Human-wildlife conflict (HWC) is intensifying globally under accelerating land-use change, climate variability, and wildlife population recovery. Compensation schemes remain a central policy response, yet their effectiveness in securing long-term coexistence remains contested. This review synthesizes evidence from 250 peer-reviewed and gray-literature sources across Africa, Asia, the Americas, and Europe to evaluate compensation, mitigation, and coexistence instruments. Using a qualitative evaluative synthesis, we assess governance outcomes related to financial sustainability, administrative efficiency, equity, preventive integration, and social legitimacy. Evidence indicates that compensation improves short-term tolerance but rarely reduces conflict incidence when implemented in isolation. More durable coexistence emerges where compensation is embedded within governance systems integrating prevention, participatory institutions, and landscape-scale planning. We propose a multi-level coexistence governance framework that links financial instruments, institutional responsibility, and adaptive capacity under climate and land-use change, highlighting the need to move beyond reactive compensation toward equitable risk governance in shared landscapes.

Port sustainability: Synergistic pathways and perspectives for air pollution control and carbon mitigation.

ABSTRACT Recent governance approaches bundle infrastructure projects into arrangements to promote equitable development. However, analyses of their multi-level governance (MLG) arrangements remain limited. We explore government intentions on how equity in transport infrastructure planning is addressed through various MLG arrangements for bundled project approaches in France, the Philippines, Colombia, South Korea and Thailand. The findings reveal an emphasis on vertical equity – prioritizing disadvantaged regions for balanced development, implemented through state-regional contracts and ad-hoc regional organizations. These governance forms rely on reciprocal capacity between government levels, warranting future research on optimizing them to strengthen local capacity and foster economic growth.

ABSTRACT This study examines how institutional trust, social participation, and place-based identity shape sustainable tourism development in Mesara, Crete. The study is grounded in place-based development theory, institutional governance literature, and multi-level governance frameworks. The research adopts a predominantly quantitative design enriched with qualitative insights. Data were collected from 133 stakeholders across the tourism industry, agri-food production, public administration, academia, and civil society. Statistical analysis included correlation, analysis of variance, regression, and exploratory factor analysis. Findings indicate that institutional trust significantly strengthens sustainability perceptions, while social participation enhances acceptance of collaborative development models. Regional branding linked to gastronomy and agritourism is structured around cultural identity and institutional credibility, contributing to territorial cohesion.

Lithium has become one of the key raw materials for the energy transition due to the central role of lithium-ion batteries in electromobility, energy storage, and the integration of renewable energy sources. However, the rapid increase in demand reveals growing environmental, social, geopolitical, and market tensions. The aim of the paper is a critical synthesis of global lithium utilization from the perspective of challenges, technological innovations, and integrative strategies supporting a more sustainable material–energy system. A broad, systematic literature review covering the entire value chain was applied: resources, extraction, processing, end-use applications, second life of batteries, recycling, and governance. The analysis shows that the strategic importance of lithium arises from the increasing demand pressure from electric vehicles and stationary storage, while the sustainability of the current model is constrained by supply concentration, uneven control over downstream stages, the water–carbon footprint of extraction and processing, social conflicts, and incomplete integration of secondary loops. At the same time, innovations such as direct lithium extraction (DLE), recovery from geothermal brines, design for recycling, second life, and battery passports can partially alleviate these tensions, but they do not eliminate the need for primary supply in the short term. The conclusion of the work is that sustainable global lithium utilization requires simultaneous diversification of sources, development of circular value chains, and multi-level governance integrating resource security, environmental efficiency, and social legitimacy.

As generative artificial intelligence (AI), particularly large language model-based tools, is increasingly integrated into diagnosis, triage, decision support, and treatment planning, it offers potential gains in efficiency and information access. However, real-world deployment also introduces important risks, including hallucinations, miscalibrated confidence, automation bias, and increased verification burden on physicians. This burden may divert attention from independent clinical reasoning, contribute to deskilling, and increase vulnerability when models fail silently or perform poorly in unfamiliar clinical contexts. Existing AI governance frameworks emphasize data quality, transparency, accountability, and ethical deployment, but pay less attention to physician-facing resilience, defined in this paper as the capacity to sustain independent and safe clinical judgment when collaborating with generative AI. In this viewpoint, we propose a multilevel governance framework organized around 3 coordinated domains: cognitive workload shaping, clinical authority governance and allocation, and organizational safety governance and accountability. Together, these domains aim to reduce verification burden, preserve physician decisional authority, and align institutional oversight with safe and context-sensitive AI use. The framework includes mechanisms such as risk-sensitive verification triggers, bounded delegation, structured interprofessional review, and organizational monitoring to support safe clinical integration while minimizing avoidable workflow disruption. At the same time, implementation may be limited by workflow friction, alert fatigue, variable institutional resources, and the need for ongoing monitoring and recalibration to ensure that safeguards remain clinically useful rather than burdensome. Accordingly, this paper outlines a structured governance framework to guide safer integration of generative AI into clinical care and inform future evaluation across specialties, workflows, and institutional settings.

