Existing Governance Arrangements Research Articles

Aligning adaptation and sustainability agendas: lessons from protected areas

Nations worldwide are committing to international environmental agreements and defining aspirational goals aligned with their sustainable development priorities and responsibilities. The post-2020 Global Biodiversity Framework is an example of such aspirations. Under this framework, nations aim to expand protected areas or create new ones as one way to integrate conservation and climate change agendas. However, implementing those high-level agreements does not necessarily align with local realities and dynamics. In this paper we examined the operational challenges experienced by protected areas actors to adapt conservation strategies to climate change. Based on interviews at the local level and a policy analysis, we identify adaptation narratives and explore potential mismatches in their implementation at the national and local level (protected areas) in three countries: Australia, Colombia, and South Africa. We assess how local visions and interpretations of adaptation align with high-level policies and how existing institutional arrangements facilitate or constrain the implementation of adaptation and, therefore, aspirations for long-term sustainability. We found that adaptation narratives at the local level are framed by common ideas and identities based on local relations within a territory. At the same time, existing governance arrangements and political contexts determine the feasibility of adaptation. The primary mismatches are high-level political and economic interests denoting different interpretations about the territory and of local realities, including the readiness, technical, and resource capacity of protected areas actors to implement adaptation. Place-based adaptation provides a common ground for scaling adaptation. However, scaling adaptation requires enabling institutional contexts, clear rules and policies to facilitate deliberations and coordinated responses across different actors and sectors, while guiding the uptake and integration of local needs and realities within national agendas.

Heading for health policy reform: transforming regions of care from geographical place into governance object

This article analyses how regional actors and national authorities shape and transform ‘the region’ from a geographical place into an object of governance for organising and delivering older person care. Drawing on an extensive ethnographic research project in the Netherlands, our findings show that these actors in interaction constitute the region through three practices: consistently creating urgency to foreground regional problems and solutions; renegotiating regulatory policies to facilitate regional care provision; and reconstructing care infrastructures to materialise regional care provision. Actors use and obtain power from co-existing and interacting institutional arrangements to develop new regional care arrangements. This evokes new interdependencies that reconfigure existing governance arrangements. Studying governance objects in-the-making reveals the required iterations, reconsiderations, and adjustments as processes within a given (ambiguous) institutional context, and which lead to institutional change. As regional organisation policies are increasingly scrutinised, this article provides an interesting and important contribution to this field.

Governing Integrated Health and Social Care: An Analysis of Experiences in Three European Countries.

Achieving greater health and social care integration is a policy priority in many countries, but challenges remain. We focused on governance and accountability for integrated care and explored arrangements that shape more integrated delivery models or systems in Italy, the Netherlands and Scotland. We also examined how the COVID-19 pandemic affected existing governance arrangements. A case study approach involving document review and semi-structured interviews with 35 stakeholders in 10 study sites between February 2021 and April 2022. We used the Transparency, Accountability, Participation, Integrity and Capability (TAPIC) framework to guide our analytical enquiry. Study sites ranged from bottom-up voluntary agreements in the Netherlands to top-down mandated integration in Scotland. Interviews identified seven themes that were seen to have helped or hindered integration efforts locally. Participants described a disconnect between what national or regional governments aspire to achieve and their own efforts to implement this vision. This resulted in blurred, and sometimes contradictory, lines of accountability between the centre and local sites. Flexibility and time to allow for national policies to be adapted to local contexts, and engaged local leaders, were seen to be key to delivering the integration agenda. Health care, and in particular acute hospital care, was reported to dominate social care in terms of policies, resource allocation and national monitoring systems, thereby undermining better collaboration locally. The pandemic highlighted and exacerbated existing strengths and weaknesses but was not seen as a major disruptor to the overall vision for the health and social care system. We included a relatively small number of interviews per study site, limiting our ability to explore complexities within sites. This study highlights that governance is relatively neglected as a focus of attention in this context but addressing governance challenges is key for successful collaboration.

