Momentum For Reform Research Articles

‘Life Will Be Very Different after the War’: Administrative, Political and Academic Tensions in the Development of Papua New Guinea after the Second World War

ABSTRACTAt the end of the Pacific War (1941–1945) in Papua and New Guinea and the restoration of Australian rule, the Australian Labor government anticipated a self‐governing colony. It was not an act of decolonisation per se. Rather it was a step toward a self‐governing colony under the umbrella of Australia. Independence was for the future. The change of government at the end of 1949, and the replacement of the administrator J.K. Murray in 1952 by Donald Cleland, further weakened the momentum for reform as envisaged by the previous Labor government. Percy Spender, the new Minister for External Affairs and Territories, said that the ‘indigenous inhabitants … will be unable, for many years to come, to play any part in the executive government of the country’. The abandonment of the Ward policy and what it explicitly and implicitly offered was a betrayal of the promises made during and shortly after the Pacifc War, that is, that there would be change for the better and New Guineans would be able to control their destiny.

“The Law is too Grey”: Liminal Legality and Moral Injury in Encounters with Drug Law Enforcement

Overdose mortality and the legitimacy crisis facing policing have propelled momentum for drug law reform. Yet, resulting reforms and associated protections are often functionally undermined by enforcement practices and the legal environment faced by people who use drugs. To explore this tension, we conducted a community-based study in Ontario, Canada. Our findings show that people's experiences of policing at overdose events reflect a legal regime characterized by their ambiguous legal status and uncertain protections. We argue that the resulting state of liminal legality is enacted in large part through police discretion and the uneven distribution of enforcement practices across spaces and populations; individuals compensate for this legal environment by mobilizing their knowledge of legal risks. Together, these expressions of law and drug enforcement generate substantial moral injury among people who use drugs.

Unpacking Duterte’s mixed legacy on economic reforms

The Duterte administration (2016–2022) rode into office on the back of the previous governments’ economic reform momentum that, in 2013, eventually culminated in the country’s first ever investment grade rating since the 1986 EDSA revolution. This paper reviews the data and evidence on the economic performance, efforts to institutionalize development, and the backdrop of economic governance that make up the Duterte administration’s economic reform legacy. The Duterte administration’s economic strategy was largely underpinned by the expansion of a public infrastructure program and funded by additional public revenues from a tax reform program intended to further accelerate the country’s growth path. Notwithstanding several key laws, several reforms were widely criticized for falling short in addressing key inequity, governance, and policy implementation issues in the country. The weakening of the rule of law under the Duterte administration also presents an ironic backdrop from which to appreciate his administration’s legislative and institutional reforms. Also, the COVID-19 pandemic exposed deep weaknesses in the Philippines’ economic model. While some structural challenges preceded the Duterte administration, its pandemic handling was nevertheless criticized as exacerbating the pandemic’s social and economic costs. Taken as a whole, the Duterte administration leaves behind a very mixed economic reform legacy.

Situating the urban poor in informal settlement within Jakarta’s water governance shift to remunicipalisation

The emergence of remunicipalisation in the past five years has brought a refreshing perspective to the water governance debate in Jakarta. By embracing the principles of equality and sustainability, water remunicipalisation has the potential to serve as a form of governance, particularly for the urban disadvantaged residing in informal settlements, which bear the disproportionate burden of persistent water inequality. This study aims to examine water governance through the lens of the urban poor in informal settlements and assess to what extent water remunicipalisation holds transformative capabilities for existing unequal systems. Employing an analytical framework that combines environmental justice, feminist political ecology, and everyday governance, the analysis will concentrate on aspects such as distribution, recognition, participation, scale, and multiple identities. Focusing on the case study of Penjaringan, an informal settlement in Jakarta, this research will explore the diverse experiences of water inequality as it intersects with gender, tenancy status, and social relations. While remunicipalisation has shed light on the issue of water inequality and generated momentum for governance reform, it must also encompass the lived realities of the urban poor in informal settlements. The intricacies of the remunicipalisation process in Jakarta impede discussions on the underlying structural causes of injustice, such as misrecognition and misrepresentation. Consequently, there is a failure to analyse the manifestation of water inequality across various governance scales and establish a more inclusive governance framework. This research further proposes the expansion of water remunicipalisation critiques beyond distribution alone to include recognition, participation.

