Action In Countries Research Articles

Knowledge Integration in the Politics and Policy of Rapid Transitions to Net Zero Carbon: A Typology and Mapping Method for Climate Actors in the UK

The types of political and policy knowledge required to guide rapid transition to low-carbon economies remain largely disconnected in the fields of political science, psychology, and sociology. The composition and key features of the main actors involved, and their relationships have also not been systematically described. This paper attempts to address these knowledge gaps by proposing a new, integrative typology of actors involved in climate change mitigation policy in the United Kingdom (UK) and a method for mapping these actors and selecting their typological descriptors onto a 2D space. The mapping method enables stakeholders to visualise and evaluate the strength of support for the UK government’s net-zero-by-2050 “green growth” strategy and the tensions, challenges, and strategic opportunities potentially facing more radical alternatives. The methodology could be replicated for climate actors in other countries and, in principle, for any geographical scale or level of governance.

Framed National Images Influence Policy Attitudes Among Targeted Foreign Citizens

Many countries increasingly try to manipulate their national image abroad. Yet, we know relatively little about their ability to shape foreign public opinion and attract support for desired policy outcomes through those images. Using a survey experiment about a Russian donation to the U.S. during the COVID-19 pandemic, we cast light on an under-investigated, theoretically important aspect of transnational opinion formation---the media's capacity, via framing, to facilitate or impede a country's efforts to change their image. We find that successful transnational image management depends on whether the media present a foreign country's actions as sincerely or insincerely motivated. However, the image changes induced by media frames do not translate to attitudinal changes across all policy issues related to that country. Research on foreign public opinion should not assume that diplomatic maneuvers go unfiltered, nor that they can shift opinions on multiple policy domains.

Lebanon and the Syrian Civil War: Sectarian Perceptions and Positions

ABSTRACT This paper analyses the role of sectarian identity in foreign policy making by bringing sub-state sectarian actors into foreign policy studies. The paper takes Lebanon and the Syrian Civil War as a case study through a close scrutiny of the emergence and the consolidation of foreign policy orientations, preferences and behaviour of the Maronite, Sunni, Shia and Druze leaders in Lebanon. By doing so, it asks how sectarian groups behave as sub-state foreign policy actors in countries where society is divided along sectarian identities and how sectarian identities matter in terms of the definition of the self and the other and the ally and the enemy in weak states. It further questions to what extent sectarian groups can be considered as sub-state foreign policy actors with their own perceptions based on their identities. Building its main findings on various fieldworks in Lebanon conducted in 2016 and 2017, interviewing leaders of major sects; this study concludes that in the absence of a cohesive foreign policy stance in a weak state, the role of sectarian identity in defining self and other becomes central for understanding the foreign policy choices of sectarian leaders faced with an existential challenge.

Professionalization, Local Military Context, and Reconstruction of the Army in Afghanistan

Security sector reconstruction is a long-debated topic in the peacekeeping and state-building literature. The primary goal of any reconstruction program in conflict-ridden countries is to build up security institutions, which are prerequisites for sustainable development and democratization. This study aims to examine how security sector institutions, specifically the armed forces, have been reconstructed by intervening actors in post-conflict countries like Afghanistan. It argues that army reconstruction programs that are developed without any elaboration of the peculiar conditions of the related post-conflict countries, are unlikely to be successful. As such, initiatives aimed at security sector reconstruction need to take account of the idiosyncratic characteristics of the conflict affected country and its institutions, and the program should be devised conforming to the case-specific circumstances. This research aims to identify reliable evidence to support this argument by analyzing data collected from both primary and secondary resources. It also aims to contribute methodologically by building upon the first-hand impressions of practitioners from various countries over their reconstruction activities.

