Logic Of Governance Research Articles

The Historical Evolution and Governance Logic of China’s Cadre Personnel System：Taking the Personnel Exchange Between Local Governments and Central Enterprises as an Example

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The paradox of technical governance: A public opinion survey’s political process and its results

The logic of technical governance goes as follows: the knowledge of society can be obtained by the state via technology, and thus social problems are identified and solutions are found. Questions have been raised about whether technical governance would ever work. For many the answer is negative and doubtful. However, one defense remains: technical governance fails not because the idea is inherently flawed but because the technology is not good. Would technical governance succeed with better methodology and more technical rigor? In order to challenge this defense, this paper examines the operation of opinion polls—a form of technical governance supported by rigorous quantitative social research methodology—run by a sub-district government in the city ‘S’. In particular, this paper asks whether it is possible for a government-run poll to reflect manipulated public opinion, despite the strictest compliance with quantitative polling methodology. The finding of this paper gives an affirmative answer. It argues that on the surface, polls are statistical surveys, but in actuality they are a political process controlled by the government despite their compliance with all statistical requirements. The power structure of the local government determines the questionnaire items, their multiple-choice answers (the screening, compressing, and quantifying of social scenarios), and the final make-up of the public opinion index. The rigorousness of methodology does not guarantee the authenticity of ‘public opinion’ in final poll figures. More likely, the outcome is controlled by those who organize polls. Hence, quantifiable technical governance presents a contradiction: the state manufactures biased public opinions precisely when it is looking for unbiased public opinions. In the end, the government constructs an image of society that is its own reflection.

Neoliberal exception to liberal democracy? Entrepreneurial territorial governance in India

ABSTRACTFocusing on the industrial area local authority (IALA), a governance regime widely applied in the south Indian states of Andhra Pradesh and Telangana, this paper examines pathways to illiberal governance within ostensibly liberal democratic contexts. The history of the IALA exemplifies the modes by which the movement towards representative government at the local level in India was subverted at its very origins by the insertion of exceptions into the legislation that purported to establish and empower urban government. Applied to demarcated territories, both established industrial areas and spaces dedicated to globalized information technology and financial services, the IALA instrument devolves the powers and functions of the municipality to an agency controlled by the state government. The career of the IALA thus demonstrates how neoliberal agendas are enacted in enclave settings through the interplay of discursive logics of participatory governance and strategies of entrepreneurial governance in practice. Using Hyderabad as an empirical case, the paper argues that special purpose enclaves, subject to regimes of exceptional urban governance, represent vectors both of neoliberalism and neo-illiberalism in avowedly liberal democratic contexts in the Global South.

Invisibilizing Eurasia: How North–South Dichotomization Marginalizes Post-Soviet Scholars in International Research Collaborations

Despite the growing complexity and multidimensionality of the system of international research collaborations, the colonial discourse casting the collaborative relationships in terms of polarized North–South antitheses persists and continues to exert influence on the nature of power distribution in the relationships, as well as on the conceptualization of some players in the relationship as superior donors, whereas others as inferior recipients. In this article, I demonstrate how dichotomic representation of the geopolitical entities involved in international research collaboration fails to acknowledge the existence and marginalizes a large and extremely talented academic community of Eurasian scholars, which has the potential to enrich and transform the global knowledge system if it becomes more actively and authoritatively involved in the international system of ideas exchange and knowledge generation. I argue that this invisibilization of post-Soviet research community is part of the logic of postcolonial governmentality, which creates the demand and draws the post-Soviet world into international trade in knowledge-related expert services, whereby profits and benefits from the trade are reaped by the countries, which self-categorize as the North, while undermining the potential of the former Soviet scholarly community to contribute to global knowledge production on equal terms.

Subverting the logics of “smartness” in Singapore: Smart eldercare and parallel regimes of sustainability

This paper argues that the divergent logics of “smartness” and “sustainability” can lead to parallel regimes of sustainability. Whilst sustainability is often used to justify the need for smart cities, smart cities are often undermined by the neoliberal logics of digital governance. Moreover, because the intersection of digital technologies and society is a negotiated one, smart solutions often fail to provide adequate solutions to social problems. This is especially true when smart solutions are used to augment or replace hitherto human-centred processes, like caregiving. Parallel regimes of sustainability are an outcome of these failures. Drawing on an analysis of a trial of in-home smart eldercare technologies in Singapore, four binary pairings – public-private, individual-community, remote-proximate and passive-active – are used to define the parallel regimes of sustainable eldercare that emerged in response to smart technologies. To conclude, the need for urban paradigms to evolve in conversation with society is emphasised.

