Implementation Deficits Research Articles

Deficient by Design? Why Australia’s Ramsar Convention Implementation Deficits are Symptomatic of Outdated Treaty Reception Mechanisms

Deficient by Design? Why Australia’s Ramsar Convention Implementation Deficits are Symptomatic of Outdated Treaty Reception Mechanisms

Evaluating Medical Students' Knowledge, Attitudes, and Practices in Pharmacovigilance: A Cross-Sectional Study

Background: It is an indispensable tool for ensuring patient safety, while its practice raises numerous questions in developing countries, including Bangladesh. This paper aims at determining medical students’ Knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP) of pharmacovigilance to inform ADR reporting. Objective: To evaluate the KAP of pharmacovigilance with second-year students, final-year students, and interns enrolled in a community-oriented medical college in Bangladesh. Methods: A quantitative study design using the cross-sectional survey approach was used together with a self-administered, well-validated structured questionnaire. Second-year, final-year, and intern groups were selected with one hundred participants from each group. Descriptive statistical analysis and chi-square analysis were used in data analysis. Results: A total of 49 percent of the participants were able to correctly define pharmacovigilance; final-year students had the highest knowledge score of 72 percent. A total of 80–85% of the participants endorsed the need to report ADRs, and 75–84% believed that reporting ADRs is a professional responsibility. However, ADR reporting practice varied significantly: In the final-year students, 90% reported having filled out an ADR form, while the corresponding numbers for second-year students and interns were 12% and 34%, respectively. While 70-90% of the participants claimed to have ever been trained on how to report an ADR, only 20-28% of the participants reported to have ever experienced an ADR. Conclusion: Thus, though attitudes toward pharmacovigilance were mostly positive, major knowledge and practical implementation deficits were found, mainly concerning interns. The study underscores the need for enhanced systematic, comprehensive, and clinically focused instruction in pharmacovigilance learning in medical schools. This paper recommends that foresulfide should strengthen the existing knowledge prerequisite, integrate compulsory continuous education programs, advance practical practice, and smoothen the procedure of reporting ADRs to amplify the practices in pharmacovigilance among future healthcare human resources of Bangladesh.

Improving the Implementation of Sport Governance with an Analysis of Its Determinants: The Case of Sport National Governing Bodies in Switzerland

This research investigates new empirical routes to improve the implementation of sport governance by sports organizations. It asks the question: what determinants influence the decision of sport national governing bodies in Switzerland to implement sport governance? It builds on implementation deficits highlighted by benchmark analysis, an exploratory literature review and a description of the non-profit sector. This paper invites a reflection on the challenges and difficulties related to sport governance standards. The method builds on an exploratory, inductive and qualitative research design. The data comprise interviews with 10 decision makers of national sport federations and the national umbrella federation of sport and Olympic committee analyzed by theme-based coding. The analysis highlights five meta-themes associated with determinants: (1) strategic priority, (2) decision makers’ knowledge on the concept of sport governance, (3) sport governance issues, (4) resources, and (5) personal attributes of decision makers. The results and findings indicate that improving the implementation of sport governance is a multidimensional issue that mainly involves organizational and individual elements, and calls for a tiered approach rather than a “one size-fits all” approach.

The Interplay Between International and Regional Human Rights Instruments on the Rights of Women: Reflections on the Maputo Protocol at 18

This article examines the increasingly tense relationship between CEDAW and regional human rights instruments on women's rights. It argues that although CEDAW has been beset by a number of challenges, including a high number of reservations and implementation deficits, it remains a key pillar in the struggle to achieve women's equality. It contends, however, that the rise of a dense web regional human rights instruments, while offering a range of positive developments for women and girls, threaten to subvert the primacy of CEDAW, particularly in areas where these instruments conflict. It hones in on the Maputo Protocol in this context, and offers reflections on treating CEDAW and regional human rights instruments as mutually reinforcing, and not oppositional.