Between international norms and land politics: the role of translocal actors in Kenyan arenas of land policy reform

AbstractIn Kenya, the return to the multiparty democracy of the 1990s and the initiation of the Constitutional Review of the early 2000s were two critical junctures that catalysed reform momentum and the development of transnational reform networks. Transnational relations were developed between Kenyan professionals (lawyers and academics among others), their international counterparts, and the local activists representing rural constituencies, so as to influence policymaking during constitutional and land policy reforms. These transnational networks influenced content and shape of land policy narratives by vernacularising the international norms that promote formal recognition of customary land rights. These international norms were not straightforwardly imported into Kenyan policies and statues: intense negotiations amongst actors in policy arenas resulted in their vernacularisation. Kenyan translocal actors appropriated the community land narrative, hybridised and reinterpreted it. This paper documents and analyses how the notion of community land was enshrined in Kenyan policy and constitutional documents through transnational relations. I argue that this notion of community land was shaped to the Kenyan historical and political context, at times defeating the original goal of promoting a property rights model alternative to land privatisation, and at times echoing the colonial category of tribal land, and exclusive territorial control.

Impact of Russia-Ukraine Conflict on Turkey's Economic Stability

The conflict between Russia and Ukraine has significant implications for the stability of global order. Turkey, as a country that has profound relations with Russia and Ukraine, is also affected by the conflict that threatens the country's economic sector, which is currently in reform momentum. The Turkish government under President Recep Tayyip Erdogan strategically seeks to position itself as a conflict mediator to reach a peace resolution that will ultimately have an impact on the restoration of productive relations with Russia and Ukraine. The author will use a qualitative research approach with analytical descriptive methods that utilize various sources such as journals, books, scientific articles, media and other sources that have gone through the study process. This study uses the theory of national interest and rational choice to observe and identify President Erdogan's decision-making process in responding to the Russian-Ukrainian conflict in a constructive and balanced manner without showing dominant partiality to either party. The results showed that the conflict between Russia and Ukraine had a significant impact on the stability of the Turkish economy, which strategically responded through restorative-based policies to rejuvenate productive relations with the two countries in conflict.

The Public Defender Movement in the Age of Mass Incarceration: Georgia’s Experience

Focusing on the efforts of the Southern Center for Human Rights, this article offers a grassroots history of the creation of the first statewide public defender in the State of Georgia in 2003. Whereas federal court litigation to improve indigent defense failed to achieve lasting reform, a shift in tactics toward “rebellious localism,” characterized by state court lawsuits against county and city officials, succeeded in prodding lawmakers to create a new framework for delivering legal services to indigent defendants. This model of legal change was effective in documenting structural flaws and creating momentum for reform. Yet other conditions—such as front-end criminal law policies and funding decisions—continued to shape the actual quality of representation received by poor people.

Somalia

Somalia is facing a severe drought and acute food insecurity, aggravated by higher global food and fuel prices. Sustained efforts from the authorities and support from international partners are needed for immediate humanitarian assistance and to build resilience over time to climate shocks. Notwithstanding the current challenges, including a fragile security situation, the authorities continue to deliver on their commitments under the IMF supported program and have maintained the reform momentum. Program and Article IV discussions were informed by the Country Engagement Strategy.

