Multiple Levels Of Government Research Articles

Future Professionals: Student Satisfaction with the General Medicine Degree Curriculum at University of Prishtina

Future Professionals: Student Satisfaction with the General Medicine Degree Curriculum at University of Prishtina

Participatory Risk Governance for Seoul, South Korea’s Flood Risk Management

AbstractRisk governance is a widely used framework in natural and societal risk management research. Risks from natural hazards in urban areas call for the establishment of rigorous and participatory urban risk governance. In this study, we examined participatory risk governance (PRG) of flood risk management (FRM) in Seoul, South Korea. We conducted key informant interviews and implemented a survey with citizens, to explore perceptions of flood risks and risk management, and to examine prospects for improving PRG in Seoul. We found a gap between the perceptions of key informants and citizens. Key informants believed that citizens’ low awareness of flood risks hinders PRG. Yet our research found that citizens’ risk awareness was not low, and risk awareness may not be the main barrier to participation in PRG. Instead, we found that citizens lacked knowledge of FRM actions, and they assigned government bodies a high level of responsibility for FRM, compared to the level of responsibility that citizens assigned to themselves. Moreover, the actors involved in FRM tended not to trust each other, which implies a lack of mutual understanding. To increase the effectiveness of PRG, we suggest a polycentric governance structure anchored by a leading actor group, and active promotion of the participation of actors at multiple levels of governance. Communication between government and citizen participants, designed to foster improved understanding and recognition of one another’s roles and contributions to FRM, will enhance trust and improve the implementation of PRG in Seoul.

Polycentric Groundwater Governance: Insights from the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area

This paper analyses groundwater governance within a transfrontier conservation landscape. Given the current heightened interest in groundwater development, it is imperative that more thought be given to how groundwater resources can best be managed in different contexts for multiple uses and users. Transfrontier conservation areas are areas of vast biological diversity whose functioning and ecosystem integrity depends on the availability of water to sustain ecosystems and subsequently derive economic benefit. Further, climate vulnerable rural communities depend on and form an important part of this landscape. The work highlighted in this paper is based on a study conducted in parts of the Kavango-Zambezi Transfrontier Conservation Area (TFCA), the largest TFCA in the world. Climate induced challenges such as droughts and general poor land use planning have resulted in threats to long term sustainability of freshwater ecosystems and increased incidences of human-wildlife conflicts over limited water resources. Effective groundwater governance can potentially provide pathways for alleviating these challenges. Building on the theoretical fundamentals of polycentric governance, this paper analyses the case of the KAZA TFCA in which multiple levels of governance exist. The paper discusses how to achieve coordination and accountability within a shared landscape to foster sustainable use and management of groundwater. Groundwater within a TFCA context has the potential to alleviate human-wildlife conflict over freshwater, support groundwater dependant ecosystems and sustain smallholder agriculture for the rural communities. Understanding this role of groundwater adds to the framing of freshwater governance and conservation efforts within a TFCA and the identification and development of platforms for the integrated management of groundwater. Bringing together freshwater and conservation institutions in a multi-country context towards integrated water resource management is an initial and novel attempt which forms the foundation for achieving optimal governance approaches in the commons.

Who are the “police” in “police violence”? Fatal violence by U.S. law enforcement agencies across levels of government

BackgroundPolice violence is increasingly recognized as an urgent public health problem. Basic questions about police violence, however, remain unanswered, including which types of law enforcement agency are responsible for fatal police violence deaths.MethodsWe estimated the proportion of police violence deaths in the U.S. (2013–2022) that were attributable to local, county, state, federal, or tribal police agencies, using mapping police violence data. We examined proportions overall, by decedent race/ethnicity, and by state.ResultsNationally, 60% of decedents were killed by municipal, 29% by county, 8% by state, and 3% by federal, police, with < 1% killed by tribal or other officers. These proportions varied by race/ethnicity, with 56% of Native American decedents killed by municipal police compared to 70–75% among other racially minoritized people. While municipal police were responsible for most deaths in most states, in the Southeast, county police predominated. In some Northeastern states (and Alaska), state police were responsible for > 40% of deaths.ConclusionsWe identify wide geographic & racial/ethnic variation in the agencies responsible for fatal police violence. Findings suggest that the budgetary and infrastructural shifts required to prevent fatal police violence need to occur at multiple levels of government.

