High-level Government Officials Research Articles

Analysis of coverage of the 11 March 2004 Madrid train bombings in Spain’s El País and El Diario Vasco through war and peace journalism frames

This study examines the way in which two major Spanish newspapers, El País and El Diario Vasco, framed the 11 March 2004 (11-M) Madrid train bombings through peace journalism or war journalism, based on Peace Studies theorist Johan Galtung’s classification. An analysis of the news articles in the immediate aftermath of the bombings finds both frames present. The incumbent Spanish government initially tried to use the news media as a vehicle to present a premature interpretation that the Basque separatist group ETA perpetrated the attacks, even trying to pass a United Nations resolution. However, some journalistic coverage of the events in the week after the 11-M attacks portrayed the Spanish people’s sentiments regarding Spain’s support of the US in the Iraq war, Spaniards’ engagement with their democracy, including massive street protests, and parallels between the Iraqi people’s suffering and the Spanish train bombing victims. Other journalistic coverage focused on the perspectives of high-level Spanish government officials, emphasized the importance of prevailing in ‘the war on terror’, and provided an ‘us–them’ orientation.

Editorial introduction: Punctuated equilibrium, multiple streams, environmental governance, and many more

Editorial introduction: Punctuated equilibrium, multiple streams, environmental governance, and many more

The challenges in protecting public health interests in multisectoral governance in the context of small island developing states: the case of tobacco control in Fiji and Vanuatu

BackgroundThe commercial determinants of health (CDoH) drive the rise of NCDs globally, and their regulation requires multisectoral governance. Despite existing recommendations to strengthen institutional structures, protecting public health interests can be challenging amidst industry interference and conflicting policy priorities, particularly in low and middle-income countries (LMICs) where the need for rapid economic development is pronounced. Small island developing states (SIDS) face even more challenges in regulating CDoH because their unique socioeconomic, political, and geographic vulnerabilities may weaken institutional conditions that could aid health sector actors in protecting health interests. This study aims to explore the institutional conditions that shape health sector actors’ capability to protect public health interests in tobacco governance in Fiji and Vanuatu.MethodsWe employed a qualitative, exploratory case study design. We applied the administrative process theory to inform data collection and analysis. Seventy interviews were completed in Fiji and Vanuatu from 2018 to 2019.ResultsThe findings show that the protection of health interests in tobacco governance were not supported by the institutional conditions in Fiji and Vanuatu. While the policy processes formally ensured a level playing field between actors, policies were often developed through informal mechanisms, and the safeguards to protect public interests from vested private interests were not implemented adequately. SIDS vulnerabilities and weak regulation of political parties contributed to the politicisation of government in both states, resulting in high-level government officials’ questionable commitment to protect public health interests. The system of checks and balances usually embedded into democratic governments appeared to be muted, and policymakers had limited bureaucratic autonomy to elevate health interests in multisectoral policymaking amidst high-level government officials’ frequent rotation. Finally, capacity constraints aggravated by SIDS vulnerabilities negatively impacted health sector actors' capability to analyse policy alternatives.ConclusionsHealth sector actors in Fiji and Vanuatu were not supported by institutional conditions that could help them protect public health interests in multisectoral governance to regulate CDoH originating from the tobacco industry. Institutional conditions in these states were shaped by SIDS vulnerabilities but could be improved by targeted capacity building, governance and political system strengthening.

Relationship-based debt financing of Chinese private sector firms: The role of social connections to banks versus political connections

We study whether a firm's social connections to banks can augment its political connections to help it obtain loans. In China, Regulation No. 18 (announced in 2013) prohibits all high-level government officials from being independent directors of firms. As a result, many firms lost their political connections. We find that after firms lose their politically connected independent directors, firms having no social connections to banks experience, on average, a 12% decrease in the bank loan ratio relative to the median ratio; but those whose board chairs or CEOs are socially connected to local bank branch heads experience a 22% increase in the loan ratio relative to the median. However, this positive effect is short lived and thus not a new equilibrium. Overall, our findings support the hypothesis that a firm's social connections to banks can augment its political connections to help it get bank financing.

