State Capacity Research Articles

The Corporate Governance of South African State-Owned Enterprises (SOEs): Leadership and Compliance Issues

The financial, operational, and business issues facing SOEs have reduced the trust that investors and citizens have in the state's capacity to effectively promote national economic growth. Most countries, especially developing ones like South Africa, have been plagued by the issue of inadequate public service delivery. One key contributing factor to this problem has been identified as the poor governance practices of SOEs. The magnitude of these massive SOE business failures, which surpassed the failure of numerous other enterprises around the world, drew attention to the urgent need for new corporate governance studies. To contribute to this, the study explores the corporate governance of South African SOEs, with a focus on leadership and compliance. To achieve this, an online questionnaire was used to gather quantitative data from a sample of 288 internal audit professionals. The data collected was then analyzed using SPSS software, and descriptive statistics were employed to present the findings. The study found that corporate governance malpractices are common in SOEs, which include hiring managers and executives who lack the necessary qualifications and experience, high tender irregularities, and understaffing critical duties. This study is unique in that it employs stakeholder theory in an innovative approach to explain the findings, notably on the leadership issue. Besides, it contains critical recommendations for SOE leadership and policymakers on how to improve the corporate governance of SOEs to help them achieve their strategic goals, while also suggesting future study directions.

Advances, gaps and way forward in provision of climate services over the Greater Horn of Africa

The Greater Horn of Africa is prone to extreme climatic conditions, thus, making climate services increasingly important in supporting decision-making processes across a range of climate sensitive sectors. This study aims to provide a comprehensive review of the recent advances, gaps and challenges in the provision of climate services over the region, for each of the components of the Global Framework for Climate Services. The study explores various milestones that have been achieved toward climate service delivery. The achievements include improvement of station network coverage, and enhancing the capacity of member states to utilize various tools in data analysis and generate routine climate products. The advancement in science, and availability of High-Performance Computing has made it possible for forecast information to be provided from nowcasting to seasonal timescales. Moreover, operationalizing of the objective forecasting method for monthly and seasonal forecasts has made it possible to translate tercile forecasts for applications models. Additionally, innovative approaches to user engagement through co-production, communication channels, user-friendly interfaces, and dissemination of climate information have also been developed. Despite the significant progress that has been made in the provision of climate services, there are still many challenges and gaps that need to be overcome in order to ensure that these services are effectively meeting the needs of users. The research of the science underpinning climate variability, capacity building and stakeholder engagement, as well as improved data management and quality control processes are some of the gaps that exist over the region. Additionally, communication and dissemination of climate information, including timely warnings and risk communication, require improvement to reach diverse user groups effectively. Addressing these challenges will require strengthened partnerships, increased investment in capacity building, enhanced collaboration between the climate information producers and stakeholders, and the development of user-friendly climate products. Bridging these gaps will foster greater resilience to climate-related hazards and disasters in the Greater Horn of Africa and support sustainable development in the region.

Culture and Economic Development in Late Comers: Comparing China and India

China and India are both late comers to industrialization. Both adopted similar economic development strategies after World War II, but the per capita GDP diverged significantly in the last 40 years. While economic growth and development have many components, we explain the difference in economic performance by emphasizing the difference in state capacity in the two economies. A country’s state capacity is affected by culture and history. China established a unified language and culture two thousand years ago that enabled it to develop strong state capacity. With a strong state capacity, China made crucial investments in infrastructure and in key heavy industries and developed technological capabilities to help start and sustain growth. India, on the other hand, is a country segmented by religion, caste, and language which has hindered the development of effective state capacity, and thus complementary state investments to spur economic growth. Moreover, India has up to now relied more heavily on expansion of its service sector compared to China, which has hindered its exports, a crucial element that helped China’s economy. India’s future industrialization crucially depends on national integration and concomitant strengthening of state capacity.

Paradoxes of inter-municipal public consortia in Brazil: do state capacities and social accountability in municipalities influence their decisions to cooperate?

