National Executives Research Articles

Money Makes the World Go Round: How Much Difference Do Recovery and Resilience Plans Make to EU Reform Governance?

AbstractThe Next Generation EU (NGEU) package transformed European economic governance. This article examines the implications of this change in terms of EU polity formation and in terms of social policy content. It asks whether the temporary availability of large funds increases the leverage of the Commission in the European Semester and how this innovation affects sensitive policies. In the tradition of Stein Rokkan, the article advances a conception of the EU as a compound polity that needs to reconcile dispersed authority with second‐order loyalty. We then contrast our theoretical expectations with traditional reform surveillance and experimentalist governance theories. The drafting of Recovery and Resilience Plans for Italy and Spain provides the empirical basis for assessing these expectations. The analysis shows a dual effect: adding fiscal capacity to the European Semester enhances the Commission's hierarchical power whilst the need to ensure member states' loyalty leaves room for national executives to insist on their priorities.

Donor political preferences and the allocation of aid: Patterns in recipient type

National executives in Western democracies are not unilateral deciders: they lead parties with long-term policy priorities and manage challenging multiparty coalitions. Leaders of donor states use foreign aid to pursue their goals, including enacting policy output consistent with party ideology. Because preferences for international engagement condition the effect of left–right ideology and coalition government incorporates actors with distinct preferences, we predict that left-pro-internationalist prime ministers and development ministers prefer aiding the neediest recipients while right-internationalists emphasize trade opportunities. Our statistical analysis of OECD donor–potential recipient dyads demonstrates the utility of unpacking democratic domestic politics’ effect on leader incentives and decisions.

National Minorities and Global Crises

Since 2015, a series of high-impact global crises has sent shockwaves across Europe. From the so-called migrant crisis of 2015, through the Covid-19 pandemic and the war in Ukraine, national minorities have, like their majority counterparts, seen considerable changes to their lives and lifestyles as a result of measures taken by the national executives in their host countries. It is possible that significant changes to border control and the increased importance of nation-state action in times of crisis have affected the ways in which national minorities understand themselves vis-à-vis their host and kin-states. By reviewing recent media comments and academic research, this article hypothesises that these international crises have pushed national minorities away from local identities and towards more national and European discourses. As a commentary, this article encourages future exploration of this hypothesis in other minority communities across Europe.

I AM Patient Safety 2023 Annual Achievement Awards

Since the Patient Safety Authority introduced the I AM Patient Safety awards in 2013, this annual contest has celebrated hundreds of teams and individuals for their advancements, outcomes, and commitment to patient safety. The awards are judged by a cross-section of national and regional healthcare executives; patient safety advocates; and government, university, and patient representatives. These judges evaluated nominations from healthcare facilities throughout Pennsylvania and nationwide for innovation, impact, sustainability, and scalability. In addition to the honorees in 10 juried categories, PSA Executive Director Regina Hoffman, MBA, RN, selected a Choice Award winner for special recognition.

The Political Behavior of Defense Ministers: A Study of Portugal, 1976-2015

ABSTRACT Defense ministers have not received the scholarly attention commensurate with the resources they command in national executives. This paper develops and tests propositions regarding the behavior of different types of defense ministers (military, pure experts, partisan experts, and purely partisan). Blending organizational theory and military psychology, our analysis investigates ministerial turnover in defense portfolios and relations with the legislature and the branches of the armed forces. Propositions are tested using a combination of original and secondary data on Portugal (1976-2015), an ideal case for this study, as well as cross-national evidence. Our findings indicate that military ministers from the army are associated with a higher army budget and larger land force, less accountability vis-à-vis the legislature, and a longer tenure in office. Experts, overall, are associated with a higher-quality army and a lower tenure in office, with mixed results for parliamentary accountability, depending on the type of the expert. These results have significant implications for the study of defense policy, civil-military relations, and cabinet politics, particularly in consolidating democracies featuring a relatively high share of either military officers or experts heading the defense ministry.

