Catholic synodality: episcopacy, clergy, laity

The article investigates the correlation between adherence to different levels of Bovespa corporate governance and earnings management. We take the hypothesis that firms with higher standard of corporate governance have lower earnings management. After a review of the literature on conceptual aspects of accruals, discretionary and non-discretionary accruals, earnings management and its relationship to the levels of Bovespa corporate governance, a research is promoted by applying the model developed by Kang and Silvaramkrishnan (1995) to identify discretionary accruals at different levels of corporate governance. The survey is characterized as descriptive and documentary, with a quantitative approach. We analyzed the companies listed on Bovespa in different governance levels: Level 1, Level 2 and Novo Mercado, in the period between 2000 and 2007. Unlike the results reported in international studies, mercaresearch has not allowed us to infer that a higher level of governance necessarily mean a lower degree of earnings management. It is also concluded that the behavior of firms in earnings management is similar between the different levels of governance of the Bovespa, especially those found in two groups of positive profitability described in this study. This suggests that the level of governance does not interfere in such behavior of managers.

The proceeding chapters have touched on several reasons why the GPA might have remained plurilateral, along with the associated, history of ongoing efforts to promote procurement reforms across different levels of government and governance. Many of the lessons to be derived from these activities suggest contradictory paths of action, or are at least difficult to reconcile, especially across levels of governance. For example, the IFIs’ early ‘liberal-rationalistic approaches’ to containing the problem of corruption — including but not limited to unethical conduct in public procurement — have proven some merit in terms of promoting more efficient use of public funds, but, by failing to address the social and historical contingency of the institutions and norms they seek to reform, may miss a deeper set of political challenges relating to the locus and legitimacy of authority in a given society (Bukovansky, 2006).

INTRODUCTION 1515 I. ONE-SIZE-FITS-ALL AND TAILORING IDENTIFIED 1523 A. A Simple Jurisprudential Model 1524 B. Four Approaches to Constitutionally Limiting the Different Levels of Government 1527 1. Different Levels, Different Constitutional Principles: The Example of “Fundamental Fairness” 1528 2. Total Incorporation 1532 3. Selective Incorporation 1534 4. Tailoring: A Variant of Selective Incorporation 1536 C. One-Size-Fits-All Outside of the Fourteenth Amendment 1538 II. THE (ULTIMATELY) PRAGMATIC GROUNDS FOR ONE-SIZE-FITS-ALL 1541 A. The Disappointing Search for a Justification 1542 B. The “Watering-Down” Thesis and the Structure of Rights 1545 C. Plausible Justifications for Selective Incorporation and Their Relation to One-Size-Fits-All 1553 1. Limiting Judicial Discretion 1554 2. Judicial Administration 1555 III. A QUASI-PRECEDENTIAL ARGUMENT: THAT TAILORING IS NOT UNKNOWN TO AMERICAN JURISPRUDENCE 1557 A. Early Influential Support for Tailoring 1557 B. Contemporary Constitutional Decisions that Reflect the Logic of Tailoring 1562 1. Federal Affirmative Action Programs 1562 2. Property-Based Franchise 1565 3. Separation-of-Powers Tailoring 1567 4. Dormant Commerce Clause 1571

Cities and networks play an important role in climate change mitigation. Various international, regional, and local networks seek to increase cooperation between cities or between cities and other stakeholders. However, we still have a poor understanding of how these formalised networks help cities to mitigate climate change at different levels of urban climate governance. Here, I analyse experiences of participation in formal climate change mitigation-related networks from the global to the local level in three European capital cities: Helsinki, Madrid, and Stockholm. As multilevel networking is a strategic tool for cities, different benefits are highlighted at different levels of governance. Some networks are more oriented towards politics and planning, while others are more practical. Formalised networking is also networking between individual people, which should be studied further. The results demonstrate both the advantages of networks and challenges in developing beneficial networking to support climate change mitigation.

This paper examines school management and policies in Germany and Australia during the Covid-19 pandemic. The study, which is comparative and qualitative, explores the interrelationship between different levels of governance and the responses of teacher unions. The inquiry is informed by the perspectives of historical institutionalism and path dependency, and the document analysis is conducted by utilising the justification categories of value, collective, and formal and procedural driven arguments. We argue the contestation which occurred between different levels of school governance and the teacher unions amidst the pandemic created the potential for changes in policy settings and influence over the administration of schooling. However, there is no indication of fundamental shifts in the organisation, policy direction or control over schooling in Germany or Australia. Instead, there is a conformity to established institutional arrangements and path dependencies, which secure and protect the vested interests of the different policy actors.