Tracing Internal Migration Governance in India Through a ‘Mainstreaming’ Lens

The COVID-19 migrant crisis was a watershed moment for internal migration, driving home the importance of inclusionary frameworks and action. Despite the lack of an omnibus migration policy, several disparate policy initiatives have emerged at multiple levels of government, across various sectors and involving multiple stakeholder types. This article traces and analyses internal migration policy in India over time, particularly how the COVID-19 pandemic reshaped responses. In doing so, it builds on the idea of ‘mainstreaming’, a reflexive approach to policymaking that Peter Scholten proposed to address such complex policy areas as migration. The article argues that a nascent framework for migration governance is evolving in India and offers suggestions on how mainstreaming can help streamline research and policy design for enhanced migrant inclusion.

5G Wales Unlocked.

This paper examines Department for Culture, Media and Sport (DCMS) and Welsh Government support for 5G deployment in rural areas of Wales. This project introduced several use cases based on 5G-enabled digital applications in Monmouthshire and Blaenau Gwent. The findings highlight the ongoing challenges associated with 5G deployment in rural Wales, and the current lack of a business model for 5G deployment by Mobile Network Operators (MNOs) in such areas. The report illustrates how the public sector may collaborate with private actors to develop an experimental approach to 5G deployment challenges faced in rural areas. This approach is based on an iterative learning process, in which small-scale experimental actions aimed at identifying sources of demand and understanding the potential impacts of new technology solutions are established. The report suggests that policy action is required at multiple levels of governance in such experimentation to address the challenge of deploying new 5G, and to ensure that firms and public service provision in rural parts of Wales are not disadvantaged.

A holistic framework for evaluating and planning sustainable rural drinking water projects in sub-Saharan Africa

Clean water facilities and services are failing the population of sub-Saharan Africa (SSA), hindering the goal of “Water for All” owing to unsustainable drinking water projects and infrastructure. A vast body of literature has examined the lack of sustainability in drinking water projects, identifying: economic, technological, planning, social and political factors. However, much of the existing literature reflects fragmented and siloed thinking, often focusing on specific issues without a holistic view, masking root causes, and overlooking multi-level stakeholder involvement, necessitating deeper analysis. In addition, most studies view individual projects as pertaining to a single spatial level—such as the village level—detached from its regional or global ecosystem. This paper introduces the “Holistic Integrated Framework” developed through a study in Siaya County, Kenya, on the sustainability of water projects aimed at bridging these gaps. This tool can enhance our understanding of sustainability, allowing for a comprehensive examination and understanding of the problems. It enables the identification of multiple spatial and governance levels and their cross referencing with sustainability categories. It uncovers essential underlying factors driving project sustainability and assesses stakeholders' interconnectedness as well as the direct impact of their actions, thus assisting in addressing the myriad obstacles to sustainability. Furthermore, it identifies the regional feedback loops that perpetuate these problems. The tool is exemplified through a case study illustrating the complexity and fragility of sustainability's, emphasizing the need for a detailed, comprehensive analysis to mitigate risks.

Responding to whom? An experimental study of the dynamics of responsiveness to interest groups and the public

ABSTRACT While politicians are commonly depicted as having strong incentives to be responsive to both interest groups and citizens to govern and maintain office, the literature lacks designs that allow for assessing the causal effect of both types of actors on individual policy-makers. This study addresses this gap by formulating theoretical propositions regarding responsiveness of politicians to both public opinion and interest groups and testing them in a vignette experiment with responses from over 2000 Danish and Dutch local, regional and national elected representatives. Our study finds important differences in the dynamics of responsiveness to the two types of actors: Public opinion has a strong direct effect on the intended voting behaviour of politicians, whereas the effects of interest groups are weaker and mainly demonstrate the potential to influence the views of ideologically aligned legislators. Left-wing politicians, in particular, are responsive to civil society groups. These results have implications for understanding political representation and the role of interest groups across multiple levels of government. While the heightened sensitivity of politicians to some aligned groups creates a risk of policy-making biases, it is reassuring that interest groups have a weaker effect than public opinion and primarily hold potential to influence like-minded politicians.