“Flexible citizenship” in Chinese international secondary school students’ transnational social networks: opportunities or constraints?

ABSTRACT Using the notion of “flexible citizenship”, this paper examines how Chinese international secondary school students accumulate and exchange different forms of capital as governed by their transnational social networks. This study draws on data from a 14-month ethnographic field study on the transnational lives of 11 Chinese students in a Canadian international secondary school. This study illustrates that the instrumental dimension of “flexible citizenship” produced both opportunities and tensions in student participants’ lives when their new and existing social relations converged to mediate their transnational lives and trajectories. The force of multiple transnational actors to maximise opportunities exerted emotional pressures on students and caused relational tensions. In addition, when the participating students encountered challenges in broadening social connections in the host society, they solidified home social connections for emotional support and further academic and career development, although such practices constrained their effort in intercultural learning for embodied cultural capital. This paper advocates that beyond the governmental logic of instrumental “flexible citizenship”, all social actors should gain more nuanced and comprehensive understanding of students’ lives and their relational and emotional development. Additionally, Chinese students may be given more freedom in enacting their agency to engage with their transnational and intercultural lives in the ways they desire rather than those that are desired by external social forces.

Marginalisation in education systems: The Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) and the failure discourse around the Italian education system

The Organisation for Economic Cooperation Development (OECD) created the Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA) as a political actor in global education through a logic of governance by numbers (Grek, 2009). This article discusses how PISA has became a major showcase for the OECD as an assessment tool par excellence while also producing marginalisation discourses. By approaching neoliberal globalisation and its aim at restoring the transnational capitalist class’ power over the “dangerous” classes (Harvey, 2005; Holman, 2006; Van Apeldoorn, 2001; Van der Pijl, 2010), this article analyses how school privatisation has grown in the Italian system over the last few years in the face of the PISA discourse (Bertozzi & Graziano, 2004). Building on document research and reports by Italian teachers, it traces how PISA’s pressure over the Italian school system has produced a twofold marginalizing effect. The first effect is the periodical disclosure of PISA rankings to distinguish successful from failed education systems. In fact, recent PISA results have placed the Italian system as a failed, technologically retarded system compared to those of high-performance countries. The second effect is the burst of neoliberal feelings among teachers, who report both stigma and guilt.

Promotion-driven local states and governing cities in action—re-reading China's urban entrepreneurialism from a local perspective

ABSTRACT This article examines local entrepreneurialism and the governance logic of local states under China’s cadre assessment mechanism. By highlighting the ubiquitous performance competition and promotion pressure faced by local officials, it argues that building performance and seeking promotion during the tenure are the internal impulses for Chinese local states and their leaders to pursue entrepreneurialism. In China’s politico-institutional soil, therefore, entrepreneurial actions are not necessarily designed to enhance local attractiveness and competitiveness in the global market, but serve as a means for local officials to accumulate political capital and pursue career advancement. Lanzhou’s urban renewal is used as a case to illustrate how city leaders advance individual careers through entrepreneurialism. By interpreting the impact of cadre assessment mechanism on local governance, the study sheds light on the ubiquitous inter-scalar politics in China. It also enriches our understanding of China’s urban entrepreneurialism by revealing the political intent behind local governance actions.

Research on the Differentiated Impact Mechanism of Parent Company Shareholding and Managerial Ownership on Subsidiary Responsive Innovation: Empirical Analysis Based on ‘Principal–Agent’ Framework

Under the dynamic competition situation, the innovation competition interaction between enterprises will take the form of mutual responding, while the formulation and implementation of responsive innovation strategy will be influenced by both shareholders and managers in the principal–agent relationship. In our research, we try to understand how the difference of governance logic between shareholders and managers affects innovation interaction strategy of enterprises. In order to achieve this research goal, this study takes all eligible listed companies (from 2007 to 2016) in China’s stock market as samples. The results show that the parent company shareholding has a negative impact on the subsidiary responsive innovation, while companies whose managers hold more shares select the relatively positive strategy responsive innovation. Moreover, the degree of separation between ownership and control rights and the external institutional environment can moderate the above relationship. Relevant conclusions can provide some reference value for the formulation of responsive innovation decision of listed companies and provide new insights for the design of parent–subsidiary corporate governance structure and the design of managerial equity incentive mechanism in the context of corporate group governance.

