Central Mandate Research Articles

How do local governments respond to central mandate in affordable housing policy? A qualitative comparative analysis of forty-one Chinese cities

Countries in developed and developing worlds have faced growing challenges to solve affordable housing shortages for lower-income households, prompting the adoption of various types of mandates to compel local implementation of affordable housing policy. A large volume of literature has focused on whether and how such top-down mandate indeed improves local supply of affordable housing. Insufficient understanding has been provided regarding the multi-faceted nature of local strategic responses to a top-down housing mandate. This research addresses this intellectual gap with an empirical study of local strategic behavior in response to the affordable housing mandate that was announced by the central government during the Twelfth Five-Year Plan (2011–2015). Through systematic content analysis of local news reports on affordable housing from 41 Chinese cities from various provinces, we describe the multiple-dimensional characteristics of local policy actions as cities were compelled to complied with the mandate. We further employ a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis method to investigate how top-down political pressure combines with local policy interpretation, resource mobilization capacity, and local public pressure lead to more diverse policy actions in affordable housing. This research enriches the understanding of how city governments respond to top-down housing mandate, as well as offers valuable policy implications for affordable housing policy.

“Understanding the World”

A central mandate of the teacher librarian (TL) is the development of information literatestudents who can locate and use information responsibly and ethically as learners and citizens(Australian Library and Information Association, 2016; International Federation of LibraryAssociations and Institutions, 2021). Therefore, it is vital that TLs are supported in theirendeavours to deliver high quality information literacy instruction, which reflects thechanging nature of information and the information landscape.

Paving the road to reconciliation: the training and practice of the Friends Relief Service in post-war reconciliation, 1943 to 1947

ABSTRACT In 1943 the British Quaker organization, the Friends Relief Service (FRS), established a training programme to prepare volunteers and members for post-war relief work. Located in London, the programme centred on Quaker pacifist tradition and conviction, drew upon instances of relief work during and after the Great War, and integrated the experience and expertise of relief workers in the field. Unlike the international organizations and Allied governments who defined ‘rehabilitation’ as economic and political reconstruction, the FRS considered the rehabilitation of the community and spirit of displaced and refugee populations as essential to the process of structural rebuilding in post-war Europe. Thus, a central mandate of the FRS was to encourage reconciliation and foster internationalism among former enemies. This article examines how the FRS prepared members for post-war reconciliation work and the application of training by FRS teams in the British Occupation Zone in Germany between 1945 and 1947. This work will underscore the role of professionalization, as expressed in formal training for post-war relief work, within the FRS, while also illustrating the challenges, limitations and opportunities in cultivating reconciliation among displaced persons (DP), refugees and local German populations.

Impacts of Scaling up Agroecology on the Sustainability of European Agriculture in 2050

SummaryThe European Commission recently embraced the concept of agroecology as a pathway to reduce negative impacts from agri‐food systems on the environment. So far, it remains unclear whether agroecology can deliver on these high hopes if implemented on a large scale. We here assess socio‐economic and environmental implications of multiple agroecological futures in the European Union in 2050, based on a novel diagnostic scenario approach, i.e. the biomass balancing model BioBaM‐GHG 2.0. We find that agroecological measures from the plot to the food systems level can indeed reduce environmental pressures while maintaining domestic food availability within the EU. Such measures are, for example, more hedgerows on croplands or reduced biomass harvest on high natural value – HNV grasslands. However, a key prerequisite is an overall reduction of the food system's size (based on the reduction of animal production, food wastes, and export production) and an optimised crop‐livestock integration. Only then does the transformation towards an agroecological agri‐food system in the EU not risk overstretching domestic land availability or produce insufficient agricultural commodities. Mitigating the accompanied trade‐off of reduced farm income is a central mandate for policy development aimed at re‐designing agriculture in Europe to align with the Green Deal goals.

Novel virus, novel response: Local discretion and responses to COVID-19 in Hebei Province, China.