La literatura brasileña sobre cooperación intergubernamental para formular y ejecutar políticas públicas (aquí denominadas “consorcios públicos intermunicipales”) sugiere una falta de calidad de gestión y responsabilidad social en estos acuerdos. Los estudios, sin embargo, no exploran el contexto de gestión y responsabilidad social en los municipios que participan en estos consorcios, observando si estos elementos influyen en la decisión de los gobiernos locales de involucrarse en la cooperación intergubernamental. La investigación aborda este tema mediante el análisis de consorcios intermunicipales en políticas de salud, educación y saneamiento en Brasil. Utiliza un modelo Probit donde existen cuatro variables independientes: capacidades estatales (existencia de plan y fondos municipales y mando único del sector) y responsabilidad social (consejos municipales con representantes del gobierno y la sociedad civil). Cuando se controlan por otras variables demográficas, socioeconómicas, políticas y financieras, los resultados no brindan apoyo empírico a las hipótesis sobre la influencia de la gestión local y la responsabilidad social en la decisión de los municipios de cooperar. El estudio concluye que existe una paradoja al esperar calidad gerencial y mayor responsabilidad social en los consorcios intermunicipales. Al mismo tiempo, estos elementos no se observan como cruciales en las decisiones del municipio para participar en estos arreglos cooperativos.

STATE INSTITUTIONAL CAPACITIES IN A COMPARATIVE PERSPECTIVE: AN EXPERIENCE OF BAYESIAN AGGREGATION OF STATE CAPACITY INDEX

This article endeavors to construct a composite indicator designed to facilitate the comparative assessment of institutional capacities across diverse political systems. The focal point of analysis resides within the domain of state capacity, a pivotal determinant for a myriad of inquiries that seek to evaluate the efficacy of public policy implementation across varying spheres. The attainment of the research objective materialized through the adoption of Bayesian methodologies tailored for the scrutiny of latent variables, a prevalent recourse within contemporary social sciences to address analogous empirical puzzles. Drawing upon antecedent advancements collaboratively undertaken with co-authors and a minimal selection of variables, ranging from the comprehensive gauge of control over violence to formal economic activity (reciprocally aligned with the gauge of informal economy), two distinct models were subjected to empirical examination: namely, the linear and hierarchical ones. The ensuing analysis of 150 countries across three temporal junctures (1996, 2005, and 2015) distinctly advocates for the adoption of the latter model after accommodating convergence testing. The hierarchical model, oriented towards encapsulating the tripartite dimensions of state capacity, namely administrative, coercive, and extractive facets, gains preference. This predilection aligns with the contribution of J. Hanson and R. Sigman, whose conceptual underpinnings are frequently espoused by scholars when delineating the contours of the observed construct. The hierarchical model affirms the efficacy and discriminatory acumen of the proposed approach in engendering pertinent state rankings. These empirical revelations, in turn, constitute an indispensable stride towards interrogating assorted hypotheses concerning trajectories of institutional development and the construction of classificatory frameworks delimiting state capacity. Moreover, they extend utility in the realm of comparative studies by furnishing an aggregated indicator conducive to cross-national analysis.

Mass migration governance and openness toward refugees: Comparing Germany and Turkey

AbstractThis study seeks answers to the question: ‘Under what conditions do communities with migration experience in refugee‐receiving states become more open toward accepting more refugees and why?’. The research seeks answers to this question by examining the attitudes of individuals (N = 37) from Turkey who have been living in Germany for at least a year and who have sufficient familiarity with the characteristics of governance of mass migration in both countries. The findings suggest that the respondents are more pessimistic about the consequences of Turkey accepting more refugees in the future, while they are optimistic about the outcomes of the arrival of more refugees in Germany. This study posits that receiving communities' perceptions about the host state's regulatory and institutional capacity in managing mass migration and integration of refugees shape their attitudes toward the possibility of the influx of more refugees over time. The findings indicate that efficient mass migration governance in a receiving state is identified through four characteristics: (i) admission of educated refugees, (ii) proper refugee registration procedures, (iii) systematic integration processes, and (iv) effective monitoring and law enforcement mechanisms. The study concludes that local communities view public authorities as the key actors in managing the consequences of mass migration and establishing and sustaining good mass migration governance at the receiving state level is likely to facilitate positive attitudes towards accepting more refugees.