An instrument for evaluating the quality of government websites is described. It takes the form of a questionnaire resident within spreadsheet or database software so that an automatically determined evaluation may be indicated following input of data. The 106 questions included are derived from previous research regarding significant components of successful websites, along with interviews with developers of portals at different levels of Australian government. The instrument may be easily tailored to accommodate varying requirements at different levels of government, and used as a basis for extended internal evaluation of their own websites by agencies. The instrument also embodies explanations of the survey questions that are asked, along with advice on how to determine sought-after information from sites.

Policy development and implementation are too often considered the 'autonomous' result of a mix of good evidence production and social support for change. But both these policy drivers need to be created, supported, and - to be honest - manipulated toward the best possible configuration of different intervention modalities (or 'policy instruments') involving ranges of audiences (from the traditional 'risk group' to a much more fuzzy caste of politicians at many different levels of governments and governance). Whereas there is an acknowledgement that intervention development and evaluation must take into account multi-level complexity thinking, the realisation that this must translate into a similarly complex world of policy development has not yet sunk in. This presentation will review the interface between (a) the available evidence and knowledge bases for health promotion policy effectiveness; (b) the role and deceptive nature of social, political and determinants of health and political action; and (c) the nature of deliberative democracy and its various forms (e.g., 'participatory budgeting') and the prerogative of community action. I will claim - and demonstrate - that the discipline of health political science has made available functional toolkits for shaping and investigating systematically the policy process for health. Particularly, we need to progress our thinking from traditional mono-paradigmatic empirical research only, to a dynamic world of hybridisation of theories and practices. I will demonstrate the feasibility of this approach by showing the new policy opportunities that can be created by combining policy network research with language frame network mapping.

In recent decades, many cities have launched low-carbon pilot schemes to explore feasible local policies and actions that can be replicated on a larger scale to reduce the intensity of carbon emissions. This synthesis analysis reviews the global literature to analyse the interplay of prescriptive visions, practical responses, and evaluation methods of low-carbon urban experiments. Before 2015, low-carbon urban experiments were regarded as a sub-branch of sustainable development, and prescriptive visions were influenced by sustainability. Low-carbon urban experiments were used as an urban planning tool, and such urban planning concepts impacted the practical response and evaluation methods. After 2015, low-carbon urban experiments were influenced by many more disciplines. Planning still occupies the largest proportion of low-carbon practices, but more advanced technologies – in energy and other fields – have also been adopted and influence the evolution of low-carbon urban experiments. We find several driving factors, including political events and developments, technology change, and contributions from various disciplines including academic research. As carbon neutrality is the long-term target of many nations, achieving net-zero carbon dioxide emissions through prescriptive visions, practical responses, and evaluation methods in urban experiments demands further investigation, especially in developing countries. Key policy insights Low-carbon initiatives on a small scale are frequently practiced by local and national governments, which has reshaped the low-carbon agenda worldwide. Low-carbon development also demands efforts and commitment on the part of local urban governments to promote low-carbon development in its multiple dimensions. Policymakers at different levels of government and governance should focus on how to build on policy instruments in experimental pilots to take action at broader scales. Policymakers also need to adopt relevant indicators from social science in evaluation methods to reflect social sustainability and inclusiveness concerns in the evaluation of low-carbon urban development.

Multi‐level Climate Governance: The global system and selected sub‐systems

Chapter 3: Governance is a complex concept which should be unpacked, taking its contexts into account. The purpose of 'governance' is not just to be 'good', but certainly to be effective. Linking and defining governance, a concept which is comprehensive by definition, to subnational levels, implies that shifting from public sector to public service impacts the vertical (different levels of government and governance) and the horizontal dimensions (private sector, civil society). Distinguishing between micro, meso, and macro levels of governance is useful. Since local and regional levels in a public sphere are increasingly driving forces in societies. 'Effective governance' at that level becomes indispensable as a vertical and horizontal governance pivot.

The solution of the tasks of allocating expenditures between the different levels of government and administration is accompanied by the need to make decisions on the redistribution of tax powers between the levels of state government. A study of international experience in building a vertical structure of tax authorities shows that there is no prevailing strategy for assigning this or that revenue to certain levels of government.