A Few Implications of the COVID‐19 Pandemic for International Business Strategy Research

A Few Implications of the COVID‐19 Pandemic for International Business Strategy Research

Integrating ecosystem services in power analysis in forest governance: A comparison across nine European countries

Within forest governance research, the transfer of power from governmental actors to civil society and market actors has been subject to intense scientific debate. We move forward on this debate by analyzing how ongoing transformations and power shifts in forest governance affect the power relations of actors with interest in various ecosystem services (ESs) in nine countries (Germany, Ireland, Italy, Lithuania, Portugal, Slovakia, Sweden, the Netherlands, Turkey). In order to examine power resources of actors, we triangulated 220 qualitative interviews, document analysis, and participatory observations. Governmental actors (with various interests in ESs) were the most powerful actors in most countries, and thus drove forest management. Our analysis shows that the power relations of actors with interest in different forest ESs, varied within the nine countries, though many similarities existed. Governmental, market, and civil society actors differed in their capacity to apply the power strategies “coercion”, “(dis)incentives”, and “dominant information”, to realize their interests in ESs. In Lithuania, Slovakia and Turkey, governmental actors relied mostly on coercion; in the Netherlands on incentives; and in Sweden on dominant information. In Germany, Ireland, Italy and Portugal governmental actors relied on a mix of coercion, incentives, and dominant information. Market actors in all countries relied mostly on incentives, and civil society actors on dominant information as their power strategy.

Interviews With, and Tests of, Palestinian Independent Assailants

ABSTRACT This study was designed to investigate the background, psychological characteristics and motivations of independent actors who carried out attacks in Israel. It also examined the antecedent factors that influenced their decision to carry out an attack, and their retrospective attitudes to the act. Forty-five Palestinians who had carried out attacks against Israeli targets on their own initiative were interviewed in prison about their background, motivations, circumstances and process of the attack. Thirty-nine of them were also interviewed by a clinical psychologist and took a battery of psychological tests. Twenty-six of these were diagnosed as suffering from one or more of the following: psychotic background, severe personality disorder, and suicidality. A considerable number of the participants described personal, family or social problems that influenced their decision to carry out the attack. Three dominant motives for carrying out an attack were identified: suicidality, a psychotic state, and an ideological national-religious motivation. The characteristics of the attack were influenced by the dominant type of motivation. The discussion compares the findings of this study with those of a study on suicide bombers and with studies on behavioral characteristics of independent actors in other countries.

Riesgos relacionados con el uso de pesticidas: prácticas, percepciones y consecuencias sanitarias en los páramos colombianos y venezolanos

Esta investigación evalúa las prácticas y las percepciones relacionadas con el uso de pesticidas, así como su riesgo y consecuencias sanitarias, en los páramos colombianos y venezolanos. La metodología se basa en un trabajo etnográfico con 128 agricultores y 42 actores externos. Los resultados muestran que: 1) los agricultores perciben e interpretan los riesgos relacionados con el uso de pesticidas, pero tienden a negarlos porque es la única alternativa con la que disponen para continuar su trabajo, 2) hay numerosos obstáculos para cambiar las prácticas, en particular los vinculados a situaciones de bloqueo sociotécnico y a una débil presencia del Estado y de los actores no gubernamentales de ambos países. Finalmente, este artículo invita a pensar que el estudio de las percepciones de los riesgos relacionados con el uso de pesticidas resulta útil para diseñar e implementar estrategias de sensibilización sobre esta problemática, adaptadas al contexto de cada comunidad.

Determinants of audit report modifications in Finnish municipalities

Although municipalities are major economic and social actors in most countries, remarkably little is known about their audits, particularly the determinants of their audit report modifications. The existing evidence is ambiguous at best and scarce, which provides opportunities for further accounting studies in this area. Therefore, based on an agency theory framework, we fill this important research gap by exploring three determinants of audit report modifications in municipalities: (1) economic performance, (2) decentralization of decision-making across different decision-making bodies, and (3) political competition between political parties in local councils. These determinants are examined based on a large panel of data on Finnish municipalities for the period from 2009 to 2013, covering virtually all of the country’s municipalities. We find that a striking 33 percent of audit reports had modifications during this period, which raises serious concerns about the state of municipal management, accounting, and auditing in Finland. Regarding the above determinants, the following conclusions can be made based on our analyses. First, we find partial evidence that weak economic performance increases the likelihood of audit report modifications. Second, the lower the competition among political parties in a local council, the lower the likelihood of audit report modifications. Finally, the more decentralized decision making is across the different decision-making bodies under the local council, the higher the probability of audit report modifications. These results are consistent with agency theory’s explanations regarding the value of auditing.