Opening the black box: socio-economic rights and the question of political will

ABSTRACT In a world characterised by vast wealth, technological development and strong polities, the widespread failure to respect, protect and fulfil socio-economic rights (ESR) will seem to many a matter of choice. It is no surprise, therefore, that the essentially voluntaristic, protean language of political will is drawn on as an explanation for how such rights are realised or go unmet. Few would doubt that the fulfilment of the duties of states contained in the ICESCR depends critically on the commitment of domestic leaders, national executives and bureaucracies. However, in the literature on ESR, the concept of political will has never advanced beyond the status of a synonym for those factors at the intersection of the psychological and the institutional that create a reform space. A widely shared acceptance that theory in this area lacks awareness of political processes that determine the success or failure of rights-based projects has resulted in a somewhat diaphanous promotion of ESR that has dishearteningly little to say about the very political will advocates identify as central to (non)realisation. This article posits political economy analysis in development literature as one place where human rights scholars and policy-makers might look for a better understanding of the concept.

TRAINING OF SENIOR EXECUTIVES FOR THE NATIONAL REPUBLICS AT GORKY HIGHER PARTY SCHOOL (1946—1991)

The article discusses training personnel for national republics conducted at Gorky Higher Party School in the 1940–1980s. The basis for establishing Gorky Higher Party School was a one-year party school and inter-regional courses that laid the foundations for the development of party education. The analysis of the documents of the State Socio-Political Archive of the Nizhny Novgorod region makes it possible to trace the evolution of training party and Soviet cadres for forty-five years. On August 12, 1946, a decision was taken to establish Gorky Regional Party School, geared to train top staffers of seven regions and four autonomous republics of the Volga region. The training was conducted with careful preparation on the part of students and teachers. In the early years of the school much attention was paid to the study of the Russian language. By the end of the 1950s, the problem of the shortage of party and Soviet workers was solved. This conditioned the establishment of an age limit for applicants, as well as refusal of admission to Gorky Regional Party School to persons with higher education. Advanced training courses were created for such candidates in the early 1960s. Subsequently, a correspondence department received a significant development, along with the inter-regional courses of party and Soviet workers. Organization of the educational process is also transformed: three new study support centers were opened in the regional centers of the recruitment zone in 1979. The result of opening new educational and consulting centers was a decrease in the number of full-time students from national republics. At the same time, there is an increase in the number of students at the correspondence department and at inter-regional courses. Retraining of personnel at inter-regional courses was carried out in the form of theoretical as well as practical classes, at which representatives of the party and Soviet elite spoke to the audience (for corresponding cohorts). In the 1980s, practical training on the basis of regional government bodies was actively developed as part of coursework. In the 1980s, the area of Gorky Higher Party School was expanded due to training managerial personnel for the Azerbaijanian, Armenian, Georgian, Kazakh and Uzbek Soviet Socialist Republics. Respectively, the composition of students’ nationalities in the school significantly expanded, too. Thus, establishment of Gorky Higher Party School was of great importance for training national senior executives.

Solar energy at the peri-urban frontier: An energy justice study of urban peripheries from Burkina Faso and South Africa

Most of the global population that lack access to electricity services live in sub-Saharan Africa. Peri-urban areas of large African cities, often characterized by the presence of informal settlements, exist in a kind of ‘scalar limbo,’ unable to benefit from either access to the city grid or from programs aimed at the electrification of rural areas. In addition, in those areas where lack of electricity access is common, energy poverty combined with proximity to the grid leads to a greater likelihood of illegal energy supply arrangements. In this fieldwork-based study, conducted through population surveys and interviews in the peripheries of Ouagadougou, Burkina Faso, and Cape Town, South Africa, we employ a hybrid theoretical framework, based on work in urban political ecology and energy justice, to analyze the situation of electricity access in the two areas. We find that the planned scale, scope, and technological design of solar energy projects in peripheral areas are crucial in determining whether and how a project will be beneficial for local communities. This study provides guidance beyond academia to national and international policymakers and executives of renewable energy companies, as well as tools for a more in-depth assessment of energy justice issues.

