The White Paper on European Governance: Implications for Urban Policy

This paper discusses the recent European Commission White Paper on European Governance, arguing that the document offers interesting possibilities for the future development of the European Union (EU), how it is governed and more particularly for 'European Urban Policy'. However, the paper argues there are problems with its use of the term governance as a strategy for reform and with a number of its proposals to widen access to the European Commission (EC) and the policy process. With regard to urban policy it is suggested that the White Paper's emphasis on a greater role for sub-national government and citizens' is to be welcomed. Although once again it is unclear whether the Commission has fully thought through the implications of its proposals both for itself and the groups it wishes to engage with. More specifically it is argued that the Open Method of Coordination is broadly similar to the methods whereby both current urban (and spatial) policy have been developed and should be embraced. Overall the White Paper is something of a mixed bag; however, this is to be expected of a document which is primarily intended to stimulate discussion about the future of EU governance.     

Assessing the role of the international financial services centre in Irish regional development

This paper examines the manner and extent to which the International Financial Services Centre (IFSC) in Dublin contributes to regional development in Ireland. Since its 1987 launch, the IFSC created over 10,000 jobs and promoted urban renewal in a previously derelict section of Dublin. Although it stands as one of Ireland's most prominent development projects, empirical examination of the IFSC remains limited. This study looks specifically at issues such as the kinds of activities and employment created at the IFSC, as well as local linkage formation. Based on published data and research interviews, this paper shows that the IFSC contributed to Ireland's economic development at a time when industrial policy focused primarily on employment creation. To date the IFSC has proven to be a successful policy intervention, the routine nature of many IFSC-related activities raises questions about the IFSC's ability to become something more than a centre for back-office financial services.     

Children's involvement in policy formation

Involving children in policy is now popular, a recent UK example being the consultation on Every Child Matters. This can be viewed as progress in increasing children's status as stakeholders in policy formation. However, questions remain about the reality of children's engagement and the validity of the methods used to gather, analyse and present their views. We need to protect children from exploitative or tokenistic processes and differentiate between gathering children's views and involving them as partners in policy formation. The former requires greater rigour of methodology. The latter requires moving from short term policy development to a longer term shared engagement enabling powerful adults and children to think collaboratively.     

THE POLICY PROCESS AND ORGANIZATIONAL FORM

In this paper the transactions cost approach (TCA) is used to define organizations and to predict their forms under certain conditions. Next, Aaron Wildavsky's approach is used to define the policy process and to predict its form in particular organizations. Two assertions follow: namely, that the most efficient organizational form may be predicted from knowledge of underlying transactions costs, and that the form of the policy process in an organization can be predicted from knowledge of the organization's form (regardless of whether it is the most efficient form). Recent natural gas policy in the U.S.A. is used to illustrate these propositions, and several conclusions are offered about 1) the potential applicability of the TCA to the public sector and to the policy process and 2) about the potential applicability of Wildavsky's version of the policy process to differing organizational forms.     

Canada's Ocean Supercluster initiative: A national policy in regional clothing?

Since the late 1980s, there has been no explicit regional policy in Canada. Indirectly, though, equalization payments, industrial policies, as well as regional agencies encouraging the adoption of federal industrial and innovation policies, impact regional economies. In 2017, the federal government appeared to alter its approach: the Supercluster initiative was announced, drawing upon the idea that localized networks of interrelated firms can generate innovation and local development. In this paper, we discuss the mechanisms through which spatially focused industrial innovation policy can lead to regional development. We then focus on Canada's Ocean Supercluster initiative. The question we address is as follows: to what extent can this initiative (and, more widely, Canada's Supercluster policy) be understood as a regional development strategy driven by a coherent rationale for regional intervention? Apart from the fact that each Supercluster focuses on a pre-existing core of firms located within a region, there is little evidence that the Supercluster initiative has regional development objectives or impacts.     

