Incumbent Power Research Articles

Is open access disrupting the journal business? A perspective from comparing full adopters, partial adopters, and non-adopters

Two decades after the inception of open access publishing (OA), its impact has remained a focal point in academic discourse. This study adopted a disruptive innovation framework to examine OA's influence on the traditional subscription market. It assesses the market power of gold journals (OA full adopters) in comparison with hybrid journals and closed-access journals (partial adopters and non-adopters). Additionally, it contrasts the market power between hybrid journals (partial adopters) and closed-access journals (non-adopters). Using the Lerner index to measure market power through price elasticity of demand, this study employs difference tests and multiple regressions. These findings indicate that OA full adopters disrupt the market power of non-adopting incumbents. However, by integrating the OA option into their business models, partial adopters can effectively mitigate this disruption and expand their influence from the traditional subscription market to the emerging OA paradigm.

Participatory Climate Action: Reflections on Community Diversity and the Role of External Experts

Academics have often contributed to designing, running, and evaluating participatory events with publics on climate action. Whilst climate assemblies are perhaps the most well-known of such events, there is also a proliferation of smaller and more local projects suggesting scope for reflection on the role of academic researchers in this evolving space. We deploy an experimental methodology that blends personal reflections with group discussion amongst the authors to help unpack the lessons learned from a project led by the local council, where we facilitated the involvement of local people in decision-making around climate action. Reflecting on our individual and academic positionalities, we question the extent to which we are well placed to build, maintain, and sustain trust, which requires spending time in place, continuity, and ceding power. As “outsiders” with “elite connotations,” our role as actors in this space is open for discussion. Indeed, our involvement could be perceived as a missed opportunity to retain more money and knowledge locally by ceding more responsibility to grassroots organisations. Our experience also suggests that framing public participation in terms of design and facilitation deficit is somewhat misleading. It is not just a process that needs to be attuned to diverse communities, but an ongoing relationship that needs certain enabling conditions to flourish, including conducive funding frameworks and a willingness to address incumbent power differentials between state and non-state actors.

Dynamics of a Single Candidate for Regional Head Election in the Democratic System in Indonesia

As the 2024 regional head elections approach, strategies are needed to maintain the democratic system in Indonesia to anticipate the occurrence of single candidates. The trend of single candidates in regional head elections is a concern for the nation, as the world's third-largest democracy should be able to conduct competitive elections with at least two pairs of regional head candidates. Therefore, it is necessary to investigate the causes of single candidates in regional head elections in Indonesia and to develop strategies to anticipate single candidates in the 2024 regional head elections. This research uses doctrinal/normative legal research methods. The results of this study indicate the factors causing single candidates in regional head elections are: the high cost of political campaigns, high thresholds for candidacy, and the significant power of incumbents. Strategies to anticipate single candidates in regional head elections include fostering political party cadres and encouraging public participation through independent candidates.

Constitution Making and Enduring Challenges To Democracy in Turkey

AbstractSome observers expected that the 2023 general elections in Turkey would end the long rule of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, while others anticipated his narrow victory. But it takes more than results at the ballot box for Turkish democracy to flourish in the medium term. Instead, we must focus on the underlying political structure, especially the constitution and its making. This study examines the social and political forces that have shaped Turkey's constitutions, from the Ottoman Empire through today. The analysis shows that top‐down constitutional processes only create advantages for the incumbent power, and they are symptomatic of weak democratic traditions. The most common use of constitutional revisions has been to serve the needs of the political elite at the time, without any long‐term objectives or broadly based political discourse among governmental and nongovernmental stakeholders. Therefore, Turkey has not been able to break the cycle of authoritarianism, even through seemingly democratic constitutional revisions. The study concludes that the future of the constitution is not bright. Given Erdoğan's narrow victory in the 2023 elections and setbacks in the recent municipal voting, revisions in the near term will seek to shore up the power of the ruling Justice and Development Party.

