Non-governmental Governance Research Articles

Non-governmental Governance of Trust on the Internet: The CA/Browser Forum

Non-governmental Governance of Trust on the Internet: The CA/Browser Forum

Strengths and gaps of the EU frameworks for the sustainability assessment of bio-based products and bioenergy

BackgroundThe high number of bioeconomy (BE) policies and strategies indicates the interest in the BE in many nations. The development of the BE holds opportunities but also risks for sustainability. Thus, the future development of a sustainable BE should be based on coherent policy frameworks. There are already links between private governance approaches and public policy frameworks that might support each other for this purpose. The aim of this study was to evaluate how the current EU BE policy frameworks consider sustainability aspects and if non-governmental governance approaches could support their enhancement.MethodsAn inventory of BE policy documents on EU and EU member state levels relevant to sustainability was conducted applying desktop research. Major sustainability risk perceptions in the BE sectors were identified. We provide a list of sustainability risks within different BE sectors, based on an expert survey. In a qualitative evaluation, most commonly identified sustainability requirements in policy documents were benchmarked against most important sustainability risk perceptions.ResultsSustainability requirements have been identified in 56% of the policy documents. The influence of the policy frameworks on the industry was found to be rather low. Specific targets and goals are included in 72% of the analysed BE policy documents, but only 50% are quantifiable. Identification of major sustainability risks revealed that in the biomass production stage, mostly environmental risks are most relevant. A “hot spot sector” with accumulated sustainability risk perceptions or a tendency to higher risk levels was not identified. Most important sustainability risk perceptions matched with requirements in policy documents, but requirements were mostly stated in a noncommittal way.Discussion and conclusionsCoherence amongst the sustainability criteria included in the various BE frameworks should be increased. Groundwork developed by non-governmental governance approaches should be picked up by policy makers for more harmonised terminologies of sustainability requirements, BE definitions, etc. BE monitoring approaches should take policy targets, sustainability requirements and sustainability risks into account and should adjust them in a dynamic way.

Interiority and government of the child

Early childhood education and care programs in Indonesia developed rapidly in the aftermath of the 2006 earthquake centered south of Yogyakarta. The newly empowered self-directed learner at the center of these programs seemed to follow from the emergence of another child in this devastated landscape: the traumatized child in need of healing. The appearance of these images of childhood along with Indonesia’s neoliberal democratization reiterates the long-standing relationship between childhood and rule. Grounded in long-term ethnographic work in the Yogyakarta area, this article traces a conceptual link between the shift to transparent and accountable good governance in post-Suharto Indonesia and the desire to produce a newly transparent childhood ready for intervention. The generative power of history, trauma, and the interior self is contrasted with risk management, nongovernmental governance, and the exteriorization of self and state to challenge the unquestioned good of empowerment and transparency.

The Virtuous Tourist: Consumption, Development, and Nongovernmental Governance in a Mozambican Village

ABSTRACT This article is about the role of tourist moral agency in governing. The affiliation between vacationing and governing is illustrated through the examination of a case study: the village of Canhane in Mozambique. The main touristic attribute of the village lies in residents' performance of a society in need, seeking outside solutions and guidance. Virtuous tourism in Canhane is the effect of a capitalist expansion in which ethics, community development, and governance are conflated with tourists' consumption. Specifically, the commodifying logic that emerges from the presence of virtuous tourists in the village derives primarily from three subjects: tourists' self‐aspirations, residents' ambition to integrate into the broader socioeconomic order, and the politicization of virtue stimulated by the development industry. Ultimately, this article shows how the cultivation of ethics through tourism consumption has become an ally for the exercise of nongovernmental governance over public spheres.

Forest certification in Canada: An exploratory study of perceptions of provincial and territorial government employees

This article provides a review of the governmental approaches to forest certification and of the applicability of forest certification requirements across Canada. Surveys of Canadian provincial and territorial government employees were conducted to examine their views about the rise of non-governmental governance in the form of forest certification. Respondents perceived that forest certification has had a positive effect on many aspects of forest management. The most prominent effects of certification from their perspectives were improved market access, increased monitoring, better emergency preparedness, and the creation of a mechanism by which corrective measures can be applied to remedy issues.

The global child and non-governmental governance of the family in post-Suharto Indonesia

State interventions in the family under Suharto's New Order were pervasive and deep, from education to the local delivery of social welfare through citizen-housewives. In the heady and chaotic period since the end of Suharto's regime in the late 1990s, there has been an explosion of programmes aimed at early childhood in response to transnational initiatives that suggest a new global child. Local women as wives and mothers are once again involved in the delivery of these programmes. Based on fieldwork in Yogyakarta, Java, this article considers stabilities and changes in non-governmental governance of families in Indonesia in the context of the democratization. New early childhood programmes illustrate forms of transnational governance, including corporate day care and international regimes of expertise on children. Yet, the re-purposing of New Order forms of governmentality now in neo-liberal forms suggests great continuity in forms of rule through the family in Indonesia, even in the era of democratic reform.

A New Vision for Public Administration

Employing the metaphor of human sight, this essay advances a new vision for public administration. It is a departure from past visions in that it asks us to see the field from its own viewpoint rather than that of others. First, three common perspectives on public administra? tion are critiqued as possessing a vision ofthe field that is not in accord with its core contributions to the demo? cratic republic. Second, a new vision is advanced comprising three elements: a concept of government-basedyet nongovernmental governance in which the contributions of administration are fully accounted for; a trajectory image ofthe administrative agency propelled by a strong sense of mission; and the notion that administrations highest purpose is to build the public trust that makes democracy possible.