Multi-level Context Research Articles

ConnNet: A Long-Range Relation-Aware Pixel-Connectivity Network for Salient Segmentation.

Salient segmentation aims to segment out attentiongrabbing regions, a critical yet challenging task and the foundation of many high-level computer vision applications. It requires semantic-aware grouping of pixels into salient regions and benefits from the utilization of global multi-scale contexts to achieve good local reasoning. Previous works often address it as two-class segmentation problems utilizing complicated multi-step procedures including refinement networks and complex graphical models. We argue that semantic salient segmentation can instead be effectively resolved by reformulating it as a simple yet intuitive pixel-pair based connectivity prediction task. Following the intuition that salient objects can be naturally grouped via semanticaware connectivity between neighboring pixels, we propose a pure Connectivity Net (ConnNet). ConnNet predicts connectivity probabilities of each pixel with its neighboring pixels by leveraging multi-level cascade contexts embedded in the image and long-range pixel relations. We investigate our approach on two tasks, namely salient object segmentation and salient instancelevel segmentation, and illustrate that consistent improvements can be obtained by modeling these tasks as connectivity instead of binary segmentation tasks for a variety of network architectures. We achieve state-of-the-art performance, outperforming or being comparable to existing approaches while reducing inference time due to our less complex approach.

Vulnerabilities of Indonesia’s Extractive Industry to Illicit Financial Flows

This article aims to explain the vulnerabilities of Indonesia’s extractive industry governance to the illicit financial flows. Earlier studies figured out that the company in extractive industry has been found to be one of the prominent actors of illicit financial flows. In the case of Indonesia during the period of 2004-2013, the data of Global Financial Integrity (GFI) illustrated that Indonesia is among the top 10 developing countries – which have the highest value of illicit financial flows. This article seeks to explain the nature of illicit financial flows on extractive industry, the causation of why Indonesia’s extractive industry is prone to the illicit financial flows, and finally the recommendation in addressing the issue. In doing so, the researchers conduct the qualitative desk research on explanatory methodology. The result explains that at least there are two natures of illicit financial flows on extractive industry, the behavior of rent-seeking and the dynamics of commodity prices. This article also found out that there are three main sources of regulatory vulnerability which may accommodate the rent-seeking behavior – which directly and indirectly influence the illicit financial flow, which are the different sets of revenue data, arm’s length measurement within the vulnerable enforcement, and regarding the cost recovery scheme. Other than that, the multi-level governance context shown by the decentralization policy of natural resources in Indonesia widens the loopholes of Indonesia’s extractive industry illicit financial flows.

Major Wind Energy & the Interface of Policy and Regulation: A Study of Welsh NSIPs

ABSTRACTThis article examines how sub-national policy is applied in consenting decisions for major wind energy infrastructure. The study focuses on the Welsh tier of governance and the perspective of the public, building on existing work on ‘territorial politics’ and public participation. It looks explicitly at the regulatory stage of decision-making, which is critical to understanding multi-level governance contexts for energy infrastructure. Two cases of ‘Nationally Significant Infrastructure Projects’ (NSIPs) in the UK are assessed and findings show how conflict is fuelled by the ways in which different tiers of policy and regulation interact.

Oil and power industries’ responses to EU emissions trading: laggards or low-carbon leaders?

ABSTRACTHow have petroleum and power companies and their European industry associations responded to the EU emissions trading system (ETS)? Responses can be political, directed externally towards the initiation and reforms of the EU ETS itself, or internally and market-based, directed at low-carbon solutions. Proactive response strategies shape companies’ leadership potential. Variation in responses is explained by two models that differ in assumptions about corporate behaviour as well as the wider multilevel regulatory context in which companies operate. Responses are found to have converged within the two industries, with reactive companies following the proactive ones. Secondly, responses between the two industries increasingly diverge, with the power industry becoming much more proactive than the petroleum industry. The main explanation is found in the differing relevance of the two models and the wider regulatory context, particularly differing exposure to international competition and weak international climate agreements.