The Chinese Communist Party is consolidating one party rule under the leadership of Xi Jinping. Beijing seeks to rule by central mandate while limiting local autonomy. The central government response to the COVID‐19 public health emergency reinforces this view. In January 2020 Beijing established the Central Epidemic Response Leading Group to mobilise a comprehensive nationwide policy effort to contain the virus. The exceptional nature of the COVID‐19 national emergency allows the central government to project power over local authorities and leverage over citizens, but we argue that this is a short‐term phenomenon because local disease control initiatives remain important, with local authorities adapting national policies to meet constituent needs. There are degrees of policy discretion and divergence at the subnational level that enable context‐specific responses to the virus within China’s strict bureaucratic hierarchy. Primary data derives from interviews and observations in Nancun village, Hebei Province, conducted from January to April 2020. Evidence from Nancun explains how local authorities interpret the edicts and mandates of the central government.

Applying the Central Clearing Mandate: Different Options for Different Markets

Applying the Central Clearing Mandate: Different Options for Different Markets

How Boards Can Help Sustainability Transformations

Board members are becoming increasingly aware of the relevance of sustainability and the ways in which orientation toward sustainable development is fundamentally reshaping business management in almost all industries. In this emerging model, the board’s central mandate remains unchanged, but its scope regarding issues such as non-financial performance, establishment of governance structures dedicated to sustainability, as well as emphasis on circular behaviors, stakeholder engagement, and integrated disclosure continues to deepen. This paper reports the results of an in-depth examination of the main factors that can affect boards’ promotion of effective implementation of sustainable business models.

The Nexus Of Foreign Reserves, Exchange Rate And Inflation: Recent Empirical Evidence From Sri Lanka

The conventional mandates of the central banks on meeting stability objectives and maintaining a growth-maximizing inflation rate have come under some criticism since the global financial crises. Maintaining adequate foreign reserves is seen as a viable solution to foreign exchange liquidity needs during crisis periods. Since the end of 2011, many Asian economies, including China and Japan, led from the forefront in central bank-led reserves build-up. However, reserves build-up remains challenging and sensitive for small open economies. Such policies help create ‘risk-neutral’ buffers for monetary and fiscal authorities to absorb transitory current account shocks and foreign exchange stress to smoothen the balance of payments. This study is motivated by the importance of identifying the inflation–foreign reserves nexus that may affect inflation in a manner counterproductive to the central bank mandate of maintaining price stability. It probes the debate of the sustainability of reserves build-up in the long and the short term. The outcome of the study poses several vital questions for fiscal and monetary policymakers concerning their respective mandates. The reserves–inflation nexus and its magnitude is determined using monthly data spanning two decades, through engaging an autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) model and relevant bounds-testing techniques proposed by Pesaran et al. The vector autoregression (VAR), error correction and Johansen cointegration methods supplement the robustness checks. Exchange rate is introduced to enrich the discussion on the reserves–inflation nexus and shows a cointegration relationship in the long run. The study provides an insight into the influence of exchange rate on reserves and inflation. The variance decomposition shows the presence of a lukewarm response from foreign reserves and exchange rate on inflation. Policymakers concerned with inflationary expectations in the medium-to-long term need to consider these signals, as reserves build-up is one of the important policy-driven objectives for a number of economies. JEL: C50, C32, E31, E52, E58, F30, F31, F39

Disruption to Surgical Training during Covid-19 in the United States, United Kingdom, Canada, and Australasia: A Rapid Review of Impact and Mitigation Efforts