This article examines Irish language activism in Northern Ireland, an understudied yet successful case of grassroots mobilization in the context of a post-conflict consociational democracy. Drawing on in-depth semi-structured interviews and documentary analysis, it analyses how language campaigners navigated and ultimately overcame a range of challenges—civic malaise, consocational vetoes, and elite-driven political culture—to achieve official recognition of their language via historic legislation in 2022. We show how a group of activists developed community spaces and language reclamation infrastructure to cultivate an independent political ecosystem prepared to upset norms of top-down consociational politics. This strategy enabled the movement to decouple from dominant ethnonational elites, broaden support beyond traditional communal boundaries, and exploit the UK’s multi-level governance system through strategic venue-shopping during periods of consociational collapse. By foregrounding the interaction between civic activism, ethnonational identity politics, and power-sharing institutions, the article contributes to scholarship on mobilization in divided societies and offers wider insights for minority language campaigners operating in similar political environments.

Licensing services are a critical component of modern governance because they shape regulatory certainty, investment decisions, and the protection of the public interest. This study maps how licensing services are conceptualized and mobilized in contemporary public administration and corporate governance research and proposes an ‍integrated organizing framework aligned with private-sector dynamics. Drawing on a PRISMA-guided systematic review combined with bibliometric analysis and science mapping of 369 Scopus-indexed articles, we advance a five-pillar model: 1) legal certainty and regulatory simplification; 2) multi-level institutional governance; 3) digitalization and data integration; 4) strengthening integrity and controlling bureaucratic pathologies; and 5) service quality and the ‍protection of stakeholders’ rights. Findings guide policymakers redesign licensing to be legally certain, digital, coordinated, innovation-friendly, and public-interest protective.

Toward a just and robust energy transition in Indonesia: A multi-scale, multi-dimensional assessment of coal moratorium and renewable energy integration.

Based on health system and multi-level governance theories, this paper develops an analytical framework of "policy elements-implementation mechanisms-governance outcomes," covering seven dimensions: legal safeguards, financial commitment, service networks, human resources, digital/remote support, inter-sectoral collaboration, and early prevention and intervention. Structured coding was applied to Brazil, Australia, Germany, and the United States. The coding evidence is limited to laws, strategies, budgets, and project documents issued by governments or government-authorized agencies; materials from authoritative institutions such as the World Health Organization(WHO), the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development(OECD), the Australian Institute of Health and Welfare, and the U.S. National Center for Education Statistics; and peer-reviewed studies. The analysis reveals that Brazil, through its Unified Health System (SUS), the Psychosocial Care Network (RAPS), and the School Health Program (PSE), has developed a public health-oriented community integration pathway, although the distribution of dedicated child and adolescent mental health resources remains uneven. Australia has established relatively clear institutional linkages among its national strategy, public funding, the headspace youth service network, eheadspace digital support, and the Be You school mental health capacity-building initiative. Germany has formed a collaborative model combining social insurance and youth welfare, based on Social Code Book VIII (SGB VIII), statutory health insurance, and a common self-governance mechanism, yet it lacks a unified, nationally coordinated school-centered youth mental health service network. In the United States, schools have become a critical entry point for mental health services, with federal grants, Project AWARE, school-based mental health service subsidies, and the 988 crisis lifeline collectively driving service provision; however, insufficient funding and workforce shortages remain major constraints. Consequently, an effective adolescent mental health service system is not a replication of any single institutional model but rather the result of aligning policy elements, implementation mechanisms, and institutional contexts. For China, leveraging strong government coordination and an extensive education system, a hybrid service system should be constructed in which schools serve as key entry points, county-level and community services provide support, the medical system offers specialized backup, and digital tools play an auxiliary role. The continuity and equity of the system should be enhanced through mandated collaboration, sustainable financing, a tiered workforce, and outcome-oriented evaluation.