Multi-level context-adaptive correlation tracking

The discriminative correlation filter (DCF) has shown impressive performance in visual tracking. Context has two functions in DCF: addressing the disturbance in target locating, and supplying cues for locating the target within the context. To improve the context utilization, we introduce a multi-level context-adaptive tracking (MCAT) approach for DCF tracking. Firstly, a multi-level context representation—called a context pyramid—is proposed to exploit the relationship between the target and its context for better visual tracking. Secondly, for each level of the context pyramid, we control the effect of context in DCF learning and tracking using context-adaptive spatial windows. An accurate target model can thereby be learned, even when the background clutter is severe. Moreover, the target can be more easily tracked when the background is weakened by the spatial window. Thirdly, a robust prediction of the target position is obtained with the multi-level structure of the context pyramid. Experimental results showed that, with conventional hand-crafted features, our tracker provided state-of-the-art performance on OTB100 comparable to those of deep-learning-based trackers.

Rethinking Fuelwood: People, Policy and the Anatomy of a Charcoal Supply Chain in a Decentralizing Peru

In Peru, as in many developing countries, charcoal is an important source of fuel. We examine the commercial charcoal commodity chain from its production in Ucayali, in the Peruvian Amazon, to its sale in the national market. Using a mixed-methods approach, we look at the actors involved in the commodity chain and their relationships, including the distribution of benefits along the chain. We outline the obstacles and opportunities for a more equitable charcoal supply chain within a multi-level governance context. The results show that charcoal provides an important livelihood for most of the actors along the supply chain, including rural poor and women. We find that the decentralisation process in Peru has implications for the formalisation of charcoal supply chains, a traditionally informal, particularly related to multi-level institutional obstacles to equitable commerce. This results in inequity in the supply chain, which persecutes the poorest participants and supports the most powerful actors.

Accounting for the shared environment in cognitive abilities and academic achievement with measured socioecological contexts.

Behavioral and molecular genetic research has established that child cognitive ability and academic performance are substantially heritable, but genetic variation does not account for all of the stratification of cognitive and academic outcomes across families. Which specific contexts and experiences contribute to these shared environmental influences on cognitive ability and academic achievement? Using an ethnically and socioeconomically diverse sample of N = 1728 twins ages 7-20 from the Texas Twin Project, we identified specific measured family, school, and neighborhood socioecological contexts that statistically accounted for latent shared environmental variance in cognitive abilities and academic skills. Composite measures of parent socioeconomic status (SES), school demographic composition, and neighborhood SES accounted for moderate proportions of variation in IQ and achievement. Total variance explained by the multilevel contexts ranged from 15% to 22%. The influence of family SES on IQ and achievement overlapped substantially with the influence of school and neighborhood predictors. Together with race, the measured socioecological contexts explained 100% of shared environmental influences on IQ and approximately 79% of shared environmental influences on both verbal comprehension and reading ability. In contrast, nontrivial proportions of shared environmental variation in math performance were left unexplained. We highlight the potential utility of constructing "polyenvironmental risk scores" in an effort to better predict developmental outcomes and to quantify children's and adolescents' interrelated networks of experiences. A video abstract of this article can be viewed at: https://youtu.be/77E_DctFsr0.

Integrating food security and biodiversity governance: A multi-level social network analysis in Ethiopia