Experiences and Lessons Learned in Developing and Implementing a Population-Based Nutrition and Health Surveillance System in Guatemala 2011–2021

BackgroundPractice-based experiences documenting development and implementation of nutrition and health surveillance systems are needed. ObjectivesTo describe processes, methods, and lessons learned from developing and implementing a population-based household nutrition and health surveillance system in Guatemala. MethodsThe phases and methods for the design and implementation of the surveillance system are described. Efforts to institutionalize the system in government institutions are described, and illustrative examples describing different data uses, and lessons learned are provided. ResultsAfter initial assessments of data needs and consultations with officials in government institutions and partners in the country, a population-based nutrition surveillance system prototype with complex sampling was designed and tested in 5 Guatemalan Highland departments in 2011. After dissemination of the prototype, government and partners expanded the content, and multitopic nutrition and health surveillance cycles were collected in 2013, 2015, 2016, 2017/18, and 2018/19 providing nationally representative data for households, women of reproductive age (15–49 y), and children aged 0–59 mo. For each cycle, data were to be collected from 100 clusters, 30 households in each, and 1 woman and 1 child per household. Content covered ∼25 health and nutrition topics, including coverage of all large-scale nutrition-specific interventions; the micronutrient content of fortifiable sugar, salt, and bread samples; anthropometry; and biomarkers to assess annually, or at least once, ∼25 indicators of micronutrient status and chronic disease. Data were collected by 3–5 highly trained field teams. The design was flexible and revised each cycle allowing potential changes to questionnaires, population groups, biomarkers, survey design, or other changes. Data were used to change national guidelines for vitamin A and B-12 interventions, among others, and evaluate interventions. Barriers included frequent changes of high-level government officials and heavy dependence on US funding. ConclusionsThis system provides high-quality data, fills critical data gaps, and can serve as a useful model for others.

Governance issues related to the management and conservation of mangrove ecosystems to support climate change mitigation actions in Indonesia

Mangrove ecosystems in Indonesia show great promise in contributing to climate change mitigation, but they continue to experience significant degradation primarily because of aquaculture conversion. This work analyzes the mangrove governance in Indonesia and how it fits the country's high emission reduction. The study is mainly based on the analysis of existing regulations, interviews with relevant stakeholders, focus group discussions, and series of executive lectures from high-level government officials. Results indicate overlapping authority claims by government institutions stemming from the absence of strong regulations specifically dedicated to mangrove management and conservation. Different government institutions have varied philosophical conceptions and development priorities for sustainably managing and conserving mangroves. This study identifies specific operational regulations that potentially undermine synergies across institutions for mangrove ecosystems. The conflicting regulations relate to coastal reclamation activities, management of mangroves in non-forest zones, and expansion of commercial aquaculture. In addition, several emerging policies, which are anticipated to further encourage ecosystem degradation, are discussed. This work then provides recommendations that can be adopted to foster an improved management and conservation of mangrove ecosystems, with the far-reaching aim to support the country's goals to reduce its carbon emissions. These recommendations include improved orchestrations of policy priorities of different institutions, including the active participation of local communities in the protection and conservation of mangroves.

Focus on the people: key stakeholders’ perceptions of elite sport in India and its potential for development

ABSTRACT Rationale/Purpose : Despite its best efforts, India is still struggling to succeed in international sport. Consequently, this study aimed to firstly, contribute an empirically driven rich picture of the current sports environment in India and secondly, to explore management factors that might explain India’s elite sport achievements and stagnations. Design/Methodology/Approach : A purposeful sample of 25 key stakeholders (high level athletes, coaches, administrators and government officials) were interviewed. Data were analysed using thematic analysis and reviewed against factors identified by Green and Oakley (2001) as those contributing to elite success. Findings : Participants revealed that India is definitely doing better on factors such as financial assistance and job security; issues that were always a constant source of concern in the past. Importantly, however, further exploration highlighted that resources invested in Indian sport are not being used effectively and that India may be following an erroneous pathway of prioritizing hardware over liveware (i.e. stadia over people). Practical Implications : The study provides some initial conclusions that managing the available resources differently by prioritizing development of Indian coaches and a coach development system might better facilitate India’s success in sport. Research Contributions : The current study, to the best of our knowledge, represents an important but comparatively unprecedented step towards trying to unwrap the sports field in India, a diverse and vast country.