Beyond tribal politics for e-participation and development: social media influence on Nigeria's 2023 presidential general election

PurposeThe study investigates factors like media, tribal, religious and party politics' influence on Nigerias’ 2023 presidential election choice. It confirms dominant social media platforms and examines their influence on election polls, e-participation and political candidate choice. The main objectives of this study are to: investigate if tribal, religious and party politics affect the respondent’s choice of a presidential candidate, ascertain the respondent's most used social media platform for political engagement and determine how social media platforms influenced the election polls during the 2023 Nigerian presidential election.Design/methodology/approachA sample size of 384 registered voters was used to survey three states in Southeast Nigeria hinged on the technological acceptance model, the instrumentalist theory of ethnicity and the theory of reasoned action.FindingsThe study found that tribal politics did not influence political candidates during the 2023 Nigerian presidential election. However, religious and party politics influenced their choices as well as X (Twitter), found as the most used and most influential social media platform vital for enhancing participatory democracy and informing people at real-time.Research limitations/implicationsThe researchers experienced challenges such as ensuring that the respondents filled the questions appropriately to reduce the number of void questionnaires and a funding problem since they had yet to receive any grant to enhance the study.Originality/valueThe study commends improved Internet connectivity and accessibility among the citizens for increased political engagement on social media. It also recommends that the Nigerian government enforce the rule of law in politics to enable diverse tribes and religions to experience democratic e-participation and development without marginalisation or subjugation by incumbent power. The findings affirm that social media is apt in political communication during the 2023 presidential elections in Nigeria. The study is a contribution to knowledge, timely and original.

Collective action lessons for the energy transition: learning from social movements of the past

To accelerate the energy transition and achieve the needed large-scale transformation to address climate change, different barriers including lock-ins and path dependencies, incumbent power structures and changing individual and collective norms, values, and behaviors around energy need to be addressed. In the face of these challenges, citizens are beginning to play a bigger role in the transformation of the energy system. For example, they are becoming prosumers (energy consumers who also produce energy) and are increasingly engaging in collective energy actions, including taking part in energy communities. In the latter instance, collective investment and consumption decisions are made together, and norms, understanding and behavior towards energy are shaped collectively. To better understand the roles that individuals and groups can play in confronting the challenges of the energy transition, we make use of and adapt Ostrom’s socio-ecological systems (SES) framework to analyze past examples of collective actions and to delve deeper into the causes and catalysts of collective actions. We show how this framework can be used to analyze collective actions across time and contexts, focusing on connecting individual and group behavior with changing societal norms and the corresponding barriers to change. By applying the adapted SES framework as a lens to analyze historical examples of collective actions that have resulted in a widespread transformation in social norms and structures, we identify similarities and differences between these case studies and the current energy transition. Confronting incumbents and the challenge of changing social norms and behaviors are among the similarities, but the specific tactics used to limit incumbents’ powers and the actions taken to influence the norms and behaviors differ. Lastly, we determine the key actors that influenced social and behavioral change, as one of the main outcomes of the analysis.

A relational power perspective on the positional shift of peripheral players in an organisational field: The case of Mediapart in the French press field

Prior research in field theory has acknowledged the importance of power to the stability of field structure and to the reproduction of the benefits and advantages that powerful incumbent organizations have over powerless peripheral players. In this paper, we challenge such determinism by embracing a relational view of power in the field. We argue that when incumbents' use of power is perceived as hegemonic and in contradiction with field values and norms by peripheral players, the latter may act to contest such hegemonic power, leading them to achieve a positional shift. We conducted a qualitative study of the newspaper Mediapart in the French press field who succeeded in getting to the centre of the field by contesting the hegemony of incumbents. Our findings show three main strategies that allow peripheral players to achieve a positional shift in the field: reclaiming ownership, recentring authenticity and reaffirming legitimacy.

Measuring market power of rail incumbents

The aim of this article is to assess the market power of the state-owned incumbents within the open-access lines in Europe and compare it among themselves. This article investigates three open-access lines in Europe: Prague-Ostrava line (in the Czech Republic), Vienna-Salzburg line (in Austria) and Bratislava-Košice (in Slovakia). The market power assessment of each of the state-owned incumbents on these lines is based on their market shares, average revenues per passenger-kilometre, whether there is a vertical separation of the infrastructure owner and railway service provider and the role of state intervention. Our results show that the state-owned incumbent in the Czech Republic on the Prague-Ostrava line has the lowest market power in comparison to other investigated open-access lines.

