Bureaucratic Complexity Research Articles

How do institutions and infrastructure affect mobilization around public toilets vs. piped water? Examining intra-slum patterns of collective action in Delhi, India

Abstract Why does a slum community mobilize differently around different public services? I use qualitative data derived from ethnographic fieldwork in four urban slum communities in Delhi, India, to examine the strategies they employ for countering everyday problems of access to water and toilets. While literature explains communities’ use of informal arrangements and political engagement to access water, what is less clear is why similar strategies do not emerge in the case of toilets. While collective action literature focuses on community-level factors such as social capital, trust, ethnic heterogeneity, and intermediary organizations, it often ignores how services interact with the slum ecology and the institutional frameworks they are embedded within. Caste, gender, religion, class, and influential slum leaders no doubt mediate everyday social relations in Indian slums, but communities that surmount these obstacles may still not be able to mobilize in a way that improves everyday service delivery. I argue that communities are able to coordinate when they think their efforts will yield success – both locally in terms of inducing reciprocity and reducing free riding as well as when they get appropriate institutional support for their initiatives. Infrastructural characteristics unique to a service determine whether reciprocity and cooperation can be sustained within the built environment of the slum. Bureaucratic complexity determines whether communities will be able to negotiate successfully. In the case of water, easy adaptability within the neighborhood and ease of bureaucratic access allow for sustained coordination within communities. The infrastructural nature of toilets makes it harder to find arrangements that will work within the slum ecology and induce cooperation. The complicated institutional dynamics create obstacles on top of that deter sustained mobilization. What communities experience instead is a sporadic pattern of collective action around poorly functioning public toilets.

Understanding project cancellation risks in U.S. P3 surface transportation infrastructure

Public private partnership (P3) projects can face many internal and external risks affecting their development and implementation. As a result, this research explores the understudied risk factors underlying the U.S.’ cancelled, deferred, and terminated (CDT) P3 projects. A database of CDT projects is developed. Of the projects identified as the U.S. surface transportation P3 population, 46% (31 out of 68) experienced cancellation, deferment or early contract termination. The research then applied a risk typology and a multi-case study method to the troubled cases to identify common risk factors. Data collection focused primarily on the identification of political (public and political voice, bureaucratic complexity) and economic risk factors. The most frequently identified factors across the 31 cancelled, deferred, or terminated cases include political opposition, local opposition, and inadequate demand projections. Since the paper studies the entire U.S. surface transportation P3 project population, the results serve to inform public agencies and private sector actors of possible friction points meriting consideration during P3 procurement planning.

Complaints-Based Entrepreneurialism: Worker Experiences of the Employment Standards Complaints Process in Ontario, Canada.

In Ontario, workers who face unfair working conditions have the option of filing an official complaint with the Ministry of Labour. Complaints making is characterized as a widely available, easily accessible, and free-of-cost avenue for workers who may have experienced a violation of the law. However, interviews with Ontario workers who have filed complaints tell a different story. This paper is based on a community-university project on the enforcement of the Employment Standards Act in Ontario. We draw on 36 interviews with workers employed in precarious jobs in Sudbury, Toronto, and Windsor, who filed complaints to the Ministry. Workers characterize the complaints process as rife with bureaucratic complexity, risk, and unsuccessful payouts. Their experiences shed light on the efficacy of complaint-based approaches that are often promoted as a form of "bottom-up" enforcement of employment standards (ES). We demonstrate that the current ES complaints system requires workers to enact neoliberal entrepreneurialism (rather than agentic or collective entrepreneurialism) creating a highly stressful, enormously time-consuming, and demoralizing experience. We document the increasingly individualized and contradictory avenues through which workers must act as entrepreneurs to navigate and self-advocate when their rights have been violated. We argue that the current complaint processes limit the potentially empowering impact of this strategy.

Contemporary Livestock–Predator Themes Identified Through a Wyoming, USA Rancher Survey

On the Ground • Livestock-predator interactions structure ranchers' perceptions of predators. • We surveyed 274 ranchers in Wyoming using open-answer questions about contemporary livestock-predator themes. • Four themes emerged: 1) difficulty mitigating losses from protected large carnivores; 2) escalating impacts of predatory birds on livestock and wildlife; 3) sustainability of predator management funding; and 4) continual bureaucratic complexities of predator management. • Themes had an underlying thread regarding the tension between state control versus federal control including concern about growing predator populations that may affect both livestock and native wildlife such as greater sage-grouse (Centrocercus urophasianus).

