National Government Level Research Articles

The Chineseness of Urban Cultural Policy in Taiwan

ABSTRACT The narrative of Chinese culture occupied the central position in Taiwan’s cultural policy agenda after the Kuomintang (KMT) retreated to the island in 1949, but the primary (if not exclusive) focus on Chinese culture became contentious after democratisation and bentuhua (“Taiwanisation”) in the late 1980s. This prompted the KMT to redesign and renegotiate its cultural policy objectives in accordance with the changing political climate. Nevertheless, as shown in this article, these revisions were not as extensive or as progressive as one might have anticipated. This study examines the roles and meanings attached to Chinese culture by the KMT in the context of urban cultural policy. Drawing on interviews with local policymakers and policy document analysis, it explores cultural policy in Taipei during the KMT’s incumbency in the city (1998–2014), arguing that despite the adoption of multiculturalism and bentuhua narratives at the national and municipal levels of government, the KMT’s version of Chinese culture continued to dominate cultural policy discourse in Taipei until as late as 2014.

‘With respect for the core business’: on regionalist parties and their minister portfolios in government

ABSTRACT This article investigates the relationship between regionalist parties and the minister portfolios they control in government. A novel dataset was constructed which inventories a comprehensive collection of their minister posts (N = 1779). These stem from 77 different regionalist parties across 10 Western multilevel democracies throughout the post-Second World War period (1945–2020). An in-depth analysis shows that governing regionalist parties adhere closely to their ideological core business: territorial, cultural and institutional affairs form a major part of their ministerial responsibilities. The kind of ministries that regionalist parties hold differs between the regional and national levels of government. They obtain more key leadership positions regionally than nationally. Regionalist parties own a disproportionately high number of minister posts at the national level when compared with their actual seat share in parliament. The results from this study improve our understanding of the portfolio preferences and party strategies that regionalist parties employ when they participate in government.

Research on the Establishment of Management Accounting System of Medical Institutions in the Information Age

<p>In November 2014, the Ministry of Finance issued the " the guidance on comprehensively promoting the construction of management accounting system", which optimized the management of the accounting system. This measure can optimize the financial system, develop the national governance system vigorously, improve the level of national governance, and realize the modernization of governance,etc. With the continuous development of the information age, the pressure on the operation and management of medical institutions has increased. This article focuses on the analysis of the current situation of the management accounting of medical institutions.By deeply exploring the various reasons that hinder the development of the management accounting system of medical institutions in the information age, it provides some reliable suggestions for the improvement of the management accounting system of medical institutions including increasing the importance of accounting personnel, establishing a complete management accounting system mechanism, cultivating high-quality professionals, and vigorously building an accounting information system and so on. It is hoped that this suggestion will provide more help for the smooth development of management accounting in medical institutions.</p>

The role of organizational culture and voluntariness in the adoption of artificial intelligence for disaster relief operations

PurposeThe study explores the readiness of government agencies to adopt artificial intelligence (AI) to improve the efficiency of disaster relief operations (DRO). For understanding the behavior of state-level and national-level government agencies involved in DRO, this study grounds its theoretical arguments on the civic voluntarism model (CVM) and the unified theory of acceptance and use of technology (UTAUT).Design/methodology/approachWe collected the primary data for this study from government agencies involved in DRO in India. To test the proposed theoretical model, we administered an online survey questionnaire to 184 government agency employees. To test the hypotheses, we employed partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM).FindingsOur findings confirm that resources (time, money and skills) significantly influence the behavioral intentions related to the adoption of AI tools for DRO. Additionally, we identified that the behavioral intentions positively translate into the actual adoption of AI tools.Research limitations/implicationsOur study provides a unique viewpoint suited to understand the context of the adoption of AI in a governmental context. Companies often strive to invest in state-of-the-art technologies, but it is important to understand how government bodies involved in DRO strategize to adopt AI to improve efficiency.Originality/valueOur study offers a fresh perspective in understanding how the organizational culture and perspectives of government officials influence their inclinations to adopt AI for DRO. Additionally, it offers a multidimensional perspective by integrating the theoretical frameworks of CVM and UTAUT for a greater understanding of the adoption and deployment of AI tools with organizational culture and voluntariness as critical moderators.

