institutions. The article concludes with policy implications that contribute to the debate on post-2020 EU Cohesion Policy.     

The Role of Universities in Regional Development: Conceptual Models and Policy Institutions in the UK,Sweden and Austria

The literature on universities’ contributions to regional development is broad and diverse. A precise understanding of how regions may draw advantages from various university activities and the role of public policy institutions in promoting such activities is still missing. The aim of this paper is to provide a framework for analysing universities’ contributions to regional economic and societal development in differing national contexts and the policy institutions that underpin them. To do this, we review four conceptual models: the entrepreneurial university model, the regional innovation system (RIS) model, the mode 2 university model and the engaged university model. The paper demonstrates that these four models emphasize very different activities and outputs by which universities are seen to benefit regional economy and society. It is also shown that these models differ markedly with respect to the policy implications and practice. Analysing some of the public policy imperatives and incentives in the UK, Austria and Sweden, the paper highlights that in the UK, policies encourage all four university models. In contrast, in Sweden and Austria, policy institutions tend to privilege the RIS university model, whilst at the same time, there is some evidence for increasing support of the entrepreneurial university model.     

Errichtung und Zurechnung von Ressortforschungseinrichtungen. Eine Frage des Bedarfs an wissenschaftlicher Expertise?

The Constitution and Attribution of Government Research Agencies. A Matter of Need for Science‐generated Policy Knowledge? Government research agencies are a form of extra‐university research institutions. In contrast to other extra‐university research facilities they are subordinate to and financed by respective German governmental departments. As their mission they provide science‐generated information, services, and monitoring to support the governmental departments. In science studies researchers proclaim a rigid association between the installation, attribution, and development of government research agencies and the increasing need for science‐generated policy knowledge. The article examines this assumed association based on the personal, institutional, financial, and mission specific development of government research agencies between the years 1965 and 2005. According to the results the expansion of government research agencies stagnates – like science in general.     

Regulatory Enforcement,Riskscapes, and Environmental Justice

Does environmental regulation vary over poor and minority communities? An uneven governmental response may follow from regulators' varying incentives to negotiate enforcement challenges. We argue that regulators confront two in particular. Regulators can pursue political enforcement, responding to mobilized interests, regardless of environmental risk, or they can pursue instrumental enforcement, responding to at‐risk communities, regardless of political mobilization. To examine these competing strategies, we use an original dataset from the EPA's Risk‐Screening Environmental Indicators model to develop a geographic “riskscape” combined with census tract community data and facility‐level enforcement data. We find that state regulatory agencies pursue a mixture of political and instrumental enforcement, but that these tactics are applied unevenly across traditional environmental justice communities. Specifically, state agencies devote more attention to facilities in communities with relatively higher risk, but less attention in the area of punishment for violations for facilities located in Hispanic communities. Importantly, this lack of attention to Hispanic communities is not mediated by the relative level of risks that they face, but it is to a significant extent in communities in which environmental justice advocacy organizations operate.     

Governing system innovation: assisted living experiments in the UK and Norway

Debates on how to address societal challenges have moved to the forefront of academic and policy concerns. Of particular importance is the growing awareness that to deal with issues such as ageing, it will be necessary to implement concerted efforts on technological, social, institutional or political fronts. Drawing on a number of theoretical perspectives – including socio-technical transitions and embedded state theory – the aim of this paper is to identify and understand different approaches to the governance of such system innovations by comparing state responses to assisted living in two contrasting national systems of care, namely that of the UK and Norway. Its findings highlight that state-supported and funded experimentation projects have been instrumental in designing and implementing system innovation: through their emphasis on co-design and co-creation, these projects demonstrated the value of early implementation pilots to explore the ‘fit’ between novel technologies and prevailing practices and institutional structures in national systems of care. Still, competition, biases or conflicting interests should not be ignored between well-established agents and institutions and experimental solutions whose efficacy remains relatively untested and which involve a combination of new technical, social, organizational and institutional solutions.     

Regulating Meaning, Appropriating Nature: The Codification of California Organic Agriculture

In California, conventional agro-food firms are beginning to appropriate the most lucrative aspects of organic food provision and to abandon the agronomic and marketing practices associated with organic agriculture's oppositional origins. Echoing the uneasy and complex dialectic between nature and capital in the American West, organic farming is becoming more akin to farming off of nature's image, as the idiom of a "purer" nature is deployed to sell what is increasingly commodified nature. The direction of organic agriculture in California can be understood as reflecting global trends in agro-food provision and regulation, but it is also uniquely grounded in the context of California's regional history: on the one hand, a product of the counterculture, bolstered by a strong climate of environmental regulation; on the other hand, a legacy of California's exceptional agriculture, characterized in part by the dominance of growers' organizations and a focus on high-value specialty crops. This paper also discusses three ways in which the political construction of the meaning of "organic" and its institutionalization in regulatory agencies such as private certification organizations have facilitated both the proliferation of agribusiness entrants and their adoption of questionably sustainable practices: first, certification agencies have their own institutional logic and are most beholden to their client-growers; second, regulation requires the definition of enforceable standards out of complicated ecological, economic, and even sociocultural concerns; third, the certification process, by conferring a legal right to market food as organic, has created distinct incentives that shape participation in the sector.     