Governing anthropogenic assets for nature’s contributions to people in forests: a policy document analysis

Forests support human wellbeing by providing multiple nature’s contributions to people (NCP). These are derived from an interplay of both natural and anthropogenic assets, which is a process known as NCP co-production. Like forests and NCP, anthropogenic assets are subject to modes of governance operating across multiple levels, in which policies are a central tool for executing formal governance. Here, we conduct a policy document analysis to investigate how policies refer to both the anthropogenic assets involved in NCP co-production and the modes of governance affecting these, i.e., hierarchical, scientific-technical, (adaptive)-collaborative governance, and the governing of strategic behaviour. The policy document analysis focuses on forestry and biodiversity conservation policies spanning across multiple governance levels, from the local level – two Biosphere Reserves and one National Park in Germany – to the supra-national level of the European Union. We find that policies predominantly address material and regulating NCP and refer to hierarchical and scientific-technical governance. Based on a redundancy analysis, we identify six archetypes of governance of NCP and the anthropogenic assets underpinning their co-production: (1) the governing of strategic behaviour for regulating NCP, (2) governing habitat management for experiences in nature, (3) governing habitat management for pest control, (4) collaborative governance for timber, (5) local governance for experiences in nature, and (6) promoting knowledge for habitat protection. Our analysis thereby unveils how policies intend to govern anthropogenic capitals related to the co-production of specific forest NCP. The findings, including the six archetypes, can support policymakers in designing policies across governance levels.

Towards a typological framework for circular economy roadmaps: A comprehensive analysis of global adoption strategies

This study introduces a novel typological framework for categorising Circular Economy Roadmaps (CERMs) across multiple governance levels, such as national, regional, and sectoral, responding to the fragmented landscape in current literature. Through a comprehensive review and analysis of 398 CE documents, combined with methodological approaches like natural language processing (NLP), topic modelling, and quantitative content analysis, patterns, prevalence, and priority areas in CERMs are expounded. Results underline the pivotal role of governance in CE transitions and spotlight environmental issues, especially sustainable waste management, as dominant motivations. Notably, there appears to be limited private sector involvement in CERM development. Given the inherent regional and sectoral nuances, the findings critically highlight the need for tailored CERM types to facilitate effective transitions.

From project-based to community-based social impact assessment: New social impact assessment pathways to build community resilience and enhance disaster risk reduction and climate action

Social impact assessment can greatly contribute to sustainable regional and urban planning. However, social impact assessment is used primarily in the context of pre-determined projects, while social impact assessment’s role in informing regional and urban plans before projects are even conceived is under-estimated. Moreover, a narrow understanding of the social impacts of projects leads social impact assessment practitioners to consider such impacts as being the outcomes only of the technical characteristics and risks of projects and their implementation, rather than also of broader social, cultural and political-institutional processes. In this article, we reflect on these gaps in social impact assessment. We expand the conceptualization of the social impacts of projects to better consider how social impacts are also influenced by the social dimensions of risk and resilience, and by the knowledge processes and governance strategies that inform and regulate projects. We conceptualize these processes and strategies and design new conceptual models to derive the social impacts of projects. Finally, we reflect on the strategic role social impact assessment can have in enabling social learning and sustainability transformation in localities (i.e. community resilience) and across multiple governance levels (i.e. social resilience). With this article, we contribute to building a key role for social impact assessment in disaster risk reduction, climate action and sustainable development.

Intergovernmental relations and national education policy implementation in Lagos State, Nigeria

ABSTRACT Intergovernmental relations (IGR), the interaction among multiple levels of government, is an essential factor in implementing public policy in federations. Effective collaboration among numerous agencies of government is necessary for achieving policy goals. This study investigated the IGR framework as an essential factor in implementing the National Policy on Primary Education (NPPE) in Lagos State, Nigeria. The study was guided by administrative federalism theory and primary data were collected using in-depth interviews. This was complemented with secondary data from the scholarly literature and official publications. Data obtained were content analyzed. Findings from the study indicate that intergovernmental relations in Lagos State were characterized by a low level of trust between the implementing agencies, which undermined the achievement of the primary education policy goals. Increased dialogue among officials of the levels of government to achieve the buy-in of all implementing agencies would raise the level of trust needed for effective collaboration.