Political trust in a multilevel polity: patterns of differentiation among more and less politically sophisticated citizens

Differentiation in political trust attitudes occurs when citizens distinguish between different political institutions in terms of their trustworthiness. This article explores patterns of citizens’ (non-)differentiation between the local, national and European Union governance levels with regard to political trust. With unique Dutch data, we find that trust evaluations of each pair of governments (local–national/national–European Union/local–European Union) follows a distinct pattern. This suggests that citizens: (1) form more than one political trust attitude; and (2) use different cognitive mechanisms (like cognitive proximity and subjective rationality) to make sense of the political complexities in multilevel governance systems. Although general patterns found at the population level were largely reproduced at the subgroup level, that is, low and high political sophistication groups produced similar patterns of (non-)differentiation, highly politically sophisticated citizens tended to differentiate more – they are more likely to evaluate each governance level ‘on its own merits’. Our results are especially relevant in an era of declining trust, where governments want to regain citizens’ trust but are very much in the dark about which government level (if any) is the main culprit. Points for practitioners Citizens, particularly those with higher political interest, more exposure to political information and higher education, tend to differentiate in their trust orientations towards different governments. This suggests that citizens, to some extent, judge different governments in the multilevel system ‘on their own merits’. Therefore, politicians and public managers confronted with declining trust in their jurisdiction should seriously consider whether such a negative trend might not reflect citizens’ dissatisfaction with their governments’ lack of responsiveness to the specific demands of its citizens.

Lessons From the UK's Lockdown: Discourse on Behavioural Science in Times of COVID-19.

In recent years behavioural science has quickly become embedded in national level governance. As the contributions of behavioural science to the UK's COVID-19 response policies in early 2020 became apparent, a debate emerged in the British media about its involvement. This served as a unique opportunity to capture public discourse and representation of behavioural science in a fast-track, high-stake context. We aimed at identifying elements which foster and detract from trust and credibility in emergent scientific contributions to policy making. With this in mind, in Study 1 we use corpus linguistics and network analysis to map the narrative around the key behavioural science actors and concepts which were discussed in the 647 news articles extracted from the 15 most read British newspapers over the 12-week period surrounding the first hard UK lockdown of 2020. We report and discuss (1) the salience of key concepts and actors as the debate unfolded, (2) quantified changes in the polarity of the sentiment expressed toward them and their policy application contexts, and (3) patterns of co-occurrence via network analyses. To establish public discourse surrounding identified themes, in Study 2 we investigate how salience and sentiment of key themes and relations to policy were discussed in original Twitter chatter (N = 2,187). In Study 3, we complement these findings with a qualitative analysis of the subset of news articles which contained the most extreme sentiments (N = 111), providing an in-depth perspective of sentiments and discourse developed around keywords, as either promoting or undermining their credibility in, and trust toward behaviourally informed policy. We discuss our findings in light of the integration of behavioural science in national policy making under emergency constraints.

Epidemiological profiles and associated risk factors of SARS-CoV-2 positive patients based on a high-throughput testing facility in India.

We describe the epidemiological characteristics and associated risk factors of those presenting at a large testing centre for SARS-CoV-2 infection. This is a retrospective record review of individuals who underwent SARS-CoV-2 testing by reverse transcription-polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) at a high-throughput national-level government facility located in the north of India. Samples collected from 6 April to 31 December 2020 are included in this work and represent four highly populous regions. Additionally, there was a prospective follow-up of 1729 cases through telephone interviews from 25 May 2020 to 20 June 2020. Descriptive analysis has been performed for profiling clinic-epidemiological aspects of suspect cases. Multivariable logistic regression analysis was undertaken to determine risk factors that are associated with SARS-CoV-2 test positivity and symptom status. A total of 125 600 participants' details have been included in this report. The mean (s.d.) age of the participants was 33.1 (±15.3) years and 66% were male. Among these tested, 9515 (7.6%) were positive for COVID-19. A large proportion of positive cases were asymptomatic. In symptomatic positive cases, the commonest symptoms were cough and fever. Increasing age (groups 20-59 and ≥60 years compared to age group less than 5 years), male sex, history of international travel, symptoms for SARS-CoV-2, and participants from Delhi and Madhya Pradesh were positively associated with SARS-CoV-2 test positivity. Having co-morbidity, risk behaviours and intra-familial positivity were associated with a positive odds ratio for exhibiting SARS-CoV-2 symptoms. Intensified testing and isolation of cases, identification of both asymptomatic and symptomatic individuals and additional care of those with co-morbidities and risk behaviours will all be collectively important for disease containment in India. Reasons for differentials in testing between men and women remain an important area for in-depth study. The increased deployment of vaccines is likely to impact the trajectory of COVID-19 in the coming time, and therefore our data will serve as a comparative resource as India experiences the second wave of infection in light of newer variants that are likely to accelerate disease spread.