Federal Challenges in the Implementation of the EU’s Recovery and Resilience Facility in Germany

The paper focuses on the internal implementation process of the EU Recovery and Resilience Facility in Germany with special regard to the participation of the Länder in the development of the plan and its priorities. The course of the development and implementation process is exemplifying how the blindness of the EU and its treaties for federal systems can be used by national executives to pursue their objectives. The fact that the EU’s Recovery and Resilience Facility and NextGeneration EU were labeled by the EC as a “stimulus package” to combat the (short-term) consequences of Covid-19 made it easier for the German government to develop its own Recovery and Resilience Plan without major consultation. Concerning time constraints, there was no broader public discussion. Since the program and structure of the Recovery and Resilience Facility can also be interpreted as a new structural and cohesion policy approach of the EU, the lack of public discussion is of concern. Following this interpretation, a stronger involvement of the German Länder and municipalities in the negotiation process of the Recovery and Resilience Plan would have been indispensable. The analysis of the implementation of the EU’s Recovery and Resilience Facility in the Federal Republic intends to highlight exemplary aspects of multilevel governance that would need to be strengthened if the EU were to expand its range of economic policy instruments in the future.

Conflicts of sovereignty over EU trade policy: a new constitutional settlement?

This paper investigates whether the politicization of a new generation of trade agreements has led to the transformation of EU trade policy. It provides a qualitative study of multilevel contention based on sources from civil society and the parliamentary archives in Belgium, Germany, and the European Union concerning the EU-Canada Comprehensive Economic and Trade Agreement (CETA) and three subsequent agreements concluded by the EU with Japan, Vietnam, and Singapore. We argue that, far beyond mere institutional disputes, the contention surrounding CETA has epitomized two conflicting visions of sovereignty: on the one hand, a vision where national executives qua states share sovereignty under the auspices of the European Commission, and on the other hand, a claim to reassert popular sovereignty (and the channelling thereof by parliaments) in a multilevel fashion. We demonstrate that the strengthening of the latter vision has been limited as the empowerment of parliaments was not sustained when civil society’s mobilization waned. The EU institutions have successfully curtailed the category of mixed agreements thus limiting the involvement of national and regional parliaments. CETA was a climax in the politicization of trade yet failed to bring about a new constitutional settlement that enhances the popular component of sovereignty in the EU.

A Bird’s Eye View: Supranational EU Actors on Twitter

Given the politicization of European integration, effective public communication by the European Union (EU) has gained importance. Especially for rather detached supranational executives, social media platforms offer unique opportunities to communicate to and engage with European citizens. Yet, do supranational actors exploit this potential? This article provides a bird’s eye view by quantitatively describing almost one million tweets from 113 supranational EU accounts in the 2009–2021 period, focusing especially on the comprehensibility and publicity of supranational messages. We benchmark these characteristics against large samples of tweets from national executives, other regional organizations, and random Twitter users. We show that the volume of supranational Twitter has been increasing, that it relies strongly on the multimedia features of the platform, and outperforms communication from and engagement with other political executives on many dimensions. However, we also find a highly technocratic language in supranational messages, skewed user engagement metrics, and high levels of variation across institutional and individual actors and their messages. We discuss these findings in light of the legitimacy and public accountability challenges that supranational EU actors face and derive recommendations for future research on supranational social media messages.

The European Semester as Goldilocks: Macroeconomic Policy Coordination and the Recovery and Resilience Facility

AbstractHow and why did the European Semester end up as the main institutional vehicle of the Recovery and Resilience Facility (RRF)? To what extent did this new set‐up change the power balance among key actors (for example, financial and economic actors versus social affairs actors)? Drawing on historical institutionalism and based on 28 semi‐structured interviews and document analysis, our assessment suggests that while social actors were initially side‐lined and national executives strengthened, over time the pendulum is swinging back. The usual actors are strategically using the institutional structures of the revised Semester as a vehicle to ‘have a say’ in the RRF. Having more carrots and sticks suggests further strengthening the pivotal role of the European Commission. Yet having the option of submitting national plans gives member states options too. The EU institutional response to the Covid‐19 pandemic built on, and further cemented, the EU's socio‐economic governance architecture.

Fiscal Integration in an Experimental Union: How Path-Breaking Was the EU's Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic?

