Government Power Research Articles

Smart ignorance: Instrumentalising useful unknowns to bureaucratise and rescale power in the city

Critical geography inextricably associates smart cities with modalities of entrepreneurial governance, the privatisation of government assets and functions, and an effectively diminished role of the state in urban governance. In this article, I argue that this is an incomplete examination of ‘actually existing smart cities’ as it overlooks the bureaucratisation of city government through rescaling, which occurs via the instrumentalisation of ambiguity and ignorance. Furthermore, the existing literature focuses on the rescaling of power in ‘spaces of exception’ or enclave developments, but does not adequately address what happens when these corporate parastatal entities land in ‘actually existing’ cities where urban spatialities and political geographies are alreacy established and do not need to be formulated afresh. I draw on rich qualitative research in one case study of an ‘actually existing’ smart city – Pune in western India – to explore how the implementation of a smart cities programme results in a bureaucratisation of city government through existing useful unknowns, and generates further ambiguity around issues of authority and power in city government. This article offers a significant conceptual contribution to the understudied political geographies of city government by moving beyond the examination of zones of exception and investigating the dynamics of integrating privatised governance mechanisms into a historical ‘actually existing smart city’ with a formalised city government dating back to the late 19th century.

Doctoral studies as a precarious identity process: deviance and the rational ideal of the doctoral process

ABSTRACT Based on narrative interviews with late-phase doctoral candidates and early postdoctoral researchers, complemented by an autoethnographic diary, this study analyses the experiences of junior academics. A rational ideal of the doctoral process is identified, and its implications for doctoral students’ identity work are discussed. While the rational ideal of the doctoral process has its uses, it prescribes the preferred conduct of doctoral studies and regulates doctoral identities through preferred conceptions of the self. Consequently, doctoral identity work often involves the construction of one’s self in ways that seek to conform to the rational ideal while continuously failing to do so, making deviance from expectations a prevailing feature of it. These experiences of deviance from the elusive ideal both increase the precariousness of doctoral identities and reproduce the regimes of power in which doctoral students are embedded. Thus, this paper challenges the rational ideal and provides a more nuanced understanding of doctoral studies as a precarious, emotional and embodied identity construction process.

Lessons from Founding a College: A Personal Perspective

“Higher education is in a critical period with a potential for rebalancing of internal and external relations of authority, power and responsibility in higher education governance. An important element in this transition has been a growing policy focus on the contributions of higher education institutions are expected to make to economic growth, job creation and innovation.”‐ Peter Maassen, “A New Social Contract for Higher Education?”

Business Spirits

What are the co-making processes that blur the boundaries between religion and economy? How can we move past misleading metaphors and analogies that reify the false distinction between sacred and secular or that frame religion as pure essences corrupted by financialization? Inspired by McLaughlin et al.’s (2020) call for increased attention to the “corporate form of religion,” we outline how common social structural and aspirational elements undergird shared processes of both religion-making and corporation-making. Drawing on ethnographic and historical data from contributing authors to this Special Issue, we hypothesize that the reification of religion and business is context dependent, benefits regimes of power, and is open to contestation; and that some intentional communities, purposeful or not, have from their inception been understood as neither religious nor corporate. We marshal global data from diverse case studies to explore the modes of relatedness between religions and corporations, on the one hand, and the context-specific boundary-making practices that reify a false binary, on the other.

Platform power and regulatory capture in digital governance

Abstract Digital governance is a public concern, yet under private control. After numerous scandals, all stakeholders in the European Union (EU) agreed to establish a “novel constitution for the internet” that would effectively constrain the power of large platforms. Yet the Digital Services Act (DSA) ultimately legitimized and institutionalized their position as the gatekeepers of the internet. Why? We argue that platforms prevailed thanks to their ability as intermediaries to quietly shape the available policy options. Our “platform power mechanism” combines institutional and ideational sources of business power to show how big tech drew on its entrenched position as an indispensable provider of essential services and promulgated the idea of itself as a responsible and neutral intermediary. We follow the unfolding of platform power through a process-tracing analysis of Google and Meta’s activities with respect to DSA legislation from its announcement (2020) to its adoption (2022). Besides contributing a reconceptualization of the DSA as a regulatory capture, we integrate the notion of platform power into a “regulator–intermediary–target” model and demonstrate how gatekeepers have exploited information asymmetries to share “the public space.” Our analysis thus supplements established approaches that have derived regulators’ deference to platforms from the tacit allegiance of consumers.