An Analysis of the Relationship between River Engineering and Water Conservancy Construction and State Capacity in the early and middle periods of the Qing Dynasty (A.D. 1644 - A.D. 1820)

The study in this paper focuses on the relationship between the financial situation related to river engineering and water conservancy and state capacity in the early and middle periods of the Qing Dynasty. There have been some controversies in the study of state capacity in the Qing Dynasty. Taking the governance of the Yongding River in the Kangxi Dynasty and the governance of the Jiangsu and Zhejiang Seawalls in the Yongzheng and Qianlong Dynasties as examples, this paper argues that in the river engineering and water conservancy construction in the early and middle periods of the Qing Dynasty, the expenditures were not only supported by the part of the total amount of regular fiscal income, but by the positive extra revenue other than regular fiscal income. This fact suggests that the state’s capacity in the early and middle periods of the Qing Dynasty was recognizable in handling practical affairs and might not be as weak as it appeared.

Lessons from the Viral Body Politic: Borders and the Possibilities of a More-than-Human Worldmaking

Abstract Bordering practices have been a central and controversial feature of the SARS-CoV-2 pandemic. Closed borders, lockdowns, and restrictions on movement and individual “freedoms” have revived concepts of the biopolitical “state of exception” and state control. In this article, we argue that biopolitical critiques of responses to the pandemic fail to grasp the opportunity to rethink worldmaking and instead base their critiques on a desired “return to normal” which foregrounds human-centric individualism at the expense of alternative worldmaking that accounts for the more-than-human. To do so, we bring the virus and the virome into our discussion to rethink bordering practices and how the SARS-CoV-2 virus affects bodies, worlds, and politics. We focus primarily on the Australian case, where the pandemic response began with lockdowns and then gave way to a militarized and individualistic approach. Responses to the pandemic have failed to produce a reimagining of human and more-than-human relations. Opportunities for ethical engagement have been missed, resulting in limited responses that stem from the failure of state capacity and entrenched modes of inequality that are harmful to vulnerable others, both human and more-than-human. This requires an ontological reframing of how we relate to a complex world from a more-than-human perspective.

The Uneven State: Center and Periphery in Shaping State Capacity in Thailand

abstract: This article examines the state's uneven capacity to deliver public social goods to the periphery. It does so through a comparative analysis of two agencies in Thailand, the Ministry of Public Health and the Ministry of Education, which have exhibited a marked disparity in serving rural citizens over the past twenty-five years. The author traces these outcomes to a divergence in how the agencies perceive the significance of their rural policies in meeting Thailand's security threats and economic growth strategy. This perception produces contrasting organizational norms between central and local bureaucrats, which informs incentives for capacity-building. When an agency's central office believes that rural policy matters significantly for national goals, norms develop that encourage local agents to invest in serving rural needs. But when an agency deems rural policy to be less urgent in meeting key national objectives, the converse ensues. The article finds that how an agency strategically considers the rural sector influences its decisions to invest in the periphery, with lasting consequences for state capacity and the rural-urban divide.

State capacity impact on COVID-19 mortality in Brazil.

This study addresses the State's capacity to combat the COVID-19 pandemic and contributes to the literature on crisis management in health care. We analyzed whether the capacity level impacted the State response to COVID-19 in Brazilian healthcare regions in 2020 using a set of statistical analysis techniques and public health impact analysis, including propensity score matching (PSM). Results revealed that a low COVID-19 mortality was associated with participation in municipal health consortia, schooling level of municipal health managers and the resources allocated by the Brazilian National Program for Improvement of Access and Quality of Basic Care (PMAQ). Conversely, the number of intensive care units (ICU) and life-sustaining equipment available were associated with higher mortality, as locations with a larger population concentrated operational capacity to treat the most severe cases. In conclusion, the different levels of State capacity in health regions led to different outcomes in combating the pandemic. This reinforces the importance of discussing State capacity and crisis management, since the COVID-19 confrontation in Brazil related to the level of existing resources concerning health system capacity, bureaucratic capacity and participation in consortia for sharing inputs and ensuring the provision of health services to the population.

