Scope Conditions Research Articles

The implementation of EU environmental policy: Why the scope conditions have improved?

Implementation gaps of European Union (EU) environmental policy are explained, inter alia, by shortcomings in knowledge, a lack of administrative capacities and weak enforcement practices. However, this article presents evidence that the scope conditions have improved, based on document analysis and semi-structured interviews with actors involved in the implementation process. Four main factors are considered. First, the Commission’s monitoring capacities benefit from an improved access to data sources other than those provided by the member states, and from a reduced legislative agenda, allowing for a more intense focus on implementation. Second, subnational actors have improved their implementation capacity through knowledge transfers and strategic planning, facilitated by improved statistical data. Third, inspection networks benefitted from technical advances, such as the access to satellite images, presenting new opportunities for the detection of environmental crimes, and new software programs facilitating risk-based inspections. Finally, citizens’ and non-governmental organizations’ improved access to justice in environmental matters contributes to a stricter enforcement of EU law.
 
 Keywords: networks; European Union; software programs

“Thugs-for-Hire”: Subcontracting of State Coercion and State Capacity in China

Using violence or threat of violence, “thugs-for-hire” (TFH) is a form of privatized coercion that helps states subjugate a recalcitrant population. I lay out three scope conditions under which TFH is the preferred strategy: when state actions are illegal or policies are unpopular; when evasion of state responsibility is highly desirable; and when states are weak in their capacity or are less strong than their societies. Weak states relative to strong ones are more likely to deploy TFH, mostly for the purpose of bolstering their coercive capacity; strong states use TFH for evasion of responsibility. Yet the state-TFH relationship is functional only if the state is able to maintain the upper hand over the violent agents. Focusing on China, a seemingly paradoxical case due to its traditional perception of being a strong state, I examine how local states frequently deploy TFH to evict homeowners, enforce the one-child policy, collect exorbitant exactions, and deal with petitioners and protestors. However, the increasing prevalence of “local mafia states” suggests that some of the thuggish groups have grown to usurp local governments’ autonomy. This points to the cost of relying upon TFH as a repressive strategy.

Governance on a bumpy road from enfant terrible to mature paradigm

ABSTRACTThe governance paradigm has been travelling a bumpy road from an enfant terrible that challenged conventional ideas about how think of the way that society and the economy is governed to a relatively mature paradigm with distinctive theories and methods and empirical studies of scope conditions and causal impact of interactive forms of governance. This article reconsiders and seeks to clarify the conceptual confusion about how to define the concept of governance. It also highlights some of the recent achievements of governance research and points to new and emerging developments that aims to further consolidate the governance paradigm. The new items on the research agenda are briefly illustrated with an empirical example.

Does environmental peacemaking between states work? Insights on cooperative environmental agreements and reconciliation in international rivalries

The literature on environmental peacemaking argues that cooperation in the face of shared environmental challenges can facilitate further cooperation, trust building, and eventually peace between states in conflict. Empirical research on environmental peacemaking, predominantly conducted in the form of single case studies, has so far been inconclusive. This article uses a cross-case, multimethod research design to test the environmental peacemaking proposition. More specifically, it argues that the conclusion of a cooperative environmental agreement can have a positive impact on reconciliation between rival states. Based on a new dataset on international rivalry termination, transboundary protected areas, and international freshwater agreements, this article first conducts a statistical analysis and a qualitative comparative analysis (QCA). The results are then verified and refined by six case studies. Triangulation of findings from the three studies suggests that the conclusion of a cooperative environmental agreement facilitates reconciliation in international rivalries. But this effect is contingent on a number of scope conditions, such as high environmental attention, internal political stability, wider patterns or traditions of environmental cooperation, and already ongoing processes of reconciliation. Still, the findings imply that environmental challenges do not only affect peace and security in a negative way. Addressing them jointly also opens opportunities for peacemaking and peacebuilding between states.

Emerging markets and private governance: the political economy of sustainable palm oil in China and India

ABSTRACTPrivate governance programs are now an important source of regulation in global value chains – particularly in context of North–South trade. But can these programs play a similar role in the value chains feeding into fast-growing emerging markets like China and India? Most scholars doing research on the topic draw a pessimistic picture. They argue that the scope conditions for private sustainability governance are not yet present in these markets. Our analysis of the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil – a leading non-state certification program – in China and India partially confirms this view. At the same time, however, we find that emerging markets are not a unified category. We observe that sustainable palm oil is beginning to gain momentum in China, whereas uptake in India remains much weaker. We trace this back to a number of key market conditions, which we show are more favorable in China. In addition, our analysis highlights the role of the Chinese state in creating awareness of and shaping firms’ interests in sustainable palm oil.