Advocacy Coalitions,Policy Stability,and Policy Change in China: The Case of Birth Control Policy, 1980–2015

This study used the advocacy coalition framework (ACF) to explain stability and change in China's national birth control policy from 1980 to 2015. We found that policy remained stable, despite internal and external changes to the relevant subsystem, from 1980 to 2013. The stability was explained by the dominant advocacy coalition's mobilization of considerable resources to defend its policy core beliefs. Policy changes in 2013 and 2015 were caused by a combination of external and internal perturbations, in addition to policy-oriented learning and advocacy by two expert-led minority advocacy coalitions. The case showed that the openness and plurality of China's policy processes had increased over time but were still limited in comparison with those in Western democracies. The case analysis confirmed two policy change hypotheses and suggested a mechanism for policy change: a hierarchically superior jurisdiction is more likely to impose a major policy change when it learns that the change is an adaptation to internal and external perturbations and that adopting the change will serve the jurisdiction's political interests.     

Structural ways to embed a research laboratory into the company: A comparison between Philips and General Electric 1900-1940

This paper compares the Philips Research Department and the Research Laboratory of the American company General Electric (GE). 1 It argues that it is, above all, the issue of the organization of industrial research, appropriate leadership and the embeddedness of a research department in the company as a whole that is important for an historical analysis of an industrial research department. The complex structures that Gilles Holst (the first Philips research director) and Willis Whitney (the GE research director during the first decades of the twentieth century) set up in their organizations enabled scientists to keep in touch with the resources provided by the universities, and made it possible for them to come up with articles, patents and devices for their respective companies. It enabled them also to strengthen their contacts inside and outside the laboratory's walls. However, more than his colleague Whitney at GE, Holst at Philips intended to integrate the research laboratory into the company as a whole. Holst's policy as a research director will be illustrated using the case of Philips' radio research. A comparative discussion of industrial research in the 1930s within both companies shows that the "successful" integration of research activities is context-dependent.     

Unintended consequences: an examination of Australia's ‘historic policy shift’ on East Timor

The Howard government's foreign policy objectives concerning East Timor remain the subject of intense historical debate. Given that some Indonesians harbour suspicions about Australia's role in East Timor's independence, it is important to reflect on Australia's diplomacy throughout this period. This article draws on 15 interviews with former politicians and officials—including Prime Minister John Howard and Foreign Minister Alexander Downer—to argue that in 1998, Australia's foreign policy was focused on supporting Indonesia's democratisation process and maintaining the bilateral relationship. It was only when Indonesia moved towards a ‘special status’ of autonomy for East Timor that Australia reconsidered its own position. Although rarely acknowledged, Australia's policy shift actually precipitated outcomes that it had sought to avoid. As such, Habibie's decision to allow self-determination in East Timor can only be viewed as an unintended consequence of Australian diplomacy—independence was never the objective of Australian foreign policy.     

Failing to live up to the promise: the politics of equal pay in ‘new’ workplace and industrial relations institutions

Workplace and industrial relations regulations are key sites for policy intervention to address Australia's gender pay gap, which, at 15.3 per cent, is almost as large as it was in 1997. In both the Fair Work Act 2009 (Cth) and the Workplace Gender Equality Act 2012 (Cth) the goal of equal pay has a more central place than it did in predecessor legislation. In particular, the Fair Work Act has the potential to deliver more gender-equitable wage structures through addressing systemic gender-based undervaluation at the industry level. Adopting a feminist institutional approach this article examines equal pay policy in the operations of workplace and industrial relations regulation to ask why, despite some recent successes, this potential appears unlikely to be realised.     

