Modes Of Governance Research Articles

Integrated urban governance of COVID-19 interventions in Ghanaian cities: insight from marketplaces in Accra and Kumasi

ABSTRACT It is argued that cities require a specific mode of urban governance to provide an effective response to pandemics and disease outbreaks. This is conceptualized as integrated urban governance, which involves early intervention, strict enforcement, stakeholder collaboration, and the provision of social and economic support to vulnerable groups. Seeing through the perspective of “everyday urban governance” and case studies of three markets in Ghana, this article scrutinizes the responses and politics of infection control measures in marketplaces. It demonstrates that effective response to pandemics in Ghanaian cities is contingent on the three pillars of early intervention, strict enforcement, and stakeholder collaboration. Nevertheless, this article contends that urban governance is characterized by underlying institutional tensions, which have the tendency to reverse gains made. The repressive enforcement of the pandemic protocols, the contestation between state and market actors and the (in)visibility of informal groups as subjects of infection control are examples of those tensions. The article recommends, among others, the need for municipal authorities in African cities to integrate informal actors into formal planning and governance processes, and to prioritize regional planning strategies, while paying attention to the contextual constraints, to achieve resilience against future pandemics.

Russia–Ukraine war and India's quest for leading power status

AbstractIndia's neutrality and failure to publicly criticise Russia is driven by the Modi government's quest to be a great/leading power. It believes that Moscow can aid New Delhi in achieving this goal by enhancing the security pillar of its foreign policy strategy. However, publicly criticising Russia will undermine India's security pillar and will prevent India from becoming a leading power. Thus, India's response to the Ukraine war might be best described as ‘varied consequentialism’. Additionally, India has also exhibited ‘strategic opportunism’; that is, it has employed norms and values strategically to pursue its aspirations to emerge as a leading power. It has sought to use the Global South's discontent with the US‐led Western liberal order aggravated by the Russia–Ukraine war, to seek leadership of the Global South. It seeks to act as the leader of a new ‘non‐alignment’, which has emerged as a consequence of the war.

Governing sustainable corridor development: A case study of the Gilimanuk–Denpasar–Padang Bai corridor in Indonesia

AbstractIn regional planning, and more specifically transport corridor development, sustainability is often overshadowed by economic ambitions and prospects. This contribution explores how the governance of corridor development processes can enhance sustainability. It presents findings from the planning process for the Gilimanuk–Denpasar–Padang Bai (GDP) Corridor in Bali, Indonesia. The analysis is guided by a theoretical framework that builds on literature on regional development, corridor development, sustainability and governance. Using process tracing, the analysis investigates the influence of five governance factors on the process of sustainable corridor development and its outcomes, notably the presence of a sustainability vision, the governance mode, the actor constellation, the available knowledge, and the institutional setting. Whereas literature on sustainable corridors suggests that governance structures and corridor management are needed, this contribution analysis how and under what conditions these structures in practice contribute to sustainable outcomes. The findings show how the original economic focus of the corridor gradually evolved into a more sustainable one, although not all potentials were realized. These illustrate that sustainable corridors require governance of interaction processes, involving a dynamic and contextualized constellation of governance factors, that co‐evolves during the planning process. Despite that the GDP corridor gradually developed into a more sustainable direction, the presence of a sustainability rather than an economic focus from the onset would have increased the potentials of realizing sustainability ambitions.

Research progress and hotspot evolution analysis of wildfire disasters in national park communities

In recent years, wildfire disasters have had an essential impact on national park communities' social, economic, and ecological structure, which has gradually become the forefront of academic attention. Therefore, to review the research history of wildfire disasters in national park communities, this paper used CiteSpace and Bibliometric R analysis tools to conduct a detailed analysis of 328 kinds of literature in the Web of Science database from 2002 to 2023. The data showed that the number of papers published was rising, and the subjects involved included ecology, botany and zoology. However, there is still a need for increased collaboration among the collaborating groups of authors, institutions, and countries. From the perspective of the research content, it mainly focused on the mathematical model and established a comprehensive database to simulate and predict wildfire disasters. Finally, we predict a future research direction using keyword clustering and burst detection -the management framework for wildfire disaster risk prevention. The key points include improving the governance mode of the country, community and enterprise and improving the simulation and prediction ability of mathematical models. This study provided a reference for promoting wildfire hazard risk identification and management in national park communities.