Dealing with the elephant in the room: the EU, its ‘Eastern neighbourhood’ and Russia

ABSTRACTThe article seeks to advance the understanding of the shifting European Union (EU)-Russia interaction in Eastern Europe and the South Caucasus by exploring both the EU’s policies and responses to Russia’s initiatives in the region. Drawing on different strands of literature (regionalism, international relations and EU foreign policy analysis), it identifies three scope conditions under which to expect EU policies to influence the interaction with Russia in the shared neighbourhood: the degree of integration offered to post-Soviet countries as part of the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP)/Eastern Partnership (EaP); the extent to which the EU seeks to link Russia with the ENP/EaP; and the degree of internal coherence on the EU’s interaction with Russia. The article argues that all three conditions have contributed to shaping interaction with Russia, albeit to different degrees. It is primarily the EU’s new role of a region-builder as part of the EaP that triggered Russia’s counter-actions, thereby resulting in a growing competition for influence in what has become a contested neighbourhood.

Don't Blink: Reputations for Resolve and Higher-Order Beliefs in Crisis Bargaining

Reputations for resolve are said to be one of the few things worth fighting for, yet they remain inadequately understood. Discussions of reputation focus almost exclusively on first-order belief change — A stands firm, B updates his beliefs about A's resolve. Such first-order reputational effects are important, but they are not the whole story. Higher-order beliefs — what A believes about B's beliefs, and so on — can matter just as much, if not more. When A comes to believe that B is more resolved, this may decrease A's resolve, and this in turn may increase B's resolve, and so on. In other words, resolve is interdependent. We provide evidence from a survey experiment on quasi-elites that suggests observers make inferences along these lines. Countries are able to develop reputations, and the effects are large, general, and robust. Our estimates of the extent to which an exogenous increase in A's resolve decreases B's resolve indicate that higher-order beliefs are responsible for a large proportion of these effects (40-70%). We conclude by supporting the plausibility of our claims with anecdotal examples, positing scope conditions for the argument, and outlining promising areas for future research on higher-order belief dynamics.

E PLURIBUS UNUM? THE COMMUNITARIZATION OF EU MIGRATION, ASYLUM AND BORDER MANAGEMENT POLICIES IN TIMES OF CRISIS

The article accounts for the emergence of an external dimension of EU internal policies and focuses on the migration, asylum and border management domains. Building on Bretherton & Vogler (2006), it assesses and explains the forms and extent of EU’s external engagement. Firstly, it assesses the degree of EU actorness – that is, the extent to which the Union has become an actor in global politics - in the researched fields in terms of opportunity, presence and capabilities. Secondly, it attempts to explain the emergence of such EU external engagement. While the article defends that the treaty objective of creating an European Area of Freedom, Security and Justice (article 3 TEU) makes EU external action in the migration, asylum and border control domains necessary, it also acknowledges the role of external triggers, such as the so-called 2015 ‘migration and refugee crisis’. On the one hand, external events can provide scope conditions accelerating the pace by which EU external action is pursued. On the other hand, they can also trigger the comeback of hard security concerns linked to claims for ‘more national sovereignty’, thus constraining the development of EU (external) action. The analysis carried out shows that the degree of EU actorness varies considerably across the three domains researched. On one extreme of the continuum, neo-realist understandings of increased arrivals of foreign citizens as hard security challenges to member states account for the enhanced interest in cooperation at the intergovernmental level. Such interpretations explain why the most established domain for EU external engagement is the cooperation with third countries on border management, as it is shown by the expansion of the mandate of EU agencies such as Europol and Frontex, or by negotiation by the European Commission of international agreements containing clauses on readmission of third country citizens irregularly residing in the EU to their countries of origin (the Mobility Partnerships). Less developed, yet quickly evolving, is the EU external dimension of migration policies. Functional concerns related to the need to acquire highly specialized (and relatively cheap) workforce towards an efficient functioning of the single market have prompted a remarkable the law-making in this area, as shown by the EC directives and regulations aimed at third country students, unpaid trainees, voluntary workers and big corporations’ staff. While the neo-functionalist logic explains the emergence of the external dimension of EU migration policies, it may also explain this development is currently limited to certain areas within the policy area. A comprehensive approach to migration policy has not proved possible to achieve so far, due to institutional and bureaucratic limitations, as well as the different agenda of national policymakers. On the other extreme of the continuum, liberal theories and constructivism account for the constraints currently limiting the full development of EU actorness in asylum policies. Several member states’ civil societies do not perceive prospects for absolute gains deriving from cooperation at the EU level. Constraints to the establishment of international institutions regulating asylum policies are thus understood through the lack of strong societal pressures at the member states level. Therefore, while the article puts forward a combination of neo-functionalist, neo-realist, liberal intergovernamentalist and constructivist explanations to account for the emergence of an external dimension of migration asylum and border management policies, as wells as for the obstacles opposing that process, it also provides evidence that external triggers such as increased migratory pressure lead to internal policy dynamics with positive or negative impacts on the shift of actorness from EU member states to the EU itself.DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.5755/j01.eis.0.11.18956