Public Capital Infrastructure Management: Cases of Germany, Hungary and the USA

ABSTRACT The study uses a comparative case study approach to analyze contrasts and similarities of capital infrastructure management at the national level in Hungary, Germany, and the USA. Public investment has decreased in Germany and the USA while Hungary has benefited from significant public investments financed by EU funds over the past 15 years. Ageing infrastructure and public infrastructure maintenance has been found to be the weakest area in all three countries. The COVID-19 pandemic has further exacerbated existing challenges in underinvestment in public infrastructure. Political support for capital infrastructure project could be more important than cost-benefit estimates in the USA and Hungary. These study findings show that there has been an increased need to institutionalize recommended practices in capital infrastructure management at national levels of government, in particular during COVID-19 crisis. The countries have a unique opportunity to reinvest in capital infrastructure and jumpstart countries’ economy during COVID-19 crisis.

Health policy and federalism in India

ABSTRACT This paper addresses the question of how the position of Indian states in terms of their approach to welfare state policies interacts with the centre–state relationships that characterize health policymaking. In India’s version of federalism, health policymaking has been influenced by four mutually interacting sources: international public health discourses; Indian government programmes and policies; civil society organizations concerned with health; and the political economy of the different states and their associated political regimes. Public health issues sometimes achieve a high policy profile at the government of India, but very rarely do so at state level. This divergence provides fertile spaces for negotiation and conflict. An analysis of the path dependency of the allocation of health functions to different national and subnational levels of government contextualizes a case study of the National Rural Health Mission (NRHM), 2004–14. This shows the limits to the central government’s ability to implement a universalizing, rights-based programme across the country. An explanation for the different outcomes can be found in the variety of state systems within the country. Finally, the paper assesses whether the changes introduced since 2014 show a new federal order in the making and provides preliminary insights from state responses to the 2020 Covid-19 outbreak.

Access to Essential Contraception, Family Planning, and Safe Motherhood Services During COVID-19 Pandemic: Single Secondary Level Care Hospital Experience

OBJECTIVE: During the COVID-19 pandemic, more precisely as a result of restrictions on movement and continuing altered perception of essential health care services, women’s health is disproportionately affected due to reduced access to services as per reports and statements made by different global and national level Government and non-government agencies. We aimed to evaluate the health care impacts related to contraception, family planning, and safe motherhood in an Indian Armed Forces secondary level care hospital during the COVID-19 pandemic. STUDY DESIGN: Immediate health care effect on women’s sexual and reproductive life during pandemic months (April to August of the year 2020) is analyzed through a retrospective observational cohort study in a single Indian Armed Forces secondary level care hospital experience. RESULTS: It has shown more late reported unintended pregnancies requiring surgical intervention, more late-registered antenatal cases and consequently delayed essential evaluations, increased trend in high-risk cases requiring in-patient care (IPD), and reduced access to contraception and family planning services in comparison to those in the previous two years. CONCLUSION: Considering these negative impacts noted in this observation, with the help of policymakers, government, and other non-government agencies, all services should be made available to women including un-interrupted out-patient (OPD) and IPD services in all hospitals, along with continued basic infection prevention and control precautions (IPC) to both clientele and health care workers (HCW). Telemedicine can also play a supplementary role in various aspects of women’s health to avoid upcoming population explosion and for better maternal-child health care.

The path, value and limits of the Confucius Institute in carrying out public diplomacy

On the basis of Chinese language teaching and cultural communication activities, the Confucius Institute carries out a variety of cultural exchange activities between China and the host country, which has become an effective way for China to carry out public diplomacy and participate in global cultural governance. By analysing the concepts of public diplomacy, cultural diplomacy, people-to-people exchange and cultural governance, this paper summarises three typical paths of Confucius Institutes in carrying out public diplomacy: ‘from the government to foreign nationals’, ‘from the government to Chinese citizens and then to foreign nationals’, and ‘from the government to foreign nationals and then to foreign nationals’. The value of the Confucius Institute in carrying out public diplomacy is reflected on the level of national diplomacy, international exchange and global governance. Furthermore, the capability of the Confucius Institute as a language and cultural communication institution initiated by China and in cooperation with other countries in carrying out public diplomacy is limited. This limitation, on one hand, originates from the nature of the Confucius Institute as a language and cultural communication organisation, and on the other hand, is related to the difficulties and challenges that China faces in its participation in global governance. Public diplomacy and cultural diplomacy are based on national interests. They also transcend national interests and, furthermore, become a way for a country to actively participate in global cultural governance. The experience of and challenges faced by the Confucius Institute can have important implications for China in participating in global cultural governance.