Arctic Security, Territory, Population: Canadian Sovereignty and the International

AbstractCanada's policies to assert and maintain sovereignty over the High Arctic illuminate both the analytical leverage and blind spots of Foucault's influential Security, Territory, Population (2007) schema for understanding modern governmentality. Governmental logics of security, sovereignty, and biopolitics are contemporaneous and concomitant. The Arctic case demonstrates clearly that the Canadian state messily uses whatever governmental tools are in its grasp to manage the Inuit and claim territorial sovereignty over the High North. But, the case of Canadian High Arctic policies also illustrates the limitations of Foucault's schema. First, the Security, Territory, Population framework has no theorization of the international. In this article I show the simultaneous implementation of Canadian security-, territorial-, and population-oriented policies over the High Arctic. Next, I present the international catalysts that prompt and condition these polices and their specifically settler-colonial tenor. Finally, in line with the Foucauldian imperative to support the “resurrection of subjugated knowledges” (Foucault 2003, 7), I conclude by offering some of the Inuit ways of resisting and reshaping these policies, proving how the Inuit shaped Canadian Arctic sovereignty as much as Canadian Arctic sovereignty policies shaped the Inuit.

Nuclear governmentality: Governing nuclear security and radiation risk in post-Fukushima Japan

Nuclear governmentality is offered as a conceptual contribution to research on energy politics, security studies, and nuclearity. Nuclear governmentality is conceived as a logic of government in the Foucauldian sense, that describes contiguities in conduct and symbolic representations found across disparate dispositifs, especially (albeit not exclusively) those strategically aimed at eliciting and exploiting atomic forces in medicine, industry, and war. This project demonstrates the logic and technologies of power specific to nuclear governmentality in post-Fukushima Daiichi energy commitments, evacuation policies, risk assessments, and health surveillance programs. Nuclear governmentality is at once modern in its adaptation of regimes of risk management and anachronistic in its prioritization of sovereign decisionality in their developments and deployments, especially evident in the legal principle of the minimum standard and the instrument of the permissible dose.

Who are the civilians in the wars of South Sudan?

This longitudinal study explores the place of the civilian populations in the wars of what is now South Sudan. Using a broad range of empirical evidence, we trace the evolution of conflict practices and norms from the 1800s to today. Two main insights stand out: First, since the initial colonial incursions, local residents have been strategic assets to be managed and exploited, and thus populations are not just legitimate targets in conflicts but also key resources to capture and control. Second, violent governance structures and practices have been created and reformed through these generations of coercive rule and civil wars. These two issues have undermined, and redefined, the distinction between military and civilian actors. This analysis does not excuse the massive and systematic violence against the general population of these countries. However, without due consideration of these deeply engraved historical systems and logics of violent governance, today’s brutal conflicts become incomprehensible, and there is a significant risk that international approaches to mitigating this violence – such as Protection of Civilians camps – become incorporated into these systems rather than challenging them.

A Critical Approach to ‘Financialization’ through the Castoriadian Lens of the ‘Social Imaginary’

In order to capture certain dynamics of recent socio-economic history over the last forty years, many scholars have made use of the term ‘Financialization'. The concept has been used as a lens to understand myriad phenomena including de-industrialization, the forces responsible for the decline of the middle class, the rise of an ethics of ‘individual responsibility, the growth of unprecedented economic inequality, a catalyst for the diffusion of a shareholder value logic of corporate governance, a cause of the recent subprime crisis, and as a force behind the increasing commodification of everyday human life. Despite the significant exploration of the processes and effects of ‘financialization' by scholars in disparate fields, there has been a relative dearth of research that endeavors to explore the more ideational and therefore cognitive/emotional aspects of financialization. The present study will address this gap by using the lens of the ‘social imaginary' as developed by the Social Philosopher/Psychoanalyst Cornelius Castoriadis. The argument will be made that we now live in a world where the ‘Imaginary of financialization' has become an overarching ‘imaginary signification' that serves to orient human behavior, define social relations and determines the forms of our socio-technical projects.

