Coercive Policies Research Articles

How does female representation affect long-term firm performance? Capturing causal complexity with a configurational approach

Purpose Via dialectical perspective and configurational approach, this paper aims to explore the relationship between female representation and long-term firm performance when combined with environmental conditions. Design/methodology/approach For necessary condition analysis and time-series qualitative comparative analysis, a sample of 614 listed Chinese manufacturing firms between 2017 and 2020 was obtained. Findings The inclusion of female executives can aid firms in their long-term performance and resilience. Seven configurations, categorized as chimpanzee type, African elephant type and queen bee type, can prompt long-term firm performance. Chimpanzee-type configuration is the most prevalent path for firms to achieve long-term performance. Practical implications Firms could reconsider the role of female executives in achieving long-term success, assist in breaking the invisible “glass ceiling” and “glass cliff,” and refrain from viewing them as mere “tokens.” Policymakers can improve female representation by institutionally guaranteeing women’s opportunities for empowerment, education and promotion. Originality/value This study presents evidence for the legitimacy of female representation by demonstrating the intricate causality between female representation and firm performance beyond the controversy between business ethics and coercive policy. This paper also builds upon and extends the literature on female representation and provides alternative ways to improve female representation by combining female executives’ percentages, professionalism and positions.

Implementation of carbon tax policies to encourage the use of public transportation in cities

The use of public transport is one of the concepts of sustainable transport. However, people prefer to use private vehicles, which causes various problems, one of which is the high carbon emissions produced. This research aims to encourage programs to use passenger public transportation through a carbon tax. The method in this research is descriptive quantitative with primary data and secondary data. Secondary data was developed in the research by collecting literature study sources on the concept of sustainable transportation development as well as primary data carried out by analyzing calculations regarding the implementation of the carbon tax. There are several proposals that can significantly accelerate the achievement of goals, namely a collaborative approach through collaboration between local government agencies, a policy of progressively implementing a carbon tax as a coercive policy and supported by a program to provide supporting facilities for public transportation. Decision making in this research was carried out by looking at the percentage increase in public transportation use based on the application of a carbon tax or carbon tax.

Coercive public health policies need context-specific ethical justifications.

Public health policies designed to improve individual and population health may involve coercion. These coercive policies require ethical justification, and yet it is unclear in the public health ethics literature which ethical concepts might justify coercion, and what their limitations are in applying across contexts. In this paper, we analyse a number of concepts from Western bioethics, including the harm principle, paternalism, the public interest, and a duty of easy rescue. We find them plausible justifications for coercion in theory, but when applied to case studies, including HIV testing in Malawi, vaccine mandates in South Africa, and prohibitions of antibiotic use in livestock in the EU, their limitations become clear. We argue that the context-specificity of ethical justifications for coercion has been overlooked, and there is more work needed to identify context-relevant ethical justifications for coercive policies in various settings and for various populations, rather than relying on universalising Western bioethical justifications across all contexts.

Service Engagement Among People Experiencing Homelessness and Mental Disorders: A Call for Person-centred Innovations.

In recent years, there has been increased support for the use of coercive policies to address the seemingly intractable problem of homelessness among people with mental disorders in North America. Although these policy approaches respond to a critical issue, rising rates of unsheltered homelessness, low service engagement and concerns about disruptive behaviors in public settings, they are unlikely on their own to be successful. To avoid coercive practices, there is an urgent need to consider alternative, person-centred approaches to promote service engagement among people experiencing homelessness and mental disorders, with input from those with lived experience and frontline homeless service providers. Three person-centred approaches are proposed for consideration: (1) cross-sectoral service delivery models, (2) peer-led services, and (3) financial incentives. These approaches merit further study to support voluntary treatment engagement and exits from homelessness among people with mental and substance use disorders and safeguard the human rights of this population.