ObjectiveTo synthesise the current evidence of pandemic-related impact on surgical training internationally and describe strategies that have been put in place to mitigate disruption.DesignRapid scoping review of publically available published web-literature.SettingFive large English speaking countries; United States (US), United Kingdom (UK), Canada, Australia and New Zealand (NZ).ResultsRecruitment and selection to residency programmes in the US, Australia and NZ has been largely unaffected. Canada has implemented video-conferencing in lieu of face-to-face interviews. The UK has relied upon trainee self-assessment for selection. Widespread postponement and cancellation of surgical board examinations was seen across the studied countries. Resident assessment-in-training and certification procedures have been heavily modified. Most didactics have moved online, with some courses and conferences cancelled where this has not been possible. None of the studied countries had a central mandate on resident operating privileges during Covid-19.ConclusionsThe collective response by international surgical training bodies to the dual challenges of safeguarding residents whilst minimising disruption to training has been agile and resident centred. The pandemic has exposed weaknesses in existing training systems and has highlighted opportunity for future improvement.

The Politics of Inclusion and Exclusion: Chinese Dual-Pension Regimes in the Era of Labor Migration and Labor Informalization

Why do some Chinese local governments include informal workers in their welfare systems while others exclude them? This article argues that local officials attempt to balance multiple, conflicting, top-down career-evaluation criteria by developing different inclusion mechanisms. The central mandate to build an inclusive welfare regime incentivizes local officials to embrace welfare “outsiders” (informal workers and nonlocal workers). However, other top-down policy goals and the locally defined citizenship ( hukou) system disincentivize the full integration of outsiders. Faced with this political dilemma, local officials have strategically incorporated different types of outsiders into their welfare regimes. Their strategies depend on local labor market structures—specifically, the extent to which informal workers overlap with nonlocal workers. This hypothesis is tested using an original data set derived from thirty-one Chinese provinces, covering the period between 2005 and 2015, as well as two rounds of national-level survey data. Findings suggest that recent Chinese welfare expansion has ironically consolidated, even exacerbated, regional inequality.

Explaining Misperceptions of Crime

Promoting public safety is a central mandate of government. But despite decades of dramatic improvements, most Americans believe crime is rising—a mysterious pattern that may pervert the criminal justice policymaking process. What explains this disconnect? We test five plausible explanations: survey mismeasurement, extrapolation from local crime conditions, lack of exposure to facts, partisan cues and the racialization of crime. Cross-referencing over a decade of crime records with geolocated polling data and original survey experiments, we show individuals readily update beliefs when presented with accurate crime statistics, but this effect is attenuated when statistics are embedded in a typical crime news article, and confidence in perceptions is diminished when a copartisan elite undermines official statistics. We conclude Americans misperceive crime because of the frequency and manner of encounters with relevant statistics. Our results suggest widespread misperceptions are likely to persist barring foundational changes in Americans’ information consumption habits, or elite assistance.

A plausible neural circuit for decision making and its formation based on reinforcement learning.

A human's, or lower insects', behavior is dominated by its nervous system. Each stable behavior has its own inner steps and control rules, and is regulated by a neural circuit. Understanding how the brain influences perception, thought, and behavior is a central mandate of neuroscience. The phototactic flight of insects is a widely observed deterministic behavior. Since its movement is not stochastic, the behavior should be dominated by a neural circuit. Based on the basic firing characteristics of biological neurons and the neural circuit's constitution, we designed a plausible neural circuit for this phototactic behavior from logic perspective. The circuit's output layer, which generates a stable spike firing rate to encode flight commands, controls the insect's angular velocity when flying. The firing pattern and connection type of excitatory and inhibitory neurons are considered in this computational model. We simulated the circuit's information processing using a distributed PC array, and used the real-time average firing rate of output neuron clusters to drive a flying behavior simulation. In this paper, we also explored how a correct neural decision circuit is generated from network flow view through a bee's behavior experiment based on the reward and punishment feedback mechanism. The significance of this study: firstly, we designed a neural circuit to achieve the behavioral logic rules by strictly following the electrophysiological characteristics of biological neurons and anatomical facts. Secondly, our circuit's generality permits the design and implementation of behavioral logic rules based on the most general information processing and activity mode of biological neurons. Thirdly, through computer simulation, we achieved new understanding about the cooperative condition upon which multi-neurons achieve some behavioral control. Fourthly, this study aims in understanding the information encoding mechanism and how neural circuits achieve behavior control. Finally, this study also helps establish a transitional bridge between the microscopic activity of the nervous system and macroscopic animal behavior.