Sustainability and fairness still missing in the Greek social insurance system

Despite deep cuts in pensions recently implemented in Greece, the social insurance system is still characterized by a multitude of problems—financial, social, and organizational. These make it counterproductive in improving intragenerational inequality and intergenerational fairness, while its bureaucratic complexity makes the planning and implementation of reforms a difficult task. The aim of the paper is, first, to describe the long‐term adverse dynamics and, second, to suggest a road map of changes that ensure a fairer treatment among the various categories of pensioners as well as between them and current generation employees.

Timing Is Everything: Late Registration and Stratified Access to School Choice

School choice policies necessarily impose registration timelines, constraining access to schools of choice for students who register late. Drawing on administrative data, survey data, and interviews with 33 parents in Boston, we find that late registration is common and highly stratified: Nearly half of black kindergarteners miss the first registration deadline, a rate almost three times higher than their white peers, consigning them to the least preferred schools. Contexts of instability and bureaucratic complexity serve as barriers to registering months in advance, and parents describe disengagement from the school system following their late registration. These findings show how despite equal access in theory, bureaucratic structures such as timeline-based lotteries hinder many families, particularly those disadvantaged already, from full participation. Inequality in school choice outcomes and experiences thus results not only from families’ selections, the focus of previous research, but also the misalignment of district bureaucratic processes with family situations.

Energy governance in the context of energy service security: A qualitative assessment of the electricity system in Bangladesh

Soaring energy demand in developing Asian countries presents a challenge for existing centralized systems and monopolistic electric utilities since these often fail to reliably provide energy service security. Inclusive energy governance could serve as a hedging mechanism against several inherent problems such as supply disruptions and corruption practices, and thus improve energy service security. This study therefore (i) proposes a conceptual framework for energy governance in developing countries and (ii) applies this framework to qualitatively assess the energy service security perspectives of the electricity system in Bangladesh via an interpretive research approach. Relevant governance indicators were first identified in an inductive thematic analysis of systematically selected literature. Bangladesh’s electricity system was then subsequently qualitatively analyzed on the basis of secondary data and official reports. The findings indicate the presence of weak institutions in the electricity sector and a lack of market competition, and the need for consistent policy implementation, proper pricing and information disclosure mechanisms. In addition, other challenges such as endemic corruption and bureaucratic complexities, underdeveloped grids and insufficient resource logistics also need to be addressed. While international interventions and national policies favor a heavy take-up of fossil fuels in order to achieve energy security and energy equity, environmental sustainability is largely ignored. The study concludes that the integration of energy governance and energy security perspectives is crucial to understanding and addressing the challenges of a just energy transition in the face of the standard energy trilemma in developing countries.

The belt and road initiative: domestic interests, bureaucratic politics and the EU-China relations

This article explores the linkages between domestic affairs and foreign policies in China in fulfilling its grand ambition of Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). It examines the complexities in decision-making process of “BRI” inside Beijing’s administration. It departs from the most existing literature on BRI in Europe, which focus upon the geo-economic and geo-political impacts of the BRI. Instead, it adopts an “inside-out” approach by examining the actual policy process with a primary focus to individual actors such as the Party, the government department and the state-owned enterprises as well as individual academics. It also disentangles the intricate relations amongst the Party, the key decision-making institutions and the policy execution entities in determining the final outcome of the BRI. It will finally reflect the extent to which Beijing’s bureaucratic complexities have impacted upon the EU and its member states’ willingness in collaborating or in formally endorsing China’s BRI.

Analysis of Public Subsidies to the Solar Energy Sector: Corruption and the Role of Institutions

This study investigates the connection between rent-seeking behaviour, corruption activity and quality of institutions to empirically evaluate the unexpected implications of an energy policy for criminal activity. The object of this research is a program of public subsidies introduced in Italy in 2005, which successfully boosted the solar energy sector but seems to have generated a growth of corruption activity, arisen from the opportunity of rent extraction. In particular, according to the main hypothesis of this research, bribery is expected to rise significantly where big photovoltaic plants are concentrated and administrative procedures are more complicated. To determine the causal effect of the subsidies on corruption, the study employs a Difference-in-Difference methodology on a sample of 76 Italian provinces and exploits solar radiation as exogenous variable to discriminate the profitability of investments and bribing. Results confirm that, in poor-institutions areas, the growth of the solar sector in sunniest provinces has gone hand in hand with increasing corruption. Results suggest that policy makers should pay additional attention to the potential distortions of public policies implying large rent opportunities, in areas where the weakness of institutional settings and the bureaucratic complexities encourage illegal behaviour.