Negative Integration Is What States Make of It? Tackling Labour Exploitation in the German Meat Sector

AbstractIn this article, we trace Germany's recent reform (and its precursors) seeking to remedy precarious working conditions in the meat sector. Focusing on an extreme case of labour exploitation, and asking how unique it is, allows us to uncover which institutional features of EU Member States condition the liberalization effects of negative integration. We thereby contribute to the literature on Europeanization, which has mainly emphasized weak industrial relations to account for the German meat industry's reliance on cheap migrant labour. Complicated enforcement structures, demanding requirements of administrative cooperation, and the complexities of an evolving case law, we argue, further contributed to the precarious conditions of migrant workers in Germany. Major COVID outbreaks in slaughterhouses created the political momentum for reform which specifically addresses this administrative side of labour protection, but remains limited to the meat sector – despite similar patterns of labour exploitation elsewhere.

Integrating Sustainable Trade Principles in Uzbekistan

This article is an assessment of the current state of affairs in Uzbekistan’s sustainable development goals (SDG)-related policies. It is based on an analysis of UN compiled data on SDGs, and an overview of Uzbekistan’s key SDG-related strategies, as well as unstructured interviews with a dozen respondents. Desk research suggests that Government’s key SDG priorities remain in export promotion, job creation and increased economic competitiveness. Interviews suggest that sustainability is understood as political and economic stability, economic growth, environmental conservation and rule of law. From the SDG issues, respondents identified SME and female entrepreneur support, employment generation and e-commerce as the ones with the highest priority, while concurring that corruption, monopolies and market distortions, low policy implementation capacity and limited public awareness of sustainability were the greatest obstacles. The greatest strength of Uzbekistan in integrating international trade into SDGs is the current reform momentum. Significantly improved relations with neighbours are another strength, with a window of opportunity to improve on regional trade, transit, connectivity, as well as water management and water-energy nexus. The greatest challenge remains the government’s focus on exports, jobs and investments at the expense of other SDGs, as well as the continuation of the import substitution policies.

Enacting Safety and Omitting Gender: Australian Human Rights Scrutiny Processes Concerning Alcohol and Other Drug Laws

Global momentum for drug law reform is building. But how might such reform be achieved? Many argue that human rights offer a possible normative framework for guiding such reform. There has been very little research on whether human rights processes can actually achieve such aims, however. This paper responds to this knowledge gap. It explores how one human rights mechanism—the “parliamentary rights scrutiny process”—deals with alcohol and other drugs. We consider how four Australian parliaments scrutinized proposed new laws that would deal with alcohol and other drugs for their human rights “compatibility.” We find that laws that would limit the rights of people who use alcohol and other drugs were routinely seen as justifiable on the basis that alcohol and other drugs were inherently “unsafe.” Crucially, safety was conceptualized in a gender-neutral way, without regard to the potential role of gender, including specific masculinities, in the production of phenomena such as family violence and sexual violence and other public safety problems. Instead, such problems were regularly constituted as consequences, simply, of alcohol or other drug consumption. In making this argument, we build on the pioneering work of David Moore and colleagues (e.g., 2020). Their work asks important questions about how the causes of violence are constituted across different settings, including research and policy. Drawing on ideas from scholars such as Carol Bacchi and John Law, they identify “gendering practices” and “collateral realities” in research and policy on violence, in which the role of men and masculinities are routinely obscured, displaced or rendered invisible. We find similar problems underway within human rights law. In highlighting these gendering practices and collateral realities, we aim to draw attention to the limitations of some human rights processes and the need for more work in this area.

Agricultural Restructure Policy in Vietnam and Practical Application for Sustainable Development in Agriculture

The Vietnam’s agricultural sector had to challenge with its course and learned lessons of further development. Novel policy might be adopted to encourage the private investments and sectors in agriculture. Furthermore, an introduction of new models such as climate-smart or green agriculture and application of modern technology increased productivity at the same time and creating jobs for millions of agricultural workers and reversing the massive rural-urban migration flux. Vietnam’s agricultural sector needs to maintain the reform momentum, particularly liberalization policy, and to boost up agricultural potential. Obstacles such as land limitation policy must be removed to enable large-scale production and encourage private investment in the agricultural sector. To avoid being trapped by its own success, Vietnam is now shifting the old development paradigm that focuses too much on the quantity to the quality of the agricultural production. The government makes major efforts to achieve at the same time agricultural growth, better livelihood of the farmer, and the development of the rural areas. However, Vietnam still needs to prepare a “transition strategy” to overcome the impact of the technological progress on the traditional agricultural workers.

