Locus Of Governance Research Articles

Authoritarian energy transitions undermined? Environmental governance cycles in China’s power sector

We develop a theory to explain the persistence of tensions between decentralized delegation and centralized control of environmental governance in authoritarian regimes. Economic benefits from decentralization – information, competition, and efficiency – conflict with environmental goals of centralized policy harmonization and management of inter-jurisdictional externalities. Decentralization to local government actors can facilitate economic growth but also empower them in ways that undermine environmental governance. Persistent tensions between decentralized and centralized imperatives generate cycles in environmental and energy systems governance. We test our theory of authoritarian environmental governance cycles using the case of China’s power sector, drawing on evidence from primary source documents, field interviews, and multiple data sources on the development and distribution of energy generating capacity. We focus on two policy areas – coal-fired power and wind energy – that are integral to central government efforts to improve the quality of environmental governance. This research explains the puzzling alternations in the locus of governance, and contributes to understanding inter-governmental relations and environmental politics in authoritarian regimes.

All Climate is Local: How Provincial Preferences Undermine China's Coal Commitments

We develop a theory to explain the persistence of tensions between decentralized delegation and centralized control of environmental governance in authoritarian regimes. Economic benefits from decentralization – information, competition, and efficiency – conflict with environmental goals of centralized policy harmonization and management of inter-jurisdictional externalities. Decentralization to local government actors can facilitate economic growth but also empower them in ways that undermine environmental governance. Persistent tensions between decentralized and centralized imperatives generate cycles in environmental and energy systems governance. We test our theory of authoritarian environmental governance cycles using the case of China’s power sector, drawing on evidence from primary source documents, field interviews, and multiple data sources on the development and distribution of energy generating capacity. We focus on two policy areas – coal-fired power and wind energy – that are integral to central government efforts to improve the quality of environmental governance. This research explains the puzzling alternations in the locus of governance, and contributes to understanding inter-governmental relations and environmental politics in authoritarian regimes.

Shifting locus of governance? The case of NATO's connected forces initiative

ABSTRACTIn early 2012, NATO's then-Secretary General, Anders Fogh Rasmussen, unveiled the Connected Forces Initiative (CFI), an effort designed to increase allied interoperability and readiness. Through three lines of effort – training and education, exercises, and better use of technology – the CFI is intended to help the alliance maintain the operational and tactical interoperability it developed in Afghanistan. At first glance, the CFI appears to represent an example of the claims of some neo-institutionalist scholars that there is a shift in the locus of governance from member states to NATO. However, this article takes a deeper look and concludes that in fact the locus of security governance is not shifting, at least not in this instance. Member states of the alliance retain several means of controlling and influencing NATO, thereby preventing it from developing a significant degree of autonomy, in contrast to the European Union or United Nations.

Change in Global Environmental Governance

Where does change come from in the architecture of global environmental governance? To the extent that a traditional answer to this question exists, it is that states self-consciously make changes in the architecture, to meet specific cooperative goals and in response to new information about the state of the natural environment. This is the classical neoliberal, institutionalist, regime theory answer: States, understood as rational unitary actors, create new institutions to reduce the market imperfections in international cooperation. This answer has informed much good work on global environmental politics over the past two decades, but it is limited by its terms of reference. States are often neither rational nor unitary, and they are not the only actors of relevance to global environmental governance. A more recent counter-narrative to state-based regime theory abjures the state and the formal intergovernmental organizations created by states, looking both to other levels of government and to nongovernmental actors as sources of environmental governance. This approach looks at networks of nonstate actors as the source of voluntary global environmental leadership, built up from the grass roots rather than imposed from the top. This is a useful corrective to an exclusive focus on the state as the unit of analysis, and on conscious design rather

Rationalities in Trade Union Practices: A Discourse Analytic Perspective on The Strategies of Three Danish Trade Unions for Professionals

The ambition of this paper is to analyze the discursive practices of three Danish trade unions for professional and managerial staff as found in their strategy and position papers. Using discourse analytic methods, the paper analyzes, discusses, and compares the strategy papers of the three unions in order to investigate how they problematize their roles and objectives. This investigation clarifies the discursive premises of the unions and it shows how these premises restrain and afford their agendas. The overall purpose of the paper is to investigate and describe the dominant logics and rationalities that shape the documents and to point to their limits and bounds. Through an archaeological investigation, the paper critically examines the implicit and tacit naturalizations made in the documents and reveals the ideological presuppositions of the discursive practices of the authors. The paper documents how “strategic management” has become an integral part of Danish trade unions practices and the paper sets out to discuss this trend in relation to the general neo-liberal decentering of the “social” and promotion of “community” as the locus of governance. Through examples from the practices of the Danish trade unions for professionals, the paper substantiates how new technologies of governance and the subjectification of union members as “customers” tend to transform the role of the trade unions from the position of “political actors” to “service providers” in the advanced liberal societies.