This article analyses how the ASEAN Way, as the normative architecture underpinning Southeast Asian regionalism, structurally constrains human security for communities across Malaysia’s three principal borderlands: Kelantan–Pattani–Southern Thailand, Kedah–Perlis–Southern Thailand, and Sabah–Sulu. Drawing on the UNDP’s seven-dimensional human security framework and critical bordering studies, this article argues that ASEAN’s foundational commitments to non-interference, state sovereignty, and weak institutionalism systematically preclude the multi-level governance mechanisms through which border communities could attain security across economic, food, health, personal, community, political, and educational dimensions. The article substitutes educational security for environmental security as the seventh analytical dimension, justified by the empirical prominence of educational exclusion for stateless and undocumented borderland children. Through comparative qualitative analysis of three ethnographically distinct border sites, the article demonstrates that human security deficits are structurally produced by the interaction between porous de facto borders and a rigid de jure sovereignty regime. These borderlands exemplify non-Westphalian bordering realities that the ASEAN framework remains institutionally ill-equipped to govern. The article concludes by proposing a porous sovereignty governance model as a conceptual alternative, with implications for both ASEAN’s human security agenda and Malaysia’s border development policy.

ABSTRACT This research critically examines how inclusive policies are evaluated and to what extent these evaluations support goals of inclusion. Using a comparative case study of Antwerp, Rotterdam and Gothenburg, the study explores evaluation practices across three dimensions of policy success: process, programmatic and political success. It compares nine inclusive city initiatives based on 22 policy documents, 9 municipal website news, 17 open-ended interviews, 9 semi-structured interviews. While all three cities claim to pursue inclusive assessment, findings show that evaluations are often shaped by institutional and political agendas. In Antwerp, evaluations reflect multi-level governance and professional-led consultation; Rotterdam emphasizes performance and efficiency, often at the expense of deeper inclusion; and Gothenburg promotes participatory processes but faces challenges in translating them into institutional responsiveness. Institutional constraints, political priorities and methodological gaps continue to limit the potential of evaluation to promote inclusion. These findings highlight the need for more reflexive and inclusive evaluation frameworks to support the development of inclusive cities.

ABSTRACT On 28 February 2019, Baden-Württemberg returned two heirlooms associated with anticolonial leader Hendrik Witbooi – a Nama-language (Khoekhoegowab) New Testament, known as the ‘Witbooi Bible’, and a whip – at a high-profile ceremony in Gibeon, southern Namibia. Officially framed as a gesture of reconciliation and historical redress, the return also cast restitution as a governance problem: who may receive, interpret, and steward heritage where state authority and traditional leadership intersect. Drawing on fieldwork, documentary materials, and recent scholarship, this article reconstructs the objects’ symbolic significance and historical context and analyses how their return shaped competing claims to authority across German and Namibian institutions. It argues that state-led restitution can operate simultaneously as a gesture of moral repair and as a site of contested political negotiation. The article concludes that post-ceremony afterlives may raise longer-term questions of custody and sustained public engagement, reframing restitution as a process of governance over time rather than a single diplomatic moment.

ABSTRACT Strategic communication is increasingly conceptualized as an integrative governance function through which organizations coordinate communication processes, align stakeholder relationships, and sustain legitimacy. Despite this development, strategic communication scholarship remains theoretically fragmented across public relations (PR), organizational communication (OC), and corporate communication (CC), which have evolved as distinct yet interrelated research traditions. This study addresses this fragmentation by theorizing strategic communication as an organizational-level governance system grounded in the integration of PR, OC, and CC. Drawing on a bibliometric review of 316 articles indexed in the Web of Science between 2000 and 2025, the study maps the intellectual structure and thematic evolution of these domains and examines their convergence within strategic communication research. The findings reveal a clear shift toward integrated perspectives that combine relational management, internal meaning-making, and corporate-level identity and reputation concerns. Building on these insights, the study proposes an Integrated PR-OC-CC Model that conceptualizes strategic communication as a multi-level, constitutive, and relational governance function. The model advances strategic communication theory by offering a coherent framework that integrates disciplinary perspectives and supports cumulative theory-building.

ABSTRACT Environmentally responsible behaviour (ERB) is widely recognised as essential for sustainable tourism, yet its governance remains fragmented and largely aspirational. This study examines how visitor behaviour is operationalised within a multi-level tourism governance system, using Estonia as a case. Drawing on 13 expert interviews across national, regional, and local institutions, we apply inductive content analysis to identify systemic gaps and enabling conditions. Findings reveal deficits in accountability, coordination, and participation, compounded by structural enablers that remain underdeveloped: limited local capacity and skills, absence of ERB monitoring routines, and fragmented digital information architectures. While actors affirm support for sustainability, behavioural tools, such as signage or incentives, are inconsistently integrated into destination routines. Non-traditional actors, including environmental infrastructure agencies and guides, emerge as critical behavioural amplifiers, yet lack formal recognition in governance frameworks. The study advances sustainable tourism governance theory by linking ERB to multi-level governance and highlighting the need for capability building, robust indicators, and integrated digital systems alongside mandates and coordination mechanisms. Practical implications include embedding ERB objectives in national strategies, strengthening DMOs as development coordinators, and institutionalising monitoring and co-designed interventions. These insights inform policy design and future research on behavioural governance in tourism.