Developing and Planning a Protocol for Implementing Health Promoting Animal Assisted Interventions (AAI) in a Tertiary Health Setting.

The Ottawa Charter identifies that multiple levels of government, non-government, community, and other organizations should work together to facilitate health promotion, including in acute settings such as hospitals. We outline a method and protocol to achieve this, namely an Action Research (AR) framework for an Animal Assisted Intervention (AAI) in a tertiary health setting. Dogs Offering Support after Stroke (DOgSS) is an AR study at a major tertiary referral hospital. AAI has been reported to improve mood and quality of life for patients in hospitals. Our project objectives included applying for funding, developing a hospital dog visiting Action Research project, and, subsequent to ethics and governance approvals and finance, undertaking and reporting on the Action Research findings. The Action Research project aimed to investigate whether AAI (dog-visiting) makes a difference to the expressed mood of stroke patients and their informal supports (visiting carers/family/friends), and also the impact these visits have on hospital staff and volunteers, as well as the dog handler and dog involved. We provide our protocol for project management and operations, setting out how the project is conducted from conception to assess human and animal wellbeing and assist subsequent decision-making about introducing dog-visiting to the Stroke Unit. The protocol can be used or adapted by other organizations to try to avoid pitfalls and support health promotion in one of the five important action areas of the Ottawa Charter, namely that of reorienting health services.

Gap analysis of climate adaptation policymaking in Coastal Virginia

Due to its inherent multidimensionality and complexities, successful climate adaptation policymaking requires a concerted effort among multiple governance levels. Discovering the challenges and governance gaps can provide insights for policymakers paving the way for more effective policies in the future. This paper intends to provide such analysis for Coastal Virginia, a strategic region in the United States receiving significant climate impacts, particularly sea-level rise (SLR) and flooding. Utilizing semi-structured interviews with the main stakeholders and building on the adaptation framework of Moser and Ekstrom, we identify, categorize, and relate main adaptation challenges to better understand the gaps and underlying institutional dynamics causing them. Intergovernmental coordination and comprehensive planning and prioritization are the main overarching challenges, with high emphasis in the literature, while the challenge of retreat and the private sector are less discussed. It is followed by recommendations for different levels of government, informing the path forward from the stakeholders' perspective. A discussion of findings provides several implications for local, state, and federal policymakers. This research could be extended to other coastal and non-coastal areas to help formulate national and sub-national adaptation policies that maintain a holistic vision for adaptation policymaking while pondering the context-specificities of states, regions, and localities. It would be an essential task as adapting to climate change is still in its infancy stages, with the prospect of staying with us for decades to come.

Fostering Market Penetration Strategies for Sustainable Conservation of Heritage Sites in Nyeri County, Kenya

Sustainable conservation has become popular in tourism, accepted by developers and stakeholders as an economically viable, socially acceptable, and environmentally friendly model for heritage tourism development models. However, heritage tourism encounters challenges like cultural commercialization, deterioration, development pressure, marketing gaps, and insufficient maintenance. Consequently, Kenya has prioritized long-term heritage tourism development goals to realize Vision 2030. This paper examines how market penetration strategies can leverage the sustainable conservation of heritage sites in Nyeri County, Kenya. The study adopted a cross-sectional descriptive survey design, targeting the local community members, tourists visiting the heritage sites, key informants from the local government of Nyeri, officials from the National Museums of Kenya, and site supervisors. The sample size was 762 respondents, 11 were interviewed, and 752 were administered questionnaires. The results of correlation analysis revealed that market penetration strategies exhibited a positive and statistically significant relationship with sustainable conservation (r=0.620, P=0.000), explaining 38.4% of heritage sites' sustainable conservation variations. The study concludes that market penetration catalyzes the sustainable preservation of heritage sites. The study recommends integrating heritage sites into the County's economic plans and employing a comprehensive approach that engages the local community at all stages. This approach should encompass these sites' social, cultural, and economic importance for the local population. Furthermore, the findings highlight the need for a collaborative effort involving multiple government levels and diverse agencies to develop, expand, and market heritage products, with due consideration for biodiversity conservation. Keywords: Biodiversity, Heritage Sites, Market Penetration Strategies, Nyeri County, Sustainable Conservation, Tourism.