Contested ‘commune rurales’: Decentralisation and the (violent) struggle for public authority in the Democratic Republic of Congo

AbstractThis article explores how decentralisation policy and specifically the establishment of communes rurales in DR Congo turned into a profoundly destabilising juncture, shaking existing governance arrangements. In particular, we examine how this has led to a reshuffle of power and a renegotiation of public authoritiy. By analysing the impact of decentralisation on the construction of and competition over public authority in three Congolese towns – Rubaya, Minembwe and Fungurume – we demonstrate how decentralisation is deeply politicised, with conflicting governance actors mobilising their power in an attempt to secure their claim to public authority. We argue that the establishment of communes rurales in eastern and southeastern DRC should be therefore understood as a strongly destabilising moment, changing the access of governance actors to resources and repertoires from which they build and legitimise their public authority. Depending on the specific context of the local political arena and its entanglements with larger struggles for power and control, this destabilising moment bears the potential for (violent) conflict. As such, we conclude that decentralisation has failed to live up to its promises of stability and peace while generating new sets of political fault lines and a re‐activation of (violent) conflict.

The United Nations Security Council and Global Health Threats

Abstract covid-19 has prompted a range of new suggestions to reform the existing international system. One recommendation garnering political support has been to create a new Global Health Threats Council, comprised of heads of state, to facilitate sustained political commitment and investment in pandemic preparedness and response. A question that currently remains unanswered, however, is how and where this new body aligns to existing governance arrangements. Some observers have suggested the new body should report the United Nations Security Council on the basis it is charged with maintaining international peace and security. This paper evaluates the UN Security Council’s engagement with health crises over recent decades to consider the legal, political, and practical feasibility of the body assuming a larger role in responding to future disease events, and the appropriateness of the proposed Global Health Threats Council falling under the authority of the UN’s principal organ for international security.

Medical device regulation and oversight in African countries: a scoping review of literature and development of a conceptual framework

Regulatory and other governance arrangements influence the introduction of medical devices into health systems and are essential for ensuring their effective and safe use. Challenges with medical device safety, quality...

Cross‐scale, cross‐level and multi‐actor governance of transformations toward the Sustainable Development Goals: A review of common challenges and solutions

AbstractThe importance of governance for achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) is uncontested. However, the design of effective governance arrangements to initiate and deliver the necessary transformations is complex, multi‐scale, and multi‐actor and many knowledge gaps remain. For would‐be reformers, a fundamental challenge arises because all transformative efforts must proceed, at least initially, within existing governance arrangements which can be highly resistant to change. While there is a rich literature on governance of transformations, knowledge remains fragmented. In this paper, we first review this literature and highlight important governance scales as spatial, jurisdictional, sectoral and temporal. We highlight common governance challenges that may arise from tensions within and between these scales, and how governance framings and design choices of actors may accentuate or ameliorate these challenges. To further illustrate, we review a selection of recent case studies on transformations to the SDGs and highlight common governance challenges and solutions. We conclude by suggesting five concrete steps that would‐be reformers could usefully take to increase the likelihood that their transformation efforts will meet with success.

Local Activism in Urban Neighborhood Governance

This study investigates local activism in politically challenging contexts, focusing on Cairo. In such contexts, active resident groups strive for urban improvement, while governance arrangements often disregard citizen involvement in urban and public affairs. Cairo presents an exemplary case of local activism in a politically challenging and under-researched context. The study explores the characteristics, roles, and interrelations of active resident groups with local governance arrangements and their deviations from existing literature. It employs a qualitative methodology with observations and semi-structured interviews with local officials and active residents from nine different districts. The study uses Facebook to select, observe, and analyze the activities of multiple active resident groups and contributes to theoretical frameworks for analyzing local activism in complex contexts. It reveals the dominant and absent roles and the governance dimensions (un)attainable by active residents. It also traces the sources of limited local activism in the existing governance arrangements in Cairo, highlighting the importance and difficulty of changing governance arrangements in Egypt. The study broadens our understanding of local activism in the Global South beyond dominant forms of activism.

Opening the black box between governance and management: A mechanism-based explanation of how governance affects the management of endangered species.