Toward Eve’s Exodus

OPEN ACCESS CC BY-NC-ND Paid In an American context of reproductive injustice, the Christian right legitimizes a coercive pronatalist policy agenda by appeal to the theological belief that ‘human life begins at fertilization,’ which they ground in the biblical narrative of Genesis 1–3. Drawing upon interdisciplinary resources and utilizing an innovative feminist methodology, this article demonstrates that, while the story of pro/creation in Gen. 1–3 does not directly support ‘life at fertilization’ theology, it does provide a de facto undergirding for that conceptualization via its highly androcentric ideology of reproduction. Through symbolic, mythical narration of how ‘life’ comes to be, Gen. 1–3 constructs a central fiction of the Father God’s paternal reproductive omni-potence, which is built upon God’s colonization of agents with the capacity for maternal gestation labor and his violent destruction of those agents’ collective autonomy and capacity for reproductive anti-labor. In its ancient religious context, this rhetoric championed God’s patriarchal, patrilineal world-building project, which served those establishing and reinforcing a society that generated power and wealth for dominant men. As a story deeply socialized through lived religion over time, it operates now as a contemporary social fact that the Christian right exploits to construct its own, more extreme fiction of paternal omnipotence. Illumination of the Gen. 1–3 narrative’s oppressive constructions of women as reproductive laborers/anti-laborers – symbolized by Eve and other agents – enables feminist religio-cultural narrative intervention. A new story of life’s pro/creation is needed in both religious and secular settings to liberate ‘Eve’ and advance the movement for reproductive health, rights, and justice.

Missions, conditions and the policy transfer of Smart Specialisation in the European Union

ABSTRACT Smart Specialisation is fundamentally a bottom-up policymaking process premised on entrepreneurial discovery and peer learning. Nonetheless, the European Union has relied on coercive policy transfer through the ex-ante funding conditionality instrument to secure its implementation across regions. This paper examines how the use of conditionality has shaped the implementation of Smart Specialisation in the European Union and its regions. Furthermore, it discusses whether the use of conditionality to ensure the implementation of a particular type of innovation policy reflects a changed perception of the role of the state in the broader European integration project.

Political Partisanship, Confucian Collectivism, and Public Attitudes toward the Vaccination Policy in Taiwan.

Conventional wisdom suggests that people with a collectivist tradition tend to comply more with the government's regulatory and even coercive disease-prevention policies. Besides this socio-cultural element, political partisanship is also an important aspect relating to people's willingness to cooperate with the government. This study aims to examine the relationships between these two factors and three dimensions of vaccination policy attitudes: common responsibility to take the vaccine, the government's vaccine mandate, and indignation over anti-vaxxers. Using the data from a nationally representative cross-sectional survey conducted in 2022 in Taiwan, this study applies multiple linear OLS regression to examine the relationships between vaccination policy attitudes and Confucian collectivism and political partisanship. Confucian collectivism and political partisanship aligning with the ruling party are associated with supportive vaccination policy attitudes. For those who do not align with the ruling party, the negative attitudes toward the vaccination policy appear in different dimensions according to the party they lean to. Confucian collectivism is prevalent in Taiwan and is related to public attitudes toward vaccination policy. This association is independent of political partisanship. Public health authorities should consider the socio-cultural context and political atmosphere for the effectiveness of disease-prevention measures.

Addressing the issue of coercive vaccination policies

Addressing the issue of coercive vaccination policies

Mitigating the levee effect – Spatial planning approaches to address residual risk

The levee effect poses a challenge for flood risk management. While there is research on the consequences of the levee effect in general, a detailed understanding of policies addressing residual risk is lacking. The aim of this research is to understand how coercive and cooperative policy designs are applied in spatial planning provisions dealing with residual flood risk and which context conditions influence planning authorities when deciding on a certain policy design. We applied a qualitative research approach, including expert interviews and examining relevant documents. The results show that coercive planning policies can regulate the use of areas with residual risk either by limiting the extension of building land or by prescribing flood adaptation of buildings. However, the formulation of such regulations is connected to the spatial context, the actors involved, past flood events and risk awareness. Cooperative planning policies address residual risk either as recommendations or by providing local authorities scope for decision-making when it comes to land use planning in residual risk areas. The interview partners also discussed possibilities that go beyond spatial planning, such as emergency management. The research shows the variety of policies that can offer ways of dealing with flooding beyond the expected level.