Potential Areas for Investment in Morocco. An Analysis using Inputs-Outputs Model

During the 1990s Morocco implemented a series of major institutional and economic reforms that made the country politically stable and helped it to withstand the destabilizing effects of the Arab Spring. Political reforms resulted in the adoption of a new constitution in 2011, was followed by initiatives to improve justice, public administration, the fight against corruption, and to strengthen governance, transparency and ethics in public life. The country also embarked on a regionalization of public policies and decentralization of administration to ensure an integrated and durable regional development. This reform momentum was further emphasized by the King of Morocco when in his 2019 throne speech he stressed that "… the stake is thus to rebuild a strong and competitive economy, by encouraging the private initiative, while launching new productive investment plans and by creating new job opportunities…". Keywords: Moroccan economy, Investment in Morocco, Political reforms.

The Need for New Cost Measures in Pediatric Value-Based Payment

* Abbreviations: APM — : alternative payment model InCK — : Integrated Care for Kids TCOC — : total cost of care Value-based payment reform is gaining momentum as health care stakeholders seek to reduce costs and improve quality. Reforms have not been evenly distributed, with most alternative payment models (APMs) being focused on adults. The relative lack of child-focused APMs represents a missed opportunity. Early life interventions can improve children’s cognitive and behavioral development, resulting in reduced costs over a lifetime; however, such interventions require new financing models to be sustainable.1 The Center for Medicare and Medicaid Innovation’s recent Integrated Care for Kids (InCK) Model, which requires APM development to support the integration of health care and other family-serving sectors, offers new momentum for child-focused payment reform.2 To capitalize on the reform opportunities, new cost measures for APMs are needed that better capture the value of children’s healthy development and promote greater investment for preventive interventions during this critical life stage. Cost measures play a vital role alongside quality measures in shaping the incentives within an APM. Cost-of-care measures capture the total spending on health care services for a specific duration of time, population, or care setting. APMs use cost measures to ensure that the total amount paid out is not more than what would otherwise be spent absent the APM. For example, the total cost of care (TCOC) captures the total spending for a patient population over a certain duration … Address correspondence to Nathaniel Z. Counts, JD, Mental Health America, 500 Montgomery St, Suite 820, Alexandria, VA 22314. E-mail: ncounts{at}mhanational.org

Uticaj globalizacije na inovacije u Crnoj Gori i zemljama Zapadnog Balkana

The macroeconomic environment in the Western Balkans is based on the progress of the market economy and the development of the private sector. Strengthening the role of governance, education and social inclusion is crucial to improving countries' capacity for innovation, a stable financial environment, the successful implementation of broad-based reforms and the establishment of a macroeconomic environment that supports private sector activities. It is especially important to emphasize the importance of properly understanding the importance of scientific infrastructure in the field of research on the growth of "innovation capacity", so that national policies in this area can be formed. The analysis of the connection between innovation and globalization in the conditions of modern trends of economic development, showed that the reform momentum in the Western Balkans region has slowed down, which reflected that many of these economies have failed to use their potential for innovation.

