Subnational Systems Research Articles

Navigating sustainability: key factors in prioritising Sustainable Development Goals

AbstractPrioritising sustainable development goals (SDGs) is one of the fundamental approaches to achieving global sustainability objectives, as it helps efficient resource allocation, addresses urgent needs, enhances policy coherence, and measures impact. Despite existing efforts, there remains an unclear understanding of the key factors needed for effective SDG prioritisation, presenting challenges for strategic planning and decision-making. This study provides an evidence-based analysis of these critical factors by examining relevant literature, conducting surveys, and employing Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP)-based Multi-Criteria Decision Analysis (MCDA). The study identifies four primary factors for SDG prioritisation: SDG interrelations, performance, scope, and alignment. The findings confirm that national prioritisation have more priority compared to global, regional, and sub-national systems, and that prioritisation is more valuable at the indicator level rather than at the goal or target levels. Additionally, prioritisation should initially focus on off-track SDGs. Notably, academia ranks SDG prioritisation based on relationships and performance highly, while government officials emphasise alignment and relevance. Moreover, the results indicate that academia prefers target-level prioritisation, while government officials lean towards indicator level. However, both groups favour national scale over global and regional scales.

Authoritarian innovation in the United States: the role of dual subnational systems of labor governance

I apply Curato and Fossati's (2020) concept of “authoritarian innovation” to analyze historic changes in labor governance in the United States that have undermined democratic participation in the workplace and in the polity. Drawing from comparative political economy and welfare state theories, I argue that since the 1930s the U.S. has had not one unified, national labor regime but two competing, subnational regimes: the New Deal and its legacy in the industrialized North and West Coast, and a counter-regime based initially in the former Confederate Southern states. The more anti-union, anti-welfare, and anti-democratic Southern regime survived the Civil Rights era of the 1960s and 1970s, gained ascendance nationally with the rise of neoliberalism in the 1980s and 1990s, and expanded its boundaries in the 2010s into the deindustrialized Midwest. The “dual regime” analysis highlights critical transitions and divergent paths in the reshaping of American democracy.

Non-typhoidal Salmonella in Nigeria: do outcomes of ‘multisectoral’ surveillance, treatment and control justify the intervention costs?

ABSTRACT Non-typhoidal salmonellosis (NTS) is significant and an economic burden in Nigeria. To determine whether investment in NTS control is economically justifiable, Outbreak Costing Tool (OCT) was used to estimate the robust funding of public and animal health systems for epidemio-surveillance and control of multisectoral NTS outbreaks in Nigeria. Health, production, and economic data were collected and used to populate the tool for evaluation. The multisectoral NTS burden for the year 2020 in Nigeria was US$ 930,887,379.00. Approximately 4,835 technical officers, and 3,700 non-technical staff (n = 8,535) were needed with an investment of >2.2 million work hours. The investment cost for NTS control was US$ 53,854,660.87. The non-labour-related cost was 89.21% of the total intervention costs. The overall intervention’s investment was 374.15% of the estimated national and subnational systems’ annual budget for diarrhoeal diseases, and the outbreak response period attracted the highest costs (53%) of the total intervention. In conclusion, intervention against NTS was beneficial (benefit – cost ratio: 17.29), hence justifying the need for multisectoral surveillance-response against NTS in Nigeria. Complex sectoral silos must give way to coordinated collaborations to optimize benefits; and over-centralization of health interventions’ associated delays must be removed through decentralized sub-national-focused framework that empowers rapid investigation, response, control, data collection, and analyses. It should assist anticipatory planning, and outbreak investigation and reduce critical response time. Anticipatory planning tools, when applied pre-emptively, can benefit budgeting, identify gaps, and assist in the delivery of cost-saving and effective measures against infectious disease.

