Institutional Regulatory Framework Research Articles

Evolution of Regulatory Governance for Human Research in Costa Rica

Regulatory governance of human research derives from historical abuses of people participating in health related and non-health relates studies. Costa Rica was no exception and nowadays counts with a Regulatory Law of Biomedical Research (Law 9234) that guarantees the protection of research participants’ human rights. The aim of this narrative review is to overview the gradual development and state of the art of protections and oversight of research with humans in Costa Rica. A recapitulation of why regulatory governance for biomedical human research was enacted in 2014 will be discussed. Even so, there is no legal requirement in Costa Rica, as in other developing nations, for non-health related protocols with human participants, to undergo the scrutiny of research boards. Nonetheless, even before Law 9234 was passed, the University of Costa Rica made efforts to compel compliance with research ethics when studying humans. Therefore, another objective is to review the current ethical guidelines dictated by the University of Costa Rica and Scientifical Ethics Committee of the University of Costa Rica to conduct responsible human research. The University of Costa Rica’s institutional regulatory framework on human research, can serve as a model to other national and international institutions from developing nations, where ethical assessment of sociocultural research is relatively neglected, compared to the review of biomedical and clinical studies.

The labour process and workers’ rights at Mercado Libre: hiding exploitation through regulation in the digital economy

E-commerce platforms such as, most famously, Amazon use digitalised production systems in their warehouses. In this article we examine how such digitalised systems impact upon the labour process, the organisation of work and working condition in the warehouse of Mercado Libre in Argentina, the largest e-commerce platform there and in Latin America. In many respects, this case is aligned with the evidence emerging from similar studies on Amazon. The ubiquitous combination of algorithmic management with discretionary human management has limited the sphere of workers’ autonomy and spaces of resistance, increased control to virtually any productive or unproductive time spent by workers in the warehouse and imposed stressful working conditions on workers, often with negative implications for health and safety. These conditions of exploitation common to digitalised workplaces have, however, been strengthened by the company’s hiring strategy, based extensively on labour broking, on the high turnover of a young workforce, and the strategic use of the existing institutional regulatory framework and formal trade union representation to buffer management from workers’ complaints. In this sense it is not regulation as such that is the key to better working conditions in the digitalised labour process but rather how that regulatory framework is effectively used and contested by workers’ struggles on the ground to get concessions.

UN Convention to Combat Desertification as an International Environmental Regulatory Framework for Protecting and Restoring the World’s Land towards a Safer, More Just and Sustainable Future

There are ongoing international initiatives on how to protect the environment towards sustainable development (SD). These initiatives range from those of the United Nations (UN) to those of other international organizations and institutions. At the level of the UN, these initiatives are mainly its conferences and summits, which may be considered as the UN SRJRS Process. The UN SRJRS Process refers to the cities in which various UN conferences and summits on the environment and development towards SD have so far been convened, namely Stockholm, Rio de Janeiro, Johannesburg, Rio de Janeiro and Stockholm. So, these UN conferences and summits are the (i) UN Conference on the Human Environment, held at Stockholm, in 1972; (ii) UN Conference on Environment and Development, held at Rio de Janeiro, in 1992; (iii) World Summit on SD, held at Johannesburg, in 2002; (iv) UN Conference on SD (Rio+20), held again at Rio de Janeiro, in 2012; and (v) the Stockholm+50, which was held again in Stockholm, Sweden, in June 2022. The UN SRJRS Process and their outcome documents and progressively ongoing strategies are aimed at protecting the environment in the course of development, so as to achieve SD in UN’s member states and territories around the globe, in the interest of humans and society at large. Desertification, which may arise from deforestation, is an environmental problem associated with forests. Internationally, forests are regulated by the UN Statement of Forest Principles, 1992, UN Framework Convention on Climate Change, 1992, the Convention on Biological Diversity, 1992, the Convention to Combat Desertification (CCD), 1994, and other relevant multilateral conventions, as well as international agreements and efforts associated with forests. This study thus examines the UNCCD, 1994, as a worldwide shared vision and a comprehensive multilateral environmental regulatory mechanism, designed to combat desertification, through relevant implementation measures, such as policies, laws, institutional regulatory frameworks and practices in sovereign states and territories around the globe, so as to protect and restore the world’s land, towards a safer, more just and better sustainable future, especially towards achieving relevant goals of the UN Sustainable Development Goals.