跨国场域下的企业家精神、国家与社会网络：中国新移民的个案分析

以在新加坡的中国新移民企业家为个案,简要地讨论企业家和企业家精神的内涵及其在全球化时代的展延;分析了新移民企业家跨国知识与技术优势在新兴企业成长中扮演关键作用;论述了跨国移民企业家产生与发展的不可或缺的外在因素以及由此形成的双赢策略;进而阐述跨国性的理论架构如何有助于解释华人企业家在当代世界和中国社会经济发展中的作用。     

Framing,agency and multiple streams– a case study of parks policy in the Northern Territory

ABSTRACT

There is increasing interest in the role of agency in policy processes for creating effective change. In this paper I explore the critical role of policy entrepreneurs in both creating and capitalising on windows of opportunity through creative framing of issues. I combine Kingdon’s multiple streams framework of the policy, problem and politics streams with the three types of social movement framing – diagnostic, prognostic and motivational – to analyse a case study of pragmatic and innovative policymaking in Australian Indigenous policy. I find that pragmatic policy entrepreneurs used framing to actively refine available policy solutions, particularly in response to structural barriers, and played an active role in brokering the problem in ways to make it politically acceptable. This confirms the importance of ideational processes, and the critical role of framing, in creating windows of opportunity for significant reform.     

THE ORGANIZATION OF PUBLIC INTEREST GROUPS

The topic here is whether broad public interests in consumer rights, a clean environment, and political reform have the organizational strength to be represented effectively when policy-making is the responsibility of bureaus and administrative agencies. The most persuasive explanation of why such interests could not be effective on a sustained basis is the collective action theory of Mancur Olson. The paper supports research arguing for modifications of Olson's theory by showing how public interests have been at least partially successful in maintaining effectiveness over time based on four concepts: the similarity of public interest groups to social movements, the use of purposive and solidary incentives, the use of material incentives to support lobbying as a by-product of other activities, and the role of organizational entrepreneurs supported by new technology, notably the computerized mailing list.     

Defiant Innovation: The Adoption of Medical Marijuana Laws in the American States

Diffusion research often characterizes the role of the federal government in innovation adoption as a supportive one, either increasing the likelihood of adoption or its speed. We examine the adoption of medical marijuana laws (MMLs) from 1996 to 2014 to shed light on what motivates states to adopt innovations that are in explicit defiance of federal law. Furthermore, we examine whether federal signals have any influence on the likelihood of adoption. In doing so, we utilize implementation theory to expand our understanding of how the federal government's position impacts state policy innovation adoption. We find mixed evidence for the influence of federal signals on the adoption of MMLs. The results suggest that medical marijuana policies are much more likely to be adopted in states when proponents have the political or institutional capital, rather than a medical or fiscal need. Moreover, this political capital is sufficient independent of the federal government's real or perceived position.     

Policy Entrepreneurs,Legislators, and Agenda Setting: Information and Influence

Policy entrepreneurs are thought to be instrumental in agenda change, yet we lack knowledge of how legislators perceive their role in the agenda formation process. Using data from a national survey of state legislators, we examine whether entrepreneurs shape the legislative agenda on disaster preparedness and relief, which types of entrepreneurs are most influential, and what strategies they use in their interactions with legislators. The results indicate that legislators who report contact with policy entrepreneurs are more likely to have introduced related legislation, evidence of the important link between entrepreneurs and policy change. While entrepreneurs utilize a variety of different strategies, the analysis reveals policymakers are particularly receptive to entrepreneurs who provide new and reliable information. This finding suggests the influence of entrepreneurs lies not only in their ability to define problems and build coalitions, but also in their distinctive ability to provide information to elected officials, an important role that has largely been overlooked by existing literature.     

Wind(ow) of Change: A Systematic Review of Policy Entrepreneurship Characteristics and Strategies

What lessons can we learn from 40 years of policy entrepreneurship scholarship on policy entrepreneurs’ strategies and defining characteristics? While scholars have offered important insights, many questions remain open. This article systematically reviews 229 articles that were published between 1984 and 2017. Our findings provide (i) an analysis of policy entrepreneurship characteristics by sector, policy domain, individual/group, government layer, and geographical spread, (ii) an empirically based identification and classification of policy entrepreneurship strategies, and (iii) a statistical analysis of the relationship between policy entrepreneurs’ characteristics and strategies. We conclude with an agenda for future studies that will continue to examine new theoretical approaches that advance our understanding of the role that individuals and small groups play in the policy process.     

Institutional alignment: The anniversary of Italy's 150 years of unity

This article introduces the concept of institutional alignment, referring to the contemporary convergence of a number of institutions (political, governmental, economical, clerical and media) working to hegemonize legitimate knowledge and privilege certain issues. In such instances institutions are called upon to align themselves in terms of narrative style, use of lexicon, symbolic array and, most importantly, the diffusion of a homogeneous and approved truth. Institutional alignment has been implemented in the last few years in Italy on a number of issues crucial to the ideological and economic preservation of the established order: the support for the wars conducted by the Italian armed forces under the guise of humanitarian intervention, especially during periods of patriotic mourning; the backing for the construction of large public infrastructural projects; the condemnation of what is labelled as ‘political violence’; the protection of policies said to generate ‘economic and financial stability’. The issue is illustrated with reference to the celebrations for the anniversary of Italy's 150 years of unity. The agencies involved in promoting a uniform representation in this context are examined. Finally, the frailty of the hegemonic grip is discussed.