Return Migration Around the World: An Integrated Agenda for Future Research

Currently, two distinct bodies of scholarship address the increased volume and diversity of global return migration since the mid-1990s. The economic sociology of return, which assumes that return is voluntary, investigates how time living and working abroad affects returnees’ labor market opportunities and the resulting implications for economic development. A second scholarship, the political sociology of return, recognizing the increasing role of both emigration and immigration states in controlling and managing migration, examines how state and institutional actors in countries of origin shape the reintegration experiences of deportees, rejected asylum seekers, and nonadmitted migrants forced home. We review these literatures independently, examining their research questions, methodologies, and findings, while also noting limitations and areas where additional research is needed. We then engage these literatures to provide an integrated path forward for researching and theorizing return migration—a synergized resource mobilization framework.

Introduction: Socialism to Be Embodied

This article belongs to the special cluster, “Family, Gender and (dis)Abled Bodies after 1953”, guest-edited by Maike Lehmann and Alexandra Oberländer. While the ideal of the New Socialist Wo/Man was never fully realized and seems to have been abandoned across the Eastern Bloc after 1953, the question still arises what role individuals were to play within the socialist system. As dichotomous conceptualizations of state and society have been repeatedly criticized in recent years, we propose to look at how the role of the individual was imagined by different actors in Eastern European countries and how the ideals inherent in these imaginations were (to be) embodied. One possible avenue would be to explore the role of official language for subjectivization processes as they have been discussed during the last twenty years in Soviet studies. We, however, want to turn the attention towards the body and its role in shaping the individual in a cluster dealing with the impact family, gender, and dis/ability (were meant to) have on the formation of an individual body and its place within broader society. This is to explore some of the ways in which anybody could become somebody in socialist Eastern Europe and might help to shift the attention from dichotomous conceptualizations of political dogma and social practice towards an exploration of socialism as a diverse, yet specific cultural system.

Generating a Scandal: Non-market Activity to Stop a Cross-Border Merger and Acquisition

In this manuscript, we present three controversial cross-border merger and acquisition (CBMA) deals that failed to be consummated after public announcement. Our cross-case analysis reveals that scandal, which causes the controversy surrounding these deals, is a non-market activity, whose main concern is to ensure the status quo in the target country through generation of executive and legislative action favoring the target country threatened actor. Scandal is a last resort act that makes the deal widely salient through transformation of the bid into a national threat. Target country actors threatened by the CBMA skillfully use scandal, along with their corporate political activities (CPA), to hinder deals that they could not have stopped otherwise. It is mainly the inadequacy of the CPA efforts that lead to emergence of scandal. Once condemned of wrongdoing, the acquirers instantly become persona non grata, even in the cases where the government is supportive of the deal.

Linking throughput and output legitimacy in Swiss forest policy implementation

Policy scholars typically assume that implementing actors should follow democratically decided rules in linear, predictable ways. However, this assumption does not factor in the operational challenges and multiple accountability relations facing policy implementers in contemporary, hybrid policy implementation settings. Shifting the focus to throughput (governance process) and output legitimacy (results), this paper explores how throughput dimensions affect the implementation of policy outputs. We study a hybrid policy—the Swiss Forest Policy 2020—in a federalist, multi-level implementation context. We find that accountability dilemmas have negative consequences for output implementation, particularly when professionalism clashes with rules. Accountability dilemmas are exacerbated by policy incoherence and interact with policy ambiguity. However, high issue salience can partially compensate for the negative effects of these factors. In sum, we highlight how the role of implementing actors in democratic countries goes beyond rule-following: accountability relations and other throughput dimensions crucially affect output legitimacy.