Information Fusion for the Training of Public Administrators: Design of a Composite Indicator through the Integration of AHP and TOPSIS Methods

The article addresses the importance of capacity development among public administrators to ensure the efficient functioning of the state and the provision of quality services to the citizenry. This entails acquiring legal knowledge, ethical principles, and technical skills in areas such as strategic planning, financial management, and policy evaluation. In addressing the evaluation of public administrators' training programs, the Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) methods are employed. The methodology delineates the fundamental concepts and key equations to understand the application of these methods in evaluating public administrators' training programs. The findings underscore the significance of specific competencies in public administrators' training. These competencies, combined with comprehensive training encompassing cognitive, attitudinal, and instrumental dimensions, can equip professionals to confront current governmental challenges effectively. The article emphasizes the relevance of capacity development among public administrators and introduces methods such as AHP and TOPSIS to assess and enhance training programs in this field, aiming to bolster the state's capacity to respond efficiently to societal needs.

Bourbon Reforms and State Capacity in the Spanish Empire

Bourbon Reforms and State Capacity in the Spanish Empire

Fundamentals of Institutional Quality and Economic Freedom

ABSTRACT: Social scientists have extensively studied the causes of good institutions, including the origins of economic freedom. Results concerning the causes of different kinds of institutions are often similar, often concluding that the geography, environment, and culture are important factors. However, a recent political economy framework suggests that certain dimensions of economic freedom, namely specific dimensions of the size of government (government consumption, transfers and subsidies, and the top marginal tax rate), differ systematically from other dimensions of liberalization. This paper explores these arguments by constructing an index of a set of consensus predictors of institutional quality: ethnic fractionalization (predicts negatively), the natural log of the population size (negatively), absolute latitude (positively), natural resource rents (negatively), the presence of the country in the Americas (negatively), British legal origins (positively), the presence of the country in Eurasia (positively), and island geography (positively). The countries with the “best” fundamentals for institutional quality are Iceland, Ireland, Malta, Finland, and Cyprus, while the five with the “worst” fundamentals are Angola, Nigeria, Chad, Burkina Faso, and Ghana. It then takes this index of “fundamentals” of institutional quality and shows that, although they predict economic liberalism as a whole (as measured by the Economic Freedom of the World index) as they would predict other measures of institutional quality, they predict oppositely (i.e., corresponding to larger governments) for the dimensions of the size of government listed above. The result is congruent with the predictions of the political economy model. Additionally, this result is not contingent on the inclusion of any one of the “fundamental” variables, although natural resource rents and absolute latitude appear to be the most important variables. Countries with considerably more economic freedom than would be predicted by their fundaments include Peru, Singapore, the United States, Chile, and Canada; should deviations from fitted values be seen as presaging future movements in institutions, these countries are the most likely to see upcoming declines. The aforementioned political economy model implies that these findings are the result of complexities involved in the interaction between state capacity and different dimensions of economic liberalization.

The Complementarity between Cities and State Capacity

The Complementarity between Cities and State Capacity

Global Governance, State Capacity and the Development Crisis in Africa

Global Governance, State Capacity and the Development Crisis in Africa

Loper Bright, (Increased?) State Capacity, and (Perhaps?) Pyrrhic Taxpayer Victories

Loper Bright, (Increased?) State Capacity, and (Perhaps?) Pyrrhic Taxpayer Victories

“Entre Deux Transatlantiques”: American Religion and the French Family at the Comédie-Française (1890)

Mormonism, seen in 1865 by French critic Hippolyte Taine as an American religious and social experiment conducted “for our benefit,” appears frequently in French thinking in the second half of the nineteenth century. Whether Taine intended it or not in his use of the word “benefit,” this American religion was mobilized in French conversations about pressing sociopolitical issues such as gender identity, marriage, and the social norms surrounding those issues. Relying on a cultural studies approach, we illustrate in this article how French literary critic and playwright Philippe Gille uses Mormonism in Camille, a play in which he explores issues of gender in the context of the état civil during the Third Republic. First performed at the French national theater (Comédie-Française) in 1890, Gille’s play stages the transatlantic encounter of Franco-American cultures and values as a way to displace questions about the capacity of the French state to regulate marriage and family relationships.