Integrating food security and biodiversity conservation is an important contemporary challenge. Traditionally, food security and biodiversity conservation have been considered as separate or even incompatible policy goals. However, there is growing recognition of their interdependence, as well as of the need to coordinate solutions across multiple policy sectors and levels of governance. Despite such recognition, there has been no empirical analysis of governance networks that specifically integrates food security and biodiversity. Focusing on southwestern Ethiopia, this paper used social network analysis to investigate three main questions: how stakeholders interact in the governance of food security and biodiversity in a multi-level governance context; how the goals of food security and biodiversity are integrated in such a multi-level governance context; and which stakeholders are popular and play connecting roles between stakeholders in the governance network. The study was conducted in a subsistence dominated farming landscape, where we interviewed 244 stakeholders ranging from local to national levels. We found that the governance of food security and biodiversity conservation was strongly hierarchical, with virtually no horizontal linkages between adjacent districts, and very few vertical direct interactions of stakeholders spanning two or more levels of governance. Introducing a novel analytical distinction of collaborative vs individual integration, we found that only a minority of the collaborations between stakeholders took both food security and biodiversity into account, despite the majority of actors being individually involved in both sectors. Stakeholders with positional power, sociological power (popularity) and formal authority played a liaison role in the governance network. To further improve integration of food security and biodiversity conservation, a governance network that harnesses stakeholder collaboration across sectors and governance levels is essential. However, given the central role of many government administrative organizations, possible problems of power capture by some stakeholders need to be carefully managed.

Writing blank checks? How government funding affects interest organisations’ advocacy behaviour in a multi-layered context

ABSTRACTThis article analyses how government funding affects the interactions interest organisations initiate with governments in a multi-level context. Governments rarely write blank checks, but rather specify eligibility and spending requirements when funding interest organisations. Our primary argument is that these requirements do not only impact organisations’ interactions with their benefactors, but that they may also impact interactions with governments at other levels. We analyse this expectation drawing data from a recent survey of a representative sample of Belgian interest organisations. Our results demonstrate that organisations dependent on funding from the subnational and European level are less prone to interact with the national government. Whereas, organisations dependent on national government funding are not less likely to contact the subnational level of government. This variation is explained by the various ways these respective governments implement discretion.

An assessment for developing resilience capacity of Tasmanian coastal governance

Scholars argue that conventional environmental governance approaches have not been effective in reversing or slowing the deterioration of coupled social-ecological systems (SESs). Recent research suggests that resilience thinking offers a useful framework to analyse problems in SESs and could help improve the effectiveness of associated governance systems. Much of the available literature explores this from a theoretical perspective, identifying advantages from resilience thinking to improve governance of SESs. This paper builds on this literature, creating a set of attributes that are used to assess the specific challenges of a particular multi-level Tasmanian coastal governance context, and thus clarify where intervention responses are best directed. In this context, a low level of resilience capacity was apparent across the entire governance system. At the national level, we determined that knowledge management and sharing processes, and the diversity of expertise were the only attributes contributing to resilience capacity, with other attributes insufficiently developed to support any level of resilience. The performance was similarly poor at the Tasmanian state level, with leadership, adaptive planning, organisational flexibility and a supportive legislation framework at critically low capacity. Inter-organisational attributes also required significant improvement. On the other hand, a regional natural resource management body and two coastal local governments demonstrated attributes supportive of resilience capacity, including aspects related to leadership, transparent decision-making, stakeholder engagement, organisational learning, knowledge sharing and flexibility. These findings confirm that resilience thinking can offer practical suggestions for how to improve governance of this, particularly challenging context.

Hybride stadsregionaal bestuur belicht: effectiviteit en legitimiteit in vier grootstedelijke gebieden

This article reports on an analysis of the effectiveness and legitimacy of modes of governance in four European regions that clearly show signs of hybridity, that is, they have private as well as public characteristics. Berlin, Eindhoven, Copenhagen-Malmo and Zurich thus aim to increase the problem-solving capacity of their regional governance and to govern ‘smartly’ in a complex and multi-level context. The individual cities search for effective links with private and societal actors, each in its own way. Legitimacy is an issue that is hardly reflected upon, though. Hybrid modes of governance may have negative impacts on both effectiveness and legitimacy, but also offer new opportunities for good governance. ‘Hybrid’ and ‘smart’ do not always go hand in hand, but they are not mutually exclusive either.