English

This paper reports research which investigated the issue of access in the Universal Basic Education (UBE) and sought to know why access to education remains the biggest challenge with over 10.5 million school-aged children out of school in Nigeria (NUT, 2004; UBEC, 2004; UNICEF Report, 2015). Data for this study were collected through document analysis and interviews with 30 bureaucrats responsible for implementing UBE in two geo-political zones and the federal capital territory. According to the analysed data, the challenge of access in UBE implementation was attributable to bureaucratic complexity. Recommendations have been developed for UBE implementation that seeks to enable enhanced access to education among Nigerian children. Key words: Universal basic education (UBE), Bureaucracy, policy implementation, Education agencies (UBEC), tate Universal Basic Education BOARD (SUBEB) and Local Government Education Authority (LGEA), Nigeria.

Shining a light on the shadows: Identifying robust determinants of the shadow economy

Despite the substantial body of research studying the determinants of the shadow economy in the past few decades, consensus on a set of consistent drivers of the underground sector has failed to emerge. This paper aims to synthesize the literature by identifying robust determinants of the shadow economy and addressing related modeling uncertainty. Using three different cross-national shadow measures and employing numerous determinants over hundreds of model combinations, we find that bureaucratic complexity is more significant than monetary severity in driving the shadow economy. Further, the incentives of new shadow entrepreneurs are somewhat different from established shadow operators. A one standard deviation increase in tax complexity increases the overall shadow economy by over ten percent of the mean. In contrast, a similar increase in business startup costs increases the prevalence of new informal entrepreneurs by almost more than double. Further, shadow determinants in developed and developing nations are dissimilar.

Robust Determinants of the Shadow Economy: An International Comparison

To synthesize the literature on determinants of the shadow economy, this paper uses three cross-national shadow economy measures and employs numerous determinants over hundreds of model combinations to identify robust determinants of the shadow economy and address modeling uncertainty. We find that bureaucratic complexity is more significant than monetary severity in driving shadow activity. The incentives of new shadow entrepreneurs are somewhat different. A one standard deviation increase in tax complexity increases overall shadow economy by over ten percent of the mean. In contrast, a similar increase in business startup costs increases new informal entrepreneurs by almost more than double.

Does Smallholder Land Titling Facilitate Agricultural Growth?: An Analysis of the Determinants and Effects of Smallholder Land Titling in Zambia

Zambia’s land policies privilege agricultural land alienation by wage earners over local smallholder farmers. As a result, land title holders are not statistically significantly different from non-title holders in terms of agricultural productivity, despite greater access to investment capital from wage earnings and higher levels of education. The effects of land titling on long- and medium-term land investments are also limited. These results are indicative of widespread speculative alienation of agricultural land by wage earners. Enabling more productive land users to acquire title requires policy change aimed at lowering the transaction costs and bureaucratic complexity of acquiring land title.

Mapping a new future: using spatial multiple criteria analysis to identify novel habitats for assisted colonization of endangered species

AbstractMany species with restricted ranges or poor dispersal ability will occupy suboptimal habitats under climate change. The practice of translocating populations to more suitable areas outside the known historical range (assisted colonization) has been advanced as a solution to reduce the risk of extinction in the wild. Due to the high‐risk and bureaucratic complexities of assisted colonization, it is imperative that a systematic process is used to select release sites that have a reduced likelihood of translocation failure. Here we demonstrate how a spatially explicit, three‐stage multiple criteria analysis (MCA) can be used to identify potentially suitable sites for assisted colonization of an endangered species. We employ this method as an initial screening process, prior to final selection of sites for assisted colonization of the critically endangered western swamp tortoise (Pseudemydura umbrina). This species occurs naturally in two small reserves in southwestern Australia, and is currently threatened by a shift to a drier climate and consequent changes to hydrological regimes. A literature review, characteristics of remnant P. umbrina habitat, and expert knowledge were used to create a composite index of habitat suitability, mapped across the entire south‐west bioregion of Australia. The most suitable sites were 150 to 250 km south of the known range of P. umbrina, in areas of high landscape connectivity and low human population density. A subset of sites were examined in further detail and ranked using weighted summation. Careful use of MCA, taking into account data uncertainties and differences in expert opinion, can be a valuable tool when evaluating novel habitats for threatened species.

PHP30 - Is External Price Referencing an Appropriate Drug Policy from an Efficiency, Equity, and Quality Perspective?