Threats, Victims and Unimaginable Subjects of Rights: A Genealogy of Sex Worker Governance in Poland

This paper sketches the emergence of, and shifts within, the social, legal, and political figurations of sex workers in Poland. By adopting a genealogical perspective, I investigate how sex workers have been (re)constituted as subjects of governance and unimaginable social justice claimants in legislation, political debates, and law enforcement strategies. With a broad temporal scope, this article traces continuities, transformations, and disruptions within modes of sex work governance in Poland from the adoption of the first laws relating to sex work enacted during the early 19th century to the present day. Through analysis of policy documents, scholarly work on the history of sex work policies in Poland, and personal accounts by sex workers, I identify and examine two dominant discursive and legal figurations of a sex worker: as a threat, and as a victim in need of rescue and protection. While analysing the emergence of and interplay between these two figurations, this article demonstrates how these seemingly contradictory frames of recognition gradually conjoined within 20th-century Polish sex work governance strategies, rendering sex workers unimaginable subjects of rights and social justice claimants.

From co-produced hegemony to coerced imperial governance

ABSTRACT This paper is inspired by recent analyses of the nature of imperial power that unbundle it from the modes of global governance performed by European rulers in the ‘Age of Empire’. While maintaining the defining features of the concept, it argues that today’s global Pax Americana is constituted by a variety of legal regulatory instruments that define the topography of an imperial regime through strategies of inclusion/exclusion that dilute the national and economic sovereignty of the targeted community or state. The argument is fleshed out by applying it as a grille de lecture to four existing case studies published by historians of science and technology, including my own. The regulatory systems they describe evolved from a classic metropolitan-periphery mode of colonial subordination (in the case of Hawaiʻi in the early twentieth century), through a US–UN brokered legal status of strategic trusteeship to legitimate the use of the Marshall islands to destructively test weapons after World War Two, to the use of export controls and other regulatory instruments to control the transnational flow of US-origin knowledge, know-how and technical data in the nuclear and commercial fields.

The indirect government of family farming: the case of Pillar II projects of the Green Morocco Plan

The agricultural field is experiencing several transformations which embody ways of thinking drawn from the neoliberal repertoire. However, there is no conceptual reference to neoliberalism in the debates and analyzes around agricultural policy in Morocco, even less with regard to family farming. The objective of this article is to analyze to what extent neoliberal practices in the agricultural world are not experienced as a break but make sense with ancestral practices; it is an imperial imagination familiar with the indirect mode of government, particularly with delegations. The results show that Family Farming, particularly under Pillar II projects, is governed by delegation to characters chosen according to a historically constructed political imagination. Thus, this study would contribute to a new reading of the modes of government of family farming, as much as it would promote new approaches making it possible to restore historical sequences of indirect government of the agricultural sector in Morocco.

Making donations work in crisis management: A contingent governance transition in philanthropy in Wuhan's COVID‐19 response

AbstractIn response to public complaints about the chaotic management of donations during the emergency, the site of the first identified COVID‐19 case, Wuhan (in central China), underwent a contingent governance transition. And given the public complaints about the disorganized management of donations during the early stage of emergency management in Wuhan in January 2020, local governments initiated a minor governance transition in philanthropy, involving multiple stakeholders such as public and private charities, as well as private enterprises. In contrast to the abundance of literature on governance actors such as the state, the market, and societal actors, this review discusses the changes in governance mechanisms using publicly available data from governmental websites, policy documents, and news reports. It examines a minor governance change in local philanthropy from hierarchical bureaucratic governance to embryotic non‐monocentric governance and to expedient collaborative/interactive governance. Moreover, it highlights the yet‐to‐be institutionalized characteristics of the newly emerging governance models in China, a country where the traditional mode of hierarchical governance is dominant. This article not only adds to the body of evidence on governance failures caused by monocentric bureaucracy, but it also contributes to the literature on public governance transition in China's philanthropic sector and the state‐society relations more broadly.

Addressing complexity and diversity in the sustainable transitions of spiny lobster fisheries in Quintana Roo, Mexico

This study articulates five dimensions of territorial governance (social capital, leadership, transparency, accountability, socioenvironmental innovations, and commercialization routes) to construct a tripartite typology that helps explain the diverse sustainable transitions of small-scale fisheries in specific territorial contexts. The types are: 1) participative-inclusive governance expressed in solid institutions dedicated to environmental conservation; 2) exclusive-conflictive governance which generates institutions that are fragile for environmental conservation; and 3) transitional governance toward inclusion and responsible fishing, seen in communities that are implementing social and organizational changes to reduce overexploitation of fishing resources. Intensive fieldwork was conducted in localities devoted to spiny lobster fishing along the coast of Quintana Roo. We also held 106 interviews with key actors in governance. Results show that articulating intra- and extra-territorial networks is vitally important in developing the kinds of socioenvironmental innovations that can help local fishermen respond to the multiple environmental, economic, and political contingencies that affect their territories. We conclude that it is necessary to articulate institutional changes on various territorial scales to propel sustainable transitions that are realistic and feasible for small-scale fishers in marginalized communities in countries of the Global South.

