Development Coalitions Research Articles

The Politics of Government–Business Relations in Urban Southeast Asia: Introduction and Overview

Recognising the increasingly urban character of Southeast Asian politics, our introduction to this special issue explores the varied patterns of government–business relations found across the region. In some urban centres, businesses form collusive rent-seeking relations with mayors and other politicians; in others, they support governance reform and urban renewal. In beginning to unpick this variation, we briefly highlight what we can learn from literatures on national-level government–business relations and subnational politics – emphasising that local-level government–business relations commonly diverge in significant ways from those at the national level. Next, we survey the articles that follow through three themes: relative strengths of local government and business across distinct urban settings; changes over time in the presence and efficacy of development coalitions spanning government and business; and recent innovations in government–business ties in certain cities. We end by calling for increased research into this important but poorly understood topic.

The Fizzling of “Ceboom”: How Jurisdictional Battles and Warring Factions Undermined Cebu's Development Coalition

Starting in the late 1980s, in a phenomenon dubbed “Ceboom,” Cebu City and its surrounding metropolitan area attracted national envy and international attention as a leading centre of growth within a country facing many economic challenges. This article focuses first on the development coalition in the heyday of Ceboom (1988–1998) and proceeds through two subsequent periods in which this coalition declined (1998–2016) and then effectively collapsed (2016–present). Two important factors explain the fizzling of Ceboom. First, dysfunctional jurisdictional structures inhibit the emergence of coherent metropolitan governance; second, these underlying structural impediments feed into, and are exacerbated by, intense competition among warring factions involving city- and provincial-level politicians. Cebu's metropolitan region, we argue, will not be able to address multiple pressing development challenges without a coherent system of governance linking its many components; sadly, we do not see how this is likely to emerge in the foreseeable future.

Challenges, limitations, and pitfalls of PET and advanced MRI in patients with brain tumors: A report of the PET/RANO group.

Brain tumor diagnostics have significantly evolved with the use of positron emission tomography (PET) and advanced magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) techniques. In addition to anatomical MRI, these modalities may provide valuable information for several clinical applications such as differential diagnosis, delineation of tumor extent, prognostication, differentiation between tumor relapse and treatment-related changes, and the evaluation of response to anticancer therapy. In particular, joint recommendations of the Response Assessment in Neuro-Oncology (RANO) Group, the European Association of Neuro-oncology, and major European and American Nuclear Medicine societies highlighted that the additional clinical value of radiolabeled amino acids compared to anatomical MRI alone is outstanding and that its widespread clinical use should be supported. For advanced MRI and its steadily increasing use in clinical practice, the Standardization Subcommittee of the Jumpstarting Brain Tumor Drug Development Coalition provided more recently an updated acquisition protocol for the widely used dynamic susceptibility contrast perfusion MRI. Besides amino acid PET and perfusion MRI, other PET tracers and advanced MRI techniques (e.g. MR spectroscopy) are of considerable clinical interest and are increasingly integrated into everyday clinical practice. Nevertheless, these modalities have shortcomings which should be considered in clinical routine. This comprehensive review provides an overview of potential challenges, limitations, and pitfalls associated with PET imaging and advanced MRI techniques in patients with gliomas or brain metastases. Despite these issues, PET imaging and advanced MRI techniques continue to play an indispensable role in brain tumor management. Acknowledging and mitigating these challenges through interdisciplinary collaboration, standardized protocols, and continuous innovation will further enhance the utility of these modalities in guiding optimal patient care.

The case for a global therapeutics development coalition: Building a therapeutics pipeline for pandemic and endemic diseases.

The case for a global therapeutics development coalition: Building a therapeutics pipeline for pandemic and endemic diseases.