Do shadow economy, institutional regulatory framework, government stability, and corruption affect non‐performing banking loans in emerging market economies: A dynamic common correlated effect (DCCE) approach

AbstractThe banking sector of the emerging economies is continuously confronted with the puzzle of non‐performing loans (NPLs). To solve this puzzle, researchers have investigated various determinants of non‐performing loans; however, the issue persists. The current study explores the impact of the shadow economy, institutional regulatory framework, government stability, and corruption on NPLs among emerging economies from the period 2000–2017. We have employed a novel dynamic common correlated effect (DCCE) model to estimate the long‐term relationship, which produces reliable estimates in the presence of cross‐sectional dependence (CSD). We found that the shadow economy, institutional regulatory framework, and government stability negatively influence NPLs, whereas corruption is positively associated with NPLs. It implies that a 1 per cent increase in the shadow economy, institutional regulatory framework, and government stability reduces NPLs by 0.06 per cent, 0.81 per cent, and 1.87 per cent in emerging countries. The study also highlights that ignoring the issue of CSD in panel data provides unreliable estimates. It is an original work and provides reliable estimates in understanding the implication of shadow economy, institutional regulation, and corruption on NPLs among emerging countries. Besides, the findings of our study also offer several policy implications.

The challenges of economic integration in Latin America: searching for consensus in contexts of globalization. The case of MERCOSUR (1991–2019)

ABSTRACT This paper analyses the trajectory of MERCOSUR from a critical historical perspective. This interpretation presents an alternative to more Eurocentric approaches to regionalism, which tends to view MERCOSUR as a failed integration process due to the inability of governments to build supranational institutions in the image of the European Union. In contrast, I analyse MERCOSUR as a field of contestation between visions of autonomy or dependence. Consensus between national actors with different visions, material capacities and institutions varied over time with direct effects on the correlation of political forces. However, the results of this dispute remain strongly tied to the international division of labour. To demonstrate this idea, this article moves through three stages of MERCOSUR, identifying the changes in terms of consensus and dissent between national governments around the regional institutional framework and its external realignment.

Global Fisheries Management and Community Interest

The conservation of fishery resources is a common interest of the international community. In the 1990s, the global fisheries management system was formed based on the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (LOSC). In order to achieve sustainable fisheries management, the international community also adopted a series of legally binding and non-binding policy instruments for the implementation of the global fisheries regime. The regional institutional framework was strengthened and expanded to offer broad coverage worldwide. Based on the analysis of the global fisheries management system, the article concludes that the current legal and policy instruments collectively provide a comprehensive framework for global fisheries management, but there still exist limits in addressing the challenges of fishery resources today. More effective implementation of the current legal system through better cooperation among States, as well as efficient coordination within and between national, regional and global institutions, is required.

HUMAN SECURITY IN EAST AFRICA: THE EAC'S ILLUSIVE QUEST FOR INCLUSIVE CITIZENSHIP

The East African Community (EAC) exemplifies the contradiction of independent Africa's efforts to champion regional integration and the idea of pan-Africanism, whilst maintaining the nation-state model left from colonialism. EAC I, 1967-1977, ultimately collapsed due to its inability to create a regional institutional framework that could supplant the nationalist tendencies of its member states' leaders; and failing to adopt a people-centred inclusive approach to its structure and actions. The resultant human security issues suffered throughout post-colonial East Africa at their essence have been caused by the victorious nationstate's continued failure to offer this inclusive citizenship to its peoples. Despite the EAC II's, 2001-present, espoused people-centred reincarnation, it too has so far failed to create the inclusive citizen, or peoplecentred approach to its development and so risks the continued insecurity of its people.