How to become a first mover? Mechanisms of military innovation and the development of drones

AbstractStates generate the hardware of military power by either developing new technologies as first mover or adopting demonstrated technology as second mover. Given that military drones have arguably demonstrated effectiveness and thus proliferate, scholars have produced profound insights into today’s second mover dynamics. Yet, the preceding political process of developing this military technology remains poorly understood. The article’s objective is to explain how states become first movers of military hardware. To this end, it applies four causal mechanisms of military innovation studies to the historical trajectory of the development of drones. I argue that security threats initially formed state interests in drones. Yet, capacity was necessary for success. Politically induced transfers and cross-sector diffusion supplied technological progress. At the same time, distributional implications and legacy systems constrained the development process, but could ultimately be overcome. This mechanismic pathway results from the process-tracing analysis of two separate, but related trajectories in Israel and the United States since the 1970s. Given within-case variation, a sequencing and domain-of-application perspective allows the formulation of scope conditions of the mechanisms behind military innovation. This contributes to a historically contingent, yet generalisable, understanding of the political process of how states generate military power.

Experts, Coders, and Crowds::An Analysis of Substitutability

Recent work suggests that crowd workers can replace experts and trained coders in common coding tasks. However, while many political science applications require coders to both and relevant information and provide judgment, current studies focus on a limited domain in which experts provide text for crowd workers to code. To address potential over-generalization, we introduce a typology of data producing actors - experts, coders, and crowds - and hypothesize factors which affect crowd-expert substitutability. We use this typology to guide a comparison of data from crowdsourced and expert surveys. Our results provide sharp scope conditions for the substitutability of crowd workers: when coding tasks require contextual and conceptual knowledge, crowds produce substantively dierent data from coders and experts. We also find that crowd workers can cost more than experts in the context of cross-national panels, and that one purported advantage of crowdsourcing - replicability - is undercut by an insucient number of crowd workers.

Tracing Failure of Coral Reef Protection in Nonstate Market-Driven Governance

Institutional failure remains an important blind spot in the private governance literature. In this article we argue that a focus on scope conditions alone cannot explain why some programs thrive while others cease to exist. Studying the now-defunct Marine Aquarium Council—a certification program for coral reef protection—we adopt an institutional-process approach to fill this gap. Our main points can be summarized in a two-step argument: First, we argue that the scope conditions of private governance are partly endogenous to these processes. Through making strategic decisions, private governance programs have a certain level of control over their environment, and thus over the scope conditions under which they operate. Second, initial choices often unfold path dependencies over time. By tracing the evolution of the Marine Aquarium Council, we illustrate the program’s “mission creep” and the “vicious cycle” of self-reinforcing activity that culminated in its failure.

La degradación del medio ambiente como discriminación por razón de la edad

En este trabajo se argumenta que las leyes contra la discriminación pueden usarse en la litigación ambiental para luchar contra la degradación ambiental, incluyendo el cambio climático. Esta afirmación se basa en la posibilidad de hacer una lectura de las leyes contra la discriminación que permite considerar la degradación ambiental como una discriminación entre generaciones. Esta interpretación ha recibido un apoyo implícito en algunas resoluciones judiciales como el caso del Tribunal de Justicia Europeo (TJE) Comisión vs. Hungría. Se analiza el alcance de las condiciones personales y materiales necesarias para que esta estrategia pueda tener éxito.