Middle powers as ‘peacemaking entrepreneurs’ in Myanmar’s peace process 2011–2021

Middle powers were visible actors in Myanmar’s peace-donor landscape, from the beginning of that country’s peace process in 2011 until the 2021 coup. Considering Myanmar’s longstanding dependency on China and generally difficult relationship with larger powers, this appears to be significant. However, the literature on middle powers remains incapacitated by a definitional opacity that makes application of the term difficult, despite consistent references to their mediating capabilities. Recent scholarship has applied an ‘entrepreneurial’ lens to understanding middle power behaviour, implying middle powers are driven by a confluence of material and ideational factors. Based on fieldwork interviews with over fifty informants examining Norwegian, Japanese and Australian engagement with peacemaking in Myanmar 2011–2021, this paper expands on the entrepreneurial label and argues that middle powers in Myanmar acted as peacemaking entrepreneurs—as actors that traded upon their peacemaking reputations to secure concomitant material benefits. Nevertheless, this paper argues that engaging in peacemaking entrepreneurship proved to be problematic in Myanmar’s context, given it tended to favour incumbent power. Indeed, in stark contrast to theoretical assumptions of these actors as neutral intermediaries, this paper raises serious questions about the contribution of middle powers in peacemaking.

Executive decrees, omnibus bills, and the politics of abusive constitutionalism

ABSTRACT Consolidation of authoritarian rule by constitutional tools is becoming an increasingly prevalent phenomenon, as powerful incumbents instrumentalize constitutional amendments to rework the state to their advantage and eliminate the horizontal checks. Turkish experience since 2014, we argue, is a suitable case to identify the legal mechanisms that are abused to undermine democratic rule within the context of abusive constitutionalism. We present original data on omnibus bills and analyse the executive decrees which expanded executive discretion over legislation and reduced horizontal accountability. Our analysis shows that the regime single-handedly reorganized the administrative structure through executive decrees, while the omnibus bills were critical in addressing the economic and judicial issues. Both methods of legislation accelerated the law-making to exclude the opposition from legislative processes. Our analysis contributes to the literature as it illustrates how the would-be autocrats eroded democratic institutional order by gradually neutralizing checks on their rule.

What is the real power of incumbents? Case study on the Czech Republic

After an introduction of competition due to liberalisation, there is an expectation of lower prices and better quality. However, these overall positive effects could be also driven by the incumbent’s incentive to exclude competition within the liberalised markets. Such a situation occurred on the Prague-Ostrava line where liberalisation brought lower prices and an increase in quality. However, it also brought multiple accusations by both the Czech competition authority and the European Commission of the state-owned incumbent, České dráhy, that it had engaged in predatory pricing. This paper then assesses whether the price decreases within this line were driven by actual competition or by predatory behaviour of České dráhy by analysing the position of České dráhy. The aim of this paper therefore is to assess the real market power of the Czech state incumbent, České dráhy, on the Prague-Ostrava line. To achieve this aim, we used unique data we had gathered from our previous research (such as price development, market shares and customer behaviour). Our results then show that it is unlikely that České dráhy could have acted independently of its competitors and customers, which indicates that it could not have had a dominant position.

Revolutionary innovation and the incumbent business: Patterns of relationship and coping strategies

Revolutionary innovations bring about drastically new ways of doing business that potentially challenge the dominance and even the survival of many powerful incumbent firms. The choice of the incumbent firms’ strategies in coping with a revolutionary innovation depends on the specific patterns of relationship between the revolutionary innovation and the incumbent firms’ core business, be it substitutive, complementary, or parallel . In the situation of a substitutive relationship, the incumbent firms could exit from the incumbent business through swift divesting or gradual harvesting before it is eventually displaced or eroded. In a complementary relationship, the incumbents could absorb the innovation into the incumbent business by embracing the innovation that enables them to add entirely new functions to their incumbent business or assimilating the innovation to enhance the value of the incumbent business. In a parallel relationship, the revolutionary innovation either results in the retrenchment of the incumbent business or leaves it undisturbed, which, respectively, calls for specializing in certain niches of the incumbent business or further solidifying the incumbent business. In addition to the above coping strategies focusing primarily on the incumbent business, the incumbent firms also need to deal simultaneously with the new businesses inspired and propelled by the revolutionary innovation. They could fend off the potential disruptions of the innovation by engaging in a competitive fight in the market domain or a nonmarket fight in the sociopolitical domain. They could also enter those new businesses through greenfield entry or merger and acquisition .