Activation policy: bruised and battered but still standing

Abstract Policies aimed at upskilling, motivating and/or disciplining the unemployed have remained a cornerstone of most OECD countries’ employment policies since the 1990s. Central to these policies is the idea of activation – i.e. the premise that benefit entitlement is conditional on one’s participation in some kind of activity. This article seek to understand how this idea of activation has proven so enduring by analyzing the international development of Activation Policies since 1990 through the lens offered by the concept of ideational robustness. It is analyzed how the robustness of the idea of activation has been continuously challenged through critiques raised against the effects, the legitimacy and the relevance of activation policies. Yet, in each of these moments of contest, proponents of the idea of activation succeeded in keeping the idea relevant as a point of reference for policymaking. They did so by rebalancing disciplinary and enabling approaches to activation, adding a new scope of application for activation policies, and rearticulating the underlying assumption about client agency. The analysis further reveals how these robustness mechanisms succeeded in appropriating the critiques due to their inscription within the technical and seemingly de-political language concerning effect evaluations, implementation deficits, and new forms of governance. Policymakers were thereby able to downplay normative questions of the legitimacy, fairness, and justice of activation policies. The idea of activation has thus taken on a status as an objective to be implemented as effective and efficiently as possible rather than as an idea to be discussed or challenged. However, while the idea of activation remains robust, the same cannot be said of the governance and implementation structures of activation policies. Our study suggest that the near-constant reforms of these governance arrangements and implementation structures during the last 30 years are partly a consequence of critique being skewed from the idea of activation to these structures and arrangements. The robustness of the idea of activation has thus, rather paradoxically, come about by reducing the robustness of specific activation policies and governance arrangements.

Can supply chain laws prevent deforestation in the Democratic Republic of the Congo and Indonesia?

There is a new trend toward public supply chain-related laws which demand information from companies on imported products. The European Union's (EU) Renewable Energy Directive (RED) and Timber Regulation (EUTR) exemplify this new type of law. In both cases, companies have to prevent deforestation in their supply chains. The Democratic Republic of the Congo and Indonesia, both among those countries with the world's highest deforestation rates, support supply chain laws on paper, but there are serious implementation deficits in practice. Using a tripartite framework developed by Cashore and Stone, our study addresses this alleged contradiction and explains deficits inherent in the laws based on the analysis of policy documents, expert interviews and field research. We find that companies take advantage of opportunities to shift exports to less regulating countries. EU member states exercise their purchasing power too cautiously over intermediary (manufacturing) countries in the supply chain, especially China. Finally, despite possibilities of public action, sanctioning is largely left to the private sector.

Human trafficking in West Africa: An implementation assessment of international and regional normative standards

It is now over 20 years since the Palermo Protocol was adopted as a global mobilisation tool to combat human trafficking. Although the Palermo Protocol has been widely ratified by all 15 states in West Africa, the implementation of the instrument in the sub-region remains unclear. Also, beyond the Palermo Protocol, a systematic assessment of other anti-trafficking mechanisms available in West Africa is non-existent. Thus, this study has two core objectives: the first is to chronicle the key anti-trafficking instruments and their relevance in West Africa, while the second aspect engages with the manner in which those norms are translated at the domestic level in three West African countries namely, Ghana, Nigeria and Senegal. The study finds that human trafficking has remained resilient both at sub-regional and domestic levels despite the legal efforts to end it. Relevant trends and implementation deficits are identified across the three states, while recommendations are offered for effective anti-trafficking governance.

Strengthening multilevel governance of public goods through democratic and republican constitutionalism*

Russia’s invasions of Ukraine confirm the historical experience that governance of public goods (PGs) demanded by citizens (such as human rights, democratic peace, and the sustainable development goals (SDGs) as universally confirmed by the United Nations General Assembly) depends on defending principles of democratic constitutionalism (such as citizenship, democratic governance, ‘mixed government’, and courts of justice), republican constitutionalism (such as separation of power, the rule of law, and jus gentium since ancient Rome), and common law constitutionalism (such as parliamentary and judicial protection of fundamental rights and property rights) against abuses of power. The United Nations (UN) and its 2030 Sustainable Development Agenda recommend these constitutional principles also for multilevel governance protecting the SDGs and related PGs. Yet constitutionalism depends on multilevel legislative, administrative and judicial implementing measures transforming the SDGs into concrete duties of governments and corresponding rights and remedies of citizens. The global health, environmental, energy, security, economic and human rights crises reveal the systemic ‘market failures’, ‘governance failures’, and ‘constitutional implementation deficits’ undermining UN and World Trade Organization governance of PGs. Liberal order can only survive as ‘militant constitutional demoi-cracy’ if citizens defend freedom against tyranny at home and abroad, notably in authoritarian States which, notwithstanding their formal constitutions, suppress democratic constitutionalism.

