Private Actors Research Articles

Turning a spotlight on construction logistics for a sustainable urban environment—a review of current policy concepts and literature

Construction logistics is an influential participant in the overall urban freight network and a bottle neck for an efficient construction process. Especially in the urban area professionalization of its management may reduce negative impacts on the environment from which stakeholders, like construction companies, policymakers and residents, do profit. In order to shed light on construction logistics in the urban environment in particular, a two-step methodological approach was pursued, which reconciles scientific findings with consideration in policies for the first time. Therefore, the current state of research was investigated by performing a systematic literature review and applying bibliometric keyword co-occurrence analyses in the first place. Moreover, policy papers (grey literature) on urban freight transportation of the 20 biggest cities in the DACH-region (Germany, Austria, Switzerland) were analyzed for their consideration of construction logistics in an initial case study. The results demonstrate limited consideration with only four cities paying deliberate attention within their overall logistics policy concepts and just one city providing construction logistics-specific policy recommendations. This is in line with the findings that although construction logistics in the urban environment is an emerging topic in academia, it is currently underrepresented in the context of urban logistics research. Therefore, combined results suggest insufficient translation of research findings into actionable policies despite existing literature providing possible ways to design future policies, e.g., by supporting decision-making. In conclusion, strategic management of construction logistics in the urban environment should be paid more attention to from both policy and academia in proportion to its environmental and socio-economic effects as well as its impact on the whole construction process. In that regard, predominately robust empirical data is needed in order to legitimate effective and sustainable concepts for urban construction logistics for both public and private actors.

Constantine – Algeria- informal expansion, private lands value at stake. Towards a preventive approach to informal land use

In this paper, we examine the informal expansion of Constantine from the perspective of land as a property asset and a regulation target and what it involves in terms of stakeholders’ interplays. The study was conducted on the southeastern expansion by drawing a parallel between land use regulation and the actual land use on large private landholdings. A qualitative survey was conducted to investigate the informal production and use of urban land through semi-structured interviews with relevant public and private stakeholders. The study shows that informal land use lies in the conflict between urban planners and landowners over the conversion and allocation of large private landholdings and the financial stakes it involves. Land transactions are engaged in the informal market when land use regulation does not converge with the owner’s logic of land value maximization. The informal land market allows the latter to circumvent land use regulation and to capture land added value on hypothetical uses, whether by informally converting agricultural lands or allocating urban ones. As to the resulting informal land use, it is not limited to housing issues but also meets the needs of private actors for tertiary real estate. It is also pointed out that land use policy and regulations failure in countering the phenomenon lies in ignoring the informal land market upstream of informal land use and urbanization. Finally, the study suggests that a preventive approach should address the conflict over land use with land management oriented towards local approach and consensus seeking with the private stakeholders. In this sense, we propose a tool to assess the likelihood of the emergence of informal land market as a decision aid for urban planners and policymakers in terms of land use.

The ivory tower in China’s speculative urbanism: instrumentalizing the university-healthcare nexus

ABSTRACT This research investigates how the public university engages in China's speculative urbanism by establishing and operationalizing the university-healthcare nexus through both real estate and healthcare businesses. Drawing on open company data and expert interviews, the organizational structure of public and private actors in the university-healthcare nexus of the Peking University Healthcare City was unfold as a case study. Findings reveal that the university-healthcare nexus was established by Peking University and its subsidiary private companies. The nexus enables speculative urban development by aligning stakeholders' interests, branding healthcare businesses, and camouflaging profit-driven real estate development. This research thus brings an alternative perspective to understanding the relationship between public and private institutions and the critical role of universities in China's urbanization process. Since the research is based on an individual case study, future comparative studies could help test the scalability of the implications.

External Hydrogen Relations of the European Union: Framing Processes in the Public Discourse Towards and within Partner Countries

With the need to decarbonize sectors that have hard-to-abate emissions, hydrogen as an energy carrier has increasingly gained attention. Within the European Union (EU) and its member states, hydrogen is assumed to be key for decarbonizing different sectors in the fight against climate change. Hence, state and private actors have engaged in a variety of attempts, strategies, and interests. However, energy security in Europe cannot be managed by European energy supply alone, despite high targets for the expansion of renewable energies. Rather, the EU will have to continue to rely on energy imports from partner countries. Against this backdrop, this paper seeks to provide an analysis of frame promotion processes generated by the EU’s bet on hydrogen. Drawing on a discourse analysis that is based on more than 32,000 media reports generated through the database Nexis, it conceptualizes the media debate as a carrier of frame alignment efforts by actors with a specific focus on the debates concerning external partner countries. It thus focuses on the discourses on the EU’s hydrogen approach in a complex environment with diverging interests of stakeholders from inside and outside the EU, thereby examining debates that still need further empirical research.