Human Rights System Guidelines on the Benefit from Scientific Progress in Access to Medicines

Abstract Health innovation and research has become an economic and profitable activity. Market practices have exposed inequalities, scarcities and inequities in access to treatments and have significantly reduced the decision-making power of governments in the field of public health. Documentary research on the human right (HR) to health (Art. 12) and its interrelationship with the right to benefit from scientific progress (Art. 15, b) of the International Covenant on Economic, Social and Cultural Rights (CESCR) on access to medicines in three bodies of the UN system - the ICESCR Monitoring Committee (CESCR), the Human Rights Council (HRC) and World Health Organisation - over the last 10 years. The documents address three main topics. Market: marketing restrictions, price controls and using flexibility in pharmaceutical patents to reduce costs and produce generics. Innovation: patent protection without barriers to access to medicines for people in need. Health system interventions: giving priority to economic efficiency and sustainability by institutionalising health technology assessment, selecting essential medicines, developing clinical guidelines and integrating and linking regulatory agencies. These normative guidelines minimise the ethical, political and legal dimensions of the human right to enjoy scientific progress in access to medicines as a priority value that should guide public and private action, and emphasise technocratic and financial measures that seek to reconcile the liberal and social logic of the ICESCR. Key messages • In order to maximise the guarantee of human rights in access to medicines, economic and financial considerations should play only a residual role in human rights. • To give countries greater decision-making power at the global health, the scope of the right to benefit from scientific progress and its applications in health care needs to be expanded.

Analysis of Rumor Propagation Model Based on Coupling Interaction Between Official Government and Media Websites

The COVID-19 pandemic has not only brought a virus to the public, but also spawned a large number of rumors. The Internet has made it very convenient for media websites to record and spread rumors, while the official government, as the subject of rumor control, can release rumor-refutation information to reduce the harm of rumors. Therefore, this study took into account information-carrying variables, such as media websites and official governments, and expanded the classic ISR rumor propagation model into a five-dimensional, two-level rumor propagation model that interacts between the main body layer and the information layer. Based on the constructed model, the mean field equation was obtained. Through mathematical analysis, the equilibrium point and the basic reproduction number of rumors were calculated. At the same time, stability analysis was conducted using the Routh Hurwitz stability criterion. Finally, a numerical simulation verified that when the basic regeneration number was less than 1, rumors disappeared in the system; when the basic regeneration number was greater than 1, rumors continued to exist in the system and rumors erupted. The executive power of the official government to dispel rumors, that is, the effectiveness of the government, played a decisive role in suppressing the spread of rumors.

Cooperation and Profit Allocation Mechanism of Traditional and New Energy Complementary Power Generation: A Framework for Renewable Portfolio Standards

To boost the sustainable development of energy and the environment, a new power system with clean energy sources has been proposed by the Chinese government and traditional coal-fired power units are being transformed into regulation service providers for this new energy power system. Then, in this study, complementary power generation cooperation between traditional coal-fired power and new energy power producers is analyzed and discussed, and the energy quota agents, power sellers, are also included. Based on the cooperation game idea, different decision-making models of the tripartite power entities are elaborately constructed. Then, according to the price linkage mechanism between new energy and traditional thermal power, the profit of all power subjects is calculated and the profit allocation process is also analyzed. The conclusions show that the similarity of the two wholesale power price coefficients verifies the symmetry of the cooperative status of power producers. For BPC and SPC quota patterns, for example, BPC is bundled with new energy power and green certificates, whereas SPC is separate. Under the SPC pattern, there is a critical value for effective cooperation between the two power producers in the price range of traditional thermal power or new energy, which can achieve a win–win situation of increasing economic benefits and the consumption scale. Under the BPC pattern, the dynamic benefit compensation mechanism, which is the corrected Shapley value based on the RPS quota ratio, can solve the compressed profit of traditional coal-fired power producers. In contrast, the overall effect of profit allocation using the nucleolar method is not ideal. This study aims to give full play to the elastic induction effect of RPS to promote the sustainable transformation of traditional thermal power energy, especially combining the market mechanism to encourage traditional coal-fired power units to improve green technology to advance the construction of the green power market in China.