When and where do elections matter? A global test of the democratization by elections hypothesis, 1900–2010

ABSTRACTSuccessive multiparty elections in sub-Saharan Africa are associated with incremental democratization. Yet tests in other regions are less than encouraging. Non-significant findings on Latin America and post-communist Eurasia, as well as conceptual criticism regarding the theory’s application in the contemporary Middle East, suggest that this may be a case of African exceptionalism. This article moves these debates forward by posing a comprehensive, global set of tests on the democratizing effect of elections. We seek to establish the scope conditions of the argument geographically, temporally, and substantively. Although we find a correlation between reiterated multiparty elections and improvements in the liberal-democratic components of electoral regimes globally since 1900, the relationship is only substantial in the period since the onset of the third wave of democracy. Experiences with iterated multiparty elections have substantive importance for democratization in sub-Saharan Africa, the post-communist region, Latin America and the Caribbean, and Asia. For the Middle East and North Africa, the relationship is weaker and less robust. Finally, the results suggest that reiterated sequences of multiparty elections are associated with improvements to liberal and deliberative components of democracy more so than egalitarian components.

The Structural Balance Theory of Sentiment Networks: Elaboration and Test

Structural balance theory attends to a group’s network of sentiments and posits that this network alters over time toward particular structural forms. Current work on the theory is focused on understanding the mechanisms that alter sentiments as a function of the configuration of sentiments in which they are embedded. Although the theory assumes tension reduction mechanisms, there has been no effort to directly measure and model the temporal changes of individuals’ relational tensions that are predicted by the theory. This article elaborates and tests balance theory with an empirical analysis of its posited interpersonal tensions and their reductions via a sentiment conversion process. In addition, the authors open a new line of inquiry on the theory’s scope conditions and point to a community commitment condition that is involved in the realization of structural balance. Their analysis draws on a unique suite of multiwave measures obtained from the Urban Communes Data Set.

Comparative Analysis in Group Processes: Expanding the Reach of Sociological Social Psychology

Over the past 40 years, the social psychological field of group processes has achieved rapid theoretical development. However, this subfield’s amazing growth has been recognized mainly by its own practitioners. The focus of this special issue is to spark new conversations. First, it aims to ignite an interest amongst regular readers of the journal to consider how theoretical research programs in group processes may be relevant to their own work. Second, it also aims to encourage group processes researchers to think more carefully about how different kinds of comparative analysis can be incorporated in their own research. Considering new forms of comparative analysis (cross-cultural, cross-national, cross-level of analysis, etc.) may help group processes scholars become more aware of the theoretical and cultural assumptions that undergird the scope conditions and the manner in which their traditional experimental protocols have been designed. While the four articles in this issue do not encompass the full range of theoretical research programs in group processes, they all grapple with the ups and downs of using comparative analysis to question the fundamental assumptions undergirding the theories they work with. More than resolving any questions, this special issue aims to inspire new lines of inquiry.

Change in international practices

This article builds on the practice turn’s welcome move to redirect our attention to the unconscious habitual practices that constitute most of daily social life, including in world politics. Since International Relations practice theorists continue to resort to arguments that include deliberate reflection, I try to clarify the relationship between going on in the world automatically and proceeding with conscious reflection. Beyond providing scope conditions for reflection during ongoing practice, which increase the probability of a change in practices, I also elaborate mechanisms by which ongoing practices may yield an endogenous source of change. I illustrate some of these conditions for change from recent International Relations scholarship on practices in world politics.