The Ascent of Saudi Arabia to a Regional Hegemon: The Role of Institutional Power in the League of Arab States

After the Arab upheavals that began in 2011, Saudi Arabia became the most dominant power in the Arab world. While most of its Arab rivals experienced political and economic crises and disintegration, the Gulf monarchy began an unprecedented active and even interventionist foreign policy and increased its regional influence tremendously. Remarkably, most of this activism was not exercised unilaterally but within regional institutional frameworks, mainly of the League of Arab States (LAS) and the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC). This article investigates how Saudi Arabia gained institutional power within the LAS. The analysis is based on the LAS decisions at the Summit level before and after the Arab uprisings with regard to Saudi Arabia’s main foreign policy interests. The purpose of the article is to examine the essence of Saudi Arabia’s regional power. It also looks at the unforeseen revitalization of the LAS and allows predictions of the future of Arab regionalism in a changing Arab world.

ПРЕДПРИНИМАТЕЛЬСКАЯ ДЕЯТЕЛЬНОСТЬ В РЕГИОНАЛЬНОЙ ЭКОНОМИКЕ: НА ОСНОВЕ ГОСУДАРСТВЕННО-ЧАСТНОГО ПАРТНЕРСТВА

The article examines the theoretical aspects of the development of entrepreneurial activity based on public-private partnership (PPP) in the regional economy. The organizational and economic mechanism of public-private partnership development in the regional economy is shown. Its main elements include: justification of the conditions for using financial resources for a PPP infrastructure project; creation of organizational bases for implementing the public-private partnership model; implementation of a set of management functions (planning, organization, motivation and control) in the conditions of the entire investment cycle; achieving goal setting and ensuring the effectiveness of the PPP infrastructure project in the interaction of the state and business. It is proved that the process of implementing public-private partnership includes elements of institutional support for this system: regulatory support for the PPP Institute; formation of a system of state regulation of relations in the field of publicprivate partnership; formation of an organizational and economic mechanism for managing the development of public-private partnership in the regional economy. It is revealed that the institutional regulatory framework in the regional economy involves the creation of a regulatory framework for the functioning of the system of interaction of public authorities and business structures, forming an open competitive environment for public-private partnership, identification of the openness and transparency of the system of relations of public-private partnerships. It is shown that the use of the public-private partnership mechanism will ensure the necessary growth rates in the regional economy. Implementation of infrastructure projects is one of the forms of avoiding “institutional traps” in the context of crisis situations in recent years. It is concluded that a necessary condition for the effective implementation of a regional public-private partnership PPP project is to find the necessary financial resources and ways to use them most effectively for the socio-economic development of the region.

Duties in Permanent Sovereignty over Natural Wealth and Resources and Petroleum Development in Nigeria: Need to Domesticate Benchmarked International Standards and Practices in the Country

This paper examines the duties of resources-rich developing countries inherent in Permanent Sovereignty over Natural Wealth and Resources (PSNWR) in the context of the laws and other forms of government regulatory frameworks, such as government institutional regulatory frameworks, governing petroleum development in Nigeria. It emphasises the significance of good, dynamic and effective laws, alongside viable, strong and efficient institutions in the governance of major natural resources extractive industrial development operations (EIOs) in Nigeria. It rationalises how and why petroleum and other EIOs regulatory frameworks in Nigeria should be designed and implemented in conformity with widely acknowledged and accepted benchmarked international EIOs regulatory mechanisms, such as guidelines, norms, rules, standards and practices, which are soft law instruments that are increasingly governing EIOs in sovereign states around the globe, in the ongoing era of sustainable development (SD). It recommends a need for domestication of such regulatory mechanisms governing petroleum resources development operations and other EIOs in Nigeria, as doing so would boost good environmental governance and overall government social responsibility, towards robust, efficient and effective accomplishment of the duties of Nigeria embedded in PSNWR, in the course of the resources development operations in the oil-rich Niger Delta region. Doing so would thus boost human wellbeing, good governance and environmentally-sound and socio-economically equitable SD in Nigeria, towards overall public good and all-embracing prosperity in the country. Keywords: Permanent Sovereignty over Natural Wealth and Resources (PSNWR), Petroleum Development, Extractive Industrial Operations (EIOs), Good Environmental Governance (GEG), Government Social Responsibility (GSR), Good Governance and Sustainable Development (SD). DOI : 10.7176/JLPG/92-09 Publication date: December 31 st 2019