Reflections on the EU Third Country Regime for Capital Markets in the Shadow of Brexit

This article considers the recent evolution of the EU’s third country regime for capital market access in light of Brexit, the important series of legislative reforms adopted in March 2019 as the 2014-2019 European Parliament/Commission term closed, and the emergence of the European Securities and Markets Authority (ESMA) as a material technocratic influence. The article suggests that while the capital market third country regime is changing (with Brexit a key but not exclusive driver of change), it is not being radically recast, although it is tightening. The regime remains broadly based on the more-or-less liberal ‘deference’ model which has long characterised EU third-country financial services policy. But it is becoming increasingly ‘on-shored’ by means of the direct application of EU rules and by ESMA’s oversight/supervision of certain third country actors. The significantly more restrictive approach being taken to third country central clearing counterparties is a marked development, but here the political and economic context is distinct. The implications of the overall shift towards a more ‘on-shore’, centralised, and potentially restrictive access regime are considered, and a modest reform prescription is offered.

Policy Ideas and North–South Research Cooperation: The Case of Norway

Geopolitically powerful actors in countries linked to the global North have historically shaped the landscape of North–South research cooperation. The literature documents not only the pervasiveness of asymmetrical relationships in North–South research cooperation but also a growing recognition among policy and academic actors of these dynamics. In this context, this study traces the invention of the Norwegian “South-South-North” partnership model, which was envisaged as an alternative to mainstream approaches and sought to foreground the needs and priorities of researchers in the global South. Employing the conceptual perspective of policy ideas, this study identifies three ideas that were constitutive of the model: humanitarianism, enlightened self-interested, and international reputation building. Functioning as broad public philosophies, these ideas underpinned the adoption of the South–South–North model as a distinctively Norwegian approach to research capacity building in the global South.

Applying an Evolutionary Growth Theory for Sustainable Economic Development: The Effect of International Students as Tourists

In this globalized era of strict competition, all actors in countries must focus on their strengths for continuous growth, which would presumably lead to sustainable economic development. Amongst the three components of sustainable development, this paper focuses on the economic and social aspects. Many countries are becoming service-oriented for economic growth. Education is a form of human capital investment which significantly contributes to countries’ national income via students, particularly international cross-border students in higher education institutions. While endogenous growth models dismiss the importance of governments in the growth process, in this paper, the Keynesian and new growth theories are combined to form an evolutionary growth theory. This research aims to analyze the short and long-term relationships between macroeconomic variables, international students, and their impact on the gross domestic product (GDP) of a small island with the intention of policy implications for stakeholders to reach or maintain sustainable economic development. Using an evolutionary growth theory with 34 years of time-series data on quarterly base, the vector autocorrection (VAR) model helps reveal the short and long-run relationships as well as impacts on the economy for sustainable economic growth. The results confirmed a long-run relationship via cointegration. Moreover, they approved bidirectional causality between student numbers, general secondary school enrolment, and GDP. Findings suggest significant implications for all stakeholders, particularly for higher education institutions, the government, and local citizens due to the importance of micro and macro-economic variables’ effect on GDP. The results prove that educated human capital contributes to economic growth. Governments should continue their existing strategy regarding secondary school enrolment rates as it is found to be the most effective variable in the long-run. As education, knowledge, and information transfer rises, it contributes to sustainable development through promoting social stability. Limitation of the unavailability of the total yearly population, GDP was opted instead of GDP per capita.

Looking back in anger? Putting in perspective the implementation of the Bologna process in Finnish and Portuguese higher education systems

ABSTRACTThe analysis of policy implementation tends to focus on aspects related to legal frameworks, neglecting countries' cultural, political and institutional specifics. By comparing the implementation of the Bologna declaration in the Portuguese and Finnish higher education systems, this paper reflects on the different permutations of cultural-political changes wrought by the Europeanisation of higher education. Analysing policy implementation is thus considered essential to understand (effects of) policy change. This research adds to the literature on higher education policy the voices of practioners drawn from 47 interviews of system and institutional key actors in both countries. It is argued that while Portugal has a top-down tradition of policy implementation, Finland has been following a hybrid model of decision-making, combining top-down and bottom-up approaches. Empirical data challenge the importance of the national cultural dimension because, as is shown here, interviewees' perceptions differ more according to their role rather than their nationality. The apparent lack of visibility of national differences is explained by convergent trends such as managerialism and subsequent implications for the academic profession.