The article examines the implementation of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) Recommendation on Effective Public Investment Across Levels of Government in Ukraine. The article covers the nature and peculiarities of the OECD Recommendation and analyzes the process of its implementation by Ukraine. The purpose of the Recommendation on Effective Public Investment Across Levels of Government is to help governments at all levels assess the strengths and weaknesses of their public investment capacity using a country-wide approach and identify priorities for improvement. Given the downward trend in public investment, especially in times of crisis, it is very important for governments at all levels to be efficient, i.e., to be able to deliver better results with less costs and to spend more wisely. The problem is much broader than just funding investment, as it concerns the most efficient use of investment funds, for which different levels of government may lack appropriate management tools even if investment funding is available. The scope of the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development and the list of legal instruments it is developing are described. The article outlines three systematic challenges to multi-level public investment management that impede the achievement of the best outcomes: coordination challenges, capacity challenges, and framework challenges. It notes that to address these issues, the OECD has developed a Recommendation on Effective Public Investment Across Levels of Government, which takes into account the above challenges and is built on three key pillars: coordination of public investment at different levels of government and policy; strengthening public investment capacity and promoting policy learning at all levels of government; and ensuring an appropriate framework for public investment at all levels of government. The framework covers twelve principles, which in turn include specific steps for implementing the OECD Recommendation in practice. The principles set out in the Recommendation are applicable to national, regional, and local governments and address aspects that are relevant to other stakeholders in public investment. The implementation of the OECD Recommendation on Effective Public Investment Across Levels of Government will allow Ukraine to benefit from the experience of successful OECD countries in this area, and the increase in the efficiency of public investment will signal to foreign investors that investing in Ukraine is a viable option. The article also examines the steps taken by Ukraine on the way to establishing and strengthening cooperation with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, in particular in terms of implementing the Recommendation, and outlines the main problematic issues on this path. Ukraine’s cooperation with the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development is extremely important for ensuring its economic well-being, both at the national, regional, and local levels.

Tackling climate change through circular economy in cities

The article determines that in many countries the challenges of sustainable development are solved by creating new institutional structures that form inter-organizational management networks, which are corporations of public actors representing different sectors and levels of government, as well as private actors. Such networks should contribute to the implementation of coordinated actions, which are necessary to solve the problems of sustainable development in certain areas. It is noted that the concept of sustainable development is based on three pillars: social, economic and ecological. But the institutions necessary to ensure sustainable development can be considered as its fourth pillar. Local management networks are one of such institutions. It is necessary to involve subjects who have certain resources or otherwise contribute to the solution of the relevant problems in the management of the network. In addition, there is a need to consider the interests of all stakeholders in order to achieve legitimacy. This is quite natural, but there are two challenges that must be taken into account. First, it is a challenge to involve all powerful actors in situations of asymmetric distribution of interdependencies, which leads to the fact that some of them will not consider the implementation of real cooperation in their interests. Second, it is a challenge caused by an asymmetric distribution of interests, where commercial resource extraction interests prevail among local private actors and local governments, who are also important resource owners, and environmental conservation interests prevail among external stakeholders, who are also stakeholders. Sustainable development policy crosses the boundaries of political sectors as well as the boundaries between the public and private sectors, i.e. sustainable development is cross-functional. It also crosses the boundaries of territorial jurisdictions, whether local, regional or national. So, the sustainable development goals are at the intersection of different jurisdictions, different sectors of governance, and different levels of governance. Thus, the realization of these goals represents a significant challenge for the coordination and integration of the actions of many actors, accordingly, it is necessary to create complex institutional structures such as management networks.

The study “Officials’ Perception of the Content Mobilization Work of the Party Committee Level in the City of Hai Phong in a New Era” provides an in-depth evaluation of how officials understand and apply the Party’s viewpoints on civil mobilization. This research is particularly relevant in the context of Vietnam’s ongoing socio-economic transformation and the increasing emphasis on participatory governance. Through comprehensive surveys and rigorous quantitative analysis, the study explores the depth of officials’ awareness, the key factors influencing their perceptions, and the limitations they encounter in implementation. Findings reveal that while most officials recognize the fundamental role of civil mobilization in fostering trust between the Party and the people, there are noticeable inconsistencies in comprehension and execution across different levels of governance. Some officials, particularly at the grassroots level, struggle with mastering the principles and methodologies required to adapt civil mobilization strategies to the evolving socio-political landscape. This lack of proficiency hinders the effectiveness of mobilization efforts, leading to gaps between policy intentions and real-world outcomes. Furthermore, the study highlights a range of external challenges that complicate civil mobilization work. The rapid pace of digital transformation has altered traditional communication dynamics, requiring officials to develop new skills and approaches to engage with the public effectively. Socio-economic changes, including urbanization, labor migration, and shifting demographics, have also introduced complexities that demand more adaptive and inclusive mobilization strategies. Additionally, coordination challenges between different administrative units and levels of government further limit the efficiency of mobilization efforts. To address these issues, the study proposes a series of strategic solutions. Enhancing officials’ theoretical and practical understanding of civil mobilization through training programs is a key recommendation. The study also emphasizes the need for modernizing mobilization approaches by leveraging digital tools, strengthening inter-agency collaboration, and fostering a more responsive governance framework. By implementing these solutions, Hai Phong can improve the effectiveness of civil mobilization work, thereby reinforcing the relationship between the Party and the people, ensuring social stability, and promoting sustainable development in the city.