The quest for continuous improvement in light of power disciplinary, sovereign and pastoral power in a state-initiated school improvement programme

ABSTRACT There is a global movement of education reform, informed by a neoliberal agenda, emphasising continuous improvement and accountability through performance measurements, surveillance and monitoring. This puts local school actors under constant gaze and endless pressure to perform. This article uses a Swedish state-initiated school improvement programme, Co-operation for the Best School Possible (CBS), to investigate how power is exercised within the programme and to discuss possible implications for the local actors. A theoretical model based on Foucault’s power modes of sovereign, disciplinary and pastoral power as well as governmentality is used. Empirically, the article builds on a case study from a municipality participating in CBS. The analysis takes impression of Jackson and Mazzei’s “thinking with theory”. The CBS programme illustrates the widespread and multifaceted nature of power in educational governance, prompting local actors to internalise norms, self-regulate, and continuously evaluate their practices. This study highlights the importance of understanding the interplay of different power modes in shaping educational practices and the professional lives of local school actors. This article has contributed to questioning the common sensical, and it has made the exercises of power recognisable through the use of Foucault’s concepts.

Understanding migration power in international studies

Abstract Where and how does power operate in the governance of international migration? Migrants and refugees are increasingly used for strategic purposes in international politics, but scholarship on this matter has yet to engage thoroughly with the central International Relations concept of power. This article draws on the thinking of Michael Barnett and Raymond Duvall to propose a well-rounded picture of the multiple forms of power in, through or against migration that are mobilized by states and other international actors. We thus conceptualize migration power across two relational dimensions: the nature of the social relations between the actors involved (interactive or constitutive) and the specificity of such relations (direct or diffuse). This leads us to distinguish between four complementary types of migration power—compulsory, institutional, structural and productive—and to identify the main causal mechanisms through which they operate. We argue that power in international migration governance is diffuse, wielded by a wide range of actors, unevenly spread across its different dimensions, and yet, deeply asymmetrical in its distribution along intersecting axes: namely global North vs South, as well as state vs non-state. Beyond academia, the recognition of this complexity can encourage more reflexivity in policy-making and more sensitivity among practitioners.

Time, transition, and planetary decolonial justice as invention

ABSTRACT Contestations over temporal categories are marginalized in transition debates. This article reorients such debates by exploring the structural relationship between time and just transition or planetary justice. I demonstrate how transition, defined as governments and inter-state institutions’ efforts to shift to a lower carbon future, is inscribed with categories of time and certain notions of justice. I argue the recent acknowledgement of the link of colonization with climate change by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change does not necessarily disrupt the deployment of a linear and recursive (universal) notion of capital time nor does it challenge the co-constitution of racialized accumulation institutions and governance power technologies, with dire effects on a ‘just transition.’ I then draw on Frantz Fanon’s idea of invention as an event without sense or content, a decolonial violence whose subject plunges into an abyss and whose ‘measure’ or possibility is always unprecedented.

Hotep anti-Blackness: Misogynoir and queer exclusion in online conspiracy theorizing

Research suggests African Americans are more likely than Whites to support conspiracy theories, especially those related to the U.S. government. Locating the pedagogical practices of Black activists in the online hotep subculture, I use the concept of public pedagogy to understand how these activist influencers use social media to spread political messages in the public sphere. This essay situates hotep subculture as a conspiritualist project that uses Pan-Africanism, Afrocentricity, Black spirituality, and hip-hop culture to advance conspiracy theories among Black communities for consciousness-raising and economic independence. While hoteps have promulgated a pro-Black politic, their reliance on ethnonationalist homophobia and misogynoir promotes a form of erasure that is not only exclusionary and anti-Black but also reflects racial fears rooted in anxiety. This essay contributes to the growing literature on conspiritualism’s investment in white supremacy and the need for conspiritualist critiques to investigate how anti-Blackness shows up in discourses at the intersection of faith, spirituality, and global regimes of power. Drawing on the concepts of misogynoir and anti-Black heterotopias, Black gender and sexual minorities are framed within hotep discourse as subservient, deviant, and perilous to Black liberation.

Workload, Legal Doctrine, and Judicial Review in An Authoritarian Regime: A Study of Expropriation Judgments in China

This paper contributes one of the first systematic studies on how courts adjudicate expropriation disputes both in the absence of judicial independence and in the face of resource constraints, extends the study of judicial workload into an authoritarian context, and demonstrates the complicated and dynamic interactions between apolitical and political aspects of courts in authoritarian regimes. Our results demonstrate that legal doctrine can check the abuse of government power even in situations where it is least expected. Specifically, we examined how Chinese courts, faced with an explosive increase in workload caused by a legal reform in 2015, adjudicated expropriation disputes between the government and property rights holders. Employing a difference-in-differences method, we found an increased judicial workload to improve property rights holders’ chances of winning their case against the government. We discovered that judges’ use of hard-edged legal doctrine—administrative procedures, in particular—to save time constrained judicial discretion, which is prone to arbitrary political influence in authoritarian regimes.