PERFORMANCE AND CHARACTERISTICS OF MANAGEMENT IN THE PUBLIC SECTOR

Performance measurement has attracted the attention of many researchers in the area of managerial accountability over the last two decades. However, most of them focus on measuring performance only in the private sector. Meanwhile, since several years, especially after the publication of the "New Public Management" doctrine, performance measurement has emerged as an important research priority in the public sector. This does not mean that it has not previously shown interest in the public sector's efficiency problem, but it has been limited in the context of the policy appraisal concept. This concept has functioned more as a tool for assessing public policy delineation and has eventually served to redraft existing policies or practices rather than a system of measurement and performance management of public institutions.Policy evaluation methodologies are very useful, but they can only be used within a framework that assumes the presence of managerial behavior in the public sector. Where legal laws and regulations serve as a basis for dealing with issues, it is very difficult to it is assumed that efficiency will be a fundamental priority. The concept of governance, recent decades, is closely related to the process of modeling assessment procedures. Governance, as such, generally refers to the tools that serve to direct, control and co-ordinate individuals and organizations, partly autonomous ones, in the name of the interests they contribute to (Lynn, Heinrich and Hill, 1999).Some of the recent problems in the area of governance include issues of formal control over authoritative decision-makers and decentralization; focusing on powerful interest groups or goals that are difficult to describe (eg "efficiency" and "high credibility"), as well as comparing different governance regimes.A full description and analysis of the governance model is a prerequisite for further study of performance measurement in public sector activity.The logic of governance in the public sector is simple: lawmakers create the legal framework, administrators deal with enforcement, and the public pays, at least in theory, enjoys the benefits. Lawmakers are elected to act during a mandate (usually four years), but also the administrators (bureaucrats and civil servants) are nominated and supposed to have a long-term career in implementing policies and legal acts. The latter should serve professionally and implement legal acts adopted by lawmakers, using the maximum of their knowledge. There is still an open discussion on how to evaluate the achievements of civil servants and the policy effectiveness they implement.Governance is a division of responsibilities, it should serve as a tool that facilitates the continuous improvement of work in the public sector. Only redistribution of formal authority can have little or no effect on the desirable consequences with all the opposing claims expressed by some administrative reformers.

La cuarta transformación en México carece de sujeto político

México, en voz de su presidente, ha iniciado la cuarta transformación del país, entendida como un cambio substancial en la vida económica, política y socio-cultural. Un proceso que implica reformar leyes, crear nuevas instituciones, redirigir la orientación de la política económica, redistribuir mejor el ingreso, ajustar la política fiscal y ante todo, involucrar a la sociedad civil en la dinámica transformadora; sin embargo, las primeras medidas instrumentadas están orientada en sentido contrario a los razonamientos discursivos, los actos de gobierno no han incorporado las redes, saberes y memorias colectivas de movimientos populares existentes, desconoce toda institucionalidad, abriga en su decisión las decisiones estratégicas asumidas, no acepta la mediación de colectivos empoderados y el Movimiento de Regeneración Nacional (Morena) no aprovecha la cartografía de los diversos sujetos locales para armar una acción colectiva con perfil de cambio; por tanto, el objetivo de este artículo es identificar los elementos que llevan a la ausencia del sujeto político. Si bien es cierto, que la narrativa convoca al pueblo, lo uniforma en sujeto despojado, sin derechos y olvidado, le concede paliativos, en la práctica ataja los ímpetus participativos; proclama la construcción de identidades populares para sumar a todos los micros movimientos locales, pero los aleja de las decisiones substanciales; anuncia cambios profundo en la lógica gubernamental pero niega al sujeto político su intervención, desconoce los saberes acumulados y pretende remplazarlos por decisiones unipersonales y ante todo desplaza del espectro político y ajedrez operacional, los espacios estratégicos construidos y las autonomías de cada uno de ellos sujetos que hicieron posible el triunfo electoral. La Cuarta transformación sin un sujeto político acoplado a las acciones de gobierno trunca el propósito de cambio social; no altera las coordenadas de la continuidad del modelo neoliberal.