对改革开放以来我国文化产业政策绩效的几点思考

产业政策绩效问题一直是我国产业理论研究的难点和薄弱环节。本文回顾了我国文化产业政策的实践历程,对我国文化产业政策的绩效进行了比较系统的分析评估,认为我国文化产业政策虽取得了一定成效,但总的效果并不理想。作者在分析了其中原因后指出,要提高文化产业政策绩效,必须适应形势的要求对我国文化产业政策作出必要的调整。     

Internet freedom,human rights and power

Internet freedom is rapidly becoming understood as a normative framework for how the Internet should function and be used globally. Recently declared a human right by the United Nations, it also forms a central pillar of the USA's 21st Century Statecraft foreign policy doctrine. This article argues that although there is a clear human rights agenda present in this policy, there is also a power element which is much less discussed or acknowledged in the vast literature on Internet freedom. Through an exploration of both a short history and some important lessons learned about Internet freedom, this article demonstrates how the US Department of State has adapted to the information age in such a way as to harness individual agency (reconceptualised in policy terms as ‘civilian power’) for the promotion of state power. Although this is by no means as stable or reliable as some more conventional mechanisms, it is an expression of power that meets with few challenges to its legitimacy.     

Interview with Romano Prodi

On the occasion of the Conference on the State of Italy, held at Brown University's Watson Institute for International Studies on 29–30 October 2013, David Kertzer interviewed former two-time Italian Prime Minister Romano Prodi. Their focus was on the evolution of Prodi's involvement in Italian government and politics. This first in what is planned to be two such interviews examines Prodi's initial move from an economics professor at the University of Bologna interested in the study of political economy and industrial policy, to a major figure in implementing industrial policy in Italy. It looks at his brief stint as Minister of Industry under Giulio Andreotti, his founding of the influential industrial study group Nomisma, and then his presidency of the Institute for Industrial Reconstruction (IRI), Italy's giant holding company. With the crisis of the Italian political system in the early 1990s, Prodi was central to the creation of a new centre-left coalition, named L'Ulivo (the Olive Tree), an experience he recalls here, along with his first experience as Prime Minister, from 1996 to 1998.     

Criticism of Henry II's expedition to Ireland in William of Canterbury's miracles of St Thomas Becket

The long collection of miracles of St Thomas Becket written by William, a monk of Christ Church, Canterbury, between 1172 and c.1179 is, like many other examples of the genre, a rich source for attitudes towards sanctity, relics, and pilgrimage. A far more unusual feature of William's text is the author's criticism of the recent English presence in Ireland. William's comments on this score amount to a loaded stretching of the normal parameters of his textual medium, resulting in an evaluative engagement with current affairs of the sort that we would more normally associate with reflective forms of history-writing. William's criticism focused in particular upon the expedition to Ireland undertaken by King Henry II (October 1171–April 1172), inverting the very rhetoric that Henry had used to justify his Irish adventure. William was not himself Irish, as has sometimes been supposed, nor was he registering his institution's frustrations about its exclusion from the new ecclesiastical order in Ireland, as might be implied by the traditional but questionable ‘Canterbury plot’ interpretation of the much-debated papal bull Laudabiliter. Instead, William was skilfully engaging with current debates about the rectitude of Henry II's Irish expedition, and more broadly contesting emerging prejudices about England's ‘uncultivated’ neighbours, in order to effect a subtle critique of the king's involvement in Becket's murder.     

Peaceful development: China's policy of reassurance

The rise of China has aroused much concern and anxiety around the world. This has complicated China's foreign policy objective of securing a peaceful international environment for domestic reforms and development. Accordingly, reassuring the world of the benign nature of China's rise has become a central feature of China's foreign policy. This paper describes and analyses China's efforts in this regard. First, it outlines the central features of such efforts which constitute a policy of reassurance. Then it explores the major factors shaping the policy. Finally it tries to assess the result of the policy and speculate about its future development. It is hoped that this will help gain a better understanding of China's foreign policy.     