Rethinking Difference in Music Scholarship ed. by Olivia Bloechl, Melanie Lowe, Jeffrey Kallberg (review)

Rethinking in Music Scholarship. Edited by Olivia Bloechl, Melanie Lowe, and Jeffrey Kallberg. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2015. [xvi, 434 p. ISBN 9781107026674 (hardcover), $115; ISBN 9781316190784 (e-book), $92.] Music examples, illustrations, photographs, bibliographic references, index. Addressing a criticism lobbed at emerging trends of the recent past, Gary Tomlinson pithily notes that [t]he scholarship of difference, carefully distinguishing one tree from the next, has not attended to larger groves, let alone the forest (p. 368). Our focus on seeing unique particularities and drawing out that which had been ignored by patriarchal, colonial hegemony has been necessary and persuasive, but perhaps it is time to take a fresh look and aim not for mere recognition of difference (argued here as reductive), but also frameworks of redistribution, representation, and freedom (pp. 3-4). Dedicated to Ruth Solie, the fourteen essays indeed reflect her 1993 collection, Musicology and (Berkeley: University of California Press); some authors invoke the new musicology archetype directly, and all nonetheless respond to the lessons learned about music and gender, class, and race. Unremarked in the book, but certainly worthy of mention, is the title mashup with Nicholas Cook and Mark Everist's 1999 Rethinking Music (Oxford: Oxford University Press). Perhaps the Bloechl/Lowe/Kallberg collection is their inevitable scholarly progeny. Each collection engages a variety of scholars, epochs, genres, and approaches; each emphasizes the literal and metaphorical crossing of boundaries; and each challenges notions of what it means to critique musical happenings. Of the represented pantheon of scholarly heavyweights, Suzanne Cusick has the unique distinction of contributing to all three volumes. The collection at hand offers a range of topics from the early modern to the very modern (although there is a notable gap between Rossini and Puccini), new looks at the well-known, and first looks at the previously unknown. Primarily musicological, some essays make a nod to ethnomusicology and music theory' and many rely heavily on the standard interdisciplinary humanities with a brave foray into evolutionary biology. Gender, race, and ethnicity are prominent, as are class, sexuality, and religion to a lesser extent. I am surprised that disability studies warranted only the barest passing glance in the introduction and no representative chapter, given that it is a rising subfield within difference studies. I would also have liked to see scholars from beyond the discipline contribute an outside-looking-in perspective, lest we become myopic. Arranged chronologically, it opens with a hefty introduction by Bloechl with Lowe and closes with what I expected to be companion bookend piece, Difference unthought, byjairo Moreno; the latter is instead an excessively dense amble through geopolitical modernity, loosely tied to what was otherwise an interesting case study of identity in international jazz. If the essay titles do not always give away much of their contents, browsing scholars are sure to find enough familiar cues to guess which chapters might be in their purview. I would suggest beginning with chapter 13, Gary Tomlinson's Beneath difference; or, humanistic evolutionism. Not strictly tied to any time, genre, or composer, the biological turn is considered in this thought-provoking essay; it pairs well with many other articles and approaches because of its emphasis on the dichotomy of difference and universality. This thread is one of three that I tracked as defining this new model for difference scholarship and holding this collection together. The introduction by Olivia Bloechl, with Melanie Lowe, certainly provides a wide swath on which to lay the essays, but as no central mandate or methodology for analysis--or even a single definition--of difference is given, the essay authors do not align their case studies under unifying parameters. …

State-led experimentation or centrally-motivated replication? A study of state action plans on climate change in India