Coercive Vaccination Policy in Nigeria: Legal Perspectives

Background: In December 2021, the Nigerian federal government declared a compulsory COVID-19 immunisation for all employees of government. This declaration by the government has been viewed by some Nigerians as a contravention of the fundamental rights of Nigerian citizens. Aim: This study was aimed at identifying the human rights concerns surrounding vaccination mandates from the perspective of legal practitioners in Nigeria. Methods: This study was a cross-sectional study that used a semi-structured self-administered questionnaire to interview legal practitioners practicing in Uyo, Nigeria. The survey focused on identifying human right concerns surrounding vaccination mandates. Results: One hundred and five legal practitioners participated in the study. Data analysis revealed that 79 (75.2%) of our respondents agreed that vaccination mandates to prevent an epidemic is well within the powers of the state, while 97 (92.4%) asserted that the Nigerian constitution gives the state authority to enact health laws including quarantine and vaccination laws to protect its citizens. According to 59% (n=62) of our respondents, the only exception to a mandatory vaccination is an offer of apparent or reasonably certain proof to the state’s board of health that the vaccination would seriously impair health or probably cause death. Conclusion: In the opinion of majority of the legal practitioners interviewed, the Nigerian constitution gives the state the power to implement measures established by legislation to protect the health of her citizens. Thus, coercive vaccination policies by the state to protect the public from an epidemic outbreak of a disease which threatens the safety of citizens may be legally binding on the citizens.

Developing an Ethical Evaluation Framework for Coercive Antimicrobial Stewardship Policies.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) has been declared one of the top ten global public health threats facing humanity. To address AMR, coercive antimicrobial stewardship policies are being enacted in some settings. These policies, like all in public health, require ethical justification. Here, I introduce a framework for ethically evaluating coercive antimicrobial stewardship policies on the basis of ethical justifications (and their limitations). I consider arguments from effectiveness; duty of easy rescue; tragedy of the commons; responsibility-tracking; the harm principle; paternalism; justice and development; a precautionary approach; and professional duties. I consider how these justifications might form the basis for developing a comprehensive ethical framework, and the need for this to be context-specific and aligned with the priorities, evidence and needs of the particular jurisdictions in which a policy is to be enacted. I demonstrate how the ethical justifications might be used by reference to an example policy of the EU ban on the use of certain human-critical antibiotics for livestock, before concluding with challenges for further development of the framework.

Stewardship according to context: Justifications for coercive antimicrobial stewardship policies in agriculture and their limitations.

Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is an urgent, global threat to public health. The development and implementation of effective measures to address AMR is vitally important but presents important ethical questions. This is a policy area requiring further sustained attention to ensure that policies proposed in National Action Plans on AMR are ethically acceptableand preferable to alternatives that might be fairer or more effective, for instance. By ethically analysing case studies of coercive actions to address AMR across countries, we can better inform policy in a context-specific manner. In this article, I consider an example of coercive antimicrobial stewardship policy in Canada, namely restrictions on livestock farmers' access to certain antibiotics for animal use without a vet's prescription. I introduce and analyse two ethical arguments that might plausibly justify coercive action in this case: the harm principle and a duty of collective easy rescue. In addition, I consider the factors that might generally limit the application of those ethical concepts, such as challenges in establishing causation or evidencing the scale of the harm to be averted. I also consider specifics of the Canadian context in contrast to the UK and Botswana as example settings, to demonstrate how context-specific factors might mean a coercive policy that is ethically justified in one country is not so in another.