The coalitional politics of the European Union Regulation on deforestation-free products

This paper analyses the belief- and interest-driven coalitional politics of the new European Union Regulation on deforestation-free products (EUDR) by applying the Advocacy Coalition Framework and Baptist & Bootlegger Theory. Our results first show how two PRO-Regulation Coalitions advocated for new European Union (EU) trade rules: key members of a Sustainable Development Coalition and an Environmental Coalition include key sustainability- and environmentally-oriented EU institutions, import-dependent EU Member States, non-governmental organisations, civil society groups, and some food and forest certifiers. Second, a PRO-EUDR Business Coalition – mainly composed of multinational business actors such as consumer goods companies and retailers, import-dependent European companies, some EU domestic producers from the agricultural sector, and their respective associations – joined the PRO-Coalitions in a strategic cross-coalitional PRO-Regulation Alliance to pursue business-oriented pro-regulatory interests. Third, the building of this Alliance facilitated political momentum for the EUDR's agenda-setting, drafting and adoption despite opposition from a weaker CONTRA-Regulation Coalition of status-quo-oriented policy advocates among some EU institutions, forest-rich EU Member States, agricultural certifiers, tropical producer country governmental authorities, as well as European and non-EU companies and their associations from the forest, agricultural and food sectors. Fourth, the EUDR's final legislative text is a compromise solution, institutionalising different core beliefs and interests of pro- and contra-regulatory state and non-state actors. Pro-change actors were more powerful in institutionalising their beliefs and interests.

EU trade liberalisation, sectoral coalitions and development: insights from Moldova and Georgia

ABSTRACT This paper contributes to the literature on EU trade policy by introducing insights from the political economy literature on development to the study of how EU trade liberalisation affects development in trading partners. Drawing on a comparison of EU trade liberalisation with Moldova and Georgia, we argue that the type of coalition between public and private actors in partner countries’ top export sectors determines which firms benefit from better market access to the EU, as indicated by their ability to increase their exports. We show that liberalised trade with the EU tends to contribute to achieving the EU’s declared objective of inclusive development if the presence of inclusionary development coalitions ensures that a broad range of firms is enabled to increase their export capacities through a mechanism that we call ‘inclusive empowerment’. Otherwise, trade liberalisation contributes to exclusive development, benefitting big, mostly foreign firms, or, at worse, consolidating rent-seeking practices.

A political economy perspective on alternative development coalitions: the case of paramilitary territories in Colombia

ABSTRACT This article analyzes alternative development coalitions, their contradictions and complexities, and how they promoted a steeply unequal agrarian change through illicit crop substitution. We zoom into two paramilitary-controlled territories in Colombia. We show that those programs counted with significant support from, and were actually driven by, long coalitions that included regional and national politicians, sectors of the rural rich, paramilitary leaders, Colombian government and United States agencies.

Investigating physician leadership competencies in rural and remote areas of the province of Aceh, Indonesia

BackgroundsGlobally, the most rural healthcare systems are lagging behind those of urban healthcare systems. Especially in rural and remote areas, the essential resources to provide principal health services are inadequate....

China’s Green Belt and Road Initiative: transnational environmental governance and causal pathways of orchestration

ABSTRACTThe Green Belt and Road Initiative was proposed by the Chinese government to address the environmental challenges related to the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI). The BRI International Green Development Coalition (BRIGC), a flagship initiative of the Green BRI, aims to promote the BRI’s environmental performance through transnational governance measures. In this study, we analyzed the BRIGC from the perspective of orchestration theory. We developed a model of causal pathways to understand the micro-steps linking orchestrators, intermediaries, and targets. Furthermore, drawing on first-hand evidence collected through participatory observation, interviews, and focus groups, we identified four key pathways of green orchestration: green consumerism, green infrastructure, green finance, and green governance. We found that the orchestration processes were hampered by the lack of substantial input from the BRIGC, which undermined the intermediary-target relationship. We concluded with recommendations for the BRIGC to strengthen its orchestration capacity.

Industrial and Organizational Mutations in the Medical and Pharmaceutical Sectors impulsed by Open Innovation during the Pandemic

The Covid-19 pandemic tragically emphasized severe failures of health systems. In particular, the saturation of hospital infrastructures and the lack of medical devices is crucial for respiratory ventilators. The medical and pharmaceutical sectors had to find urgently new ways to innovate efficiently in R&D, to produce devices, therapeutic trials, and vaccines, and make them available on a large scale. Our work will analyze that these innovations related to Covid-19 have been largely based on Open Innovation. For that purpose, exploratory case studies will be shown that exemplify the value of implementing Open Innovation in the pandemic context. These case studies concern the pharmaceutical firm Pfizer, the biotechnology company BioNTech, and the respiratory ventilator open development coalition OxyGEN (from design company Protofy. xyz to the hospitals' network of Barcelona and manufacturer SEAT). Methodologically, these case studies build on a full referencing and systematic analysis of articles, scientific documents, and published reports related to the Open Innovation involvement of these organizations since the start of the pandemic. Based on the operative contributions from these revelatory case studies, we can show that Open Innovation is a highly efficient vector for extended partnerships for accelerated R&D and operational production contextually to pandemic emergencies.

