Policies In Place Research Articles

Institutional and Policy Arrangements for Evaluation of the European Union Structural Funds in Lithuania

Institutional and Policy Arrangements for Evaluation of the European Union Structural Funds in Lithuania

Monetary-fiscal interactions and the euro area's malaise

When monetary and fiscal policy are conducted as in the euro area, output, inflation, and government bond default premia are indeterminate according to a standard sticky-price general equilibrium model extended to include defaultable public debt. With sunspots, the model mimics the recent euro area data. We specify an alternative configuration of monetary and fiscal policy, with a non-defaultable eurobond. If this policy arrangement had been in place since the onset of the Great Recession, output could have been much higher than in the data with inflation in line with the ECB's objective.

Latin American governments in the promotion of outward FDI.

A main issue in growing outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) from emerging economies is the participation of home governments. This paper focuses on governments in Latin America and how they are promoting the OFDI of their domestic enterprises. Brazil, Chile and Mexico are the leading countries in Latin America supporting OFDI, although only Brazil has an active policy and institutional arrangements for supporting home enterprise internationalization. Governments in Latin America need to develop their institutional environments and create suitable conditions for enterprises to expand internationally.

“Moroccan youngsters”: category politics in the Netherlands

AbstractThe article analyses the categorization of “Moroccan youngsters” as a problem group in the Netherlands. Since the 1990s Dutch‐Moroccan boys and young men are set apart as a problematic group that presents a social and security threat and an emblem of the failure of multicultural society. We analyse the intersectional “category politics” of Dutch politicians to situate Moroccan‐Dutch youngsters as problematic outsiders. Our analysis makes clear how national origin, culture, class and gender intersect in the categorization of “Moroccan youngsters” constituting a national‐cultural category, which is also defined in terms of a disadvantaged socio‐economic position. This categorization has important implications for policy arrangements and proposed measures. Existing schooling and training measures are seen as inadequate to end incessant intergenerational patterns of dependence and poverty. Intervention in the sphere of the family and parenting are deemed necessary to transform “Moroccan youngsters” into “good citizens.”

Palm biomass waste as supplementary source of electricity generation in Ghana: Case of the Juaben Oil Mills

The purpose of the study was to examine the potential of palm biomass, taking a case of the Juaben Oil Mills in the Ashanti Region of Ghana, which has over the years generated electricity for its operations from its waste products and other benefits that have accrued to the company and the host community. Primary data collection and intensive desk study approaches were employed albeit qualitatively, to describe the use of palm biomass as supplementary source of electricity generation in Ghana. The study showed that there is enough potential (waste by-products) for electricity generation to supplement current production from hydropower to meet growing demand. However, policy and institutional arrangements do not easily allow generation and extension for communal benefits. The authors therefore recommend a relook at existing policy and institutional arrangements to help promote this alternative source of energy for efficient and sustainable domestic and industrial uses. We also argue that ensuring efficiency in energy generation calls for R&D into its commercial potential and explore more efficient means of managing industrial and other agro biofuel wastes in developing economies. Future energy policy must also create and harness diversity of available biomass resources and reduce the delivery risks of the resources.

Infrastructures of expertise: policy convergence and the implementation of the EU Nitrates Directive in Poland

ABSTRACTAccess to the EU leads to a process of policy convergence in which member states’ institutions and policy cultures become increasingly adapted to align with an EU governance system. Especially in EU environmental policy, knowledge and expertise are key aspects of the institutions and policy cultures that are adapted in this process, which ideally results in the alignment of EU policy and administrative arrangements of member states. This paper offers a historical analysis of the Nitrates Directive's implementation in Poland and shows how increasing convergence of Polish institutions and cultures of expertise with EU policy occurred in response to the directive's requirements. The results highlight that (1) knowledge and expertise are central to policy convergence processes and that (2) institutions and cultures of expertise are entwined in ‘infrastructures of expertise’. The paper concludes with a call for more consideration of the science–policy interface in policy convergence processes related to Europeanisation.

Belgian flood risk governance: explaining the dynamics within a fragmented governance arrangement

Despite some inertia, flood risk governance in Belgium has been fairly dynamic between 1995 and 2015. In this paper, change and stability during this period are described and explained in the four dimensions of the Policy Arrangement Approach: actors, discourses, rules, and resources. The analysis is based on 72 semi‐structured stakeholder interviews and legal document analysis.Belgian flood risk governance is characterised by a high level of fragmentation. Our analysis found that this can form a barrier to change, but at the same time it creates multiple entry points for policy innovation and thereby increases the dynamics within the governance arrangement.

What Enables and Constrains the Inclusion of the Social Determinants of Health Inequities in Government Policy Agendas? A Narrative Review.