Trickle-Down Burdens: The Effect of Provider Burdens on Clients’ Experience

Abstract Administrative burden research disproportionately examines micro-level burdens on clients claiming benefits from public agencies. Yet we know little about meso-level burdens on third-party providers making up the submerged state—private actors working on behalf of a public purpose—and what effect these burdens have on services. We draw on interviews, participant observation, and focus groups with substance-use disorder service providers to map provider burdens and how they affect services that third parties offer. We supplement the provider perspective with data from clients and their families about their experience with services. We find that providers face significant administrative burdens resulting from federal and state policy; that these burdens affect the quality of the services they are able to offer; and, ultimately, that burdens on providers can trickle down to become burdens on clients. Our research has implications for how we understand administrative burdens, the solutions best suited to reducing them, and the role of burdens as a form of hidden politics in the submerged state.

Normeringen av ukrainsk i det selvstendige Ukraina

Applying Joshua Fishman’s typology for linguistic corpus planning, this article surveys corpus planning in independent Ukraine regarding changes in political conditions and in standard linguistic forms. Between 1991 and 1999, corpus planning addressed urgent issues such as transliteration and orthography, but corpus planning was sporadic and often initiated by private actors motivated by purism. Between 2000 and 2018, corpus planning gradually gave standard Ukrainian a firmer basis, peaking with the National Academy of Sciences’ monolingual general dictionary of Ukrainian issued from 2010. Since 2019, corpus planning has been remarkably streamlined, resulting both from the 2019 language law and from the 2019 orthography. I conclude that speakers of Ukrainian, including the numerous Ukrainian citizens who in the third millennium have shifted from Russian to Ukrainian – a development accelerating after Russia’s full-scale aggression in February 2022 – have at their disposal a standard language marked by ‘Ausbauization’ (Fishman, 2008): Standard Ukrainian is being built away from Russian and made more unique while accepting Western foreign languages components.

Informality, Paradiplomacy, and Cross-Border Cooperation: The Development of Tourism on Bintan Island, Indonesia

ABSTRACT This article examines how informality has enhanced the ability of the local government in Indonesia’s Bintan Island to achieve cross-border cooperation for tourism development, despite the constraints imposed by the central government. The local government, the article illustrates, has negotiated between the development of the local tourism industry and its increasingly tense relations with the central government by using informality through patron–client relations. Informality has enabled the local government to mobilise private actors as proxies in its pursuit of cross-border cooperation. The government has also used international standards that govern the tourism industry in designated Free Trade Zones to accommodate local needs, such as employment. Informality provides local stakeholders with benefits from cross-border cooperation while simultaneously providing flexibility for foreign capital to operate in the region. The article concludes that informality is both an instrument that the local government can strategically use to circumvent the powers of the central government and something that local elites can use to maintain and expand patron–client relations to achieve their political and economic interests.

Human rights in climate change adaptation policies: a systematic assessment

ABSTRACT Human rights have potential to enhance adaptation because they reflect internationally agreed upon standards of human dignity, aim to advance formal and substantive forms of equality, and can be used to hold public and private actors accountable for rights violations. We assess whether, how, and under what conditions national adaptation policies recognize human rights principles and standards. We analyze 217 adaptation policies from 147 countries to examine whether there is substantive recognition of the vulnerability and needs of equity-deserving groups that experience systemic marginalization and exclusion, and procedural inclusion of these groups in adaptation planning and decision-making. Results indicate that while under the Paris Agreement governments commit to respect human rights in their adaptation policies and actions, few countries are abiding by this commitment. Only one-third of countries refer to respect, promotion, or consideration of human rights within their adaptation policies. While most countries included here recognize specific conditions of different vulnerable groups in their policies, there is minimal evidence of their inclusion in the adaptation planning and decision-making process, and half of countries fail to identify specific measures that will be developed to reduce their vulnerability. None of the strategies that we reviewed pointed to the creation of accountability mechanisms for redressing harms that may arise due to adaptation actions. We also develop a series of regression models to examine whether hypothesized national predictors of adaptation action are associated with attention to human rights principles and standards. The models indicate that countries with greater wealth and equality are more likely to include attention to human rights norms in their adaptation strategies, but countries with less wealth, more inequality, and less political freedom appear to achieve a more substantive level of engagement with these norms in their strategies.