New Ways of Seeing: Pitfalls and Opportunities in Multilevel Research

Researchers once lamented the paucity of multilevel theory, models, and research in the literature (e.g., O’Reilly, 1990; Staw, 1984), but now management journals are replete with such studies. Around a decade ago, Hitt, Beamish, Jackson, and Mathieu (2007) noted that about a quarter of recent management publications were multilevel—undoubtedly, the trajectory remains positive. The proliferation may provide support for the adage that “the squeaky wheel gets the grease,” but it likely also reflects the field’s desire to develop more comprehensive, context-rich theory and findings. Moreover, the availability of “how to” volumes for developing multilevel theory and analyzing the associated data (e.g., Johns, 2001, 2006; Kozlowski & Klein, 2000), as well as the widespread availability of accessible statistical packages, contributes to the movement. The shift is both symbolic and substantive. The multilevel context—once treated as an unknown or messy source of error variance that needed to be controlled—is frequently at the heart of theorizing on a variety of topics. This is perhaps most evident in the teams literature (see Mathieu, Maynard, Rapp, & Gilson, 2008, for a review) where multilevel studies examine direct cross-level effects as well as contextual moderators that influence lower-level processes and outcomes (e.g., Yu & Zellmer-Bruhn, 2018).1But, the influence is apparent in other streams as well, including strategic human resource management (Ployhart,Weekley, & Ramsey, 2009), emotions (Scott, Barnes, & Wagner, 2012), social networks (Brass, Galaskiewicz, Greve, & Tsai, 2004), and many others.

Regulating the invisible: interaction between the EU and Norway in managing nano-risks

Over the last decade, the need for governance of human health and environmental safety risks of nanotechnology (NT) has received increased attention at international, national and EU levels. There were early calls for increased funding of independent research, risk analysis and voluntary or mandatory regulation, but currently overall regulatory efforts have not materialised. One possible explanation is that research has revealed little need to regulate environmental and health safety risks of NT. Alternatively, there is a gap between politics and governance and the evolving state of knowledge. Such a gap can be caused by various factors including change in interests, saliency and organisation. Organisational challenges related to the science–policy interface at national, international and the EU can affect how new knowledge is channelled into decision-making processes. Decrease in public saliency is another possibility. Finally, opposition to regulation among affected producers may have increased and in turn stalled regulation through lobbying. The two explanations are analysed in a multi-level governance context. Norway is chosen as an interesting case: Highly profiled as a frontrunner i.a. in regulating gene technology, but currently awaiting regulations in the EU due to the European Economic Area agreement.

Reformas de ida y vuelta en la gobernanza horizontal del bienestar: el caso de la colaboración público-privada en la intermediación laboral en la Comunidad Valenciana

Las ideas de la Nueva Gestión Pública y los procesos de emulación de políticas europeas han extendido la colaboración público-privada como instrumento de gobernanza horizontal en la provisión de bienestar. Sin embargo, la búsqueda de una mayor participación del sector privado en la gestión de determinados servicios públicos no está exenta de dificultades. Un caso claro es la reforma de la intermediación laboral llevada a cabo en España desde 2013, cuyo alcance final ha sido muy limitado debido a factores como la crisis, el contexto de gobierno multinivel y la ideología de los gobiernos. En este artículo se analiza el caso concreto de la Comunidad Valenciana para tratar de entender las dificultades de reforma de este programa público y contribuir a la literatura con nueva evidencia empírica sobre la importancia de los factores citados en el grado de éxito de las reformas que persiguen incrementar la colaboración pública-privada en el sector de las políticas sociales.