Fiscal Integration in an Experimental Union: How Path-Breaking Was the EU's Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic?

We Sell Drugs: The Alchemy of US Empire

The war on drugs has gained renewed attention over the last decade for a variety of reasons. The ongoing economic and social experiments—in some fifteen U.S. states, Uruguay, and, most recently, Mexico—with the legalization of marijuana are evidence of changing attitudes and policies. Latin American leaders such as Colombia's Juan Manuel Santos and Guatemala's Otto Pérez Molina were outspoken advocates in favor of rethinking how the drug war has been applied in their region. Whatever the new dynamics might be, we normally associate the advent of the war on drugs with Richard Nixon's presidency in the early 1970s, when he adopted a law-and-order approach to surging illicit drug consumption in the United States. Even Nixon's original embrace of the drug war is eclipsed by more contemporary elements such as the rise of Colombian drug kingpins in the 1980s and 1990s and Mexico's current internecine drug cartel feuds.In this timely book, We Sell Drugs, Suzanna Reiss reminds us that the war on drugs started long before the early 1970s. She describes how from World War II through the 1960s a process of consolidation of U.S. hegemony over the international flow of “drug commodities” allowed U.S. officials to define the ideological and institutional frameworks for the international flow of select “drug commodities”—both illicit and licit. This control came through U.S. private industries—most critically, the highly profitable pharmaceuticals industry—as well as the U.S. federal government's heavy diplomatic hand in this era, when it held “unprecedented geopolitical influence.” The result of this imbalanced system was that the advantages (namely profits) of drug control accrued to powerful political and economic elites while “the burdens of the system fell disproportionately on indigenous communities of the crop-growing regions in Peru and Bolivia and poor communities and racialized minorities living in the United States” (p. 9).Reiss also points out that the definition of a drug—and especially a narcotic drug—was mediated by cultural politics, economics, and the way laboratories could “alchemically alter drug raw materials” into a variety of controlled substances, such as cocaine or others that “conveniently exited the regulatory gaze”—one being the coca leaves used in making Coca-Cola (p. 10). Reiss adds that the legal status of any drug was predicated on who grew, manufactured, sold, and consumed it—and not on the qualities of the drug itself. Because the United States and its corporations were riding high at the time, Reiss concludes that many of the international norms and structures adopted “pro-American” statutes or ideologies that formed the establishment of international control in the 1950s and 1960s.One of Reiss's especially novel insights is that the scholarship on the history of pharmaceuticals and legal and illegal drug trafficking are rarely considered part of one economic and political system. Too often, she writes, our scholarly focus is the violent illicit side of the drug war, when in fact there are much more extensive and broader connections at work. For example, “national governments, police officials, scientists, and business executives” (p. 7) all attempted to “monopolize the licit.”In what is not a complete surprise given Reiss's sharp critiques of the international drug system, she weaves advocacy into her book. She hopes for more “human and effective drug policies” in the service of the “people rather than state or corporate power” (p. 14). After reading this important book, one will not need much more convincing that corporations and governments—namely, the U.S. government, starting long before Nixon took office—played hugely consequential roles in what we now consider the war on drugs.

FROM THE DESK OF EDITOR-IN-CHIEF

FROM THE DESK OF EDITOR-IN-CHIEF It is a New Dawn, a New Era, heralding the reviving of the “The Nursing Scope”, a journal of destiny that went comatose in 1991 after the publication of volume three (3), Issue 1. From that time, it seemed as if the excellent work done by the Pioneer Editorial Board and the past National Executives of University Graduate Nurses Association of Nigeria (UGONSA), also known as Graduate Nurses Association of Nigeria (GNAN) was wasted efforts. However, Destiny said “No”, by prompting young visionary leaders, who are members of UGONSA, including some past National Secretaries in Diaspora to mobilize and see that the seeming wasted efforts of the pioneer team are not wasted efforts. This is the rebirth of our Nursing journal. The doggedness, commitment, and resilience of this group in making this feat a reality is worthy of the praise and support of all Nurses both in Nigeria and in Diaspora. The road to establishing a channel to give the Nursing Profession in Nigeria, a voice to reckon with in academic and clinical matters and in other areas of Nurses' contributions to the health system has been very tortuous and rigorous. This is not surprising, taking cognizance of the difficult and tortuous terrain Nursing Education itself in Nigeria has passed through to this point in time. Nevertheless, substantive progress has been made in Education, Research, and Practice. I, therefore, urge us all to come together in the spirit of teamwork to increase the tempo and speed to make, “The Nursing Scope” one of the best global journals through our collective efforts. Together we can make this happen. YES, WE CAN! Prof. (Mrs.) Ijeoma O. Ehiemere, Editor-in-Chief, The Nursing Scope