Background: Despite decades of evidence gathering and calls for action, few countries have systematically attenuated health inequities (HI) through action on the social determinants of health (SDH). This is at least partly because doing so presents a significant political and policy challenge. This paper explores this challenge through a review of the empirical literature, asking: what factors have enabled and constrained the inclusion of the social determinants of health inequities (SDHI) in government policy agendas? Methods: A narrative review method was adopted involving three steps: first, drawing upon political science theories on agenda-setting, an integrated theoretical framework was developed to guide the review; second, a systematic search of scholarly databases for relevant literature; and third, qualitative analysis of the data and thematic synthesis of the results. Studies were included if they were empirical, met specified quality criteria, and identified factors that enabled or constrained the inclusion of the SDHI in government policy agendas. Results: A total of 48 studies were included in the final synthesis, with studies spanning a number of country-contexts and jurisdictional settings, and employing a diversity of theoretical frameworks. Influential factors included the ways in which the SDHI were framed in public, media and political discourse; emerging data and evidence describing health inequalities; limited supporting evidence and misalignment of proposed solutions with existing policy and institutional arrangements; institutionalised norms and ideologies (ie, belief systems) that are antithetical to a SDH approach including neoliberalism, the medicalisation of health and racism; civil society mobilization; leadership; and changes in government. Conclusion: A complex set of interrelated, context-dependent and dynamic factors influence the inclusion or neglect of the SDHI in government policy agendas. It is better to think about these factors as increasing (or decreasing) the ‘probability’ of health equity reaching a government agenda, rather than in terms of ‘necessity’ or ‘sufficiency.’ Understanding these factors may help advocates develop strategies for generating political priority for attenuating HI in the future.

Is urban agriculture urban green space? A comparison of policy arrangements for urban green space and urban agriculture in Santiago de Chile

Urban green spaces are crucial for citizens’ wellbeing. Nonetheless, many Latin American cities struggle to provide sufficient and equitable green space distribution for their citizens. By looking at the Chilean capital Santiago as an example, this paper examines whether the growing urban agriculture movement provides a feasible opportunity to increase public urban green space access. It does so by using the policy arrangement approach to analyse change and stability in two policy domains: urban green space planning and urban agriculture. The paper investigates urban green spaces and urban agriculture and the role of practitioners, urban planners and policymakers. The analysis found opportunities for urban agriculture to facilitate the expansion of urban green spaces in Santiago if policy mechanisms enable private or public spaces to be maintained by citizen organizations. Such mechanisms may, however, encounter resistance from public agencies, as it is unresolved who is involved and who benefits from urban agriculture. The paper concludes that urban agriculture is an opportunity for urban greening in Santiago, although changes are needed in how green areas are planned and conceived. Additionally, urban agriculture should not be understood as a substitute for parks but as a complementary form of green space provision with a distinctive value.

La rilevanza del livello municipale delle politiche di conciliazione. Uno studio dell'offerta di servizi pubblici

In recent decades family-work reconciliation policies have been at the core of social-policy studies. Thus far, however, little attention has been paid at the relevance of the local level in the organization, financing and implementation of these policies. This represents a relevant gap in the framework of the increasing competition between cities and the growing relevance of the place of residence as a determinant of individuals’ well-being. In our study we analyse family-work conciliation policies implemented in three different medium-size municipalities in the region Emilia-Romagna. Our results shows that the city of residence has a substantial impact on individuals’ well-being and life-chances due to the relevant differences in the availability and accessibility of reconciliation policies. The possibility of accumulating location specific capital is strongly determined by the place of residence and municipality emerges as an important dimension along which inequalities are structured.

Getting evidence into action to tackle institutional child abuse

The Australian Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse is an example of a government response to survivors’ demands to address the harm they suffered. It is also a major response by a national government to improve child safety in the future. Facing up to child abuse is difficult and in other countries similar inquiries have suffered delays and derailing. This commentary uses an evidence-to-action lens to explore why clear evidence of child sexual abuse may be ignored and side-lined. It argues that where evidence challenges the powerful, is surprising and shocking, or undercuts current institutional and policy arrangements, then that evidence is likely to be ignored, undermined or refuted – all factors which are present in the case of historical institutional child sexual abuse.