The transnational and the local in the comparative law of finance: technics, politics, and the functions of commercial law

ABSTRACT In the absence of a global regulator, transnational financial law emerges from the combination of national laws and the contractual practices developed by networks of private, public and hybrid private-public actors who contribute to the engineering and (self-)regulation of financial services largely through contracts. The theoretical question arises whether the process of transnationalisation might determine the dominance of economic rationality over other considerations, and whether a possible nationalisation of the transnational might instead produce a repoliticisation of the economic. Against this background, the article focuses on some of the instruments of transnational financial self-regulation, and considers how these interact ambivalently with local laws and judicial practices. By looking at the role of private law institutions and considering national litigation over financial contracts in different jurisdictions, the article reveals tensions between different objectives, ultimately raising questions about the function of commercial law both within and beyond the state.

Critical appraisal – Special Issue “European defence”

ABSTRACTThe Critical Appraisal draws a picture of the current state of the EU Defence Technological and Industrial Base (EDTIB) by building on the 7 Papers included in the Defence Studies Special Issue dedicated to ”European Defence”. The authors assess the EU defence industry consolidation process, describing the trends that shape it and the variety of actors involved. In the complex European defence market, opposite – but not mutually exclusive – trends of consolidation and fragmentation coexist. The authors conclude that the EDTIB is likely to continue developing along these apparently contradictory lines, where the variety of public and private actors involved cooperate and compete simultaneously, according to a plethora of interests. The Appraisal suggests several areas for future research and touches upon new EU defence initiatives, such as the European Defence Fund (EDF) and it's precursor programmes.

Channeled Beneath International Law: Mapping Infrastructure and Regulatory Capture as Israeli–American Hegemonic Reinforcers in Palestine

The United States is the most influential actor in the Israeli–Palestinian conflict; its intelligence agencies cooperate with Israel on most “counterterrorism” dossiers impacting Palestinians’ life, with a significant number thereof pertaining to Internet policing in Gaza and the West Bank. Meanwhile, Israel controls some of the key Internet service providers (ISPs) that serve Palestinians, and it is thus endowed with the capability to compel those ISPs to filter information so as to perform as American propaganda reinforcers. Moreover, the United States may unaccountably assert jurisdiction over data from and to Palestine because American cables are where most of the Internet transits through, exercising surveillance without judicial oversight. Verified instances of censorship directed by government-tied U.S. corporations, especially during confrontational seasons, are indeed numerous. Palestinian authorities themselves contribute to creating information clusters and identity bubbles, with infrastructural deficiencies as well as executive and court orders undermining freedom of expression online under arbitrary “public morals” or “security” concerns. The combined effect of technical advantage and regulatory capture supports the convergence of interests between Palestinian and Israeli authorities in restricting Palestinians’ digital rights, and assists the United States in reiterating its “security” hegemony in the region. This warrants a debunking of the limits of the law in constraining private actors and readjusting states’ jurisdiction over Internet infrastructure and data packets transiting through it.

Re-designing public–private partnerships: Case study – Green Hydrogen Hub, Denmark

Public and private actors are increasingly realizing that the hypercomplex challenges that societies are facing require them to collaborate in different manners than current structures and best practices cater for. Private–public partnerships (PPP) and public–private innovation (PPI) are familiar constructs. However, politicians, public and private actors, and academics increasingly point out that society’s complex, wicked problems require new forms of collaboration structures that allow for solutions to be co-created in order to create real impact. Novel collaboration structures are emerging worldwide, and early studies indicate that they demand a radical change of governmental behaviours in order to sustain these, often long-term, relationships. This case study examines the cross-sectoral co-creation initiative, Green Hydrogen Hub (GHH). GHH is designing and developing a society-scale green energy storage capacity that will play a key role in the green electrification of Denmark. Specifically, it investigates the change of role, self-perception and orchestrating capabilities of the governmental actor, Gas Storage Denmark, in its role in the public–private co-creation (PPC) consortium. Through a series of qualitative interviews with both public and private actors within and surrounding the co-creation consortium, this study has identified one overarching necessity for driving successful PPC: the ability to juxtapose public actors’ for-purpose obligations and private actors’ for-profit obligations in a non-oppositional setup. The case shows how this is obtained through three key indicators: 1) an ability to establish a resilient team, 2) a strong focus on storytelling about the overall purpose, 3) a plasticity from the actors to deliver on the purpose. As such, this article brings a deeper understanding for both public and private organizations as to how they can effectively engage in co-operative complex innovation activities.