Good governance is needed to foster good management of the environment. Yet, the link between environmental governance and environmental management has received very little research attention. This paper adopts a mechanism-based framework to unpack the link between the governance and management of species at risk or endangered species in a working landscape. Using species at risk management in the South of the Divide region of southwestern Saskatchewan as a case study, we identified four governance conditions connected by five mechanisms to produce management outcomes. The governance conditions include facilitative leadership, local autonomy, trust, and incentives. The five mechanisms include institutional disruption, institutional crafting and drift, brokerage or bridging, program uptake, and alleviation of fear of harm. We discuss how using a mechanism-based approach could help us better understand the processes within the governance system that trigger particular management outcomes. For example, in this case study, dissatisfied factors disrupt the existing governance arrangements and create new ones that reflect their desire for local autonomy. Local autonomy, in turn, creates an atmosphere for local actors to form coalitions and build trust; trust enhances program uptake and the co-design and co-implementation of incentives, which then alleviates land managers' fear of harm from participating in species at risk management. Our study also suggests that top-down institutions that create room for further institutional work can become acceptable at the local level and enhance endangered species management. We conclude that a mechanism-based explanation can be useful for opening the black box connecting environmental governance and management and offering valuable recommendations to guide policy.

Operationalising coastal resilience to flood and erosion hazard: A demonstration for England

Resilience is widely seen as an important attribute of coastal systems and, as a concept, is increasingly prominent in policy documents. However, there are conflicting ideas on what constitutes resilience and its operationalisation as an overarching principle of coastal management remains limited. In this paper, we show how resilience to coastal flood and erosion hazard could be measured and applied within policy processes, using England as a case study. We define resilience pragmatically, integrating what is presently a disparate set of policy objectives for coastal areas. Our definition uses the concepts of resistance, recovery and adaptation, to consider how the economic, social and environmental dimensions of coastal systems respond to change. We develop a set of composite indicators for each dimension, grounded empirically with reference to national geospatial datasets. A prototype Coastal Resilience Model (CRM) has been developed, which combines the dimensions and generates a quantitative resilience index. We apply it to England's coastal hazard zone, capturing a range of different stakeholder perspectives using relative indicator weightings. The illustrative results demonstrate the practicality of formalising and quantifying resilience. To re-focus national policy around the stated desire of enhancing resilience to coastal flooding and erosion would require firm commitment from government to monitor progress towards resilience, requiring extension of the present risk-based approach, and a consensus methodology in which multiple (and sometimes conflicting) stakeholder values are explicitly considered. Such a transition may also challenge existing governance arrangements at national and local levels, requiring incentives for coastal managers to engage with and apply this new approach, more departmental integration and inter-agency cooperation. The proposed Coastal Resilience Model, with the tools to support planning and measure progress, has the potential to help enable this transition.

Launching a Blue Economy: crucial first steps in designing a contextually sensitive and coherent approach

ABSTRACT The Blue Economy is an emerging framework through which sustainable development is being pursued within the oceans. To date there is limited guidance into how a Blue Economy should be enacted. We propose four initial steps in the development of Blue Economy policies and plans. Firstly, we argue for early deliberation over what is meant by the Blue Economy within the relevant context. Secondly, consideration of the sectors that make up a Blue Economy should be articulated. Thirdly, we argue that Blue Economy plans should aim to be coherent within the existing policy framework. Therefore, an assessment is required of the existing policy settings for the relevant marine and coastal sectors, and the degree to which they are already coherent, or ‘mutually consistent’ with each other. Finally, a contextually sensitive and coherent Blue Economy policy can be designed which plugs policy gaps and adds value to the existing situation. We test the application of these four steps in two different case study areas, a region of Australia and Timor Leste. Despite substantial differences in context, the process identified ways in which Blue Economy policies could add value to existing governance arrangements in both settings.