An Exploration of School Organization Metaphors and Their Contribution to School Change

This study explores the development of organizational theory through understanding comprehensive resources of metaphors and the synergy of these metaphors’ changes in momentum. The comprehensive resources of organizational metaphors emphasize that exploration and detection of the complementary relationship between multiple metaphors can promote the development of organizational theory and the acquisition of generic competence requirements to stimulate the synergistic momentum for school reform and to respond to student needs. In this study, questionnaires were used to analyze the opinions of 409 school members across 28 middle schools. The questionnaire explored 17 metaphors and their qualitative meanings. Subsequently, according to the meanings of the metaphor momentum, 41 principals, administrative staff, teachers, and parents were interviewed. The results demonstrate that with bureaucracy as the core of the thought, machine metaphor, community metaphor, politics metaphor, organism metaphor, and brain metaphor interact to promote the development of school organization theory to stimulate school change.

Acute or Chronic? the Long-Term Impact of the COVID Crisis on Economic Output

There is a substantial literature on the lasting damage to economic output from financial crises. The COVID crisis is not, in the first instance, a financial crisis and nor was the eve of the pandemic characterised by large scale macroeconomic imbalances. But it is not financial crises qua financial crises that cause long term damage, but a number of channels which operate during financial crises and other recessions, some of which are at work now as well. We identify balance sheet repair, belief scarring, labour market hysteresis, slowing structural reform momentum, and policy error as relevant transmissions channels of long term damage at work during this crisis. Our judgement is that the COVID crisis will impart a permanent levels shock to post-pandemic global economic output of 3% of GDP. This is a third the levels damage after the GFC, consistent with the nature of the shock and the more encouraging monetary, fiscal and structural policy responses. But this is still a substantial amount of long-term damage relative to 'typical' downturns, reflecting the depth of the pandemic shock and the channels of damage identified.

New development: Effective public sector performance—the reform cycle continues

ABSTRACT This article examines the demise of the 1980s ‘managing for results’ reform in Australia against the likely achievements of implementing the Public Governance, Performance and Accountability (PGPA) Act 2013—current legislation relating to public management and accountability. The PGPA Act mandates that non-financial performance be demonstrated, arguably re-introducing programme evaluation as an important element of accountability. The Australian Public Service (APS) is a large and geographically-dispersed organization, where maintaining reform momentum over the time required for change to be effective can be difficult. The author discusses issues in implementing effective reform, such as extended time, administrative amnesia, geographical factors and an absence of embedding in the management culture and associated processes.

Philippines

Economic performance remains strong. Growth regained momentum in the second half of 2019 following a slowdown in the first half. The latter primarily reflected budgetary developments, with some temporary government underspending in the early part of the year. A decisive monetary policy tightening in response to the inflation spike and overheating risks in 2018, and weaker external demand also contributed. The structural reform momentum and infrastructure push remain strong.

Research Illustrates Role of New Council on Criminal Justice as Center of Gravity for the Field

Launched in 2019, the nonpartisan Council on Criminal Justice (CCJ) is an invitational membership organization and think tank that serves as a center of gravity and incubator of policy and leadership for the criminal justice field. Its mission is to advance understanding of the criminal justice policy choices facing the nation and build consensus for solutions that enhance safety and justice for all. CCJ’s emergence reflects broad agreement across the ideological spectrum that the nation’s justice system is deeply flawed and requires equally deep reform. A quarter-century ago, crime was one of the most divisive issues in politics; today, people in Washington and in capitals of red and blue states alike are uniting behind solutions based on facts and evidence. That consensus and commitment to data-driven policymaking is the lifeblood of the Council, and it is embodied by the accomplished and diverse group of leaders and innovators who comprise its members, Directors and Trustees. Through research, task forces, convenings, and special projects, CCJ accelerates momentum for criminal justice reform and drives smart policymaking by generating achievable solutions that are factual, not just fashionable. The Council’s first projects include an ongoing series of papers analyzing the legacy and lessons of the 1994 Crime Bill, which was and remains the most far-reaching and controversial criminal justice legislation in the nation’s history. Also in its first year, CCJ produced a report documenting recent, surprising trends in racial disparities across correctional populations, marking a significant advance in the data and analysis surrounding this critical issue.