The Role of Christian Churches in Geo-Economical and Geopolitical Rivalry of European Nations in Africa: 20th – 21st Centuries

The article analyses the dynamics of Africa’s religious landscape from the perspective of European nations’ rivalry in 1910–2010 with particular attention towards the largest Christian denominations in the region – Catholic, Anglican, Dutch Reformed and Pentecostal Churches. The time frame under review is divided into Colonial and Postcolonial stages. It is established, that during Colonial stage the spread of Western Christianity in Africa was extensive and was largely motivated by the geopolitical and geo-economic interests of the leading world nations. The spread of Protestantism and Catholicism in Africa was determined by the state-confessional principle – religions formed stable nuclei in territories where they enjoyed the long-term support of colonial powers and carried out the function of its legitimation. In Postcolonial stage, due to the decline of metropolitan’s influence, Christian churches, numbering millions of adherents, have been turning into independent political and economic actors in African countries. Their competitiveness is determined by the attractiveness of the intra and extra-cult “product” offered by religions as well as the accumulated political and social partnerships of the Churches and other countries, including the governments of leading world powers, international and local organizations. In this regard, the spatial dynamics of the largest denominations of Christianity, especially Protestant, begins to acquire an intensive character, but the expansion of the nuclei of Christianity in the second half of the 20th and beginning of the 21st centuries still preserved. This led to the “alignment” of the Christianity geospace – if, most African countries in the early 20th century were characterized by the absolute dominance of one denomination, then by the 21st century there are almost no such countries. In other words, the boundaries of Christianity’s nucleus “blurred” due to an increase of intra-religious diversity. The article emphasizes that the role of Pentecostal Churches has grown significantly, which in the wake of the global evangelization movement have become the most important agents for the spread of the ideas of cultural, economic and political globalization in Africa. The author assumes further strengthening of the Pentecostal, Charismatic and some other denominations of Christianity in terms of their socio-political, economical and cultural influence on African countries.

Sustainable development for global mental health: a typology and systematic evidence mapping of external actors in low-income and middle-income countries

IntroductionMental disorders account for a substantial burden of disease and costs in low-income and middle-income countries (LMICs), but attract few resources. With LMIC governments often under economic pressure, an understanding...

Bauska’s Chairmen: Party Leadership and Twitter Engagement in Estonian and Latvian Populist Far-Right Parties

Abstract Political parties in the Baltic states remain largely understudied, especially when it comes to the populist radical right (PRR). Currently, two of the three Baltic countries have PRR parties represented in their national parliaments, Nacionā lā apvienī ba (the National Alliance, henceforth the NA) in Latvia and Eesti Konservatiivne Rahvaerakond (the Conservative People’s Party of Estonia, henceforth EKRE) in Estonia. Both parties have charismatic leaders and are led in a top-down manner, keeping in line with the literature on this party family. Many political actors in numerous countries make ample use of Twitter and other social media, and the PRR in particular has proved very successful at using social media to their advantage. My article provides a comparison between the leadership of the two aforementioned parties, using a paired comparison method, highlighting the position of the party leader; how each leader is selected; the political activity of party leaders; the electoral activity of each leader; and, finally, an analysis of how each party leader uses the social media microblogging site, Twitter. The NA and EKRE are similar in that they are both parties which can be categorized in the PRR party family and are nationalist parties in countries which experienced Soviet occupation as well as the policy of Russification. Further, until quite recently1, both have directed nativist policies around language issues and the Russian-speaking population (Auers and Kasekamp 2013, Wierenga 2017). Therefore, the NA and EKRE make for an ideal comparison.2