Different external price referencing (EPR) configurations are applied by countries worldwide. Depending on how EPR schemes are implemented, they may have varying effects on short- and long-run prices, market dynamics, key stakeholders, and other relevant endpoints. This research evaluated the merits and demerits of EPR from an efficiency, equity, and quality perspective. A theoretical and empirical analysis of the effectiveness of EPR was conducted, based on a systematic review of the literature and stakeholder interviews. As EPR has been most common in Europe, the study focused on this region. The systematic review identified 100 relevant articles. The articles were categorised according to study characteristics and four major themes were identified; these findings were confirmed by the interviewees. The evidence suggests that EPR schemes often generate disproportionate price levels in relation to national abilities to pay; this is likely due to the reliance on foreign list prices which do not reflect negotiated discounts. If manufacturers apply launch strategies to exert upward pressure on prices (e.g. launch delays or product withdrawals), it may also limit patient access to life-saving medicines. In addition, the bureaucratic complexity of many EPR schemes may undermine the objectives of EPR use (i.e. cost containment and macroeconomic efficiency). Finally, widespread EPR application may stifle pharmaceutical and biomedical innovation. A national pricing policy should provide an effective, predictable, transparent, and stable pricing environment for pharmaceutical products. It should internalise national priorities for health and industrial policy, including cost containment, employment, innovation, and trade promotion. EPR is associated with important short- and long-term issues. If EPR is going to continue to be applied by EU Member States and other countries, then it is necessary to establish guiding principles to govern EPR use across jurisdictions. Still, differential pricing and risk-sharing agreements may represent more sustainable policy options.

Procedure versus process: ethical paradigms and the conduct of qualitative research.

BackgroundResearch is fundamental to improving the quality of health care. The need for regulation of research is clear. However, the bureaucratic complexity of research governance has raised concerns that the regulatory mechanisms intended to protect participants now threaten to undermine or stifle the research enterprise, especially as this relates to sensitive topics and hard to reach groups.DiscussionMuch criticism of research governance has focused on long delays in obtaining ethical approvals, restrictions imposed on study conduct, and the inappropriateness of evaluating qualitative studies within the methodological and risk assessment frameworks applied to biomedical and clinical research. Less attention has been given to the different epistemologies underlying biomedical and qualitative investigation. The bioethical framework underpinning current regulatory structures is fundamentally at odds with the practice of emergent, negotiated micro-ethics required in qualitative research. The complex and shifting nature of real world settings delivers unanticipated ethical issues and (occasionally) genuine dilemmas which go beyond easy or formulaic ‘procedural’ resolution. This is not to say that qualitative studies are ‘unethical’ but that their ethical nature can only be safeguarded through the practice of ‘micro-ethics’ based on the judgement and integrity of researchers in the field.SummaryThis paper considers the implications of contrasting ethical paradigms for the conduct of qualitative research and the value of ‘empirical ethics’ as a means of liberating qualitative (and other) research from an outmoded and unduly restrictive research governance framework based on abstract prinicipalism, divorced from real world contexts and values.

Women entrepreneurship development in Bangladesh: What are the challenges ahead?

Women entrepreneurship is a rapidly growing phenomenon in many developing countries including Bangladesh. This paper reviewed the literature on women entrepreneurship development in Bangladesh with specific focus on government and financial intermediaries supports. The article also identified major challenges that obstruct smooth development of women entrepreneurs. Women involved in various micro, small and medium enterprises take on the challenge to work in a male-dominated society, competitive and complex economic and business environment with the government policy supports and financial institutions participation. They improved their living conditions and earned more respect in the family and the society. However, the challenges that were identified includes lack of access to credit, limited access to market information, infrastructure and utility services, traditional technology, bureaucratic complexity and so on. This article provides some useful academic insights and offers some practical suggestions toward improving government policy supports for developing women entrepreneurs. Key words: Women entrepreneurship, micro, small and medium enterprise (MSME), development, Bangladesh.

Career Change and the Iron Cage: Organizations and the Early Labour Market Experience of Professional Managers

abstractAlthough it is often acknowledged that organizational structure and career outcomes are related, developed theory on how formal features of the design affect inter‐firm job mobility is incomplete. I focus on organizational size and structural differentiation and relate them to ideas about internal labour markets, organizational senescence, bureaucratic complexity, and resource endowments. Analysing data on the early career histories of professional managers, I find that the negative effect of organizational size on quits weakens with organizational age while a firm's elaborate hierarchy monotonically increases quits in all but very large firms. I interpret these effects as potential mechanisms for linking demographic processes between and within organizations and as a basis for integrating research in corporate demography and career mobility.