Anne Carson e A Verdade Sobre Deus

Apresentação da tradução inédita de três poemas da série “A Verdade Sobre Deus” do livro Glass, Irony & God (1995) da escritora canadense Anne Carson. A escolha destes três poemas tem como objetivo apresentar ao público leitor brasileiro procedimentos estéticos que a autora lança mão em seus poemas para operar uma ampliação do imaginário sobre Deus. Pensando que a palavra Deus está, hoje no Brasil, na boca dos ministros e ministra de Estado, parece relevante saber como as/os poetas manipulam esse imaginário coletivo e como isso aparece nas escolhas tradutórias de textos para o português brasileiro.

Transparency or Loopholes: Target Locations, FISA Warrants, and Reasonable Belief

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) of 1978 was a grand compromise. FISA aimed at continued collection of national security intelligence, while preserving American civil liberties from government overreach. This compromise sought to assuage concerns from the tech industry and high-level government officials by providing protection to both from litigation. The FISA comprise was premised on the independence of a specially created judicial court, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC), overseeing executive power while providing reporting to Congress. A true balance of power. From its inception, FISA's basic foundation for legality is founded on government knowledge of the physical location of targets. This foundation has not aged well as technology has evolved. In addition to technological advances, the law itself has not been updated to reflect the changes in technology. Congress has shown a penchant for reacting to either the executive or the Supreme Court. Congress' reaction to litigation in 2018, the Court's recent ruling in Carpenter, and Special Counsel Mueller's investigation into Russian election interference with subsequent Congressional disclosures, all threaten the vitality of FISA. This article outlines the foundation, covers the technological developments, and exposes flaws in the FISA system. The Article argues the Government, along with the tech industry must rework another grand compromise to ensure the continued vitality of national security surveillance, while continuing to protect American civil liberties from government overreach.

Davida Coady: humanitarian paediatrician, political activist, and recovering alcoholic

As a paediatrician and then, later in her career, as an addiction treatment specialist, Davida Coady’s mission in life was to do “the greatest good for the greatest number of...

Twenty years of community-based disaster risk reduction experience from a dryland village in Indonesia.

Academics and practitioners often argue indirectly that all the roads to community resilience should be paved with community-based disaster risk reduction (CBDRR) approach. Community-based approach to resilience building has been a discursive material that appeals many disaster management players including international donors, non-governmental organisations and high-level government officials as well as politicians. Some researchers argue that CBDRR is the foundation of disaster risk governance. Unfortunately, globally, there is lack of studies on long-term and real-world experience of CBDRR. This article addresses this research gap by providing insights of CBDRR activities from a village in eastern Indonesia based on long-term studies. The adoption of CBDRR approach in Indonesia took place in the late 1990s and the authors have been part of the early adopters of the framework. Using longitudinal participant observations, this research combined qualitative and quantitative data collected during 1998–2017. It shows the rise and fall of a community responding to disaster risks over time. The article further highlights stories of frustrations and celebrations that surround CBDRR activities implemented by one local community in a dryland village in eastern Indonesia.

What leads to official corruption in China? A politico-economic analysis of economic opportunities and government corruption across China’s provinces

This paper investigates the relationship between economic opportunities and official corruption in China. We construct a cross-province sample of corrupted officials to analyse the effects on official corruption of mineral reserve, coal production, real estate and road construction, while including control variables such as population, GDP per capita, economic growth rate, private assets, provincial government capacity, fiscal transparency and distance of the province from Beijing. Spanning from December 2012 to November 2015, our sample contains 526 high-level government officials who worked in various provinces in China. We find through multivariate regression that economic opportunities represented by coal, minerals, real estate and road construction all have a positive and significant effect on official corruption in China at the levels of provincial department director or deputy director; meanwhile, capacity of political extraction, road construction and coal production are better indicators of official corruption at the level of governor or deputy governor.