Superimposition: How Indian city bureaucracies are responding to climate change

City governments are facing complex challenges due to climate change, but those in the global South often have limited capacities and governance arrangements to develop and execute a response. Cities must also manage other existing priorities such as housing, water and waste management, which have established bureaucratic practices and incentives. How are such cities with limited climate governance capacity and with existing non-climate priorities developing a climate response? From interviews and participant observation in two Indian cities that are pioneering climate action, we find that actors are ‘superimposing’ climate objectives onto existing bureaucratic practices. Building on analysis of ongoing projects in the two cities, we theorize superimposition as an approach taken by bureaucracies that have the intention of responding to climate change but have limited control over their planning practices and mandates, high levels of institutional inertia to change existing practices, and multiple other objectives related to development that dominate agendas. As superimposition does not involve the modification of existing bureaucratic practices or incentives, the types of climate actions which emerge from this approach reflect the features, scope and limitations of existing political arrangements. We highlight five such features of how Indian city bureaucracies respond to climate change: (1) the primacy of central and state ‘schemes’, (2) the prioritization of ‘development’ as an objective, and the imperative to implement (3) ‘quick win’, (4) ‘visible’ and (5) ‘bankable’ projects. Superimposition has led to creative and politically tenable climate projects that meet both climate objectives and those of existing schemes on housing, water and waste. But these projects are also limited by existing governance arrangements with tradeoffs for long-term planning, urban justice and public ownership of infrastructure.

Bitcoin Governance as a Decentralized Financial Market Infrastructure

Bitcoin is the oldest and most widely established cryptocurrency network with the highest market capitalization among all cryptocurrencies. Although bitcoin (with lowercase b) is increasingly viewed as a digital asset belonging to a new asset class, the Bitcoin network (with uppercase B) is a decentralized financial market infrastructure (dFMI) that clears and settles transactions in its native asset without relying on the conventional financial market infrastructures (FMIs). To be a reliable asset class as well as a dFMI, however, Bitcoin needs to have robust governance arrangements; whether such arrangements are built into the protocol (i.e., on-chain governance mechanisms) or relegated to the participants in the Bitcoin network (i.e., off-chain governance mechanisms), or are composed of a combination of both mechanisms (i.e., a hybrid form of governance). This paper studies Bitcoin governance with a focus on its alleged shortcomings. In so doing, after defining Bitcoin governance and its objectives, the paper puts forward an idiosyncratic governance model whose main objective is to preserve and maximize the main value proposition of Bitcoin, i.e., its censorship-resistant property, which allows participants to transact in an environment with minimum social trust. Therefore, Bitcoin governance, including the processes through which Bitcoin governance crises have been resolved and the standards against which the Bitcoin Improvement Proposals (BIPs) are examined, should be analyzed in light of the prevailing narrative of Bitcoin as a censorship-resistant store of value and payment infrastructure. Within such a special governance model, this paper seeks to identify the potential shortcomings in Bitcoin governance by reference to the major governance crises that posed serious threats to Bitcoin in the last decade. It concludes that the existing governance arrangements in the Bitcoin network have been largely successful in dealing with Bitcoin’s major crises that would have otherwise become existential threats to the Bitcoin network.

The Climate Change Regime Complex

Abstract In an era defined by forum shopping, institutional proliferation, and regime complexity, why do global governance arrangements remain relatively stable? This article combines the insights of regime complexity scholarship with historical institutionalism to address this question. It argues that the establishment of international regimes creates winners and losers. States dissatisfied with these arrangements push for institutional change. Regimes nonetheless tend to develop in a path-dependent manner because institutions are resistant to change and the winners under the status quo seek to protect it. Thus, existing governance arrangements exert a centripetal pull, even when states engage in forum shopping and institutional proliferation to generate regime complexity. An examination of path-dependent institutional development in the global climate regime supports the argument.

Governance Arrangements for Integrated Water Resources Management in Ontario, Canada, and Oregon, USA: Evolution and Lessons

Guidelines produced by some major international organisations create a misleading impression that Integrated Water Resources Management (IWRM) can be implemented in a standardized fashion. However, contextual conditions vary from place to place, and differences in beliefs, attitudes, customs, and norms sensibly influence interpretation and implementation. Experiences with IWRM in Oregon (USA) and Ontario (Canada) are examined with regard to scope, scale, responsibility, engagement, finances and financing, and review processes and mechanisms. Development of IWRM and the evolution of governance have been shaped by different concerns and beliefs. Oregon has adopted a locally-driven and entrepreneurial approach, whereas Ontario developed a co-operative inter-governmental approach. In both cases, IWRM governance has also evolved due to changes in funding and priorities, which have benefitted some catchments and communities more than others. Both cases provide positive examples of reflexivity and resilience, and demonstrate the importance of review processes and strong cross-scale connections for effective governance. While underlying principles may be relevant for other locations, it would be a mistake to think that either of the two approaches for IWRM could be replicated elsewhere in their exact form. Implementation of IWRM in other parts of those countries and the world should, therefore, start with careful analysis of the local context, and existing governance arrangements and governmentalities.