Economic Governance and the Evolution of Industrial Districts Under Globalization: The Case of Two Mature European Industrial Districts

For many mature European industrial districts, the present decade has been one of trying (and often failing) to meet the difficult challenges posed by the rising tide of globalization. The future of these districts in the new global economy has become a key issue for regional and local development policy, and, in this respect, it has sparked a renewed interest in economic governance. Economic governance is important in that it underpins a region's long-term economic development path. This article is a contribution to the study of the economic governance of industrial districts and the related policy debate. The article does so by specifically exploring the economic governance issue by considering the experiences and challenges currently facing two mature European industrial districts in the global economy.     

Turkey's isolated stance: an ally no more,or just the usual turbulence?

This article explores the policy choices and political stances that lie behind Turkey's growing isolation both from its western allies and its regional neighbours. It details Ankara's approach to a range of current issues in its region—particularly relating to Syria but also Iraq, Libya, Iran, Russia and Israel—and seeks to trace these approaches back to the world‐view of the country's ruling party and its leading figures, most notably President Erdogan and Prime Minister Davutoglu. It also assesses Turkey's reactions to the complex regional circumstances that have confronted Turkey in recent years. It considers the content and impact of some of the rhetoric emanating from Ankara, especially where it is directed towards the West. The article asks whether and why Turkish foreign policy has acquired an anti‐western tone, and also looks at the extent to which its dealings with its neighbours can be explained by sectarian considerations or by pro‐Muslim Brotherhood leanings. It then goes on to speculate about Turkey's future relationship with NATO and to a lesser degree the EU. It considers the prospects for an improvement in Ankara's relationship with its western allies, or whether Turkey–US relations in particular are now likely to be characterized by ‘strategic drift’ and a more transactional and contingent approach to alliance relationships.     

China's New Leaders: Perspectives on Geographic Trends and Realities

A senior American specialist on the geography of China examines several aspects of China's society, economy, regional organization, and geopolitical position in light of the change in the country's leadership at the 18th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party in November 2012. After a brief comparison of the incoming and retiring leadership groups in terms of backgrounds and past policy pronouncements (as well as discussing the challenge posed by corruption), the author proceeds to discuss a series of key social and regional development policies that may be subject to some degree of change under the new leadership, including hukou and the one-child policy. He then focuses on the 12th Five-Year Plan, which provides a broad outline of the new leadership's goals, and particularly its emphasis on balanced regional development (a commitment to further develop the interior of the country as well as to revitalize the old heavy industrial region, the Northeast). The author then turns to China's growing military (and particularly naval) power in connection with its increasing assertion of territorial claims in the South and East China Seas as well as ability to project naval power across the Taiwan Strait and beyond into the Pacific and Indian Ocean theaters.     

RISK AND INCOME TRADEOFFS IN REGIONAL POLICY: A PORTFOLIO THEORETIC APPROACH*

ABSTRACT. Policy makers often try to raise a region's income by altering its industrial mix. However, such attempts to increase local income may have an adverse effect on the stability of the region's economy. In this paper, we develop single-, aggregate-, and multiregional portfolio models that can be used by policy makers to generate frontiers of risk/income-efficient industrial mixtures for a regional economy. These portfolio models are modified for application to the tourist industry in six regions of Spain. In practice, we find that the introduction of bounds on the magnitude of sector rebalancing has a major effect on the model solutions.     

Picking 'winners' in space: Impact of spatial targeting on firm performance in China

This paper examines the spatial patterns of China's industrial encouragement policy and its distributional impact on firm productivity. To this end, I develop separate proxies to measure three popular policy instruments (subsidies, tax holidays, and preferential access to loans). I first show that China's industrial support policies tend to exhibit a prominent spatial feature of targeting firms located in lagging cities with lower density. Taking into account potential endogeneity of industrial policy, unobserved heterogeneity and firm dynamics, quantile regression techniques show that more intense industrial support leads to: (a) a reduction in the productivity of lower-performing firms, especially in denser cities; and (b) a small productivity gain for better performing firms but only in denser cities. Counterfactual analysis further reveals that pursuing an alternative, space-neutral industrial encouragement policy would increase average productivity by 14–16%, in aggregate, but also contribute to significantly higher regional inequality.