Individual capacity-building approaches in a global pharmaceutical systems strengthening program: a selected review

BackgroundMedicines use related challenges such as inadequate adherence, high levels of antimicrobial resistance and preventable adverse drug reactions have underscored the need to incorporate pharmaceutical services to help achieve desired treatment outcomes, and protect patients from inappropriate use of medicines. This situation is further constrained by insufficient numbers of pharmaceutical personnel and inappropriate skill mix. Studies have addressed individual capacity building approaches of logistics, supply chain or disease specific interventions but few have documented those involving such pharmacy assistants/professionals, or health workers/professionals charged with improving access and provision of pharmaceutical services. We examined how different training modalities have been employed and adapted to meet country-specific context and needs by a global pharmaceutical systems strengthening program in collaboration with a country’s Ministry of Health and local stakeholders.MethodsStructured, content analysis of training approaches from twelve selected countries and a survey among conveniently selected trainees in Bangladesh and Ethiopia.ResultsCase-based learning, practice and feedback, and repetitive interventions such as post-training action plan, supportive supervision and mentoring approaches are effective, evidence-based training techniques. In Ethiopia and Bangladesh, over 94% of respondents indicated that they have improved or developed skills or competencies as a result of the program’s training activities. Supportive supervision structures and mentorship have been institutionalized with appropriate management structures. National authorities have been sensitized to secure funding from domestic resources or from the global fund grants for post-training follow-up initiatives. The Pharmaceutical Leadership Development Program is an effective, case-based training modality that motivates staff to develop quality-improvement interventions and solve specific challenges. Peer-to-peer learning mechanisms than traditional didactic methods was a preferred intervention among high level government officials both within country and between countries.ConclusionInterventions must involve local institutions in the design and delivery of content for both pre-service and in-service training as well as web-based methods where feasible. Such efforts would meet the changing demand in the pharmaceutical system, and promote the ownership of the human capacity development interventions. The cost-effective partnership with universities demonstrate that competency based pre-service training will prepare the future pharmaceutical workforce with a critical foundation of knowledge and skills required to meet the growing demand for patient-centered pharmaceutical services in resource-constrained countries.

Education and Training Japanese Government Officials: Current Trends and Policy Study Aspects

We explain the recruiting and promoting system for high-level Japanese government officials showing the trend of numbers of applicants for the recruitment examination, those who passed the examination, and also those who were employed by some ministries in the last 17 years. We describe the major characteristics of the promotion system for Japanese government officials. Educating and training Japanese government officials in the area of policy studies have been conducted in both university schools, governmental training centers, governmental schools and colleges. An education and training system for government officials needs to be developed so that each government official is equipped with a certain specialty and expertise. A formal system for evaluating individuals and programs has not been common in Japan, especially for evaluating individual work and contribution. We need to “invent” an evaluation system that will make the government officials’ decision-making system work more efficiently. Public and private universities, in particular, have been very active in creating many policy-related schools and departments in the last 20 years. Policy studies, which have been conducted in various schools in the university and government research institutes, are described in detail with their objectives, curriculums, and requirements.

Governing Growth

On 24 April 2013, Rana Plaza, a nine-storey building that housed five garment factories, a commercial bank and several retail shops, collapsed, killing more than 1,100 people. Had Bangladesh’s well-regarded building code been enforced, the tragedy would never have occurred. Through an exploration of the process by which real estate development projects are approved and building construction overseen, this article attempts to provide an explanation for why there is such a wide gap between formal policy and actual implementation. Following such tragic events, elected officials come under considerable pressure from civil society groups and citizens to pass stronger legislation, and Bangladesh’s political system, which concentrates power in the majority party and that party’s leadership, allows for the relatively easy passage of legislation. Nonetheless, dramatic population growth and limited availability of land create powerful incentives for developers to evade these regulations. Collusion between developers, the regulator and high-level government officials responsible for overseeing the regulator has ensured that both the laws and court orders are unenforced.