Das Ökosystemleistungskonzept in der räumlichen Planung – zehn Thesen

The concept of ecosystem services can help to overcome implementation deficits in spatial planning and to promote the protection and sustainable use of nature and landscape. However, diverse findings on the concept’s application in Germany have not yet been brought together and evaluated. The aim of this paper is to present theses on the meaningful and effective use of ecosystem services in spatial planning and the promotion of sustainable spatial development. The theses are intended to summarize the state of knowledge and provide recommendations for use in practice and for further research. They are divided into three thematic areas: Theses on the benefits of the ecosystem services concept, on obstacles and potentials of its use and theses on needs for action. The theses are intended to motivate practitioners and scientists to apply the ecosystem services concept in appropriate planning contexts, to use it for better protection and development of nature and landscape, and to support transformation processes towards sustainable development.

Avaliação da parceria FNDE e IFES na execução do Programa Nacional de Alimentação Escolar (PNAE)

The decentralization of education resources encounters obstacles in the state capacity of subnational entities to execute the programs. The federal government is unable to provide the technical assistance needed to compensate for implementation deficits. To correct the lack of capillarity and improve coordination with subnational entities, the National School Diet Program (PNAE) established partnership relationships with the Federal Higher Education Institutions (IFES), creating Collaboration Centers for School Food and Nutrition (Cecanes). Through focus groups, quantitative analysis of data on transfers and indicators of state capacity and socio-economic status of the municipalities, the text analyzes the model and assesses the possibility of replicating it for other programs. The results obtained indicate that the proximity to the assisted publics and the knowledge they have of the local particularities make it easier for Federal Higher Education Institutions to provide technical assistance and resolve obstacles that would make the program unviable in its conception, including negotiation between family farmers and municipal managers.

Farmers’ perceptions towards scavengers are influenced by implementation deficits of EU sanitary policies

Conservation regulations are instrumental for effective nature preservation, but several compliance and implementation failures jeopardize the achievement of their objectives, with strong potential to erode their legitimacy. Understanding how such deficits impact on stakeholders' perceptions is a matter of concern in pursuing truly effective tools. Here, using as case study the heterogeneous implementation of EU sanitary regulations which allow livestock carcasses to be left in situ in the Iberian Peninsula, we evaluated how uneven implementation affects farmers' perceptions towards scavengers. We interviewed 109 farmers at the border between Spain, with designated Scavenger Feeding Zones (SFZs), and Portugal, where SFZs are still under way. We detected a deficit in the implementation of European sanitary regulation and a low knowledge of this legislation by farmers (10%), which led to marked differences between countries in the perception of farmers on scavengers. Despite being expected to benefit from SFZs, Spanish farmers valued scavengers worse than Portuguese farmers. This unexpected outcome would be mediated by ca. 95% of the Spanish farmers interviewed ( n = 48) still using the carcass collection system set after the outbreak of the mad cow disease, instead of adopting the new rules allowing carcasses abandonment at SFZs. Contrastingly, ca. 28% of the Portuguese farmers ( n = 61) left livestock carcasses in the field without official approval. Our results support the initial hypothesis of more positive perceptions of scavengers by farmers leaving livestock carcasses in situ, while warning against assuming effective implementation of sanitary regulations in reality. Worryingly, as illustrated by the negative perception of Spanish farmers towards vultures, these implementation failures could turn out to an emergent farmer-wildlife conflict, which can jeopardize scavenger conservation.

Deficits Pro forma and Substantive: Multilevel Policy Implementation in China’s Administrative Approval Intermediaries Reform

Policy implementation deficits tend to emerge and expand as implementation moves downward through multilevel administration. This article uses China as an example and examines its policy implementation at both its provincial and prefectural levels under the administrative intermediaries reform policy. By analyzing data from 225 prefectures in China and their component provinces, we identify two types of implementation deficits: deficits pro forma and substantive deficits. We highlight three factors mitigating both types of deficits and their exacerbation from the provincial level to the prefectural level: self-imposed requirements, top-down pressure, and demonstration effects from upper levels. We find that while self-imposed requirements have no binding effect, rigid executive directives from upper levels have the strongest effect on deficits mitigation while demonstration effects also play an important role in deficit reduction. Our research contributes to the implementation literature by distinguishing between pro forma and substantive deficits and by focusing on the middle layer of government as well as the phenomenon of deficit exacerbation across layers.