(De)stabilizing Self-Identities in Professional Work

It is characteristic of much professional work that it is performed in ambiguous contexts. Thus, uncertainty, unpredictability, indeterminacy, and recurrent organizational transformations are an integral part of modern work for, e.g., engineers, lawyers, business consultants, and other professionals. Although key performance indicators and other knowledge management systems are used to set standards of excellence for professionals, the character of professional work is still flexible, open to interpretation and heterarchical. The very successfulness (or unsuccessfulness) of the work is established in a complex work context where various goals, interests, and perspectives are mediated, altered, contested, mangled, and negotiated in a process of sense-making. The work context is heterogeneously populated by various actors (e.g., the customer, the manager, the colleagues) and actants (e.g., quality systems and technical equipment) that give “voice” to (conflicting) interpretations of what constitutes successful work. Thus, the professionals must navigate in a very complex environment where the locus of governance is far from stable. These characteristics of professional work seem to have implications for the way professionals make sense of their work and their own identities. The identity work of professionals is interwoven with their professional training and career background. With an academic training and a professional career, the individual typically identifies with the profession’s values and adopts a certain way of seeing and approaching the world. This professional outlook typically will constitute the basis of the individual’s appraisal of the work and lay out a horizon of expectations in relation to fulfillment, self-realization, and job satisfaction. In this way, the construction of self-identity becomes the yardstick for the individual’s sense-making and, a fortiori, for the individual’s sense of meaningful work. In this paper, we will claim that the ambiguity involved in professional work becomes a potential strain on the identity construction of the employees engaged in professional work and a potential source of enthusiasm and self-fulfillment. On a conceptual basis, the paper develops three interpretative frameworks that are useful in understanding how professionals deal with ambiguity in professional work. To illustrate this point, the paper refers to qualitative material from a research project conducted in six Danish knowledge-intensive firms. Referring to this empirical material, we discuss how professionals perceive and relate to their work and the role played by professionalism in this relation. Drawing on neo-institutional theory our paper discusses how professionals draw on different frameworks of meaning in order to stabilize their identities.

Roepke Lecture in Economic Geography—Who Needs the Nation-State?

abstract The nation-state has long been under attack from liberal economists and cosmopolitan ethicists alike. But it has proved remarkably resilient and remains the principal locus of governance as well as the primary determinant of personal attachments and identity. The global financial crisis has further underscored its centrality. Against the background of the globalization revolution, the tendency is to view the nation-state as a hindrance to the achievement of desirable economic and social outcomes. Yet it remains indispensable to the achievement of those goals.

Apology Accepted: A Possibility of Global Governance

City of Gold: An Apology for Global Capitalism in a Time of Discontent. By David A. Westbrook. New York: Routledge, 2004. 400 pp., $97.95 cloth (ISBN: 0-415-94,539-9), $27.95 paper (ISBN: 0-415-94,540-2). The rapid pace and unpredictable direction of social and political change in our world seems to be forcefully undermining the established terms of political life. It appears to be more and more difficult, if not impossible, to think of politics solely within the national context. Such terms as the “nation-state,”“national identity,” and “national economy” have been loosing their explanatory power. The increasing interconnectedness of societies has made the national context more vulnerable and exposed to global, regional, and local pressures. Political globalization, for example, is giving rise to the increasing importance of global, regional, and local actors in the formation of political community, thereby undermining and limiting the ability of the nation-state to maintain its status as the main and sovereign locus of governance. Economic globalization—that is, the globalization of capital—is challenging the authority of nation-states by creating a borderless, supranational, global market place. Cultural globalization is rendering the idea of national identity problematic by giving rise to local reactions in the form of ethnic, religious, and cultural identities, which have recently paved the way for the emergence of alternative conceptions of modernity and a new politics of recognition. Yet, a quick glance at the last two decades reveals a mixed picture in terms of the impact …