The bound executive: Emergency powers during the pandemic

Abstract Emergency governance, we are often told, is executive governance. Only the executive has the information, decisiveness, and speed to respond to crises, and so the executive is not capable of being effectively constrained by other branches. Ordinary checks and balances, then, are believed to effectively disappear during a crisis. Referring to the classic theorist of emergency rule, conventional accounts describe crisis governance as “Schmittian” and “post-Madisonian,” characterized by an unbound executive that faces few, if any, legal constraints. This article interrogates these propositions using evidence from how countries responded to the 2020 global pandemic during the critical first few months. It presents data from an original and global survey of over one hundred countries to evaluate the nature of emergency powers during the pandemic. This article finds that, contrary to the conventional wisdom, courts, legislatures, and subnational governments have played important roles in constraining national executives. Courts have insisted on procedural integrity of invocations of emergency, engaged in substantive review of rights restrictions, and in some cases demanded that government take affirmative steps to combat the COVID-19 virus and its effects. Legislatures have played a role in providing oversight and, in many cases, in producing new legislation that responds to the current crisis. Subnational governments, too, have pushed back against central authorities, engaging in valuable checks and balances that shaped the response. Taken together, these findings suggest that, during COVID, emergency governance has been closer to the Madisonian ideal of strong checks and balances than to Schmittian accounts of an unbound executive. This article considers the implications of these findings for theories of emergency governance, arguing that the conventional theories are based on one particular type of crisis—a national security crisis—and therefore their insights may be ill-suited to other kinds of emergencies, such as a pandemic.

Between Populism and Technocracy: How National Executives in Bulgaria and Serbia Manipulate EU Rule of Law Conditionality

This article explores how national executives in Serbia and Bulgaria address European Union (EU) rule of law conditionality by framing it within the populism/technocracy dichotomy. The rule of law remains one of the main problems of EU relations with the two countries. While acknowledging the nuances of pre- and post-enlargement Europeanisation, this article explores the technocratic and populist narratives exploited by the national executives in their interactions with the EU and their domestic public. Rather than positioning the current executives unequivocally either as populist or technocratic, we argue that the political elites act strategically in using both populist and technocratic techniques towards their publics when explaining interaction with the EU. We explore the extent this type of executive behaviour is determined by the countries’ formally different status. While we look for the levels of possible similarity and distinction in the two cases/countries stemming from their different EU membership status, our findings confirm the existence of strategic defensive populist and technocratic techniques applied towards the EU and the national public in both countries The aim of this strategy is to mitigate the impact of the EU rule of law pressure and to secure the persistence of the existing rule of law shortcomings within the process of European integration. Interestingly, our research did not identify substantial impact of the formally different status towards the EU of the two countries.

Delegative Federalism? Subnational Abdication and Executive Fiscal Centralisation in Argentina

What accounts for the varying and increasing levels of centralisation in federal systems? This article contributes to this debate showing that, despite normative and theoretical arguments on the advantages of decentralised fiscal federalism, changing economic conditions and governance hurdles prompt an increasing trend towards executive fiscal centralisation. It seeks to unravel this theoretical riddle by proposing the concept of delegative federalism, defined as a model of federal governance suitable for explaining how economic contexts impel a dynamic of subnational assent to centralisation policies and reforms that oftentimes breach the historic institutional empowerment of subnational authorities. The experience of Argentina, a paradigmatic case of hyper-presidentialist federalism amid institutionally strong provinces, is analysed to show that national executives may increasingly extend their reach not only because of congressional dysfunction but also due to the disproportionate sway of overrepresented, mostly transfer-dependent subnational governments that shun revenue responsibility. Accordingly, and perpetuating centralisation, they delegate tax authority in crises times and abdicate it further when economic windfall affords them with predictable federal grants.