Feminism, Absolutism, and Jansenism: Louis XIV and the Port-Royal Nuns by Daniella Kostroun (review)

Reviewed by: Feminism, Absolutism, and Jansenism: Louis XIV and the Port-Royal Nuns by Daniella Kostroun Sybil M. Jack Kostroun, Daniella , Feminism, Absolutism, and Jansenism: Louis XIV and the Port-Royal Nuns, New York, Cambridge University Press, 2011; hardback; pp. xiii, 273; R.R.P. £55.00; ISBN 9781107000452. This is a book about words - ambiguous words, weasel words, brilliantly parodied in Blaise Pascal's Provincial Letters - words that underlay one of the most bitter and obscure religious struggles in seventeenth-century France, a struggle that was never what it seemed and that, in the end, gave no one the victory. Royal demands for unreserved acceptance of an imposed formulary - demands that curiously parallel similar demands in Britain at the same time -raised issues of conscience and obedience that underlay much of the intellectual and political development of the country in the hundred years before the Revolution and provided the legitimation for resistance to absolute authority. The theological issues had a long history. They had come up since the early Fathers in various forms and were, effectively, logically insoluble. Whether the fortunately dead Cornelius Jansen had ever promulgated the heresies attributed to him was an issue of fact that created a separate problem. But why did a convent of nuns, a modestly well-endowed convent but only one among hundreds in France, become the flashpoint of the struggle? Much has already been written on this subject and Daniella Kostroun's purpose is not to reassess some of the more classical claims. Readers will look in vain for any discussion of the leadership role in reform the convent may have had in the early part of the century or the importance of the petites écoles in the later period. They may also find few references to the religious inspiration of the nuns and the distinction between their reformed Rule and the more participatory life of Orders who undertook care for the wider community under the inspiration of St Vincent de Paul. Kostroun, after a brief genuflection towards the sociological context of the rising noblesse de robe, is primarily concerned to explain how, without making claim to theological understanding, the women who led the convent, from Angelique and Agnes Arnauld onwards, could present themselves as true [End Page 263] and orthodox servants of God and the Church 'using the figurative language of pious example' (p. 244). In true Biblical tradition, any setback could be accepted as a discipline sent by God to try their faith. Luckily, the material available is enormous and she painstakingly recounts the way in which, with some assistance from prominent men like Antoine Arnauld, they were able to exploit the feminine positions acceptable during the period to maintain their own independence. Kostroun also demonstrates their ability to use all the loopholes and special considerations available to stall Louis XIV's attempts to close them down. It provides excellent evidence - if more is needed - that bureaucratic complexity was alive and well four hundred years ago. The tedious and complex diplomatic and international context that influenced Louis's tortuous path are set out with considerable clarity, as are his struggles with his own bishops both Gallican and Ultramontane. The nuns, as they pick their way through this field full of calthrops, call on patrons like the queen of Poland for moral and practical assistance, smuggle written material out of the convent, and keep detailed journals as evidence of their lives and difficulties. Some of the most telling passages are those that show how different nuns, faced with a one-on-one meeting with Péréfixe, Archbishop of Paris, their ultimate superior, handled his mixture of blandishments and threats and maintained their position of equality before God. In general, Kostroun concentrates on the leaders of the community - and although the triennial election of abbess was a key point in their programme it is noticeable that reelection was the common practice - and the exhortations they delivered to those beneath them suggests that the congregation did not always share their commitment. In her conclusion, Kostroun argues that these women are part of a feminist movement in seventeen-century France. Using the language of agency and discourse and following Barbara Diefendorf, she proposes...

Understanding Activist Leadership Effort in the Movement Opposing Drinking and Driving

Why do some social movement leaders work harder than others? And, how does gender affect the patterns we uncover? Utilizing historical case study evidence of local chapters in the emerging movement opposing drinking and driving we are able to develop and test theoretical expectations about predictors of weekly effort among MADD and RID leaders. Taken together, our model explains 45 percent of the variation in leadership effort. We find bureaucratic complexity and victim support activities are more powerful predictors of effort than are individual leader characteristics, although all are important. Further analysis reveals that gender almost wholly conditions the strong effect of bureaucratic complexity on leadership effort so that increasingly complex chapter structures are associated with substantial increases in work hours for women but not men.