The COVID-19 policy response in Spain and Portugal: a study of measures to slow down infection rate

BackgroundThe COVID-19 global pandemic triggered massive policy responses worldwide. Measures taken during the pandemic differed across countries and time. Governance systems may influence the capacity of countries to respond promptly and mobilize the necessary resources in time. Identifying measures and when they appeared are critical questions to assess emergency response strategies. The objective of this study was to analyze the policy response to slow down the infection rate of COVID-19 cases in Portugal and Spain according to timing (related to death rates) and stringency.MethodsA descriptive comparative study of non-pharmaceutical interventions was conducted through a content analysis of policies and records review of official government sources. Portugal and Spain were selected considering the similarities between national health systems, but different government organization and epidemic impact. The Autonomous Community of Madrid was also included as example of subnational systems. Death rates were retrieved from daily statistics of open secondary sources.ResultsResults show that countries responded with a complex mix of measures across policy sectors, following dynamic patterns established by the epidemic evolution and governance systems. Policies aimed to reduce the spread of the virus, enable individuals and businesses to comply with restrictions, and reinforce National Health System's capacity. The declaration of state of emergency was a critical tool to organize actions under clear leadership, especially in devolved contexts.ConclusionsOur findings suggest that, in early epidemic phases, a centralized command can be more effective at timely enacting nationwide stringent measures. Evidence from this study contributes to the argument that a fast, robust, and early response might have been more effective at containing spread at the initial stages of the pandemic.Key messages The policy response included measured to reduce spread of infection, enhance adherence and strengthen health systems capacity to deal with the pandemic.The declaration of state of emergency was essential to ensure an organized, coherent, timely, and robust response, especially in devolved contexts.

Building resilience through integrated health systems strengthening: policy and planning analysis

Health system strengthening towards universal health coverage and health security are key objectives promoted by health policy actors. However, bringing together these agendas has presented challenges. Health investments are often reactive and siloed e.g. emergency and humanitarian response programmes. There has been disinvestment in public health and primary health care (PHC), and limited linkages with allied sectors (e.g. environmental and animal health). There is a need to better understand policies that promote integration and enable effective response to threats such as COVID-19 in tandem with maintaining routine health system functions (e.g. PHC and essential individual and population health services). We conducted document analysis of national health sector, security and public health policies and plans and drew on perspectives of key stakeholders to investigate integration using a health systems resilience framework. We examined the extent and manner in which policies are integrated to enable national and subnational systems to prepare for, prevent and adapt to shocks while maintaining routine and essential functions. While we identified a recognition of the need for better integration to promote health security within health systems strengthening efforts and vice versa including strengthening governance, accountability and capacity for stewardship within national and local health and allied authorities, evidence of such an approach was limited. National laws to support IHR (2005) implementation were often outdated and insufficient to produce the policy environment for multi-sectoral working. In 2020, only 47% of national COVID-19 plans from 106 countries considered the maintenance of non-COVID-19 essential health services - a key component of health systems resilience. Policies which strengthen PHC services and preventative interventions can be cost-effective and efficient whilst bridging pandemic response and other essential functions of the health system.Key messages COVID-19 is an opportunity to promote and sustain greater integration and inter- and multisectoral engagement.Everyone can play a role to foster an integrated approach focussing on preventative, cost-effective health services to ensure health systems resilience.

Fees, Fines, and the Funding of Public Services: A Curriculum for Reform

Since 2018, the Liman Center at Yale Law School and Harvard Law School’s Criminal Justice Policy Program (CJPP), in partnership with the Fines & Fees Justice Center and the Berkeley Law Policy Advocacy Clinic, have collaborated to mitigate the problems faced by people of limited means and resources who interact with criminal punishment systems around the United States. Through a series of workshops and materials, we have examined how law has enabled and, on occasion, limited these harms, experienced disproportionately by communities of color.Budget pressures are part of what drives state and local governments to rely on monetary sanctions. Reform efforts have, at times, been stymied by arguments that governments “need” the money generated by regressive fines and fees. In 2008, during and after the Great Recession, state and local governments responded to sudden budget pressures by searching for new streams of revenues—including from a host of legal assessments. Given that experience, we know that the economic disruptions created by the current COVID-19 crisis will likely result in governments’ considering additional use of monetary sanctions and “user” fee financing to generate revenue. The current economic constraints place strains on subnational budgets even more acute than those experienced a dozen years ago. Thus, we fear that governments may scale up the imposition and the enforcement of monetary sanctions. More tools are needed to resist these efforts, as the economic effects of the pandemic will frame the years to come.Knowledge of subnational systems of taxing and budgeting and of fiscal policymaking processes can be put to use to reduce and to end governments’ reliance on user fees for courts and for other aspects of criminal systems. This reader aims to help experts in public finance to understand the misuse of court-based assessments which are regressive revenue streams. Subsequent volumes will provide a primer on public finance for people knowledgeable about the law and practices of unfair monetary sanctions through an overview of how money is collected and allocated at the state and local level.These materials interact with ongoing seminars, sometimes virtual, to link people expert in publicfinance with their counterparts seeking to reform unfair monetary sanctions. Through monographs such as this, we hope to support work underway to shape just and equitable revenue-generation mechanisms that avoid imposing harmful costs on vulnerable individuals, families, and communities.