Analysis of the Dynamic Evolution Game of Government, Enterprise and the Public to Control Industrial Pollution

This paper proposes a two-party evolutionary game model of government and enterprise to solve the dilemma of industrial pollution control and explore the mode of government and enterprise collaborative governance. The local equilibrium points of the game model in four cases are calculated and analyzed, and the results show that government power alone cannot help enterprises achieve an ideal level of pollution reduction, and it is necessary to introduce public power for supervision. Based on the above, a tripartite evolutionary game model comprising the government, the public, and the enterprise is proposed. When the costs and benefits of the tripartite game players meet certain conditions, the system will evolve to a state of equilibrium (0,1,1). Following the current situation of economic development in China, the parameters of the two-party and tripartite evolutionary game are assigned, and the operating path and system’s evolution trajectory of the two-party and tripartite industrial pollution control are simulated by Matlab R2016a software. It is indicated that whether the government participates in supervision or not, an enterprise will actively control pollution under strong public supervision, which can provide feasible suggestions for the selection of industrial pollution control policies.

The paradox of collective climate action in rural U.S. ecovillages: ethnographic reflections and perspectives

Are ecovillages suited to the challenge of climate change and radical social transformation? While often framed as social experiments with the potential to support dramatic social change, we argue that ecovillages should be seen as more than that - complicated sites which both enable and constrain social action in the fight to stem the effects of climate change. As ethnographic researchers with a variety of experiences researching ecovillages, we critically examine some of the factors that affect the power of ecovillages to accomplish this mission, including governance modes that support reduced individual consumption patterns and impact; a commons infrastructure with decreased socioeconomic demands on members, and differing geographic locales with varying socio-political limitations. We conclude this piece by discussing how these factors should inform future research on the transformative nature of ecovillages.

Challenges in accelerating net-zero transitions: insights from transport electrification in Germany and California

Addressing the climate crisis necessitates accelerating transitions towards climate-neutral systems of production and consumption, with electrification emerging as a crucial decarbonisation strategy. The acceleration of such net-zero transitions across multiple systems faces significant resistance and contestation. In this paper, we propose an extended list of challenges unique to the acceleration phase of socio-technical transitions: we introduce ‘expansion and contestation’, ‘justice’, and ‘international dynamics’ as additional challenge types to complement the already acknowledged challenge types of ‘whole systems change’, ‘interaction between multiple systems’, ‘decline and resistance’, ‘consumers and social practices’, and ‘governance’. We apply this extended analytical framework to the electrification of private-passenger vehicles and investigate the unfolding transition to e-mobility with evidence from 35 expert interviews in Germany and California. We uncover over 50 real-world challenges associated with these net-zero transitions at the beginning of the acceleration phase. Most challenges fall within the categories of ‘expansion and contestation’ and ‘governance’. While Germany and California share many real-world challenges, we also find significant variation between both jurisdictions, which we attribute to differences in their automotive incumbency, transition governance approaches, and institutional contexts. We discuss implications for future research, arguing for greater attention to the dual politics of acceleration during net-zero transitions: political conflict not only centres around the decline of old industries and future losses, but also around the expansion of the new system and associated future gains.

Beyond scalable impacts: Roles of mobility experiments in local transition governance

The impact of short-term, localized real-world experiments on sustainable change is debated. Our analysis of three mobility experiments shows that even in the absence of quantifiable results, these experiments are still perceived as successful. By highlighting the underlying collective discursive strategies, we emphasize the different roles of experimentation in local mobility transitions and the importance of social learning and collective understanding in urban experimentation.In this article, we explore the role of real-world experiments in local transition governance, focusing on the negotiation between measurable impacts and the evaluation of localized, tangible outcomes. In our qualitative comparative analysis, we examine three distinct mobility experiments aimed at advancing sustainable transformation in mobility and urban planning, namely the co-creative research project City2Share in Munich, the political program of the Superblocks in Barcelona, and the real-world test bed for automated shuttles Digibus Austria in Koppl near Salzburg. Despite the structural limitations of the temporal, spatial, and legal framework and the uncertainties in measuring the impact, all experiments were presented as successful. This success was negotiated and re-framed via five discursive strategies: mobilizing citizen engagement, highlighting small achievements, manifesting institutional embedding, generating political momentum, and delegating responsibility. As we argue, success and scaling are not just the result of scientific proof, but also a matter of negotiating the political issues raised by the experiment.