‘The outcome of a historical process set in motion in 1991’: explaining the failure of incumbency advantage in Zambia’s 2021 election

ABSTRACT This article uses a longitudinal comparative perspective to analyse Zambia's 2021 transfer of power. The article takes the previous elections since the transition to multi-party democracy in 1991 as a body in which patterns of incumbency failure can be seen. It identifies five pervasive patterns that seem present in all polls that have resulted in leadership change or turnovers: a struggling economy with a clear blame orientation, a unified opposition, a depoliticised military, a rather impartial electoral commission, and collective memory of incumbent defeat. The importance of each of these factors varies over time, but collectively they shape election outcomes in decisive ways. Drawing on interviews and newspaper sources, I apply these variables to the 2021 election that resulted in the defeat of President Edgar Lungu and the victory of the opposition candidate. I argue that the repeated failure of incumbency advantage in Zambia reflects the institutionalisation of democratic processes, notably embodied in competitive elections, an increasingly independent electoral commission, effective opposition parties that can devise robust campaign strategies, and a military that continues to choose non- intervention whenever an incumbent is defeated. More broadly, I demonstrate why alternation is becoming routine while the power of incumbency is in decline.

Cartooning the Integration of Interorganizational Coordination Types

In this study, I analyze cartoons used to communicate to the public the integration of digital platforms with transport chains in port logistics. I argue that these two types of coordination carry competing logics, which explains the ambiguous visual representations of the future implementation of digital platforms in a major European port. In addition to intentional, convenient, and unintended affordances specific to cartoons, I identified three ambiguous trade-offs in the visual communications to the public. These trade-offs prevent incumbents to share the reliable real-time data required for the conception of a digital platform. Based on these findings, I argue that a disruptive suspension of the existing interorganizational coordination logic might be inevitable. This study contributes to discussions about unintentional coordination maintenance, the possibility of weaker incumbents to resist the will of more powerful incumbents, and the affordance of visual communication through cartoons.

Disruption-by-Proxy: A Collaborative Approach to Multi-industry Disruption

Extant literature shows two types of disruption: disruption-by-entry, where new entrants into an industry drive disruption, and disruption-from-within, where incumbents drive disruption. In this paper we break new ground by revealing and unpacking a third, untheorized process: disruption-by-proxy. We conceptualize disruption-by-proxy as a deliberate strategy whereby a technology provider creates a sustaining innovation in their core industry, secures technology adoption by powerful incumbents in their target industry, and thereby disrupts that industry and, potentially, other adjacent industries. The powerful incumbents act as disruptive proxies for the technology firm, which effectively drives business model change in one or more industries yet never seeks to extend beyond its core industry. To theorize this conceptualization, we explore the research question: “How does disruption-by-proxy unfold?” Our ethnographic study of a small technology firm shows how a disruptor engages in iterative phases of proxy testing of selected product-market bundles, (re)envisioning the disruptive process and potential industry end states, and advancing the technology whilst seeking to optimize its fit with emergent understandings of incumbent tolerance for adoption and disruption. Our process model theorizes disruption-by-proxy as an inherently collaborative and industry-spanning strategy that locates the instigator and driver of disruption permanently outside the disrupted industry or industries.