Political Connections and Accounting Quality under High Expropriation Risk

We examine the impact of political connections and accounting quality among Venezuelan industrial firms, which face one of the highest levels of expropriation risk worldwide. Based on prior literature, we expect a negative relationship between expropriation risk and accounting quality as firms manage earnings to avoid ‘benign’ state intervention. We find that politically connected firms have higher accounting quality than non-connected firms, which is consistent with connected firms’ lower risk of expropriation due to connections with high-level government officials or ruling party members. The relationship between accounting quality and political connections appears to be strongly moderated by institutional features like expropriation risk.

Science, technology and innovation policies in small and developing economies: The case of Central America

In the last decade, there has been an increasing recognition among Central American policy makers of the central importance of science, technology and innovation (STI) for inclusive and sustainable economic growth, based on higher productivity. This paper aims to study current STI policies in those countries and explore whether this increasing acknowledgement has come along with new and more active policies. Empirical evidence collected through questionnaire-based interviews with high-level government officials in each country shows that Central American governments have built public organisations and institutions to support STI, such as laws, national plans and a wide variety of policy instruments. Yet available science and technology indicators illustrate that the results are still meagre. This paper identifies eight barriers faced by these governments when designing and implementing STI policies.

Street-level policy entrepreneurship

Research on policy entrepreneurs typically identifies these individuals as high-level government officials or actors who lobby such elites, largely ignoring low-rung bureaucrats whose entrepreneurship concerns policy implementation. These lacunae may exist because street-level bureaucracy scholarship does not necessarily expect implementing bureaucrats to be entrepreneurial. This article argues the contrary. The existence of street-level policy entrepreneurship and its influence on policy innovations pursued by public bureaucracies is illuminated via two US state case studies. The cases describe efforts by state bureaucrats to adopt and entrench a science policy innovation for wetland management into regulatory practice.

Estimating the Value of Connections to Vice-President Cheney

Abstract We estimate the market valuation of personal ties to Richard Cheney. Our proxies for personal ties are based on corporate board linkages that are prevalent in the network sociology literature. We consider a number of distinct political and personal events that either affected Cheney’s political fortunes or his ability to hand out political favors. Specifically, we consider: (a) market reaction of connected companies to news of Cheney’s heart attacks; (b) market reaction of connected companies to Cheney’s being placed in charge of the vice-presidential search process and his surprise self-appointment; (c) correlation of the value of connected companies with the probability of a Bush victory in 2000; and (d) correlation of the value of connected companies with the probability of war in Iraq. Contrary to conventional wisdom, we find that in all cases, the value of ties to Cheney is precisely estimated as zero. We interpret this as evidence that U.S. institutions are effective in controlling rent-seeking through personal ties with high-level government officials.

Chinese Think Tanks, Policy Advice and Global Governance

Soon after leaving his post in the Chinese government, Zeng Peiyan, a former Chinese vice premier, was elected chairman of the executive council of the China Center for International Economic Exchanges (CCIEE), a high-level think that was established 2010 in Beijing. The official press release and the state sponsored media in China announced and then anointed this new organization as China's top think tank and a super think tank. A number of other former high level government officials were recruited to serve on the Board and the think was launched with great fanfare with think tanks and policymakers being invited to the inaugural conference last Spring. CCIEE's initial research agenda is ambitious and includes the continuing financial crisis, the emergence of China and the new world financial order, the strategic cooperation between China and the United States, the decision-making systems of foreign governments and international organizations including the World Bank, International Monetary Fund and the World Trade Organization and finally, the role of think tanks in formulating government economic policy. Other Chinese think tanks such as the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the Shanghai Academy of Social Sciences and the China Institute of Contemporary International Relations have dramatically increased their profiles at international meetings and expanded targeted outreach activities to think tanks around the globe. This paper will attempt to chronicle the rise of Chinese think tanks on the national and international stage. The paper will also attempt to identify the strengths and weaknesses of Chinese think tanks in the domestic and international political context. Finally, the research attempts to make some comparisons to think tanks in other emerging powers such as India and Brazil.