Home futures: a house biography of futures for a modernist high-rise estate

House biographies tend to focus on buildings’ pasts. By comparison, this article develops a house biography of futures for a modernist high-rise estate, the Aylesbury Estate in London. It argues that a house biography of futures explores the multiple futures of house, building, estate and the built environment. To provide the biography the fieldwork involved archival research, oral history interviews and home tours, semi structured in-depth interviews and photography. The article reveals the history of governed futures at the estate. Multiple modes of future governance unfolded, such as a modernist future and regeneration, due to the indeterminacy of the future. There were a range of everyday home futures, including a modernist domesticity and more ordinary futures, with the future present in the estate’s materiality and residents’ lived experiences. The article draws attention to the multiple futures of home.

Governance As a Delicate Balance: On the Concept of Luṭf in Islamic Mirrors for Princes

Abstract This article is concerned with Islamic works on political ethics as a practical guide for competent governance. The article primarily focuses on the concept of luṭf (gentleness) in the works of al-ādāb al-sulṭāniyya (the ethics of government, i.e., Islamic mirrors for princes). The main argument is that Muslim writers of al-ādāb al-sulṭāniyya literature warned rulers against depending on coercive power as the basic mode of governance. Instead, the majority emphasized that the most practical way to govern a state was to practice governance based on a balance between rewards and punishments. Based on their advice, rulers should avoid cruelty in favor of an interdependent political order based on social cooperation between the different classes. The article first explains the concept of luṭf and the importance of avoiding cruelty. Second, the article relates how luṭf operates in the realm of public policy, ruler-people relations, and the responsibility of rulers. Finally, the article highlights how luṭf dictates a functional elite structure based on loyalty and mutual respect. The methodology of this article relies on primary sources, mostly analyzing the presence of luṭf as a concept and the details of governance surrounding the concept. The article seeks to show the intricacies of the state through understanding the concept of luṭf and its relation with practicing politics in a cohesive Muslim social structure.

Research on the efficiency optimization of food reserve under the complementary reserve mode of government and enterprise in China

Food reserve is the cornerstone of national strategic security. China strives to build a complementary reserve system between government and enterprises, and how to improve the efficiency of food reserves is a matter of great concern to the government and society. Based on the analysis of the connotation of food reserve efficiency, this paper constructs the revenue function and the cost function of food reserve in an emergency and uses the cost–benefit method to explore the best ratio of government reserve, corporate social responsibility reserve, and commercial inventory when maximizing the efficiency of food reserve. This ratio is closely related to the total food reserve, the scale of supply interruption, the reserve cost of food stored by enterprises, and the government’s subsidy cost for the social responsibility reserve. The unit subsidy cost of government to social responsibility reserve is inversely proportional to the proportion of corporate social responsibility reserve to corporate reserve. Doing a good job in the social responsibility management of food enterprises is an effective way to improve the efficiency of food reserves. To expand the scale of social responsibility reserves and realize “storing food in enterprises,” the subsidies given by the government for corporate social responsibility reserves should not be too high. Taking food social responsibility reserve as an important part of corporate social responsibility, it’s the key to promoting enterprises to actively undertake food social responsibility reserves. The conclusion of this paper provides a theoretical basis and decision-making reference for how to improve the efficiency of food reserves.

Place-Based Adaptation through Network Governance

Following the inception of Climate Change Adaptation (CCA) within the UNFCCC in 1992, national CCA plans began to emerge around 2008. However, identifying successful cases of adaptation remains challenging. This is because CCA policies often stop at planning, with selective reporting of relevant projects. Recognizing that planning is not the same as actual delivery, substantial gaps persist in connecting these plans to concrete actions, hindering successful adaptation. This paper explores this implementation deficit through the examination of three different governance modes (hierarchies, markets, and networks). Drawing on a policy review (desk study), a qualitative online survey, and semi-structured interviews with professionals engaged in local CCA policies, we identified enablers of effective adaptation policy progress by comparing the Edinburgh and Glasgow city regions. Despite their close spatial and relational proximity, these two city regions have distinct administrative geographies, political leadership, and adaptation-related networks, which identify unique local contexts sufficient to drive different CCA progress. We noted more CCA progress when specific resources included coordinators (dedicated staff) and fiscal supplements, along with regional networks connecting local communities and strengthening partnerships while sharing common values such as reputational opportunities in the Glasgow city region. These findings shed light on effective adaptation governance modes that require not only a deep understanding of place-based contexts but also the presence or nurturing of broader and reinforced networks.