Nothing but symbolic: Chinese new authoritarianism, smart government, and the challenge of multi-level governance

This study investigates the impact of Chinese new authoritarian principles on the approach to multi-level governance that China has implemented during the national transition to smart government. Employing a case study analysis, we illustrate the phenomenon of symbolic compliance, where sub-national public and private actors comply with state-level mandates but while being aware that their actions will fall short of achieving the desired improvements. This behavior, hitherto undocumented in the literature, contributes to the implementation of data-driven public service management solutions that inadequately address local governmental issues. Our findings prompt a re-evaluation of multi-level governance theory and practice in new authoritarian settings and underscore the need for a more pragmatic approach to smart government transitions in such contexts.

Stakeholder Perceptions on Landscape Governance in Northern Ghana: A Q-Study to Identify Common Concern Entry Points for Integrated Landscape Approaches

In a landscape, perceptions can influence people’s actions and behavior toward natural resource use. Improving landscape governance, therefore, requires understanding the different concerns of stakeholders operating within the landscape. This paper analyzes the perceptions of local stakeholders—local landscape users, practitioners engaged in conservation and sustainable resource use, and private actors—regarding the landscape governance system, using the Q-methodology to identify common concern entry points for the implementation of a landscape approach in the Western Wildlife Corridor (WWC) in northern Ghana. To this end, individual interviews and focus groups were conducted with local communities and organizations operating in three Community Resource Management Areas (CREMAs). They identified destructive livelihood activities, constrained livelihoods, and a weak governance system as the main challenges, and the need to balance livelihoods with conservation, strengthening landscape governance through the CREMA initiative, and awareness raising as the main solutions. Thus, the Q-method allowed identifying common concern entry points regarding landscape challenges, governance issues, and potential solutions. I argue that consensus among stakeholders regarding these challenges and solutions could lay the groundwork for a multi-stakeholder process in the area, which could help foster the implementation of an integrated landscape approach in the WWC landscape. It is crucial to support the livelihoods of local people to reduce pressures on natural resources. It is also important to strengthen the functioning of local CREMA management bodies with technical, logistical, and financial support. Implementing a participatory monitoring and evaluation mechanism is critical in this regard.

Countering online hate speech: How does human rights due diligence impact terms of service?

The Internet is a global forum largely governed by private actors driven by profit concerns, often disregarding the human rights of historically marginalised communities. Increased attention is being paid to the corporate human rights due diligence (HRDD) responsibilities applicable to online platforms countering illegal online content, such as hate speech. At the European Union (EU) level, cross-sector initiatives regulate the rights of marginalised groups and establish HRDD responsibilities for online platforms to expeditiously identify, prevent, mitigate, remedy and remove online hate speech. These initiatives include the Digital Services Act, the Audiovisual Media Services Directive, the proposed Directive on Corporate Sustainability Due Diligence, the proposed Artificial Intelligence Act and the Code of conduct on countering illegal hate speech online. Nevertheless, the HRDD framework applicable to online hate speech has focused mostly on the platforms’ responsibilities throughout the course of their operations - guidance regarding HRDD requirements concerning the regulation of hate speech in the platforms’ Terms of Service (ToS) is missing. This paper employs a conceptualisation of criminal hate speech as explained in the Council of Europe Committee of Ministers’ Recommendation CM/Rec(2022)16, Paragraph 11, to develop specific HRDD responsibilities. We argue that online platforms should, as part of emerging preventive HRDD responsibilities within Europe, respect the rights of historically oppressed communities by aligning their ToS with the conceptualisation of criminal hate speech in European human rights standards.

Naming and shaming as a strategy for enforcing the Paris Agreement: The role of political institutions and public concern

Enforcement is a challenge for effective international cooperation. In human rights and environmental law, along with many other domains of international cooperation, "naming and shaming" is often used as an enforcement mechanism in the absence of stronger alternatives. Naming and shaming hinges on the ability to identify countries whose efforts are inadequate and effectively shame them toward better behavior. Research on this approach has struggled to identify factors that explain when it influences state behavior in ways that lead to more cooperation. Via survey of a large (N = 910) novel sample of experienced diplomats involved in the design of the Paris Agreement, we find support for the proposition that naming and shaming is most accepted and effective in influencing the behavior of countries that have high-quality political institutions, strong internal concern about climate change, and ambitious and credible international climate commitments. Naming and shaming appears less effective in other countries, so further enforcement mechanisms will be needed for truly global cooperation. We also find that the climate diplomacy experts favor a process of naming and shaming that relies on official intergovernmental actors, in contrast with studies suggesting that NGOs, media, and other private actors are more effective at naming and shaming. We suggest that these tensions-the inability for naming and shaming to work effectively within the countries least motivated for climate action and the preference for namers and shamers that seem least likely to be effective-will become central policy debates around making cooperation on climate change more enforceable.