In 2009, the Government of India asked all Indian states and Union Territories to prepare State Action Plans on Climate Change, making it one of the largest efforts at sub-national climate planning globally. Through an examination of state climate plans in five Indian states, the paper explores the implications of sub-national climate measures by examining two questions: First, how do state action plans on climate change link with India’s national and international climate efforts in the context of multi-level governance of climate change? Second, do these plans serve as laboratories of experimentation in addressing climate change? Through an empirically driven inductive analysis, the paper argues that because state climate plans, at least in the initial stages, followed a centrally driven, and sometimes ambiguous agenda, their scope and room to experiment was circumscribed. While they did initiate a process and a conversation, the scope and impact of the plans was limited because they tended to follow conventional bureaucratic planning processes and were limited by a central mandate. The plan process did create some space for local innovation, particularly by enterprising bureaucrats, but this was limited by both restricted space and time for innovation. As a result, the plans made only initial steps toward bringing climate-resilient sustainability to the forefront of state development planning. There is however scope for improvement as states and stakeholders begin examining the plans with a view to implement recommendations, finance projects and even consider fresh iterations.

Implementation of collaborative governance in cross-sector innovation and education networks: evidence from the National Health Service in England.

BackgroundIncreasingly, health policy-makers and managers all over the world look for alternative forms of organisation and governance in order to add more value and quality to their health systems. In recent years, the central government in England mandated several cross-sector health initiatives based on collaborative governance arrangements. However, there is little empirical evidence that examines local implementation responses to such centrally-mandated collaborations.MethodsData from the national study of Health Innovation and Education Clusters (HIECs) are used to provide comprehensive empirical evidence about the implementation of collaborative governance arrangements in cross-sector health networks in England. The study employed a mixed-methods approach, integrating both quantitative and qualitative data from a national survey of the entire population of HIEC directors (N = 17; response rate = 100%), a group discussion with 7 HIEC directors, and 15 in-depth interviews with HIEC directors and chairs.ResultsThe study provides a description and analysis of local implementation responses to the central government mandate to establish HIECs. The latter represent cross-sector health networks characterised by a vague mandate with the provision of a small amount of new resources. Our findings indicate that in the case of HIECs such a mandate resulted in the creation of rather fluid and informal partnerships, which over the period of three years made partial-to-full progress on governance activities and, in most cases, did not become self-sustaining without government funding.ConclusionThis study has produced valuable insights into the implementation responses in HIECs and possibly other cross-sector collaborations characterised by a vague mandate with the provision of a small amount of new resources. There is little evidence that local dominant coalitions appropriated the central HIEC mandate to their own ends. On the other hand, there is evidence of interpretation and implementation of the central mandate by HIEC leaders to serve their local needs. These findings augur well for Academic Health Science Networks, which pick up the mantle of large-scale, cross-sector collaborations for health and innovation. This study also highlights that a supportive policy environment and sufficient time would be crucial to the successful implementation of new cross-sector health collaborations.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12913-014-0552-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.

Central Mandates in Flux: Local Noncompliance in China

This article examines a particular type of central mandate in China, the mandate for nationwide across-the-board salary increases in the public sector. The making and implementation of this mandate epitomizes the changes and challenges in intergovernmental relations of a transition economy. Our findings show that although the central pay mandates were issued under a number of conditions that favored, or should have even guaranteed, their smooth implementation, local reactions to the mandates have deviated from central expectations.The mandated pay raises have not only failed to win local compliance but also given rise to widespread pay arrears. Based on empirical data from two Chinese counties, this article analyzes the causes of local noncompliance and its implications for intergovernmental management.