From growth coalition to development coalition: A case study of urban renewal governance transformation in Southern Area of Nanjing (SAN), China

The context of urban development in China has undergone a remarkable transformation in the latest decade. In the course of this, the central government has gradually narrowed its early flexible policies and discretionary powers for local urban development, changing from the style featuring the growth-orientated values in the early phase to a new development concept of Urban Renewal Action highlighting plural values in the new era. Different from being promoted by the local-government-led growth coalition during the previous rapid development, Urban Renewal Action emphasizes the bottom-line constraints imposed by the central government, advocating an overall reconstruction in a combination of the renewal goals, the renewal mechanism, and the renewal objects. In this sense, urban renewal can no longer be explained only through the perspective of the growth coalition. This paper, through the re-interpretation of the urban renewal in the Southern Area of Nanjing (SAN), not only demonstrates the changes in the value context of China’s urban development in the past decade, but also proposes the development coalition, as a new approach, to decode the urban renewal governance transformation under the new development discourse in China. In the process, the central government promotes such transformation through policies and regulations while considering sustainable social development as the new goal of urban renewal locally. During this nationwide transformation, residents and intellectuals are functioning as new core members.

Planning: A Glue for Development Coalitions? State Actors' Agency and Power Relationships in Urban Development Projects in Milan and Brussels

In this paper, I combine urban regime analysis and financialisation scholarships to uncover the role of planning and question the role of state actors in urban development processes. Through an analysis of CityLife in Milan and Tour and Taxis in Brussels, I argue that state actors have a strong agency in decision making as they own a critical resource: planning. My investigation reveals that, in projects characterised by uncertainty and internal conflicts, planning functions as a glue of development coalitions. Local governments mobilise it to bring together private and public interests, in order to achieve their agendas. Nevertheless, this glue function plays out differently in Milan and Brussels. While in Milan local administrations used planning to facilitate the anchoring of capital, in Brussels local governments enacted planning to shift the balance of power between them. This outcome reveals contextual differences that ultimately depend on local governance settings and planning systems. The comparison depicts the making of two different development regimes. CityLife indicates a financialised turn in governance, in which planning choices are driven mainly by economic – and financial – imperatives. Tour and Taxis symbolises an experimental entrepreneurial urban regime, a sort of laboratory to test new governance and planning frameworks.

Investing in Late-Stage Clinical Trials and Manufacturing of Neglected Disease Product Candidates – Modeling the Benefits and Costs of Investments for Three Middle-Income Countries

Background: Investing in late-stage clinical trials, trial sites and production capacity for neglected disease products could improve access to vaccines, therapeutics, and diagnostics in middle-income countries (MICs). This study assesses the case for such investment in three MICs: India, Kenya, and South Africa. Methods: We modeled how many cases, deaths, and disability-adjusted life years (DALYs) could be averted from the development and manufacturing of new technologies (therapeutics and vaccines) in these countries. We also estimated the economic benefits that might accrue from making these investments and we develop benefit-cost ratios (BCRs) for each of the three MICs. Findings: From 2021-2036, product development and manufacturing in Kenya could avert 4.4 million deaths and 206.3 million DALYs in the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA) region. In South Africa, it could prevent 5.2 million deaths and 253.8 million DALYs in the South African Development Community (SADC) region. In India, it could avert almost 9.8 million deaths and 374.4 million DALYs in Southeast Asia. Economic returns would be especially high if new tools were produced for regional markets rather than for domestic markets only. Under a societal perspective, regional returns outweigh investments by a factor of 21 in Kenya, 33 in South Africa, and 68 in India. Interpretation: Our study supports the creation of regional hubs for clinical trials and product manufacturing compared to narrow national efforts. Funding: This study was funded by a grant from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation. Declaration of Interest: This study was approved by Duke University’s institutional review board (IRB). Ethical Approval: All authors report grants from Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation during the conduct of the study.Robert Karanja also serves as Chairman of Steering Committee of the Coalition for Health Research & Development (CHReaD), a policy and advocacy coalition that is funded by BMGF - that also funded this study.

