Governing from the Border? Quebec’s Role in North American Security

ABSTRACT

This article aims to shed light on Quebec’s role in cross-border security governance. It exposes the challenges Quebec is facing in this area and what cross-border activities fall within its jurisdiction. The supported hypothesis in this article is that security is subjected to an increasing politicization from the Quebec government in a post-9/11 context, which contributes to the edification of an embryonic “multilevel governance.” If this politicization was noticeable in political statements and international agreements, it seems that it was more driven by conjectural imperatives than a real desire to make Quebec a leader in transnational security. Therefore, there were no diplomatic and financial commitments to make security part of the Gérin-Lajoie doctrine and develop a similar paradiplomacy as in other fields. However, on different technical and bureaucratic levels, transgovernmental relations between certain Quebec governmental organizations, including police corps, and their American counterparts were created. Consequently, they contributed to make continental action more effective, at least in a certain measure.     

When regional innovation policies meet policy rationales and evidence: a plea for policy analysis

In spite of recent advancements regarding regional innovation policy rationales and evidence, there are few analyses about the actual features of existing regional innovation policies. Nevertheless, a policy analysis perspective is important in order to recognize their distinctive patterns across regions, and to understand how rationales and evidence can be translated into policy-making. To this purpose, this paper develops a framework to study the extent to which regional innovation policies have changed during the past few years. Since the mid-2000s, there has been an important development of innovation policy rationales, advocating for more specialization; likewise, greater data availability at the regional level has allowed more sophisticated assessment of innovation performance. Finally, the crisis since 2008 has had ravaging effects in some regions, with job losses and severe economic sluggishness. Therefore, it is reasonable to expect transforming dynamics in regional innovation policies. Against this backdrop, the paper compares the institutional frameworks and budgetary priorities of four Spanish regions during the period 2001–2014: Catalonia, the Basque Country, Galicia and Andalusia. In so doing, it aims at studying the extent to which regional governments have readily addressed past and new challenges related to their regional innovation system, and if so, how.     

The quality of gender equality: gender quotas and Swedish film governance

Since 2000, the Swedish Film Institute has been tasked with increasing gender equality by distributing commissioner support more equally between women and men. While this has resulted in an increase in the number of women behind the camera, this study shows that the implementation has been hampered due to a representation of gender equality as being in conflict with the core values of the film governance regime. This representation reveals a lingering gender order and opens avenues for stakeholders to consider behaviour that ignores the gender equality goals as legitimate. It is further argued that the design of gender equality measures creates a conflict between the economic conditions of women’s film making and the possibility to tell stories based on gendered experiences.     

Polycentricity as spatial imaginary: the case of Helsinki City Plan

The paper analyses with a case study the use of a widely applied normative concept of polycentricity as spatial imaginary. The case study of Helsinki City Plan and the conflict over its city-boulevard scheme draws on qualitative content analysis of planning documents and expert interviews. It demonstrates the instrumental role of multiple interpretations of polycentricity in tension-ridden metropolitan and city-regional spatial planning. The conflict reveals how the conceptual ambiguity of polycentricity and the institutional vagueness of city-regional planning have together enabled advancing contradictory political aims under their guise. In conclusion, the paper emphasizes the persuasive performativity and fluidity of polycentricity as a spatial imaginary in multi-scalar planning settings.     

西汉初年陇西、北地、上郡治所考——以张家山汉简《秩律》所见各县等第为中心

汉代郡治之县,在同郡属县中秩级最高。由张家山汉简《二年律令·秩律》载录的各郡辖县秩级,可探知西汉初年某些郡的治所: 陇西郡治所为上邽县;上郡治所为高奴县;北地郡治所为彭阳县。此外,西汉初年汉中、河东、河内三郡治所也可以凭借《秩律》得到进一步限定。《秩律》在西汉初年郡治研究上的价值需要得到重视。     

从"资治"到"救国"--关于19世纪史学经世致用思想变化之研究

自19世纪40年代伊始,中国社会所发生的空前的沧桑巨变,直接推动了史学由古代史学向近代史学的转变。这种转变的重要标志之一,就是史学经世致用思想的变化,即史学经世致用思想从“资治”到“救国”,从着眼于王朝治乱兴衰到关注国家和民族前途命运之经世致用的宗旨和参照系的变化。同时,这种变化又对整个19世纪中国史学的发展及其走向产生了重大而深远的影响。     

Tracing Process to Performance of Collaborative Governance: A Comparative Case Study of Federal Hydropower Licensing

Despite collaborative governance's popularity, whether collaboration improves policy performance remains uncertain. This study assesses the link between collaborative decision making and licensed environmental management protocols in the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission's (FERC's) process for licensing hydropower facilities in the United States. Using results from a previous study of FERC relicensing (Ulibarri, forthcoming), one high‐, one medium‐, and one low‐collaboration case were selected. Using documents including meeting minutes, public comments, and issued licenses, I assessed collaboration and license outputs, then conducted process tracing to examine whether and how differences in collaboration produced differences in license quality. High collaboration resulted in jointly developed and highly implementable operating regimes designed to improve numerous resources, while low collaboration resulted in operating requirements that ignored environmental concerns raised by stakeholders and lacked implementation provisions. These results support the hypothesis that collaboration can improve environmental outcomes, revealing the pragmatic value of collaboration. [Correction added on 13 January 2015, after first online publication: the occurrences of ‘0’ in the abstract were erroneous and have now been corrected.]     

Local government reforms in Georgia and their impact on state-society relations

Abstract

This paper studies how the local governance reforms carried out between 1997–2014 shape state-society relations at Georgia’s local level. Drawing on Foucault’s concept of governmentality, I analyze how the reforms shape practices and actors at the local level. Research interviews with state officials at the national and subnational levels and citizens of the Georgian district Marneuli highlight both government rationalities and how people react to them. I argue that the reforms, which have been declared to promote participation and accountability, hardly contribute to bridging the huge gap between state and society, particularly with respect to the case of the Azeri minority in Marneuli. Thus far, the newly introduced formal actors at the local level, the municipalities, lack power. Societal action in absence of the state and interaction with the state via informal networks remains dominant. The study contributes to literature on state-building and transformation in Georgia by shedding light on the often-neglected local level and to the debate on external democracy promotion and policy transfer by empirically studying the effect of a policy transfer.     

Capturing gains by relocating global production networks: the rise of Chongqing’s notebook computer industry, 2008–2014

In 2008 a new notebook manufacturing cluster was established in Chongqing in western China. By 2013 it accounted for some 25% of world output by volume. Chongqing’s ability to attract this manufacturing supply chain was driven by several factors that permitted strategic coupling: the existence of complex networks of cooperation and economies external to the firm but internal to contemporary global production networks; changed conditions in southeast and east China; and the creation by Chongqing Municipal People’s Government with central state support of hard and soft infrastructures and externalities that drove down logistic and production costs and permitted constant product innovation.     

Nunavik and the Multiple Dimensions of Inuit Governance

ABSTRACT

Over the last five decades, the emergence of a sophisticated and multidimensional set of governance institutions in the predominantly Inuit regions of Canada and the circumpolar north has had a profound impact on the lives of Inuit peoples and the states in which they live. The region of Nunavik in northern Québec has played an important role in the political development of the Canadian and circumpolar Inuit, serving as both an institutional innovator and a key source of leadership at the regional, national, and international levels. Using a multilevel governance framework, this article explores the vertical and horizontal dimensions of Inuit governance in Canada and the circumpolar north. In particular, the article will focus on Nunavik’s contribution to and place in this multidimensional governance structure.