Environmentality: Military Maneuvers, the Ecosystem, and the Accidental

This essay argues that current efforts by United States security institutions and the security society to adopt climate change as a central mandate have begun to reformulate radically the constitution of the citizen-subject. State-formed life and the liberatory pole of citizen-subject life face a collapse in this reformulation that pulls the citizen-subject away from its relation to a groundless liberation. The action around which this separation of the citizen-subject from "permanent revolution" (Balibar) occurs is what the essay calls, after Virilio, "The Accidental." The Accidental is a name for the colonization of groundless liberation, and manifests in the security society's deployment of the accident of global ecological crisis as a naturalized enemy of the State.

‘Another world than this’: Muriel Spark's Postwar Investigations

‘While there have been many historical studies of specific aspects of Britain’s involvement in the Cold War,’ wrote Harriet Jones in 2000, ‘there is as yet no overarching narrative understanding of its impact.’1 Jones’s comment, still largely true in 2011, might explain why, apart from a couple of recent exceptions, scholarship on the Cold War’s impact on British narrative fiction has also been thin on the ground.2 This does not mean that the fiction of the 1950s in Britain, the period under discussion in the present essay, does not bear the imprint of this international conflict. Rather, as Rod Mengham has suggested, the Cold War itself is a challenge to narrative, so its expression in and by narrative may take indirect or aporetic forms.3 In the event of a nuclear blast there is no consecutive sequence of events that could be reliably followed, and thus there is no obvious narrative means by which a person’s relation to this outcome can be mapped. Yet, precisely because of this difficulty, British governmental war planners and American RAND (Research and Development) war-gamers of the period used fictional means to generate possible real-world scenarios on the basis of which policy decisions could be made. The CIA’s Congress for Cultural Freedom, which had offices in thirty-five countries, was perhaps the strangest case of mid-century political fictionalizing, having as a central mandate the advancement of the ‘claim that it did not exist’.4 If 1950s political engagement proceeds in terms of fiction, in a still more acute way than is usual, then British fiction of the period that conveys

Central Mandates in Flux: Local Noncompliance in China

This article examines a particular type of central mandate in China, the mandate for nationwide across-the-board salary increases in the public sector. The making and implementation of this mandate epitomizes the changes and challenges in intergovernmental relations of a transition economy. Our findings show that although the central pay mandates were issued under a number of conditions that favored, or should have even guaranteed, their smooth implementation, local reactions to the mandates have deviated from central expectations. The mandated pay raises have not only failed to win local compliance but also given rise to widespread pay arrears. Based on empirical data from two Chinese counties, this article analyzes the causes of local noncompliance and its implications for intergovernmental management.

The organisation of interagency training to safeguard children in England: a case study using realistic evaluation.

Joint training for interagency working is carried out by Local Safeguarding Children Boards in England to promote effective local working to safeguard and promote the welfare of children. This paper reports on the findings of the outputs and outcomes of interagency training to safeguard children in eight Local Safeguarding Children Boards. A review of Local Safeguarding Children Board documentation, observations of Local Safeguarding Children Board training sub-group meetings and a series of interviews with training key stakeholders in each Local Safeguarding Children Board were used to assess how partner agencies in the Local Safeguarding Children Boards carried out their statutory responsibilities to organise interagency training. 'Realistic Evaluation' was used to evaluate the mechanisms by which a central government mandate produced particular inter-agency training outputs (number of courses, training days) and joint working outcomes (effective partnerships), within particular Local Safeguarding Children Board contexts. The 'mandated partnership' imposed on Local Safeguarding Children Boards by central government left little choice but for partner agencies to work together to deliver joint training, which in turn affected the dynamics of working partnerships across the various sites. The effectiveness of the training sub group determined the success of the organisation and delivery of training for joint working. Despite having a central mandate, Local Safeguarding Children Boards had heterogeneous funding and training arrangements. These resulted in significant variations in the outputs in terms of the number of courses per 'children in need' in the locality and in the cost per course. Interagency training which takes account of the context of the Local Safeguarding Children Board is more likely to produce better trained staff, effective partnership working, and lead to better integrated safeguarding children services.