Collaborative Governance in PT Trans-Pacific Petrochemical Indotama CSR Program “BANG JALI (Lemons Agropolitan Development)”

BANG JALI Program (Lemons Agropolitan Development) is a corporate social responsibility (CSR) program from PT Trans-Pacific Petrochemical Indotama. This background program is based on Tasikharjo Village's imbalanced economy in the Jenu district. The existence of an orange plantation managed properly by a group through Gapoktan Sumber Rejeki was able to increase economic matters from society, build a cooperation culture, and encourage local development. The implementation of this program involves cooperation from various stakeholders, such as government, private actors, and non-governmental institutions. This paper examines collaboration between stakeholders in program implementation with collaborative governance concepts. This research was done used a qualitative approach to obtain phenomena experienced by the research object to be explained with analysis descriptive techniques. The collaborative concept results show that the cooperation between stakeholders on the BANG JALI (Lemons Agropolitan Development) implementation program can be categorized as a collaborative process.

The principal-agent problem in hierarchical policy making: A failure of policy to support the transition to LNG as an alternative shipping fuel

This paper addresses the role of policy in driving technology change to reduce maritime transport emissions. While liquefied natural gas (LNG) is little better than fuel oil from a carbon perspective, it emits very low levels of other pollutants Sulphur Oxides (SOx), Nitrogen Oxides (NOx) and Particulate Matter (PM). However, despite a great deal of policy effort, the switch from fuel oil to LNG has not occurred at significant scale. Policy makers are already turning towards other fuels such as hydrogen. This paper explores the failure of policy to support the transition to LNG through the lens of the principal-agent problem, examining the influence of its key challenges at the intersection of three geographical scales (international, supranational and national) in the European Union. The case analysis reveals a lack of incentive alignment between both different levels of public actors (the EU and member states) and between public and private actors, producing a lack of agency and an uncertain policy environment, exacerbated by a lack of monitoring and sanctions by the EU of its member states. This research provides a better understanding of the shortcomings of transition policy in the case of LNG which provides lessons on the need for more coherent, comprehensive and stringent policy that could prevent another policy failure in the transition towards other alternative fuels.

How jaguars are actually stolen: Big cat conservation and the green extractivism nexus in the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico

This article explores the seemingly unlikely intersection of jaguar conservation and green extractivism in the Yucatán Peninsula, Mexico. The 'green' or environmental aspect of jaguar conservation, we argue, is largely manufactured, employing the qualities of ecosystems to market and advance forms of 'place-based' extraction. Analyzing jaguar conservation programs through green extractivism not only shows problems related to market-based conservation schemes, but how these conservation projects advance spatial legibility of resources and political control over territories for public and private actors, aiding capitalist and extractive trajectories. Drawing on fieldwork in Laguna Om, an ejido––rural community––in the south of the Peninsula, the article reveals how an entanglement of market-based instruments (MBIs), voluntary carbon markets, NGOs, corporate financing, environmental policy, and technological developments continue to consume ecosystems into circuits of capitalist control and accumulation. Finally, the article demonstrates, jaguar conservation serves to greenwash traditional extractive and infrastructural development projects, such as Tren Maya. Digitalized and market-based forms of conservation, moreover, reduce ecosystems to units of accounting that are fit for trade in international markets, advancing the capture and accumulation of value through conservation, enacting a process of green extractivism.

The distributive politics of privately financed infrastructure agreements

AbstractPrivately financed infrastructure agreements (PFIAs) are increasingly being used across the globe, bringing private money into the delivery of public goods. How does introducing private actors to such a process change how we think about distributive politics? I investigate this question using both quantitative and qualitative analyses, uncovering a relationship consistent with PFIAs being used as distributive goods and exploring how the credit‐claim potential of PFIAs may affect their distributive use. My quantitative analyses (on 16 middle‐income countries) present evidence suggestive of a relationship between electoral variables and the likelihood of a PFIA being present in a district. In districts aligned with the national ruling party, PFIAs are more likely to be concentrated in swing districts than core districts. I find that this relationship is more pronounced for PFIAs that are more directly attributable to the government. My qualitative press analysis provides insights into how politicians use various features of PFIAs to create credit‐claiming opportunities.