Mapping the Coercive Turn: Universal Credit, Social Crisis, and the Politics of Welfare in Austerity Britain, 2010–2019

This article examines the politics of welfare in Britain from 2010 to 2019. Drawing on Gramscian literature, the first section outlines an original framework of the ‘divide-and-rule’ politics of welfare during the 1980s and 1990s in the United Kingdom. The second section examines the return of welfare restructuring in Britain following the 2008 global financial crisis, focusing on Universal Credit. It contends that a significant escalation of coercive social policies within the social security system undermined previous social antagonisms underpinning the political coalitions of neoliberal welfare reform. Alongside deepening economic stagnation and dislocation exacerbated by austerity after 2010, it argues that this coercive turn intensified an unfolding crisis of legitimacy. The third section examines the politics of welfare amid an unfolding social crisis in Britain. It argues that despite burgeoning socio-political discontent and the emergence of the counter-hegemonic project of Corbynism, 2016–2019 was characterised by an interregnum. With the defeat of Corbynism amid protracted Brexit negotiations, this included a period of political impasse in which popular support for welfare reform, austerity and neoliberalism were in decline, but without an attendant shift in the balance of political forces to advance an alternative hegemonic project. As a result, a deepening social crisis continued to unfold.

Anticipating Disasters

Following Valens’s defeat at the hands of the Goths at the Battle of Adrianople in August 378 and immediately before Alaric’s sack of Rome in August 410, both Gratian and Honorius issued temporary forbearance measures that relaxed the otherwise coercive religious policies against Donatists in North Africa. The present article analyzes these episodes as case studies in how the late Roman government reacted to disasters and crises in the religious sphere. These episodes are particularly puzzling because they go against the tendency of increasing coercion against schismatics and heretics expressed in late Roman laws and imperial propaganda. The article argues that late Roman religious policy that attempted to enforce theological orthodoxy was mainly the product of episcopal lobbying and petitions, and therefore it could be suspended when more pressing concerns, such as the loyalty of a crucial province for the food supply of the city of Rome, hung in the balance.

The art of the Trump‐Iran deal: An unsuccessful coercive foreign policy

AbstractThe success of a state's coercive foreign policy depends on how much influence it has over a ‘target’ – a premise that assumes other factors do not obstruct the policy goal. In practice however, the nature of the international system complicates the potential for such a policy's success. This paper examines this idea using the 2018 US decision that aimed to dismantle the JCPOA by pulling out of the agreement and re‐sanctioning Iran. To do so, this paper engages with the general and region‐specific literature on coercive foreign policy, sets out a background of US‐Iranian ties and examines the consensus‐driven momentum that led to the JCPOA, along with the unilateral 2018 US decision to renege on the agreement. The findings demonstrate how the US and Iranian political environments made it difficult to realise the coercive foreign policy goal of dismantling the JCPOA. The reasons for this centre on the notion that the interconnected nature of the international system diminishes the effectiveness of this type of coercive foreign policy – even when considering the USA as a powerful implementer of this policy. Thus, I argue for the importance of capturing contextual factors when considering this type of international relations.

Public support for more stringent vaccine policies increases with vaccine effectiveness

Under what conditions do citizens support coercive public policies? Although recent research suggests that people prefer policies that preserve freedom of choice, such as behavioural nudges, many citizens accepted stringent policy interventions like fines and mandates to promote vaccination during the COVID-19 pandemic—a pattern that may be linked to the unusually high effectiveness of COVID-19 vaccines. We conducted a large online survey experiment (N = 42,417) in the Group of Seven (G-7) countries investigating the relationship between a policy’s effectiveness and public support for stringent policies. Our results indicate that public support for stringent vaccination policies increases as vaccine effectiveness increases, but at a modest scale. This relationship flattens at higher levels of vaccine effectiveness. These results suggest that intervention effectiveness can be a significant predictor of support for coercive policies but only up to some threshold of effectiveness.