Institutional Design, Macroeconomic Policy Coordination and Implications for the Financial Sector in the UK

AbstractThis study has analysed the implications of institutional design of macroeconomic policy making institutions for the macroeconomic policy interaction and financial sector in the United Kingdom. Employing a Vector Error Correction (VEC) model and using monthly data from January 1985 to August 2008 we found that the changes in institutional arrangement and design of policy making authorities appeared to be a major contributing factor in dynamics of association between policy coordination/combination and financial sector. It was also found that the independence of the Bank of England (BoE) and withdrawal from the Exchange Rate Mechanism led to the increase in macroeconomic policy maker’s ability to coordinate and restore financial stability. The results imply that although institutional autonomy in the form of instrument independence (monetary policy decisions) could bring financial stability, there is a strong necessity for coordination, even in Post-MPC (Monetary Policy Committee) and the BoE independence.

Do Heterogeneous Expectations Constitute a Challenge for Policy Interaction?

Yes, indeed; at least for macroeconomic policy interaction. We examine a Neo-Classical economy and provide the conditions for policy arrangements to successfully stabilize the economy when agents have either rational or adaptive expectations. For a contemporaneous-data monetary policy rule, the monetarist solution is unique and stationary under a passive fiscal/active monetary policy regime if monetary policy appropriately incorporates expectational heterogeneity. In contrast, the active fiscal/passive monetary policy regime’s fiscalist solution is prone to explosiveness due to empirically plausible expectational heterogeneity. Nevertheless, this can be a well-defined, rather orthodox equilibrium. For operational monetary policy rules, only the results for the fiscalist solution prevail. Moreover, our results are plausible from an adaptive learning viewpoint and, conditional on stationarity, both regimes yield promising business cycle dynamics.

The introduction of catchment-wide co-operations: Scalar reconstructions and transformation in Austria in flood risk management

The management of flood risk in Europe is changing. In several European Member States there are significant ongoing processes to shift certain flood risk management duties and responsibilities from the national to the local level. Previously, national authorities dominated the discourse about national flood risk management policy, but increasingly, local and private stakeholders have become responsible for flood risk management. This has greatly influenced the governance structure and arrangements for flood risk management policy. As a result, the co-operation among various stakeholders has become increasingly important. The consequences of this shift toward local stakeholders can be understood in the context of rescaling. This paper analyses the rescaling processes through catchment-wide management plans in the Austrian flood risk management system. Therefore, we selected three different Austrian study sites (Aist in Upper Austria, Triesting-Tal in Lower Austria and Ill-Walgau in Vorarlberg). New management ideas required new dynamics within the current scales and allowed changes in the interaction of local, regional, and national stakeholders in terms of negotiation, funding, and strategy development. The new policy direction demonstrates not only the importance of network connections between stakeholders at the same scale, but also networks between stakeholders at different scales, especially between local and national levels. However, engagement at the local level strongly depends on social capacities, such as knowledge, motivation/self-interest, networks at various levels, and procedural capacity. The theoretical framework of politics of scale helps in understanding and analysing the impact of the new decentralisation policy and practice.

Scalar dynamics and implications of ambient air quality management in the EU

This paper presents a comparative case study across 3 countries and 12 cities of the implementation of the EU Ambient Air Quality (AAQ) Directive in order to show that the research perspectives of the scaling literature and the political science discussion on functionally differentiated governance can be usefully combined to reflect on opportunities and constraints in improving environmental governance. Using document and interview material from the cases and employing the policy arrangement approach, we explore how implementing the directive impact on environmental governance in a multi-level system. We demonstrate that the scalar dynamics triggered by the AAQ Directive may create unexpected problems of spatial misfit in term of rules and resources, which ultimately impinge on the effectiveness of the policy in question. Similarly, we find that the territorial rescaling down to the local level is not a panacea for facilitating bottom-up public involvement.

Perceptions across scales of governance and the Indonesian peatland fires

Across leading environmental challenges—fire management, climate change, deforestation – there is growing awareness of the need to better account for diverse stakeholder perceptions across complex, multi-level governance arrangements. Perceptions often condition behavior, compliance and engagement in ways that impact environmental outcomes. We illustrate the importance of, and approaches to, examining perceptions across scales of governance (e.g. international, national, local) and sectors (e.g. civil society, government, corporate) through the example of Indonesian peatland fires. Peatlands are crucial global carbon stocks threatened by land use change and fire and subject to a range of policy interventions that affect many different stakeholder groups. Peatland drainage and conversion to plantation agriculture has been associated with severe, uncontrolled peat fires that present significant climate, public health and economic risks. Peatland fire management has become a domestic and international priority, spurring intensely contentious debates, policies and legal proceedings. Previous fire management interventions (FMI) are numerous yet have suffered widespread implementation failures. Against this backdrop, our manuscript provides a thematically and methodologically novel analysis of how diverse stakeholders, from local farmers to international policy makers, perceive peatland fires in terms of, i) how they prioritize the associated benefits and burdens, and ii) the perceived effectiveness of FMI. We adopt an innovative application of Q method to provide needed insights that serve to quantify the areas of contention and consensus that exist among the stakeholders and their multi-dimensional perspectives. We show that many of the contemporary FMI were perceived as among the most effective interventions overall, but were also the most controversial between groups. Clear consensus areas were related to the shared concerns for the local health impacts and the potential of government support for fire-free alternatives as a solution pathway. Improved understanding of stakeholder perceptions has potential to: give voice to marginalized communities; enable transparent mediation of diverse priorities; inform public education campaigns, and shape future policy and governance arrangements.