Blockchain-based royalty contract transactions scheme for Industry 4.0 supply-chain management

Industry 4.0-based oil and gas supply-chain (OaG-SC) industry automates and efficiently executes most of the processes by using cloud computing (CC), artificial intelligence (AI), Internet of things (IoT), and industrial Internet of things (IIoT). However, managing various operations in OaG-SC industries is a challenging task due to the involvement of various stakeholders. It includes landowners, Oil and Gas (OaG) company operators, surveyors, local and national level government bodies, financial institutions, and insurance institutions. During mining, OaG company needs to pay incentives as a royalty to the landowners. In the traditional existing schemes, the process of royalty transaction is performed between the OaG company and landowners as per the contract between them before the start of the actual mining process. These contracts can be manipulated by attackers (insiders or outsiders) for their advantages, creating an unreliable and un-trusted royalty transaction. It may increase disputes between both parties. Hence, a reliable, cost-effective, trusted, secure, and tamper-resistant scheme is required to execute royalty contract transactions in the OaG industry. Motivated from these research gaps, in this paper, we propose a blockchain-based scheme, which securely executes the royalty transactions among various stakeholders in OaG industries. We evaluated the performance of the proposed scheme and the smart contracts’ functionalities and compared it with the existing state-of-the-art schemes using various parameters. The results obtained illustrate the superiority of the proposed scheme compared to the existing schemes in the literature.

Entrenching Waste Hierarchy for Sustainable Municipal Solid Waste Management in Kenya

Prioritizing waste prevention, reuse, recycling and recovery of materials and energy over disposal through landfilling, offers the waste hierarchy approach (WHA) a sustainable pathway to the management of municipal solid wastes (MSW) and realization of a circular economy. The concept is now part of the legal framework in some developing countries and its implementation has been credited for addressing waste problems linked to high rates of economic growth and urbanization. Even though Africa Vision 2063 prioritizes improvements in urban waste recycling in the continent, much of the MSW generated on the continent is disposed through landfilling evidencing weak adoption of the WHA. This article contends that because WHA is not adequately incorporated in the current legal framework at national and sub-national levels of government, Kenya is unlikely to achieve a circular economy approach necessary for realizing sustainable waste management. Operationalization of the WHA is impeded by inadequate financing, weak institutional coordination, gaps in private sector and informal actors’ engagement and risks associated with investments in large-scale waste recovery initiatives. It is therefore necessary for Kenya to elaborate the WHA in its legal framework at both national and county level, while ensuring adequate financing, involvement of informal actors, incentivization of private sector and adoption of waste planning procedures.

Strategy involving stakeholders and government to contribute and to implement the ILEDSA

A low emission development strategy (LEDS) is designed to develop action programs and policies to place a country on a development pathway that is resilient to climate change while working towards measurable long-term reduction of greenhouse gas emissions. Aceh’s efforts to protect forests have shown a steady rate of reduction in deforestation from 2013-2017. However, the threat still exists, so that an integrated strategy with other sectors is needed to ensure that the goals of tackling climate change and reducing deforestation can be achieved. The data sources for this study are primary and secondary in nature and were carried out by following the basic structure of the ‘SWOT’ analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats). Some of the strategies produced in this study to involve stakeholders and government are: 1) District, Provincial and National level governments implement policies and regulations that are synergistic between institutions; 2) Traders, Exporters / Cooperatives and Collectors monitor the performance of certified coffee and overcome market failures; 3) The Gayo Coffee Protection Society (MPKG), Universities and Research Institutions apply Geographical Indications in every export product and support research funds; and 4) Coffee farmers / planters undertake technological interventions, develop market-based strategies, and develop risk management schemes.

Advancing Gerontological Nursing at the Intersection of Age-Friendly Communities, Health Systems, and Public Health.

Mounting efforts to improve care and promote healthy aging throughout society and across the care continuum have created unique opportunities for gerontological nursing practice. Population aging has invoked a multitude of responses among all levels of international and national organizations, foundations, health care, and government to meet the needs and promote preferences of older adults. Large-scale programs by the World Health Organization, The John A. Hartford Foundation, Institute for Health-care Improvement, and Trust for America's Health have galvanized to advance the momentum of age-friendly communities, health care, and public health. Gerontological nurses can leverage this growing interest in aging by enhancing their knowledge about age-friendly movements, influencing these movements with their expertise in evidence-based practices, and advancing their own competencies in caring for older adults in any setting. [Journal of Gerontological Nursing, 47(3), 13-17.].