Кордон як фактор мексикано-американської ідентичності

The article explores the dynamics of the formation of Mexican-American identity since the end of the war between Mexico and the United States in 1848. The establishment of a new border between the two countries resulted in the leveling of the culture and traditions of those Mexicans who remained in the territories under the control of the new government. Gradual and coercive state policies against locals who tried to preserve not only their ranches and material possessions but also their spiritual practices, caused a situation of forced historical amnesia. New waves of migration, caused by complex political and economic conditions in Mexico, had a significant impact on both those Mexicans who had long lived on ethnic lands and the migrants themselves, who were forced to assimilate and live according to the laws of the “white world”. It was only in the mid-20th century that the radicalization of the Chicano political movement sparked the beginning of a reconsideration of the identity of Americans of Mexican origin. The border, as a dividing line, not only separates two countries but also splits the inner world of the Mexicans who live in the United States, signifying their border state, belonging to two worlds, two cultures, and two ways of being.

Turkey’s Middlepowermanship, Foreign Policy Transformation and Mediation Efforts in the Russia-Ukraine War

This article provides insight into Turkey’s strategic pursuit of a more active and influential role as a mediator in the ongoing Russia-Ukraine war. Turkey, positioning itself as a middle power, seeks to elevate its global standing. This involves a delicate diplomatic balancing act in its foreign policy approach towards both Russia and Ukraine. The equilibrium thus achieved positions Turkey as a natural mediator, serving as a catalyst for brokering a peace initiative among the conflicting parties. Ankara’s diplomatic activism is not just a tactical move but also a manifestation of Turkey’s broader global ambitions, underlining its commitment to playing a more significant role in shaping international affairs. These aspirations clash with a rising penchant in Turkey to pursue a more militaristic and coercive foreign policy, which stands in contradiction to the role of a benign power.

Facilitating fertility decline through economic development: a principal-agent analysis of local bureaucratic incentives in China’s fertility transition

Despite close associations, political science had weak explanatory power for fertility transition. It often depicts the political processes of fertility transition as direct and coercive policies and mechanical execution without consideration of indirect bureaucratic processes. Drawing on principal-agent and economic-driven theories, this study established a novel model using 1980–2000 Chinese provincial panel data: local officials facilitated fertility decline through economic development for career advancement. System generalized method moments (GMM) and ordered logistic regression (OLM) results showed: (1) gross domestic product (GDP) per capita growth (OR = 0.012) and total fertility rate (TFR) decline (OR = 0.026) increased promotion odds, while excessive TFR decline (over 37% within one term) decreased it; (2) the critical age (59) and tenure year (one year before leaving office) positively associated with GDP per capita, industrialization, and lower TFR; (3) GDP per capita and industrialization negatively associated with TFR. Facilitating fertility decline via economic development was an efficient, low-risk strategy for local officials compared to radical birth control campaigns. It was the first study applying principal-agent theory to explain how bureaucratic processes enabled fertility transitions. It combined political and economic-driven theories on fertility transition, advancing political demography and refining the social science paradigm on fertility transition.

Acceptability of transportation demand management policy packages considering interactions and socio-economic heterogeneity

The Transportation Demand Management (TDM) policies will not be authorized if they have not enough public acceptability. In this study, policy packing is proposed as a way to alleviate the unacceptability of coercive (push) TDM policies that have considerable effectiveness (e.g., cordon and parking pricing) by using some non-coercive (pull) TDM policies (e.g., transit development). Furthermore, in addition to the main effects, the interaction effects of TDM policies on the acceptability of two policy packages are addressed. Policy package (I) includes cordon pricing and reduction of transit access time, and Policy package (II) contains parking pricing and reduction of transit access time. A Random Parameter Ordered Logit (RPOL) model is developed based on a choice experiment designed for car commuters of Tehran, Iran. Results confirm that while reducing transit access time have a significant interaction effect with cordon pricing on the acceptability of Package (I) it has not a significant interaction effect with parking pricing on the acceptability of Package (II). Furthermore, the heterogeneity of respondents' cars value and the presence of free parking at the workplace can significantly affect the acceptability of Package (II). This study also addresses the effect of respondents’ trip and socio-economic characteristics on the acceptability.