Assessment of Nigeria’s External Image: The Buhari Administration Under Review

This paper examined contending issues in Nigeria’s external image management under the administration of President Muhammadu Buhari. Some of these issues have presented daunting challenges which have negatively undermined the capacity of the Nigerian state to meet the lofty aspirations of her citizens in the areas of security, unemployment and rising cost of goods and services to mention a few. This study is focused on dissecting these contending domestic challenges with a view to recommending actionable steps to forge a visible, robust and progressive posture in the international arena. This is core to Nigeria’s national interest and foreign policy objectives as the debilitating effect of near gloomy and not-too positive image some of these lingering domestic challenges portend for the country cannot be left to rhetorically hang like sword of the Damocles over the country. The study discovered that the reticent nature of the Muhammadu Buhari administration since its advent administration in 2015, partly explains the escalation of some domestic challenges and subsequently snowballing into international miasma over the country’s image. The study recommends increased budgetary allocation to Nigeria’s foreign missions with special emphasis on those with high volume of immigrant traffic and economic ties. The Diaspora Commission should be retooled to immediately provide legal representation to Nigerians suffering from minor human right violations before it becomes full blown diplomatic rows.

Allocation of Dynamic Operating Envelopes in Distribution Networks: Technical and Equitable Perspectives

A Dynamic Operating Envelope (DOE) specifies the available capacity to import/export power for Distributed Energy Resources (DERs) or connection points of a distribution network in a time interval without violating its physical and operational constraints. This paper proposes a two-stage, top-down approach to allocate DOEs in MV-LV (medium voltage-low voltage) integrated distribution networks. In the first stage, Distribution System State Estimation (DSSE) and Capacity Constrained State Optimisation (CCSO) techniques are employed to allocate DOEs at transformer connection points. Using network data from available metering infrastructure, DSSE estimates the current operational state of the network, whereas CCSO facilitates the DOE allocations at transformer connection points considering technical, soft-equitable and equitable perspectives. In the second stage, the allocated DOEs, containing available aggregate export/import power, are distributed among DERs of LV networks ensuring network integrity. Real-world data of an Australian MV-LV network is employed to demonstrate the effectiveness of proposed approach. Test results show that technical perspective can offer maximum allocated export/import power, whereas, minimum disparity of allocated power among different connection-points is attained for equitable perspective. Further, insightful performance studies of DOE and existing fixed export policies are conducted considering the condition of present as well as future power systems expecting substantial proliferations of renewables.

Modelling of fire behavior of RC girders strengthened by external prestressing

Since the 1950s, external post-tensioning has been a powerful tool for retrofitting existing bridges. In unbonded prestressing, the post-tensioning tendons are positioned outside the concrete cross-section, and the prestressing forces are transferred to the girder through end anchorages, deviators, or saddles. This implies that these could be critical elements for the bridge performance against fire. This paper examines reinforced concrete bridges strengthened by external prestressing and subjected to fire, using a mixed experimental and analytical approach. Initially, load tests are conducted on a model of a bridge beam strengthened by external prestressing to assess the effectiveness of the intervention until failure. The ultimate limit state (ULS) capacity of the beam is then evaluated both before and after rehabilitation. Subsequently, the fire performance is investigated through different scenarios defined by the fire load curves of Eurocode, evaluating the cross-sectional temperatures resulting from fire, estimating the loss of external prestressing efficiency, and assessing the beam’s overall fire resistance. This methodology is then applied to a real girder bridge with adjacent beams of the same type, extending the approach used on the experimental scaled beam to an actual bridge deck. Results are presented in terms of performance levels for different traffic load values and residual capacity over time from fire ignition, providing a safety assessment of girder bridges under fire exposure. The procedure is straightforward and immediately applicable to many existing reinforced bridges. The findings demonstrate how quickly external prestressing degrades, leaving the beam unprotected, and highlight the fundamental importance of the protective sheath for external tendons in limiting this degradation. Evaluating load levels based on exposure time also allows engineers to estimate the service time before rescue arrives, given the expected traffic level.