Independence in practice: superannuation fund governance through the eyes of fund directors

For many years independence has been the catch-cry of policy-makers, regulators and legislators concerned with the corporate governance of listed companies. In Australia, drawing on this model, there has been an increased focus on independence in the context of superannuation fund governance arrangements. As the sector anticipates reform, this paper reports on a series of interviews with current superannuation fund directors. The interviews examine the extent to which existing governance arrangements in the sector incorporate independence as well as how that independence is operationalised in the superannuation context. The potential for the proposed reforms to change current practices and arrangements is considered. Issues raised include the remuneration, nomination, board appraisal and board tenure arrangements. The role and potential for independence to address conflict of interest, skills and diversity issues is also discussed. The paper concludes that independence reforms such as those envisaged in the Superannuation Legislation Amendment (Trustee Governance) Bill 2015 Bill have the potential to deal with some of the governance shortfalls present in the various sectors of the superannuation system, but only if carefully drafted and appropriately buttressed with ancillary regulation addressing issues related to director nomination, selection, tenure and remuneration

Assessment of Public Hospital Governance in Romania: Lessons From 10 Case Studies.

Background: The Government of Romania commissioned international technical assistance to help unpacking the causes of arrears in selected public hospitals. Emphases were placed on the governance-related determinants of the hospital performance in the context of the Romanian health system. Methods: The assessment was structured around a public hospital governance framework examining 4 dimensions: institutional arrangements, financing arrangements, accountability arrangements and correspondence between responsibility and decision-making capacity. The framework was operationalized using a 2-pronged approach: (i) a policy review of broader health system governance arrangements influencing hospital performance; and (ii) a series of 10 casestudies of public hospitals experiencing financial hardship. Data were collected during 2016-2017 through key informant interviews with central authorities and hospital management teams, exhaustive semi-structured questionnaires filled in by hospitals, as well as the review of documentary sources where feasible. Results: Overall, the governance landscape of Romanian public hospitals includes a large number of seemingly modern legislative provisions and management instruments. Over the past 30 years substantial efforts have been made to put in place standardised hospital classification, hospital governance structures, management and service purchasing contracts with key performance indicators, modern reimbursement mechanisms based on diagnosis-related groups (DRGs), and regulatory requirements for accountability, including internal and external audit. Nevertheless, their application appears to have been challenging for a range of reasons, pointing to the misalignment between the responsibility and decisionmaking capacity given to hospitals in a questionably conducive context. Incoherent policy design, outdated and often disjointed regulatory frameworks, and cumbersome administrative procedures limit managerial autonomy and obstruct efficiency gains. In a context of chronic insufficient funding, misaligned incentives, and overly rigid service procurement processes, hospitals seem to struggle to adjust service baskets to the population’s health needs or to overcoming financial hardship. External challenges, combined with the limited strategic, operational, and financial management capacity within hospitals, make it difficult to exhibit good financial and general performance. Conclusion: Existing governance arrangements for Romanian public hospitals appear conducive to poor financial performance. The suggested framework for hospital governance assessment has proved a powerful tool for identifying system and hospital-specific challenges contributing to sub-optimal hospital performance.

Karamojan politics: extension of state power and formation of a subordinate political elite in northeastern Uganda

State-making processes that occur in peripheral areas and the role that local political elites play in such processes have not been adequately explored by scholars. This article investigates these important phenomena through the lens of the Ugandan state’s presence in Karamoja, in the country’s northeast, which until the early years of the twenty-first century was very limited. Rapid extension of the power of the Ugandan state in the region, upon which the country’s rulers have embarked in the last decade, has radically altered existing governance arrangements in Karamoja and led to the formation of a subordinate Karamojan political elite. This elite has been instrumental in government efforts to establish control over the region’s population and shaped this state-making process in important ways.