From resource curse to institutional incompatibility: a comparative study of Nigeria and Norway oil resource governance

ABSTRACTThis article seeks to address a policy quandary: despite Nigeria’s history of oil exploitation since 1956 and institutionalization of the Nigeria Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI) in 2004, why has the country not been able to address the resource wealth–poverty dilemma? Is it that the EITI’s governance model is too Western to address Nigeria’s resource curse? It has been established that a country’s propensity to integrate EITI principles in the oil industry is largely dependent not only on the existence of institutions, but also on the level of institutional development. Norway and Nigeria both created policy and regulatory systems. Norway’s more competent administrative structures grew into a self-regulatory system but, by contrast, Nigeria’s indigenous civil service never developed institutional arrangements sufficient to integrate the oil industry into the entire national or regional institutional framework. Considering these historical and contextual differences between Nigeria and Norway, this article employs ‘stakeholder analysis’ to construct a framework of ‘thinking’ regarding how the oil sector could be effectively governed in Nigeria (Figure 7), a country with a robust civil society but a complex political system: in such countries, evolution of what I call a ‘self-reinforcing system of institutional incompatibility’ is inevitable, but institutionalization of foreign models such as EITI is often difficult to achieve.

Digital Single Market as the new world to the European Union: repercussions in social and institutional regulatory structure – the universal service and the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications’ (BEREC) redefinition

Digital Single Market is the new world in the EU and it is perceived as primary public interest because it was one of the ways the EU found to become more financially attractive and better suited to innovation. To accomplish that, several legal solutions appear to be unsuitable for the present time EU is living in. Concerning electronic communications, its legal and regulatory framework needed to be recasted and a new Electronic Communications Code proposal was made by the European Commission. Among many innovative solutions, it aims at redefining EU universal service, to update it to connectivity solutions of our time, and at revising the Body of European Regulators for Electronic Communications’ role, granting it further competences on crossborder dispute resolution and articulation between European institutions and national regulatory authorities. These dimensions rethink both social and institutional regulatory framework and this text wants to understand what their strengths and weaknesses are.

Los consejos de salud como instrumento de participación comunitaria en La Rioja

ObjectiveTo describe the functioning and regulations of health councils in La Rioja (Spain) as vehicles for citizen participation in health management. MethodA qualitative analysis was conducted triangulating the national and regional institutional framework reviews of health councils, the official minutes of 58 meetings, and 11 semi-structured interviews with related persons. ResultsThe analysis revealed a predominantly biomedical-technological standpoint, a lack of training in community participation dynamics, and an absence of structure in council operations. The councils were also found to be over-powered by public healthcare administration and restricted to a role of simply transmitting information, thereby neglecting an opportunity for proactive community involvement. ConclusionsIn spite of these shortcomings, community health councils can operate as efficient instruments in health management as long as the necessary political will and appropriate community awareness both exist.

Assessment of the Institutional Regulatory Framework of Auditor Independence in Nigeria

The study assessed the effectiveness of the institutional regulatory framework of Auditor Independence in Nigeria. The study is purely a library research aided by content analysis. The results identified weakness inherent in the regulatory framework assessed such as ineffectiveness of whistle blowing in Nigeria; violation of Auditor’s reporting independence; negligence on the Part of Audit Regulators and External Auditors in Nigeria; absence of unified Code of Corporate Governance in Nigeria and proliferation of Accounting Professional Bodies and decline in Ethics. The study, recommended that, harmonisation of the multiplicity of corporate governance codes and accounting professional bodies in Nigeria by Financial Reporting Council of Nigeria is a pre-requisite for promoting auditor independence among external auditors. Also, regulators in Nigeria should create more stringent regulatory procedures to detect fraud, mete out appropriate disciplinary measure and well as penalise companies and audit firms for erring. Furthermore, the accountancy professional body (ICAN) should promote the dignity of its members by making the appointment of external auditors less dependent on the executive directors and more dependent on the non-executive directors, audit committees and shareholders. Key words: Auditor, Regulation, Independence, Framework