Identifying barriers and levers of biodiversity mainstreaming in four cases of transnational governance of land and water

Mainstreaming biodiversity into the governance of economic sectors such as agriculture, forestry and fisheries is required to reverse biodiversity loss and achieve globally adopted conservation targets. Governments have recognized this but little progress has been made. This paper addresses the following research question: What are the barriers and levers for mainstreaming biodiversity into economic sectors that exert high pressure on biodiversity? This question is approached through applying an analytical framework developed from literature on mainstreaming and Environmental Policy Integration as well as governance theory and practice to four cases in agriculture, agro-forestry and fisheries covering multi-level and transnational governance contexts. Decision-making and governance in these cases look quite different compared to the kind of public policy machinery of governmental bureaucracies that much EPI literature has focused on. Our analysis demonstrates mainstreaming efforts in some of our cases at the degree of harmonization and even coordination among key actors. It further identifies a number of ‘additional’ barriers and levers that from an Environmental Policy Integration perspective would be considered as external factors out of reach for mainstreaming efforts. The results are pertinent for the evaluation of EPI performance because the governance perspective expands the borders of who can initiate, enable and sustain mainstreaming, what scope of regulatory norms they can use and the potentially useful resources for the process.

A new railway tunnel under Brussels? Assessing political feasibility and desirability with competence-based multi criteria analysis

Interjurisdictional infrastructure planning is a complex affair due to the multiplicity of actors representing the jurisdictions, sometimes at several institutional levels. Their priorities are likely to conflict, as the ratio between costs and benefits of infrastructure differs according to place and to scale. Yet, for evaluating strategic decisions, policy makers typically use methods that assess impacts from a single-actor viewpoint, providing little insight in the political feasibility and desirability of projects that cross institutional borders.This paper presents a novel evaluation and group decision-making framework: Competence-based Multi Criteria Analysis (COMCA). It provides a structure for applying Multi Criteria Decision Analysis-based methods in a multi-actor, multi-level context. The framework can be used to evaluate the desirability of project alternatives for each of the actors, whose support, individually or as a group, is deemed necessary. Doing so, COMCA helps mapping local and global interests, providing valuable insight and input into the interjurisdictional decision-making and negotiation process.The article describes how COMCA was applied in a study with the aim to assess solutions for the main bottleneck of the Belgian railway network. It was found that, in terms of desirability among stakeholders, certain little-studied alternatives potentially surpass the alternatives which for many years were regarded as the most plausible options by the key players. Based on experiences during the study, the article discusses various parameters for finding the equilibrium between methodical precision and applicability in a real-world decision-making context.

Healing Brazil's Blue Amazon: The Role of Knowledge Networks in Nurturing Cross-Scale Transformations at the Frontlines of Ocean Sustainability

This paper dedicates to understanding of what is needed to achieve the transformation of ocean governance. Based on the theory of transformative agency conceptualized in a multi-level governance context, we build on recent novel inter- and transdisciplinary research in Brazil to explore the opportunities for transformation in the dynamic, complex and multi-level field of ocean governance. We focus this analysis on three transformation processes towards developing a socially and ecologically coherent marine protected area network as the core of a marine spatial planning process for enhanced ecosystem-based polycentric governance of the country’s Exclusive Economic Zone. The findings illuminate leverage points for achieving (much needed) transformation in Brazilian ocean governance and potentially beyond. These include: connecting transformative actions into coherent narratives and testing strategic advice derived from theories of transformative agency to promote regime shifts in ocean governance systems; setting of more ambitious social mobilization targets; fostering orchestration of knowledge-networks considering multiple issues, territorial and institutional levels; implementing institutional learning experiments; supporting transformational trajectories towards co-evolutionary, polycentric, ecosystem- and area-based ocean governance systems; and pursuing gradual, incremental structural understanding of a given knowledge network field as a major driver of catalysing transformative change. Hereby, this article advances understanding of how to better navigate the transformation towards enhanced sustainability in an important part of the Atlantic and hence of our global ocean.