WhatsApp groups: channel for sharing information among LIS professionals in Nigeria

PurposeThe purpose of this study is to determine the type of information Library and Information Science professionals share in the WhatsApp groups in Nigeria.Design/methodology/approachThe study adopted a quantitative content analysis research design. With a total of 739 participants, 1,385 posts of six different WhatsApp groups of Library and Information Science professionals for three months were analyzed.FindingsThe study found that the most shared information among the Library and Information Science professionals in Nigeria is post on professional information. This demonstrates that librarians are determined to share professional information among them to promote the profession. This was followed by political information basically on the Nigerian Library Association national executives’ election, and job advertisements related to the library. Although a few members violate the rules by posting the kind of information not required in the WhatsApp group, the erring members are quickly called to order and warned by the WhatsApp group administrator.Social implicationsProfessional ties can grow among information specialists and library practitioners through participation in virtual communities such as WhatsApp group. The implication of this work is in showing that social media especially WhatsApp groups can be used as a knowledge sharing mechanism to share timely, current and relevant information among professionals in different occupations.Originality/valueFindings on the use of WhatsApp group in sharing professional information will inform several other Library and Information Science professionals in other countries of the need to adopt this channel to disseminate timely information related to up-coming conferences, training opportunities, workshops, call for papers and so on among the professionals. The results of this paper are valuable for anyone interested in an avenue to share or receive much quicker and pertinent information that saves the time of professionals in any occupation.

Binding the Unbound Executive: Checks and Balances in Times of Pandemic

Emergency governance, we are often told, is executive governance. Only the executive branch has the information, decisiveness, and speed to respond to crises, and so the executive is not capable of being effectively constrained by other branches. Ordinary checks and balances, then, are believed to effectively disappear during a crisis. Referring to the classic theorist of emergency rule, conventional accounts describe crisis governance as “Schmittian” and “post-Madisonian,” characterized by an unbound executive that faces few, if any, legal constraints. This Article interrogates these propositions using evidence from how countries around the world have responded to the 2020 global pandemic. It presents data from an original and global survey of over one hundred countries to evaluate the nature of emergency powers during the pandemic. The survey captures, for each country, the legal basis for the country’s pandemic response as well as the extent to which there has been judicial or legislative oversight, and whether the central pandemic response has encountered pushback from subnational units. This Article finds that, contrary to this conventional wisdom, courts, legislatures and subnational governments have played important roles in constraining national executives. Courts have played three different roles: (1) they have insisted on procedural integrity of invocations of emergency; (2) they have engaged in substantive review of rights restrictions, balancing rights against public health concerns; and (3) they have in some cases demanded that government take affirmative steps to combat the COVID-19 virus and its effects. Legislatures have likewise played an active role in providing oversight and, in many cases, in producing new legislation that responds to the current crisis. Subnational governments, too, have pushed back against central authorities, engaging in valuable checks and balances that shaped the appropriate response. Taken together, these findings suggest that, in the current crisis, emergency governance has been closer to the Madisonian ideal of strong checks and balances than to Schmittian accounts of an unbound executive. This Article considers the implications of these findings for theories of emergency governance, arguing that the conventional theories are based on one particular type of crisis—a national security crisis—and therefore their insights are ill-suited to other kinds of emergencies, such as a pandemic. It develops a typology of crises and conceptualizes how different kinds of emergencies require different modes of crisis governance. Specifically, in crises like a pandemic—in which information is dispersed, the crisis is slow-moving, and local governments are needed to implement the crisis response—the executive is structurally more bound than in national security crises. This Article further defends the role of institutional checks and balances during emergencies, arguing that they are likely to produce more legitimate and reasoned responses than the executive acting alone. This is especially important in situations in which it is not clear what the optimal response is, and for which different societies may have legitimate differences over how to balance protective measures against civil liberties. For many crises, then, emergency governance should be Madisonian, not Schmittian.