ICT Laws in Nigeria: Planning and Regulating a Societal Journey into the Future

This paper examines the laws on Information and Communications Technology in Nigeria, and the institutional regulatory framework for enforcing the relevant laws. It further appraises selected concepts associated with ICT regulation and some contemporary issues as they relate to the challenges of ICT in Nigeria. The paper suggests regulatory benchmarks for the purpose of repositioning the ICT sector and approaches to strengthening the regulation of ICT in Nigeria. The paper concludes with an emphasis on value–added and result–based approach to the Information and Communications Technology regulation process in Nigeria.

Scenario-based approach in dealing with climate change impacts in Central Tanzania

Climate variability and change continue to be a threat to Africa’s agro-ecosystems. This is anticipated to have a multitude of immediate and long-term impacts on sub-Saharan Africa’s natural resources of the present study attempts to establish the potential benefit of integrating local stakeholders’ knowledge into climate scenarios. Specifically, the study sought to tap into the expertise and perspectives of locally important stakeholders in the potentially sensitive Wami/Ruvu River catchment of Tanzania. Participatory scenario planning was used to explore sectors sensitive to climate variability and change. This included 84 selected smallholder farmers and their leaders spread across six villages within the catchment. Quantitative household surveys were conducted across 199 households and Supplementary information sourced from regional statistics. The survey indicates that farmers project that land and agricultural productivity and water resources will be affected by climate change. From the participatory approach adopted for the study, thematic scenario categories featuring land and water resource-use and management and farm productivity were developed. The research found scenario analysis as a useful tool in development planning, as it incorporates interacting risks and uncertainties. If adopted by local farmers, leaders, regional institutional frameworks and policy makers, the tool has the potential to improve responsiveness to changes and risks through its collaborative management approach. This study demonstrates the need for sustainable water use and management systems and land use and farming practices that will increase crop productivity and resilience to climate variability and change.

Book Review: Somiseros: la configuracion y el devenir de un grupo obrero desde una perspectiva antropologica by Julia Soul and La disputa por la dignidad obrera: sindicalismo de base fabril en la zona norte del conurbano bonaerense 2003–2014 by Paula Varela

Julia Soul Somiseros: la configuracion y el devenir de un grupo obrero desde una perspectiva antropologica, Rosario: Prohistoria ediciones, 2014, ISBN 9789871855940, 230 $ARS Paula Varela La disputa por la dignidad obrera: sindicalismo de base fabril en la zona norte del conurbano bonaerense 2003-2014, Buenos Aires: Imago Mundi, 2015, ISBN 9789597931925, 250 $ARS In contrast with the social movement focus of the previous decade, the last few years have seen a renewal of traditional labour movement studies in Argentina. This has been partly a consequence of the improved socio-political and economic landscape following the 2001 crisis. The economic growth and the centrality given to collective bargaining and tripartite agreements in industrial relations have empowered trade union structures at central and workplace level, favouring the re-emergence of grassroots organizations and workplace labour conflict in the formal sector of the economy. This renewal of traditional workers' struggles--often associated with issues of workers' representation, trade union democracy and work precarity--has thus provided a fertile soil for research to a young generation of left-oriented researchers. The books reviewed in this article, although from different theoretical and disciplinary angles and political nuances, represent well this return to the normality' of the capital-labour relationship and to the management of labour conflict in formal sector workplaces and within the traditional institutional regulatory framework, far from the anti-politics and the anti-institutional social mobilizations of the early 2000s. The book by Julia Soul, Somiseros, using oral history interviews and ethnographic methods, offers an anthropological perspective of workers' collective formations and identities in a steel company, SOMISA, across time. This long-term perspective is developed through three chronological phases, each corresponding to a particular configuration of the capital-labour relations in the plant: the creation and expansion of the state company in the 1960s; the tension for the processes of rationalization of the 1980s and the privatization of the early 1990s; and the downsizing, flexibilization and exposition to world market as part of the transnational steel giant Techint from the 2000s to the current days. This long-term perspective gives the possibility of identifying and delving deep into the collective practices and processes constituted through what the author calls the cotidianeidad fabril (everyday plant life) and how these practices and processes have changed, particularly with the privatization of the company in 1993. This micro-perspective, centred on the cotidianeidad fabril, gives insights of the tensions running through the social relations established within the collective of workers, allowing to locate the discussion about SOMISA's workers into more general debates associated with the management of labour power (technological changes and the transformation of labour control, the precarization and division of the workforce) and with trade unions as agent of workers' collective representation. This fine-grained and ethnographically rich analysis of the tensions within the collective of workers is maintained and well developed throughout the whole book, giving the reader a lively, almost filmic, image of the factory's social relations. This micro-analysis clearly represents the core anthropological part of the book and at the same time the best part of it. However, I also think that the centrality given to this micro-analysis in the narrative and in the book's structure does not allow the author to explicitly pose issues which are fundamental in working-class studies and for the broader social sciences. What does the work tell us in terms of class (re)configuration? Are industrial workers, as far as the experience of SOMISA can teach us, still the central political subject in the construction of social change? …