Shifting the Logic: Losing Children’s Bodies

ABSTRACTThis article examines the Trump administration’s family separation immigration policy within the context of the logic of 21st-century capitalism. It suggests that the events related to the policy are not anomalous, but profoundly indicative of a system of governance that is removing itself with increasing speed from the concerns of actual living material bodies. In this sense, the situation at the U.S.-Mexico border is less about the maltreatment of this group of parents and children than it is an indication of a profound shift in the logic of governance that is global in scope and affects all living things both human and more than human across the planet. The article argues that the current emerging system of global capitalist rule is premised on a system that uses abstract algorithms to turn the vital living concerns of people into media events disconnected from any material set of actual problems or struggles. Finally, a proposal is made for a response from the field of Human Service Practice.

Clash of corporate governance logics obscuring auditor independence

Audit committees are regarded by regulators as beneficial for improving audit independence and are hence globally enforced. This study aligns with research that questions whether audit committees function well in nations that differ from the Anglo‐Saxon model. The aim of the study is to examine if the auditor and audit committee relationship conforms with a Swedish or Anglo‐Saxon logic, and to analyze the impact on auditor independence. A critical discourse analysis is undertaken on corporate governance reports and three dimensions of logics are found: one complying with Swedish logic (compliance) and two according to Anglo‐Saxon logic (varieties of subordination). The study indicates that the discourse on audit committees following an Anglo‐Saxon logic in this national setting constructs a power relation with the auditor that hampers the auditor's independence, and hence, that auditor independence is context bound. The importance of the composition of the audit committee and its members independence also from larger owners is discussed. The study contributes to research that marks the importance of a better understanding of national jurisdictions before international harmonization can be achieved.

Making sense of müsadere practice, state confiscation of elite wealth, in the Ottoman Empire, circa 1453–1839

AbstractThis article surveys the historiography of müsadere, that is, state confiscation of elite wealth in the Ottoman Empire (circa 1453–1839) and offers a new approach to understand this practice. The existing literature has focused on its legality, functions, methods of enforcement, or economic consequences. The lack of such comprehensive analysis supported by archival data has led not only to some misconceptions but to a failure to locate it into the larger themes of Ottoman state formation. The article first presents a critical review of the historiography of müsadere, discussing these misconceptions stemming from negligence of three crucial elements of müsadere, that is, time‐specificity, selectivity, and flexibility. Then, it introduces a political economy approach, putting the practice of müsadere into the context of survival strategies of a state with relatively limited capacity. Finally, it connects the political economy approach with the debate on the nature of Ottoman governance. The aim of the article is to help students of Ottoman history to make better sense of one of the most important institutions of Ottoman political economy and the logic of governance and state formation in general.

Branching points and transition pathways in the Greek Natural Gas Regime, 1966–2016

This paper studies the emerging natural gas transitions in Greece from 1966 to 2016. We place the actors and the governing processes in historical perspective, to position the regime actors, their power and their agency in the context of decision making that influenced the transition pathway and its key branching points. We argue that during the two transitions there was a passage from years of politicized visions promoted and dominated by national and local actors to years of contested visions of Greece as a transnational natural gas corridor, promoted both by national and transnational actors. There has been a reconfiguration of the governance logics action space because of the increasing agency and power of transnational actors (the EU and the ‘Troika’) especially at times of political or financial crisis. The paper shows the importance of considering how transitions are affected by asymmetries in power and agency between national and international actors and indeed between different actors in a state.

How far has the state \u2018stepped back\u2019: an exploratory study of the changing governance of higher education in China (1978\u20132018)

Due to the politicisation of universities-within-the-state, the state’s governance of higher education in China differentiates itself from other countries. This study examines how the Chinese central government adjusts its governance over universities between 1978 and 2018. Based on an extensive analysis of policy documents and scholarly research, this study proposes an analytic framework, comprising the state’s governance logics, governance instruments, and institutional demonstrations. The three strategically selected governance instruments, i.e. laws, policies, and finance, are demonstrated through various aspects integral to China’s higher education—the dual-goverance structure, appointment of the principal leadership, access to higher education, university and discipline structures, curriculum and ideology, funding and grants, and tuition fees. Based on an in-depth investigation, the study argues that the underlying governance logics of the state are moving from direct controls to indirect supervision; however, despite the increasing university autonomy and academic freedom in some areas, the state has never abdicated the essential power and authority over higher education institutions. This paper contributes to the theoretical and practical understanding of China’s governance of higher education in recent decades.