Punishment on the Frontlines of Public Service Delivery

In the wake of neoliberal public policy reforms, public welfare programs have become more directive in setting behavioral expectations for clients and more punitive in responding to client noncompliance. Many public welfare programs give public employees discretionary authority to dispense sanctions when clients do not follow or comply with the policies and procedures required to receive the welfare benefits. At the same time, research shows that public employees’ use of discretion in decision-making that affects clients can occasionally be marked by nontrivial racial biases and disparities. Combining these insights and drawing on the Racial Classification Model (RCM) for a theoretical model, this article examines how public employees’ decisions to sanction clients are shaped by client ethnicity in the Scandinavian welfare state of Denmark. With Danish employment agencies as our empirical setting, we present findings from two complimentary studies that expand our understanding of the scope conditions of the RCM. In Study 1, we present survey experimental evidence that municipal employment caseworkers are more likely to recommend sanctions for clients of ethnic minority (Middle-Eastern origin) than for clients of the ethnic majority (Danish origin). In Study 2, we triangulate the findings from Study 1 with analyses of agency-level administrative data from the national employment program. Demonstrating how client ethnicity shapes caseworkers’ decisions to sanction in a non-U.S. context adds important knowledge about the generalizability of both the RCM and extant empirical research on racial disparity in public employee decision-making to different subjects and settings. Moreover, we use the survey experiment to investigate how three caseworker characteristics–gender, ethnicity, and work experience–condition the relationship between client ethnicity and caseworkers’ decision to sanction clients. While previous research has extended the RCM with insights on the moderating effects of client characteristics, we thus contribute with new knowledge about the moderating effects of caseworker characteristics. We find no moderation effects for caseworker gender or ethnicity, but work experience appears to diminish the influence of client ethnicity on the caseworkers’ sanctioning decision. Overall, our studies offer support that ethnic minority clients (clients of Middle-Eastern origin) are more likely to be punished for infraction of policy than ethnic majority clients (clients of Danish origin)–and that caseworker work experience mitigates part of this bias. We discuss the implications of these findings for future public administration research and policy.

Individual‐level Foci of Identification at Work: A Systematic Review of the Literature

AbstractThis paper presents a systematic literature review of individual‐level targets (or foci) of identification, that is, the bases by which one derives a sense of self as a unique being in the context of work. We reviewed 253 articles from over 30 top management journals between 2005 and 2016. In examining foci types, definitions, underpinning theoretical and philosophical assumptions, we catalogue nine categories of individual‐level identification foci (manager, leader, follower, team, organization, occupation‐specific, professional, career and work), finding a dominance of functionalist meta‐theoretical orientations (comprising over half the sample, with interpretivist approaches comprising about a third of studies). Further, we enhance construct clarity in the field; we identify conceptual challenges with extant definitions of key foci, and offer integrative definitions by specifying scope conditions for each identity focus and semantic relationships between various identity foci. We contextualize our discussion of construct clarity to different research orientations in the field and offer possibilities for theoretical developments therein. Third, we offer an integrative framework for positioning work in the field by scope of interest (identity content or context) and identity construction assumptions (stable or evolving), suggesting directions for future research.

Multinationals as global institution: Power, authority and relative autonomy

AbstractThis article aims to inform the long‐standing and unresolved debate between voluntary corporate social responsibility and initiatives to impose binding legal obligations on multinational enterprises. The two approaches share a common feature: neither can fully specify its own scope conditions, that is, how much of the people and planet agenda either can expect to deliver. The reason they share this feature is also the same: neither is based on a foundational political analysis of the multinational enterprise in the context of global governance. Such an analysis is essential for providing background to and perspective on what either approach can hope to achieve, and how. This article begins to bridge the gap by illustrating aspects of the political power, authority, and relative autonomy of the contemporary multinational enterprise. The conclusion spells out some implications for the debate itself, and for further research.

The Contact Hypothesis Revisited

This paper evaluates the state of contact hypothesis research from a policy perspective. Building on Pettigrew and Tropp’s (2006) influential meta-analysis, we assemble all intergroup contact studies that feature random assignment and delayed outcome measures, of which there are 27 in total, nearly two-thirds of which were published following the original review. We find the evidence from this updated dataset to be consistent with Pettigrew and Tropp's (2006) conclusion that contact typically reduces prejudice. At the same time, our meta-analysis suggests that contact's effects vary, with interventions directed at ethnic or racial prejudice generating substantially weaker effects. Moreover, our inventory of relevant studies reveals important gaps, most notably the absence of studies addressing adults' racial or ethnic prejudice, an important limitation for both theory and policy. We also call attention to the lack of research that systematically investigates the scope conditions suggested by Allport (1954) under which contact is most influential. We conclude that these gaps in contact research must be addressed empirically before this hypothesis can reliably guide policy.