The Ngirri Regulatory Society and Power Reinforcement in Local Governance in the Mbum-land Northwest Region, Cameroon: ca. 1800 - 1902

Besides many others, Ngirri, as a regulatory society in the African context in general and specifically in the Northwest Region of Cameroon, is a political institution that regulates state power. This happened more especially in the pre-colonial states, where each chiefdom or kingdom was a state on its own. In contemporary African society, such regulatory role has been greatly reduced, as regulatory societies have been reduced to mere socio-cultural groups. The problem that necessitated this study is the fact that Ngirri’s regulatory role has been diminished by the intruding Europeans, to such a point that its preponderant activities have been misinterpreted and viewed as secret and it has been finally referred to as a secret society. This study therefore sought to trace its origin, develop its evolution in the Mbum-land, bring out its contribution towards local governance, and show the challenges it faced in reinforcing the power of the traditional government in the pre-colonial Mbum society. To accomplish this, the article primarily utilized the qualitative method of analysis. Consequently, it made use of oral tradition and interviews, as well as archival materials and other primary, secondary, and tertiary sources. These sources were cross-checked against each other in order to be certain of the facts. The findings were that Ngirri did not play only a social role. Most importantly, it played a governmental role as the executive arm of the traditional government. It therefore facilitated local governance in the Mbum traditional states through its inclusive handling of issues.

The Female Body and the Body Politic in Sex Scenes of Lou Ye’s Film: A Multimodal Discourse Analysis of <i>Summer Palace</i>

This article discusses the body politic of Yu Hong in the postsocialist Chinese film–Summer Palace (2006). Director Lou Ye places Yu Hong’s body in the sex scenes that metaphorically expresses a traumatic and sensitive political event, the “June Fourth Incident.” The portrayal of sexual intercourse, nudity, and this historical event is the unspeakable “secret” in mainland Chinese media. Therefore, the authors raise the question that, when sexual intercourse and the female body enter political discourse, how do we deal with the complex and dynamic power structures behind bodily attributes and the “anachronistic” historical objects that do not fit into the mainstream narrative and epistemological spaces? Drawing on body politic theory, feminist film theory, and a semiotic framework, we adopt multimodal critical discourse analysis to assess power relations and ideologies behind Yu’s body attributes in the sex scenes. The findings indicate that Lou constructs a complex communication system, using her body as a carrier of communication to express self-consciousness, constructing female subjectivity through the writing of feminine discourse, with the political purpose of seeking the freedom of the written word. Sexual liberation is sought by establishing a transgressive body that is not accepted by the mainstream and opposes the inherent power of government. Yu’s bodily pleasure is set up as an expression of narcissistic individualism through love, producing a vision of political ecstasy. Her melancholy body metaphor for the discomfort and confusion that preceded the student movement and the post-traumatic ambivalence. Using the female body as a site of political discourse and sexual liberation offers a new reading strategy for analysing the representation of the female body in film and other forms of media. In making the argument, the study contributes valuable scholarship to the film studies focused on sexual, gender, and political marginalised discourse.

Copra Production at the “End” of the World

Abstract Often mentioned only as a brief reference, the port town of Ende was a crucial player in a network connecting Arabic, Chinese, Indian, and Javanese merchants with the trade in valuable commodities from Eastern Indonesia. This article explores the cultural and economic exchanges at the heart of Endenese identity through archival research, historical ecology, oral histories, and ethnography. Known to the Dutch as a pirate and slaving centre, Ende was the most significant force in the Savu Sea until 1907. With the local economy reshaped to produce agricultural staples in the early twentieth century, Ende experienced a minor boom by exporting copra, or dried coconut husks. In this article, I reconstruct the complex commodity dynamics that silently shaped Ende. “Invisibilised” by colonial and Indonesian forces, I identify Ende’s peripheralisation as the deliberate consequence of the consolidation of governance power among outside elites and the disempowerment of local groups. I conclude by showing the value of ethnographic tools in retelling the stories of those who were once at the centre of the world.

"Data Free Flow with Trust": Japan's struggle to integrate democracy and human rights into digital trade policy.