The Concept of ‘Principled Resistance’ to ECtHR Judgments: A Useful Tool to Analyse Implementation Deficits?

Abstract Recent years have seen a marked increase in ‘clashes’ between national courts on the one hand and international courts and tribunals on the other hand. This article introduces a new analytical pattern, called ‘principled resistance’, in order to analyse deficits occurring during the implementation phase of a Strasbourg judgment. This analytical concept is contrasted with other most recently developed scholarly concepts (‘reasonable resistance’: Palombino; ‘pushback’ and ‘backlash’: Madsen; ‘principled’ and ‘dilatory non-execution’: de Londras and Dzehtsiarou) in order to show differences and commonalities. Furthermore, the limits of (permissible) ‘disagreement’, as opposed to (impermissible) ‘principled resistance’, are explored from an international law point of view. It will be argued that although cases of principled resistance are extremely rare, the concept has an analytical value in that it prevents us from overestimating divergences between national and international courts and tribunals. At the same time, it will be shown that even where courts and other national actors employ legal arguments for their resistance to the ECtHR, those conflicts should be conceptualized as struggles over the proper allocation of powers between the national level and Strasbourg.

Domestic Workers, EU Working Time Law and Implementation Deficits in National Law - Change in Sight?

The full or partial exclusion of domestic workers from EU Working Time Directive 2003/88/EC is a longstanding practice in many Member States that has been tolerated by the Commission for a long time. Since 2017, there is some change in sight. While domestic workers remained at the margin of attention in the Commission’s earlier communications and implementation reports of Directive 2003/88/EC, the issue has gradually gained visibility. This indicates a remarkable shift, which has up to now not yet attracted due attention. This article analyses the shifting position of EU institutions towards domestic worker’s rights. The subsequent investigation of selected national regulation raises doubts as to its compatibility with EU law. Different ways of selected Member States (Austria, Germany, Italy, the UK) to prevent the application of the Working Time Directive to domestic workers are analysed. EU working time law and national implementation deficits for domestic workers are analysed in the context of the international scholarly discussion and the ILO’s ‘decent work’ agenda. Although not free from contradictions, this development is retraced as a move from the invisibility of domestic workers in EU labour law towards the Commission’s open demand in 2017 that Member States comply with Directive 2003/88/EC for this group of precarious workers.

Implementation and Enforcement of International Humanitarian Law

The chapter analyzes different means of implementation and enforcement of international humanitarian law (IHL). This includes traditional means, and new means of implementation. Hence, the use of big data tools and Artificial Intelligence, and new challenges for the implementation of IHL, as the use of autonomous weapons, are tackled. In more general terms the author differentiates between bilateral confrontative means (such as retorsions and reprisals), general non-confrontative means (such as the law of state responsibility) and more specific non-confrontative means (such as decisions and opinions of courts and war crime tribunals, especially the International Criminal Court). Moreover, special forms of implementation and enforcement of IHL are stressed, as the system of collective security, the instruments to secure both interstate and domestic enforcement and the competence and responsibilities of different actors. It is argued by Voeneky that, even though there is no place for the claim ‘inter arma silent leges’, IHL faces two main challenges for its realization: Firstly, IHL, like other areas of international law, is not implemented and enforced via a central body or hierarchical institutions, which leads to implementation deficits of rules protecting common values and an overlap of norms and competences. The second major challenge, relevant for this particular area of international law, is its purpose, aiming at humanizing an area that is per se inhumane. Moreover, by implementing and enforcing IHL rules, a balance has to be struck between the aim to protect certain persons and objects through restricting the means and methods of warfare, and the preservation of the right of self-defense as enshrined in Article 51 UN Charter.