The 2023 Elections in Sierra Leone: Identifying Potential Conflict Flashpoints and Spoilers

Electoral violence remains a problem for many countries in the developing world. The case is more agonizing in Africa where violence in elections with varying degrees of brutality has culminated in outright national upheavals and conflicts. This article attempts to identify potential conflict flashpoints and perpetrators leading to the up-coming elections slated to be held in 2023 in Sierra Leone. The research findings catalogued some of the attributable factors responsible for electoral conflicts and violence, which include state capture, ethno-regional divide, strong-hold mentality, power of incumbency, emergence of a “third force”, state malleability, enfeebled national institutions, money politics, high levels of poverty, youth unemployment and socio-economic hardship, and lack of trust in the electoral management and security systems. It is undeniable that this is the state of play in Sierra Leone as the country prepares for the up-coming 2023 elections. We argue that identifying critical conflicts hotspots and spoilers will help national and international stakeholders articulate and design measures to fend off potential electoral conflicts and violence pre, during and post 2023 elections.

The role of powerful incumbent firms: shaping regional industrial path development through change and maintenance agency

ABSTRACT This article seeks to advance perspectives on powerful incumbent firms in (new) regional industrial path development. Drawing on recent insights from transition studies, it is argued that this actor group – hitherto often portrayed in a rather one-sided manner – plays a crucial role in shaping the pace and direction of regional path development through agency oriented towards both change and maintenance. Building on systemic perspectives at the intersection of evolutionary economic geography and innovation studies, a particular emphasis is placed on incumbent firms’ interventions to reconfigure or stabilize their surrounding regional innovation system to support their intentions. To this end, this article examines how incumbents exert their influence through various forms of power as means by which they promote or hinder regional industrial change. Empirically, the role of incumbent firms in three traditional automotive regions in Austria is investigated. It is shown how they leverage their power to propel the industry’s digitalization and suppress its decarbonization.

Diminishing Dreams

Diminishing Dreams

Who Makes or Breaks Energy Policymaking in the Caribbean Small Island Jurisdictions? A Study of Stakeholders’ Perceptions

While most studies view small island economies as a homogenous group with multiple similar vulnerabilities, few studies argue that they are a heterogenous group due to their political jurisdictions (independent versus dependent economies), with mostly environmental vulnerabilities in common. Departing from these two premises, our study is the first empirical attempt at examining inter-small island jurisdiction (SIJ) heterogeneity from the social construct perspective of stakeholders’ perceptions and within the context of environmental sustainability and energy policymaking. We quantitatively explore, across 34 Caribbean SIJs, multiple stakeholders’ perceptions of the influence of the electricity sector as a leader in environmental performance. The results show that when the governments of independent SIJs exclude electricity sector stakeholders and include other primary energy stakeholders in energy policymaking, the electricity sector actors are better perceived as leaders in environmental performance. In a global context where inclusiveness is important for sustainability, this finding suggests that within the systemic contexts of SIJs, stakeholders view the exclusion of powerful incumbent energy actors from policymaking as a viable approach for moving the environmental sustainability mandate forward. Our study has implications for policymakers and scholars on the democratic process of policymaking, and for practitioners in terms of building social trust.

Addressing the Competitive Harms of Opaque Online Surveillance and Recommendation Algorithms

Facebook and Alphabet operate free internet services that are widely used. They provide these services for free because users are online ad targets. Together Facebook and Alphabet have a large share of the market for online advertising in the U.S. Their dominance delivers monopolistic returns, reflected in the persistently high valuations financial markets place on each company. Online ad sales depend on the ability of these platforms to individually target ads and messages to huge numbers of people. Targeting is made possible by surveillance which is large in scale, scope, and effectiveness. User engagement, which helps determine target numbers, is stimulated and directed by “recommendation” algorithms on Facebook and Alphabet’s YouTube platform. These algorithms can affect what users read and view, and can influence their attitudes, emotions, and behavior. While surveillance has negative effects on user privacy, and algorithms have had powerful effects on user attitudes and behavior, platform users have limited knowledge about how these practices operate or their impacts. These information asymmetries between platforms and users have important competitive effects. They divert users from competing platforms that do not engage in these business practices, and inhibit entry and the innovation it would stimulate, thereby helping sustain the monopoly power of dominant incumbents. Section 5 of the Federal Trade Commission Act, which prohibits “unfair methods of competition” and includes rulemaking authority, may be the most effective way to address anticompetitive practices that are technically complex, can evolve rapidly, and are difficult for industry outsiders to observe.