Campus node-based wastewater surveillance enables COVID-19 case localization and confirms lower SARS-CoV-2 burden relative to the surrounding community

Wastewater-based surveillance (WBS) has been established as a powerful tool that can guide health policy at multiple levels of government. However, this approach has not been well assessed at more granular scales, including large work sites such as University campuses. Between August 2021 and April 2022, we explored the occurrence of SARS-CoV-2 RNA in wastewater using qPCR assays from multiple complimentary sewer catchments and residential buildings spanning the University of Calgary's campus and how this compared to levels from the municipal wastewater treatment plant servicing the campus. Real-time contact tracing data was used to evaluate an association between wastewater SARS-CoV-2 burden and clinically confirmed cases and to assess the potential of WBS as a tool for disease monitoring across worksites. Concentrations of wastewater SARS-CoV-2 N1 and N2 RNA varied significantly across six sampling sites – regardless of several normalization strategies – with certain catchments consistently demonstrating values 1–2 orders higher than the others. Relative to clinical cases identified in specific sewersheds, WBS provided one-week leading indicator. Additionally, our comprehensive monitoring strategy enabled an estimation of the total burden of SARS-CoV-2 for the campus per capita, which was significantly lower than the surrounding community (p≤0.001). Allele-specific qPCR assays confirmed that variants across campus were representative of the community at large, and at no time did emerging variants first debut on campus. This study demonstrates how WBS can be efficiently applied to locate hotspots of disease activity at a very granular scale, and predict disease burden across large, complex worksites.

How does e-government use affect citizens’ trust in government? Empirical evidence from China

Although much literature has discussed the potential of e-government for improving citizens’ trust in government, the question of how e-government use affects citizens’ trust in government remains underexplored. To investigate the driving mechanism of the effects of different types of e-government use on trust in government, this research develops a conceptual framework based on the institutional-based trust theory, the process-based trust theory, and the expectancy-disconfirmation model. Based on data collected from 1668 citizen users living in five cities in China, the study verifies the proposed mediated moderation model and then tests the robustness of the results using process analysis. The results reveal that citizens’ use of e-government revitalizes their trust in government indirectly, via influence on citizens’ evaluation of government integrity, performance, and responsiveness from the experience of using e-government, while the mediating effects of citizens’ evaluation of government on relationship between e-government use and public trust are diminished by citizens’ expectations for their government. The analysis also offers strong support for the conclusion that the effects of different types of e-government use on public trust are differentially distributed among multiple levels of governments in China.

Understanding the social dimensions of resilience: The role of the Social Sciences in Disaster Risk Reduction, Climate Action, and Sustainable Development

AbstractThis special issue contributes to building an integrated social science perspective on resilience and resilience‐building. The articles in this issue provide theoretical reflections and empirical insights on two dimensions that characterize resilience in society. The first (local community dimension) comprises the set of community resources, services, adaptive, transformative and coping capacities, processes, actions and behaviors that enable communities to learn from crises, disasters and past failures and transform toward sustainability in localities (community resilience). The second (governance dimension) comprises the set of adaptive and transformative governance strategies and assessment frameworks that enable social learning and sustainability transformation to be strengthened in localities and scaled up across multiple governance levels (social resilience). This special issue provides a theoretical common‐ground and practical pathways to define resilience and to support recovery and development planning to enhance resilience in society in order to achieve effective disaster risk reduction and climate action for sustainable development.