Economic Integration in East Asia: Production Networks and Small and Medium Enterprises

International production networks in manufacturing, particularly in machinery industries, have rapidly developed over the last two decades, resulting in dramatic increases in intra-regional and intra-industry trade, providing a key source of regional growth, integration and development in East Asia. This book provides a better understanding on how to effectively further increase SME participation in East Asian production networks, and in doing so identifies key challenges and issues that they need to address. This book aims to not only fill the theory-practice gap, but also to lay solid foundations for designing national arrangements and a regional institutional frameworks to further encourage and support SME engagement and participation in regional and global production networks. The book contains several country case studies and by drawing upon individual country experiences, at various stages of economic development, this book demonstrates the varying difficulty faced by SMEs in ASEAN member countries attempting to participate in regional production networks and highlighting differences in needs and policy priorities. This book offers both a more focused theme on the assessment of globalization and a rather unique approach by focusing upon the particular importance of SMEs, and by utilizing micro-level data at the firm or plant level. Its policy insights and the richness and uniqueness of the empirical findings will make the book an invaluable contribution to understanding East Asian production networks.

Workers’ grievances and resolution mechanisms in Chinese manufacturing firms: key characteristics and the influence of contextual factors

Little attention has been paid to causes of worker grievance or the human resource management (HRM) mechanisms that organizations may deploy to detect and resolve emerging grievances without invoking legalistic/procedural actions, especially in the Chinese context. This qualitative study examines sources of grievances from an HRM perspective. It identifies how grievance issues may be addressed within a national setting that has neither an institutional regulatory framework nor procedures for resolving milder forms of workplace grievances, internally, before they escalate into confrontational labour disputes. We study workers’ and managers’ views on grievance issues in four case study firms in the manufacturing industry in China. In so doing, we extend the disciplinary coverage of a people management topic traditionally studied by non-management disciplines from a legalistic and procedural angle. The study highlights a number of demographic, institutional, cultural and firm-specific factors related to grievance occurrence and management, and identifies a number of future research avenues. Our study contributes to deepening the contextual understanding of an organizational phenomenon in China that is of growing significance, but is yet to attract research and management attention.

Institutions, smart specialisation dynamics and policy

Smart specialisation features prominently in the European regional policy context. This paper discusses how the configuration of the regional institutional framework affects smart specialisation dynamics and policy. It elaborates why and how institutional diversity and integration promote entrepreneurial discovery processes, spillovers and agglomeration effects, and thereby structural change in regions. Policy challenges arising from the regional institutional framework are identified, discussed and related to well-researched system failures of regional innovation systems.