Victims and Reparations in International Criminal Justice: African Initiatives

Two important African criminal justice initiatives, namely, the Extraordinary African Chambers (eac) and the International Criminal Law Section of the African Court of Justice and Human and Peoples’ Rights (acjhr-icls), illustrate the trend whereby victims can claim and receive reparations at international/hybrid criminal tribunals (icts). The International Criminal Court (icc) started this trend. This article will examine whether the eac and acjhr-icls can contribute to victims’ status as reparations claimants on substantive, procedural and institutional levels. The eac-Statute as applied in Habré and the acjhr-Statute constitute the primary sources of analysis as complemented by inter alia the law and/or practice of the icc, Extraordinary Chambers in the Courts of Cambodia (eccc) and the African Court on Human and Peoples’ Rights (ACtHPR). This article generally finds that the realisation of victims’ right to reparations at the eac and acjhr-icls depends on how normative and implementation deficits and challenges are handled.

Control, Coordination, and Capacity: Deficits in China’s Frontline Regulatory System for Food Safety

ABSTRACT Has the establishment of the China Food and Drug Administration in 2013 and the substantial revision of the Food Safety Law in 2015 addressed earlier implementation deficits in China’s food safety policy? Through a comprehensive literature review and series of in-depth interviews with local regulatory officials in Beijing, this study observed improvements in the frontline regulatory system regarding its adherence to regulations, corruption prevention, and citizen responsiveness. However, it also found that the system’s professional capacities were found vastly insufficient for its expanded regulatory scope. Also, frequent abuses of the citizen-complaint system added significantly to the already heavy workload. While better agency collaboration was reported at the subdistrict/township level, coordination with other related functional ministries and geographical regions remained inadequate. The findings provide a needed guide for future reforms.

Errors-based Rehabilitation within Phonological Framework: Segmental Changes in Broca’s Aphasia

The studies of phonological therapy for patients with both phonemic planning and articulatory implementation deficits report the related dichotomy of anterior and posterior syndrome with psycholinguistic model. However, there must be some investigation on segmental errors as input of rehabilitation within phonological framework. This study investigates whether the errors-based rehabilitation model can encourage two Balinese individuals with Broca's aphasia (KW and NS) to reduce the phonological errors. The results showed that KW and NS performed different segmental errors and types of the phonological process even though they suffered from identical non-fluent symptom. KW, in pre-intervention tended to present phonemes substitution, omission and insertion errors which mostly occurred in the initial position of words and he transposed the onset of the second syllable to the onset of the first syllable. Meanwhile, NS in some cases, tended to transpose the phonemes randomly, inserted other segments – especially [nasal] and [lateral] between two vowels (hiatuses) and altered the high complex segments with less complex ones. The phonological error-based rehabilitation was effective to reduce the errors and the phonetic relaxation helped them exhibit minor errors. This indicated that phonetic based training can stimulate the articulatory processing deficit as anterior syndrome.

Multi‐Level Policy Implementation: A Case Study on China's Administrative Approval Intermediaries’ Reforms

AbstractPolicy output and outcome shortfalls are often attributable to deficits in implementation. Drawing on data collected from multi‐level governmental documents and in‐depth interviews regarding the ongoing reforms of the use of ‘administrative approval intermediaries’ in China, we identified a genre of policy implementation in which the policy implementers themselves are targets of reform. These implementers swing between fulfilling tasks and deviation from formal requirements. By illustrating how the implementation gap in the reform widened as the implementation moved downstream and the exercise of centralized authority deteriorated, we found that the implementation deficits worsen as the targets’ interests were increasingly undermined by the policy. This was largely due to an administrative design in which the objective was established at the top, implementation depended on change by the bottom and coordination was horizontal across the middle.

The political agenda of implementing Forest Rights Act 2006: evidences from Indian Sundarban

The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act 2006 (FRA) is a landmark statutory law which aims to grant ownership rights and forest management powers to the marginalized forest-dependent communities in India. Our study, conducted in Sundarban Biosphere Reserve (SBR) region of West Bengal, reveals that at particular locations where the act suffers from implementation deficits or lack of coverage, it is imperative to investigate the role of local politics in facilitating or impeding access to forest rights. The study identifies the political drivers which influence the (non) implementation of the act in the SBR. It argues that despite being a rights-based law, the implementation of FRA is deeply implicated within vested political interests at specific geographical locations. The study concludes that a critique of the political economy of forest conservation is inadequate to explain the limitations of FRA implementation.