A powerful regime for regulating trade, the Group of Seven (G-7) has increasingly negotiated its digital trade through bilateral and preferential trade agreements, including with non-member states in the Global South. Focusing on the dominant concept shaping these agreements, Japan's "Data Free Flow with Trust" (D.F.F.T.), we trace its discursively contested emergence and meaning within a national ("Society 5.0") vision for Japan's digital transformation, and its subsequent transnationalization in international fora and institutionalization in global digital trade policy. Drawing on our interviews with Japanese government ministers, business elites, and legal experts who contributed to the processual development of D.F.F.T., as well as diverse additional primary sources, we find that the D.F.F.T. has become more than a trade policy, covering a wider range of social and geopolitical issues. In particular, we show that contention over "data localization measures" has restructured international relations of trust, especially across the Global North/South divide. Ultimately, this research report contributes to our understanding of how D.F.F.T. poses threats to human rights, democracy, and the global knowledge economy that may undermine its goals of enhancing innovation capacity and economic growth.

Numerical appraisal of the role of heat transfer regimes on transient response of carbon dioxide based supercritical natural circulation loop during power upsurge

Appearance of steep property gradients with change in temperature is a fascinating feature of any supercritical fluid, which can instigate intricate dynamics in supercritical natural circulation loops by modulating the effective forces. While most of the relevant literature focuses on stability evaluation, anticipation regarding the transient response of the system during power transition is of utmost significance, especially in high-power applications. Present study aims at furnishing insight on the same by developing a one-dimensional numerical model of a rectangular loop with supercritical CO2 as the working medium, and characterizing the temporal trends over a wide range of heating power. Two different profiles of power upsurge have been tested for different regimes of heat transfer, unearthing intriguing characteristics. The combination of initial and final regimes during any transformation is found to be the most crucial factor. Single-step rise in power, in general, is the most vulnerable one, specifically during large-scale change of the order of 1000 W, and better be employed only at low-power regime. Even single-step change ∼ 25 W can inflict instability and flow transition within the transition regime. Power transformation following linear ramp profile with transition periods of 5, 10 and 20 s is identified to be the most suitable one across all the regimes. It can successfully mitigate instability even in the later parts of the transition regime, albeit at the expense of greater time requirement to attain the final stable state and possibly a greater period of transformation. Change through multiple small steps (about 250 W for large change in low power regime and 15 W within transition regime) can also be a feasible option for avoiding the growth of unstable oscillations at higher powers.

President E. Macron and the French Political Crisis in the Aspect of the Legacy of “Gaullism”

Introduction. The presidency of Emmanuel Macron during 2017–2023 was marked by the crisis of the regime of the Fifth Republic in France. The authors propose an analysis of the origins and development of this crisis. They emphasize the complex nature of the crisis, which is not opportunistic but systemic. Materials. The research is based on the data of sociological surveys, periodical materials, and electronic sources that allow us to characterize the course and current state of the political crisis of the regime of the Fifth Republic during the presidency of Emmanuel Macron, as well as the processes accompanying it. Analysis. The authors identify and analyze the manifestations of Gaullism as an anti-crisis strategy in the policy of E. Macron. The authors are describing and analyzing the growing political crisis under the leadership of E. Macron and the causes of his government failure. The authors compare the policy of E. Macron and the political strategy of Charles de Gaulle. Results. The authors conclude that E. Macron’s selective use of elements of the Gaullist strategy in order to further legitimize and strengthen the regime of personal power does not bring final success and that French society’s trust in the current government is gradually decreasing, which contributes to the deepening of the systemic crisis of the regime of the Fifth Republic. Author’s contribution. Ahmad Mulyadi prepared a material on the use of elements of Gaullism in the politics of E. Macron, S. V. Biryukov, and S. N. Chirun – on the political process and the crisis in France.

EU water diplomacy: A tool to strengthen the EU's soft power on environmental governance

AbstractThis article analyses the role of the European Union (EU) as a global governance actor in a multipolar and fragmented world. It focuses on the case of European Union water diplomacy, defined as the diplomatic and strategic use of water cooperation to promote peace, security, and sustainable development. The article argues that European Union water diplomacy is a tool to enhance the EU's soft power and influence in global environmental governance. Through an analysis of the European Union's main initiatives in this field, the article illustrates how the EU seeks to build alliances with other actors, promote multilateralism and the principles of international law, and support the participation of civil society and local communities. It concludes that European Union water diplomacy is an example of EU normative and transformative leadership that can contribute to the consolidation of a more just and sustainable international order.