Multi-level governance and climate change adaptation: A systematic literature review

We describe the design of the North Carolina Integrated Care for Kids (NC InCK) model. NC InCK is one of seven nationwide CMMI-funded pediatric health care delivery models that integrate services to promote whole-child health. NC InCK was collaboratively designed by health care systems, the state Medicaid agency, Medicaid managed care organizations, child-serving organizations across multiple sectors, and families. The model uses three key approaches to integrate care: 1) a risk stratification algorithm using data across healthcare, education, and social systems to holistically understand needs and identify children who may benefit from additional supports; 2) a family-centered, longitudinal care management model to integrate cross-sector services for children and youth needing clinical and nonclinical support; and 3) an alternative payment model with innovative measures around social needs and school readiness to drive investment in child and family well-being. Early success designing NC InCK has been driven by cross-sector and multi-level governance from the start of model design, garnering deep trust and alignment around shared goals. NC InCK is a step toward supporting whole-child health via cross-sector service integration and timely identification of children and families experiencing medical and social complexity. Lessons learned from design of this demonstration model can be applied to pediatric health initiatives nationwide.

Large-scale infrastructure projects (LIPs) are often framed as iconic national achievements, yet they frequently involve cost overruns and contested regional impacts. This study examines media coverage of the Helsinki–Turku (One-Hour Train) project to explore how legitimacy is constructed in multi-level regional governance. Drawing on post-Actor-Network Theory media scholarship, framing, and agenda-setting perspectives, the analysis treats media not as passive observers but as co-producers of legitimacy, shaping public perception and influencing governance decisions. Empirical findings reveal that coverage selectively amplifies political priorities, obscures alternative regional strategies, and stabilizes project narratives while marginalizing local concerns. Theoretically, the study contributes to understanding LIPs as socially and materially mediated phenomena, highlighting the role of media infrastructures in producing legitimacy across scales. Practically, the findings emphasise the need for transparent, regionally sensitive communication and strengthened parliamentary oversight to balance symbolic ambition with equitable and cost-effective governance. The study also shows how media discourses shape public accountability and the political geography of infrastructure decisions. • Examines how Finnish media discourses shape legitimacy and governance of large infrastructure projects (LIPs). • Reveals how the Helsinki–Turku rail debate exposes fragmentation between local, national, and European planning scales. • Shows that infrastructural decision-making in Finland reflects symbolic aspirations as much as strategic value. • Argues that media act as active agents in constructing regional development narratives, not neutral observers. • Calls for a coherent national interregional vision to promote equitable and balanced regional growth.

Agent-based modeling (ABM) is a unique tool for understanding social mechanisms and emergent phenomena. The paper presents an empirically grounded agent-based model that simulates how stakeholders embedded in flood governance networks facilitate community loss-sharing and post-flood recovery. The model is designed and calibrated using extensive empirical data from communities in Guangzhou, China. Modeled agents include multi-level government agencies, NGOs, private sector entities, and local clans, among others. The model integrates core processes (rainfall and flood impacts, network-based loss sharing and recovery, and the implementation of resilience measures) with modules for trust evolution and resource constraints. The purpose of this model is to evaluate the effects of different network structures, inter-stakeholder trust, and the diffusion of flood resilience measures on community flood resilience, and to advance the understanding of how resilience emerges as a macro-level attribute from micro-level interactions. Innovations are twofold: First, it moves beyond static analysis to simulate the dynamic, network-based collaborative processes among diverse institutional stakeholders; Second, it implements a process-based framework to measure community robustness and adaptivity, using these metrics to evaluate overall community resilience to floods. Key parameters, derived from literature and empirical research, were validated and tested via sensitivity analysis. The model serves as an accessible tool for researchers and practitioners interested in stakeholder collaborations in community-level climate governance and identifying optimal intervention strategies. • The model is described using the ODD protocol. • Validation, sensitivity analysis, and the number of minimum simulation runs are explained. • Complete NetLogo code and a brief user guide are provided.

ABSTRACT Low-carbon transition depends not only on policy ambition but also on how environmental policies are implemented locally. Using matched panel data on Chinese prefecture-level cities and listed firms from 2013 to 2023, this study examines whether local governments’ implementation gaps shape firms’ strategic green behavior (SGB). We distinguish between two types of implementation gaps: the Word – Action Gap and the Action – Result Gap. The results show that the Word – Action Gap significantly increases SGB, while the Action – Result Gap has a weaker and less stable effect. Additional evidence from government – firm ties and regional heterogeneity supports the interpretation that implementation gaps function as policy signals shaping corporate behavior. The findings suggest that firms respond not only to formal environmental policies, but also to the credibility of local implementation. This study contributes to research on multi-level climate governance, symbolic compliance, and corporate environmental behavior.