Systems Thinking in Socially Engaged Design Settings: What Can We Learn?

AbstractSocially engaged design programs, community development coalitions, and intentional and unintentional design spaces are rich with expertise and thinkers that are developing solutions to very pressing, yet complicated problems. Little research is conducted on the expertise and sense‐making of the community partners present. The goal of this research endeavor is to unpack the ways various community partners make meaning of their design experiences by answering: What evidence of system's thinking can be seen in the way community partners describe their work or context? A qualitative research study has been conducted in which fifteen community partners have been observed and interviewed at various points of their engagement within socially engaged design programs. Resulting codes and competencies can be used to expand scholarly conceptions of community cultural wealth, social resistance and much more. Further, this research has implications for more novel and genuine ways to situate design learning within systems thinking competencies.

Moving toward rice self-sufficiency in sub-Saharan Africa by 2030: Lessons learned from 10 years of the Coalition for African Rice Development

The Coalition for African Rice Development (CARD) was initiated as a policy framework with the aim of doubling rice production in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) over the period from 2008 to 2018. This paper assesses the contribution of the CARD policy to rice production and forecasts the local rice supply and demand to provide a better understanding of the policies needed to attain rice self-sufficiency by 2030. A combination of the autoregressive integrated moving average method and counterfactual approach was adopted using rice statistical data from 23 countries in SSA. The results showed that the contribution of CARD to paddy rice production in 2018 was 10.2 million tons, equivalent to 74% of the target. This contribution resulted from increases in area and yield of 23% and 19%, respectively. However, the yield growth rate was not sustainable in almost two-thirds of countries. Investments in supply-push factors such as fertilizer and irrigation development, which were the focus in the past, have limited effects on rice production. We conclude that sustainable investments in demand-pull factors such as the private-led modern milling sector and contract farming development should be prioritized to achieve rice self-sufficiency in SSA.

Provincialising smart urbanism in Taipei: The smart city as a strategy for urban regime transition

The appeal of revolutionising urban governance through information technologies has prompted cities across the globe to pursue smart city initiatives. The mainstream scholarship on these initiatives has mostly focused on technology and corporate-led urban development, and it also often privileges the experience of cities in the global North. Nevertheless, this mainstream understanding of the smart city may obscure emerging new power dynamics and locally contextualised processes associated with smart urban development, especially in cities at the global periphery. Inspired by post-colonial theories, this article makes the case for ‘provincialising’ smart urbanism by dislodging technology from the centre of analysis, accentuating perspectives of cities outside the locations where the smart city knowledge is traditionally produced and attending to power relationships. In our case study of Taipei, this provincialising approach helps unveil various logics, intentionalities, assemblages and power dynamics through which the smart city is employed as a political strategy to facilitate urban regime transition. We argue that the current non-affiliated Ko administration exploits the veneer of technological superiority and political neutrality of its smart city agenda to set a new growth agenda, form new development coalitions, establish new institutions and incorporate rising populist momentum into policy-making. Focusing on the politics of being smart, our findings illustrate how smart city experiments reshape power dynamics and regime formation through reorganising actors and interest groups, reconfiguring government institutions, reallocating resource distribution and, in the end, bolstering governing legitimacy.

BRI as International Norm Construction of China's Green Development Strategy in Asia

For several decades, the environmental considerations have been one of a neglected aspect of China’s development process. The massive development and industrialization process have a direct impact on environmental degradation in China, causing considerable economic losses for this country. But now China is no longer a country with an image of development that is not environmentally friendly. That old image seems to be changing, from being not environmentally friendly to pay more attention to develop more “green” development. This change can be seen through the implementation of green development agenda on Belt and Road Initiative (BRI) mega-project. The project is not only China's economic instrument in expanding its market and investment but also can be seen as a tool to construct China's new norms in international level, especially in Asia. The new norm is green development. Thanks to BRI, China has positioned itself as one of the leading countries on the green development agenda. This paper will examine the extent of the changes have been taken place by using constructivism perspective through the Norm Diffusion Theory of Finnemore and Sikkink (1998). The norm diffusion theory will be elaborated from two aspects, first is the norm entrepreneur, and second is the norm life cycle. State actor and non-state actor roles of China are both important players and decision-makers for steering the BRI project on an expected track. Not only that, the establishment of the International Coalition for Green Development on the Belt and Road Initiative (BRIGC) at the beginning of 2019 reflects China's strong commitment to a green development agenda that appears to have been successfully internalized in the Asia region.