Heterogeneities in utilization of antenatal care in Uttar Pradesh, India: the need to contextualize interventions to individual contexts

ABSTRACTBackground: This paper explores the heterogeneities in antenatal care (ANC) utilization in India’s most populated state, Uttar Pradesh. Taking an intersectionality lens, multiple individual- and district-level factors are used to identify segments of any antenatal care usage in Uttar PradeshObjective: This paper seeks to understand the multilevel contexts of ANC utilization. The planning and programming challenge is that such knowledge of contextual specificity is rarely known upfront at the initial stages of planning or implementing an intervention. Exploratory data analysis might be needed to identify such contextual specificity.Methods: Tree-structured regression methods are used to identify segments and interactions between factors. The results from the tree-structured regression were complemented with multilevel models that controlled for the clustering of individuals within districts.Results: Heterogeneities in utilization of any ANC were observed. The multiple segments of ANC utilization that were developed went from a low utilization of 23.7% for respondents who were not literate and did not have home ownership to a high of 82.4% for respondents who were literate and at the highest level of wealth. Key variables that helped define the segments of ANC utilization include: woman’s literacy, ownership of home, wealth index, and district-level sex ratio. Based on the multilevel model of any ANC utilization, cross-level interactions also were obtained between sex ratio and ownership of home as well as between sex ratio and literacy. Increases in sex ratio increased the influence of ownership of home on any ANC, while increases in sex ratio reduced the impact of woman’s literacy on receiving any ANC.Conclusion: We argue that a focus on heterogeneous segments of utilization can help build knowledge of the mechanisms that underlie inequities in maternal health utilization. Such knowledge of heterogeneity needs to be incorporated in contextualizing interventions to meet a variety of recipients’ needs.

Uncovering the link between governance as an innovation process and socio-economic regime transition in cities

A major proportion of the world’s population will be located in cities by 2030. With cities globally facing challenges due to the social exclusion of significant proportions of their populace, new thinking is needed on ways to correlate the competing socio-economic goals of various actors. This study sought to uncover the link between governance in cities as an innovation process and socio-economic regime transition towards a more equitable urban society. To do so, we draw on transition management thinking to consider urban regime transitions evolving in a temporal and incremental manner and in a multi-level context. We sought expansion from a delimited focus on socio-technical regimes in transition management literature to incorporate the notion of urban socio-economic regimes. This involved integrating aspects of reflexive governance and politics in a city context with a basic ontology of complex social systems and their evolutionary dynamics that underlies transition management approaches. Our focus is on learning by doing and experimentation as well as participation of citizens with other key city actors in a radically new process of mutual learning that creates social inclusion. The juxtaposition of national, city and community level interactions and their impact on socio-economic regime transition brings into sharp relief the issue of spatial scale and a lack of consideration in transition approaches generally. The study findings reveal a spatial orientation for creating new urban forms of reflexive governance as an innovation process taking place in transition arenas that can trigger new pathways to socio-economic change.

Helping local industries help themselves in a multi-level biosecurity world – Dealing with the impact of horticultural pests in the trade arena

In many countries the biosecurity system is under financial strain resulting in an on-going push for shared responsibility and greater industry self-reliance. This occurs in an increasing globalised, multi-level trade context. It raises the question of how the broader support system for local industries can be improved to help industries help themselves. This work relates to systems approaches as a phytosanitary measure in horticulture trade to address pest concerns. Specifically, it investigates how to create an enabling environment for local Australian horticulture industries to pursue systems approaches involving area-wide management (AWM) of Queensland Fruit Fly (QFly). A functional-structural analysis is applied to identify issues that prevent local industries pursuing systems approaches and to suggest ways forward. Primary data is derived from semi-structured interviews with representatives from three levels of government, industry bodies, consultancies and other key groups, complemented by a grower survey in three case study regions. Systems approaches involving AWM comprise a complex domain as it is situated across multiple levels from the local to the international; it involves various dimensions and many rationally-bounded actors. Key blocking mechanisms to local progress include a lack of clear change pathways for local industries; low connectivity between local industries and the innovation system; currently feasibility signals for systems approaches including AWM are weak; and systems approaches are problematic. Ways forward include supporting and initiating innovation platforms, offering domestic and international market access training; and minimising transaction costs to industry.