Urban wireless traffic evolution: The role of new devices and the effect of policy

The emergence of new wireless technologies, such as the Internet of Things, allows digitalizing new and diverse urban activities. Thus, wireless traffic grows in volume and complexity, making prediction, investment planning, and regulation increasingly difficult. This article characterizes urban wireless traffic evolution, supporting operators to drive mobile network evolution and policymakers to increase national and local competitiveness. We propose a holistic method that widens previous research scope, including new devices and the effect of policy from multiple government levels. We provide an analytical formulation that combines existing complementary methods on traffic evolution research and diverse data sources. Results for a centric area of Helsinki during 2020–2030 indicate that daily volumes increase, albeit a surprisingly large part of the traffic continues to be generated by smartphones. Machine traffic gains importance, driven by surveillance video cameras and connected cars. While camera traffic is sensitive to law enforcement policies and data regulation, car traffic is less affected by transport electrification policy. High-priority traffic remains small, even under encouraging autonomous vehicle policies. Based on peak hour results, we suggest that 5G small cells might be needed around 2025, albeit the utilization of novel radio technology and additional mid-band spectrum could delay this need until 2029. We argue that mobile network operators inevitably need to cooperate in constructing a single, shared small cell network to mitigate the high deployment costs of massively deploying small cells. We also provide guidance to local and national policymakers for IoT-enabled competitive gains via the mitigation of five bottlenecks. For example, local monopolies for mmWave connectivity should be facilitated on space-limited urban furniture or risk an eventual capacity crunch, slowing down digitalization.

Income inequality and circular materials use: an analysis of European Union economies and implications for circular economy development

PurposeThe purpose of the research was to evaluate the relationship between income and the recycled materials used in order to rate the business related to circular repair services under the burden of economic development in the countries of the European Union.Design/methodology/approachThe analytical processes explore data from 2010 to 2020. The countries were divided into clusters according to economic maturity (Human Development Index (HDI), real Gross domestic product (GDP) per capita). Subsequently, the relationships were evaluated through the income indicators (for the 13 population groups), and the circular materials use rate indicator. The three indicators decomposed into five specific metrics were employed. The commonly applied characteristics of the descriptive analysis, Pearson's correlation coefficient and the panel regression analysis were engaged in the investigation.FindingsThe results demonstrated the vast disparities between income and circular materials use. In the more economically developed countries, their levels were twice higher as the less-developed countries. However, there is a meaningful positive relationship between them. The greatest attention was paid to the panel regression analysis applied to the relationship between income and circular economy (CE) use. The results showed that in a majority of the cases (different income categories), there is a significant positive relationship. When comparing the outcomes of the regression models between the groups of the countries according to their economic development, a closer relationship was clearly demonstrated in the countries with a lower level of development (Bulgaria, Romania, Croatia, Hungary).Research limitations/implicationsBesides the specific strengths, the study also shows some limitations identified mainly on the data side. The latest data on the consumption of circular materials come from 2020, so they do not cover the period related to the pandemic crisis. It is believed that there may have been some changes in income during the pandemic, and they may have harmed CE. Furthermore, there is to note that some limitations occur in the analytical process. The incompleteness of the data can also be included here as certain data is not available; hence, it was estimated directly by the Eurostat statistical authority.Practical implicationsAt the same time, the following are currently considered among the primary barriers: financial restrictions, insufficient infrastructure, weak government support and obstacles on the global market. Consumers, industry leaders and the government are the most influential stakeholder groups in overcoming barriers. Higher demand for repair services will also initiate further development of business activities in this area at various regional levels. Progress in the repair services economy will continue to require extensive efforts in the future. Systematic coordination of activities at multiple levels of government together with manufacturers, designers, educational institutions, community institutions and individuals will be essential.Social implicationsSocioeconomic characteristics such as sex, age and education represent crucial predictors of consumer behavior. Therefore, the authors would like to focus future research on analyzing these characteristics and examine all the conceptual frameworks of consumer behavior and its positioning in detail within CE and the strategies related to the repair service. Discussing this issue through follow-up research will allow for solving complex transformational and political tasks related to the repair service strategies within CE. It will also inspire the discussion frameworks and multidisciplinary solutions to this issue affecting the fields of human geography, sociological, ethnographic and political sciences.Originality/valueIn less-developed countries, wage change can have a more substantial impact on the development of the CE. Also, a closer relationship between business in the field of repair services with income and the use of circular materials was manifested in the same way.