National Regulations and Local Rules - A Hybrid Regulatory Model of Intelligent Connected Vehicles in China

This paper investigates the laws and regulations of China on the intelligent connected vehicles (ICV). After analyzing the current Chinese laws that are related to the ICVs, this paper makes a list of challenges that the current legal framework needs to face if (1) the ICV-related laws are not revised or new laws are not passed, and (2) there are no regulations or rules made to govern the legal issues of the ICVs. Then this paper starts to focus on the research into the national regulations and local government rules. In this part, literature review of the regulations of the central government and the rules of the local government is completed to investigate how this hybrid model works for the development of ICV industry in China. Detailed analysis of text of provisions is provided. The results indicate that the interaction and interconnection of the regulations at the national level and local government level form an underlying framework for the Chinese ICV industry by providing guidance, policies, and implementation rules.

Are governments complying with transparency? Findings from 15 years of evaluation

How well do governments comply with their own transparency statutes? Alarmingly, answers to this question are in short supply because of patchy comparative data. This study begins to address this gap by analyzing an exhaustive compilation of 265 transparency compliance evaluations (i.e. audits) authored by NGOs, academics, and government oversight authorities across Latin America between 2003 and 2018. Aggregating data on patterns of evaluation and public sector compliance with transparency statutes, we find modest increases in compliance over time, strikingly low compliance with passive transparency compliance (i.e. governmental responses to citizen requests) at the local versus national levels of government, and significantly higher compliance scores when government oversight agencies act as evaluators. Our data also reveal worrying gaps in evaluation efforts. Evaluators tend to focus far more on active transparency (i.e. website-based disclosure) than passive transparency, more on national level governments than subnational governments, and preponderantly on the executive as opposed to legislative or judicial branches of government. Textual analyses show that education is the most evaluated policy theme, with financial policies and social services close behind. In presenting the first large-scale cross-national assessment of transparency compliance, the current study brings to light trends in the effectiveness of transparency regimes and patterns of transparency evaluation across Latin America.

Online dispute resolution in e-commerce: is consensus in regulation UNCITRAL’s utopian idea or a realistic ambition?

ABSTRACT The rigorous deliberations of the United Nations Commission on International Trade Law to create a global regulatory framework for Online Dispute Resolution have failed to generate a consensus. This paper analyses whether UNCITRAL’s ambition to develop an inclusive ODR regulatory platform has considered the complexities of cutting across cultural boundaries and power (im)balances. The objective here is to challenge UNCITRAL’s assumption that technology’s a-territorial nature facilitates homogeneity in ODR. To this end, the paper examines the implications of globalisation and the evolution of diverse cultures on ODR and proposes that an alternative approach is needed to combine cosmopolitan and legal pluralism in developing a platform trusted by all disputing parties. The author argues that the focus of contemporary research should extend to consider commonalities across and between national, regional and global levels of governance when regulating for ODR. The paper’s findings will inform policy makers and regulators, including UNCITRAL, when considering the role and interaction of various stakeholders when developing an ODR framework. The significance of this article lies in bringing out that the creation of a regulatory ODR framework needs to be more finely nuanced due to its nature as a normative and legal hybrid.

Climate Change Policy: Can New Actors Affect Japan’s Policy-Making in the Paris Agreement Era?

AbstractThis article examines changes in Japan’s policies related to climate change, focusing on three notable events that could have significantly altered Japan’s decisions on climate change: (a) the hosting of the Third Conference of the Parties (COP3) to the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC) and the adoption of the Kyoto Protocol in December 1997, (b) the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant accident in March 2011, and (c) the adoption of the Paris Agreement in December 2015 and its early enforcement in November 2016. The study shows that the Japanese government’s position remained fundamentally the same throughout these events. It called for emission reduction targets that would not harm the Japanese economy, considered nuclear power to be the least costly way to reduce carbon dioxide emissions, and avoided any mention of a 2°C mean global temperature rise as the long-term target. Meanwhile, after the Paris Agreement came into effect in 2016, an increasing number of Japanese private companies and local governments started taking voluntary actions to reduce their respective emissions, independent of national policy. These changes by sub/non-state actors have begun to alter decision-making at the national government level and could be a sign of transformational changes in Japan, wherein these new actors’ voices have a greater influence on Japan’s climate change policy than those of the traditional state-based actors.

Education and gender wage gap: Evidence from Indonesia

This paper empirically tried to analyze the effects of education on the gender wage gap in Indonesia and to examine whether globalization could alter such a relationship. We modified a decomposition method for the panel dataset that corresponds to the National Socio-Economic Survey from 1996 to 2016. Overall, we found that schooling could significantly influence the salary discrepancy. We also proved that globalization did matter in explaining the relationship between the educational attainment and the salary gap. Here, it could widen the difference in the remuneration. Based on the results, strengthening the gender-responsive budget at the national government level might be one of the solutions. Basically, it actually started with a new awareness of the budget that was not genderneutral. Thus, the positioning of women in education and decision-making process is very crucial for the future of development.