Territorial governance and proximity dynamics. The case of two public policy arrangements in the Brazilian Amazon

AbstractUsing social network and proximity‐based approaches, this paper analyses the effect of two territorial governance arrangements implemented in the Amazonian region in the framework of ‘The Territories of Citizenship’ programme, which aims to promote interaction and collaboration between the various actors of rural development. In the Amazon region, the great distances between actors made their interactions difficult. Our study reveals, however, that those distances are not insurmountable obstacles to collaboration. Indeed, the measures implemented in the framework of territorial policies promote communication between the different actors of the territories, thus allowing for the development and reinforcement of organized proximity.

Tools of Government for Russian Development: The Case of Housing

The article analyses the use of policy tools in the Russian housing sector, associated with the government’s objective of development, and examines the pattern of complementarity that exists between the policy tools. Building on the insights of historical institutionalist and public policy literatures, it argues that the choices of policy tools are determined by institutional and policy sector specific structural factors and temporal calculations by the policy makers leading them to adopt specific ‘bundles’ of policy instruments as well as doubling policy arrangements.

FORMULASI KEBIJAKAN AKUNTANSI PEMERINTAH DAERAH

This research is conducted to comprehend the Formulation Process of Merauke Regency Accounting Policy and to find out the proponent and obstruction factors due to the process of formulation.The approach of this research is analytical qualitative. Informants taken of this research are Head of Finance and Regency Asset Managerial Bureau in Merauke Regency, Head of Accounting Division and Head of Treasury Division, Head of Documentation Section of Regency Secretariat Law Division in Merauke Regency, also experts used in the process of policy arrangement. Data collected by using interview method which is then processed with “snowball” technique.From the result of this research will be then comprehended how the policy arrangement process are conducted, started from policy issues to the decision or ratification of the policy. It can be seen from the result that policy issues are being responded by the release of Ordinance about Government Accounting Standard Based on Accruals which then being followed by Minister of Home Affairs’ Ordinance for Implementation of Accruals Accounting Application. Initial phase is by making team of Policy Arrangement in Regency Government which then followed by a discussion of the team and experts, and also related officers in local government. The most affecting factors are dominated by old behavior related to the application of the policy implementation.Regent ordinance about Merauke Regency Accounting Policy is the instruction of Government Rules which later be arranged in Minister of Home Affairs’ rule about the Implementation of Accounting Standard in Regency Government, the arrangement team involves experts or academician as masters of policies who has been chosen by Head of Finance and Assets Executives, public process has involved related division and treasurer as impacted party of this policy. By doing discussion and socialiszation, this policy arrangement – which is done by policy experts and related division – has applied easier alternatives under the obedience of the regulation.There is no obstruction factor in this arrangement process then by far it can be called a success since the team, experts, and institutions has done a good communication and coordination during the process. But still the old behavior holds the most dominant effect in this formulation.Efforts done in this phase of policy arrangement – from team assembling of demand issues to discussed material through the forum – involved stakeholders which then be settled as occured procedure.

Dynamics of climatic and anthropogenic stressors in risking island-char livelihoods: a case of northwestern Bangladesh

ABSTRACTLivelihood in developing countries draws grave attention to the climatic and anthropogenic stressors that contribute to risk the livelihood despite diversification, and thus wane people’s adaptive capacity and capabilities to cope with unanticipated shocks. Following stratified purposive sampling techniques, a total of nine focus group sessions were performed at three island-chars of Mahishkhocha union in Lalmonirhat district, from February to May in 2013, and explores current livelihood practices and likely risks. The analysis explores evolving risks sprouted from climatic stressors including riverbank erosion, flooding, cold wave, erratic rainfalls and droughts that contribute to livelihood disturbances and slothful processes of sustainable livelihood renewal. The findings suggest that risks are compounded by anthropogenic stressors classifying into state and non-state engagements across manifold institutional scales and policy arrangements, providing insight for promoting rural livelihoods through different actors, formal and informal institutions. Despite challenges to addressing likely risks at different scales, this research demonstrates how public policies can elevate adverse conditions for the emergence of sustainable livelihood pathways.