Consensus recommendations for a dynamic susceptibility contrast MRI protocol for use in high-grade gliomas.

Despite the widespread clinical use of dynamic susceptibility contrast (DSC) MRI, DSC-MRI methodology has not been standardized, hindering its utilization for response assessment in multicenter trials. Recently, the DSC-MRI Standardization Subcommittee of the Jumpstarting Brain Tumor Drug Development Coalition issued an updated consensus DSC-MRI protocol compatible with the standardized brain tumor imaging protocol (BTIP) for high-grade gliomas that is increasingly used in the clinical setting and is the default MRI protocol for the National Clinical Trials Network. After reviewing the basis for controversy over DSC-MRI protocols, this paper provides evidence-based best practices for clinical DSC-MRI as determined by the Committee, including pulse sequence (gradient echo vs spin echo), BTIP-compliant contrast agent dosing (preload and bolus), flip angle (FA), echo time (TE), and post-processing leakage correction. In summary, full-dose preload, full-dose bolus dosing using intermediate (60°) FA and field strength-dependent TE (40-50 ms at 1.5 T, 20-35 ms at 3 T) provides overall best accuracy and precision for cerebral blood volume estimates. When single-dose contrast agent usage is desired, no-preload, full-dose bolus dosing using low FA (30°) and field strength-dependent TE provides excellent performance, with reduced contrast agent usage and elimination of potential systematic errors introduced by variations in preload dose and incubation time.

Leadership for success in transforming medical abortion policy in Canada.

Mifepristone was approved for use in medical abortion by Health Canada in 2015. Approval was accompanied by regulations that prohibited pharmacist dispensing of the medication. Reproductive health advocates in Canada recognized this regulation would limit access to medical abortion and successfully worked to have this regulation removed in 2017. The purpose of this study was to assess the leadership involved in changing these regulations so that the success may be replicated by other groups advocating for health policy change. This study involved a mixed methods instrumental design in the context of British Columbia, Canada. Our data collection included: a) interviews with seven key individuals, representing the organizations that worked in concert for change to Canadian mifepristone regulations, and b) document analysis of press articles, correspondence, briefing notes, and meeting minutes. We conducted a thematic analysis of transcripts of audio-recorded interviews. We identified strengths and weaknesses of the team dynamic using the Develop Coalitions, Achieve Results and Systems Transformation domains of the LEADS Framework. Our analysis of participant interviews indicates that autonomy, shared values, and clarity in communication were integral to the success of the group's work. Analysis using the LEADS Framework showed that individuals possessed many of the capabilities identified as being necessary for successful health policy leadership. A lack of post-project assessment was identified as a possible limitation and could be incorporated in future work to strengthen dynamics especially when a desired outcome is not achieved. Document analysis provided a clear time-line of the work completed and suggested that strong communication between team members was another key to success. The results of our analysis of the interviews and documents provide valuable insight into the workings of a successful group committed to a common goal. The existing collegial and trusting relationships between key stakeholders allowed for interdisciplinary collaboration, rapid mobilization, and identification of issues that facilitated successful Canadian global-first deregulation of mifepristone dispensing.

Moving toward Rice Self-Sufficiency in Sub-Saharan Africa by 2030: Lessons Learnt from 10 Years of the Coalition for African Rice Development

The Coalition for African Rice Development (CARD) was initiated as policy framework with the aim of doubling rice production in sub-Saharan Africa (SSA) over the period from 2008 to 2018. This paper assesses the contribution of the CARD policy to rice production and forecasts the local rice supply and demand for a better understanding of the policies needed to attain rice self-sufficiency by 2030. A combination of the autoregressive integrated moving average method and counterfactual approach was adopted using rice statistical data from 23 countries in SSA. Results showed that the contribution of CARD to paddy rice production in 2018 was 10.2 million ton, equivalent to 74% of target. This resulted from the increasing of area and yield by 23% and 19%, respectively. However, yield growth rate was not sustainable in almost two-third of countries. Investments on supply-push factors such as fertilizer and irrigation development, which was the focus in the past, have less effect on the rice production. We conclude that sustainable investments on demand-pull factors such as private-led modern milling sector and contract farming development should be prioritized for achieving rice self-sufficiency in SSA.