East Sussex Better Together Alliance - Governance to enable cross sector delivery

Our problem, what we did and how: ESBT is a partnership between two local Clinical Commissioning Groups CCGs, the acute and community NHS Trust, mental health NHS Foundation Trust and the County Council. The partners’ aim is to integrate the whole system to ensure they use their combined £860m annual budget to achieve the best possible services for their local population approximately 370,000 people. To facilitate this in 2017/18 ESBT came up with a transitional governance model within the current UK legislative context, in order to enable the partners work differently together as a whole health and care system to achieve their ESBT objectives. The integration transformation programme of work started in 2013 and the new governing arrangements have been in place since April 2017. Highlights innovation, Impact and outcomes: Tangible outputs of this work to date include for example: A single integrated point of contact hub for all health and care services; A Crisis Response service supporting older people at risk of emergency admission to hospital; Fully staffed and operational integrated locality teams in 6 localities; A welfare benefits Project that has supported over 7,000 people; 183schools with developed whole school health improvement plans; 136 nurseries – 82% total / rising to 93% in areas with highest inequalities have signed up to the nursery transformation programme Healthy Active Little Ones HALO; rocess and outcome measures that indicate the impact that the programme has had to date include: Activity change between 2013/14 and 2016/17 is lower for ESBT and the acute provider, than in STP CCGs and nationally in all points of delivery bar AE Comparators showing CCG activity rates per 100,000 weighted population against the average for England are lower across almost all points of delivery other than bed days; 72% of people seen by the Crisis Response have not been re-admitted to hospital within a month; Improved access to psychological therapies– target 75% actual; Eastbourne Hailsham and Seaford 85.5% / Hastings and Rother 89% Healthy Living PharmacistHLP - 53 pharmacists and 10 pharmacy staff in wider roles attended leadership training in preparation for new ways of working. Conclusions: In order to develop and shape proposals for further strengthening the ESBT Alliance in 2018/19 we have mapped and reviewed the existing governance arrangements of our sovereign commissioning member organisations, as well as the key elements of our new ESBT Alliance governance structure, to further develop our understanding of the following: what is currently delegable to our Alliance and what isn’t; where lay, clinical and elected members’ roles could be used to best effect in assuring plans as we move forward on a system-wide basis in 2018/19; an initial screening exercise of potential equalities and health inequalities impacts, and; the transitional timetable that will be necessary to test system-wide governance and leadership arrangements over the year. The process of developing the new governance model should be transferable to any context.

Governance arrangements and adaptive decision-making in rice farming systems in Northern Ghana

Climate variability has consequences on water availability in rice farming systems. In Ghana, rice farmers in the Northern Savannah are amongst the most vulnerable to long periods of drought and erratic rainfall conditions. Within the Kumbungu district, farmers engaged in both rain-fed and irrigated rice farming are no exception. Coping with uncertain water availability conditions requires adaptive decision-making for sustained productivity in rice cropping. From an adaptive governance perspective, the extent to which formal and traditional governance arrangements enable adaptive decisions amongst rice farmers remains a key question. Using an exploratory research design, the study investigates three key questions; what water-dependent decisions rice farmers take and how these are adaptive to changing water availability conditions; what formal and informal governance arrangements rice cropping decisions are embedded in; and how existing governance arrangements enable or constrain adaptive decision-making. Rice farmers in twelve communities around the Bontanga Irrigation Scheme in the Kumbungu District in the Northern region were engaged through individual interviews and focus group discussions. The study reveals that farmers take six major water-dependent decisions throughout the cropping season; decision to or not to plant rice, land preparation, planting, weed control, fertilizer application and harvesting. Farmer decisions are most adaptive to water availability conditions during planting and fertilizer application. Both formal and traditional governance arrangements influence the extent to which farmers are able to adapt to changes in water availability conditions. The paper also reflects on the potential of hydro-climatic information and the place of Environmental Virtual Observatories (EVOs) in adaptive governance and decision-making.