Stakeholders’ perceptions of hydrogen and reflections on energy transition governance

BackgroundThere is a race to innovate, develop or create hydrogen production technologies to accelerate energy transition and create a hydrogen economy. Acceptance has been used in social science literature as a lens through which to anticipate possible challenges surrounding hydrogen technologies. However, very few studies problematize perceptions and focus on the production of hydrogen. Hence, this study aims to bridge these theoretical and empirical gaps using a mixed-method approach based on semi-structured interviews (n = 7) and a questionnaire survey (n = 73) to understand stakeholders’ perceptions of hydrogen production sources through a social construction of technology lens.ResultsThe findings suggest a tendency to favor hydrogen produced from renewable sources and to reject hydrogen produced from non-renewable sources. All the examined groups conform to this pattern. Their perceptions are based on prior knowledge of hydrogen technologies, with participants seeking information from specialized sources or from activities promoted by their organizations. Participants anticipate that hydrogen will be generated primarily through renewable energy sources and utilized where direct electrification is unfeasible. In addition, they envisage that the hydrogen economy will enhance energy democracy through representative participation in decision-making. Nevertheless, it is acknowledged that the topic is limited to certain social groups and kept away from the public eye. Furthermore, unlike the benefits, the perception of risk appears to have no impact on perceptions’ construction. High confidence in science appears to minimize the recognition of potential risks and bolster the recognition of potential benefits. There is, however, a lot of uncertainty about the possible real impacts of the hydrogen economy.ConclusionsThere appears to be a collective perspective on hydrogen production sources, indicating the existence of social representations. Nevertheless, group attitudes and backing towards hydrogen vary. The participants identify hydrogen as a matter that remained unnoticed for over a decade, despite its prominent position in the policies and economic approaches of numerous countries. The topic has been relegated to third parties. This exclusion of civil society from decision-making may justify the NGO group's critical stance towards hydrogen. Moreover, it suggests that energy democracy, which is based on information dissemination and participation, is not being achieved.

해방직후 대한민국임시정부의 통일운동

This paper is about the unification movement of the Provisional Government of the Republic of Korea(PGRK) right after liberation. On December 20, 1945, PGRK finalized the Founding Line. The first step was to establish a transitional government by convening the Emergency Political Council that included people from all political forces. Therefore, PGRK's unification movement is defined as a series of activities to involve all political forces in the Emergency Political Council. On the first stage, PGRK negotiated with political parties and organizations, but failed to narrow down the differences with the left-wing forces, ending on January 5 1946. On the second, PGRK tried to convene a five-party meeting to serve as a preliminary meeting for the Emergency Political Conference, but this also failed, ending on January 16. Finally, PGRK abandoned negotiations with the left-wing forces and decides to convene the Preliminary meeting of the Emergency Political Conference, by unilateral notification. PGRK's unification movement failed due to the lack of participation from the left-wing forces. This was a major reason why PGRK lost the momentum to implement the Founding Line and participated in the “political organization” plan of Syngman Rhee and the U.S. Army Military Government in Korea instead of pursuing independent activities.

Human Capital Formation and Territorial Governance at the Heart of Building a Skill's Local Economy: The Exemplarity of Corsica

In Corsica, the island economy is characterized by the absence of large multinational groups that direct and shape the global economy. Nor is there any mention of the existence of medium-sized enterprises, which in many other regions, like the Third Italy, constitute the spearhead of a dynamic economy. The Corsican economic fabric consists mainly of very small businesses, small farmers and producers, artisans, and traders. Given the hypertrophy of the public sector, private companies seem to be the only option likely to trigger a dynamic of territorial development. The latter necessarily involves the development of strategies for the formation of human capital and a technological research process whose objective is to increase the level of skills, responding to the immanent needs of the island territory. In this perspective, the mode of territorial governance prefigures a model of economic development to be favored.