Commissions and Local Government Reform: Expressed Leadership Identities of Commissioners in Inquiries Proposing Municipal Mergers in Northern Ireland and New South Wales

Commissions of inquiry are frequently used as venue‐alteration mechanisms to investigate and “depoliticize” local government reforms. Through the application of a leadership identity framework that examines the judgments commission chairs make during the course of the inquiry, this article explores the roles commission chairs play as interpretive authorities. The judgments that commission chairs make about the scope of stakeholder engagement and whether to adjust the agenda of the inquiry generate four types of leadership identity: conservator, consolidator, advocate, and catalyst. The leadership identity framework is applied to two commissions conducting inquiries into proposed structural reform of local government in two subnational systems: Northern Ireland and New South Wales. The application of the framework reveals that the commission process itself leads to a shift from a conservator to a consolidator leadership identity in both systems, despite their different and distinctive historical, social, and political contexts.Related Articles Ertas, Nevbahar. 2015. “.” Politics & Policy 43 (): 426‐451. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/polp.12120/full König, Pascal D., and Georg Wenzelburger. 2014. “.” Politics & Policy 42 (): 400‐430. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/polp.12076/full Raile, Eric D., Amber N. W. Raile, Charles T. Salmon, and Lori Ann Post. 2014. “.” Politics & Policy 42 (): 103‐130. http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/polp.12063/full Related Media Sansom, Graham. 2013. “.” Future of Local Government. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v = AwQvSVqJN0E 2014. “Northern Ireland ‐ Assembly Passes the Local Government Bill ‐ 8 April 2014.” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v = n6YNcrBhx-s

Exploring the ‘Ecology’ of Laws at the Interface Between International Rights Law and Subnational Customary Law

What has gone wrong with the great fundamental rights project? 1 Despite ‘the burgeoning human rights revolution’ with its constantly ‘evolving’ standards, the world is still plagued by ‘massive violations’ of core fundamental rights. Neither relentless pressure from international organisations nor the involvement of powerful NGOs has ensured that states eradicate rights abuses. Resistance to rights reform, whether it comes from states themselves or from substate communities, points to the fact that the system created by international law is constantly competing with other, resilient, forms of regulation. This means that more of the same type of reform is unlikely to translate into a greater and better vindication of rights. Hence, the argument is that, for rights reform to be effective, legislation must not only recognise but also purposively engage with these alternative regimes and, as explained below, particularly with those at subnational level, where resistance to reform could be heightened. With respect to rights reform in general, it is clear that an uncomfortable ‘contact zone’ exists between international law and many subnational systems,

Representing Your Country: Scotland, PISA and New Spatialities of Educational Governance

This paper focuses on the rescaling and re-spatialization of policy and governance in education, including the constitution of a global education policy field. It deals with the changing education policy work of the OECD, particularly the influential Programme for International Student Assessment (PISA). We argue that PISA has become the most successful OECD ‘product’ and as such has become the prototype for other OECD developments, including PISA-Based tests for schools, PISA for development, PIACC and AHELO. These developments help constitute a global education policy field and contribute to the production of a global data infrastructure in education. At the same time, they also have impacts on other spatial relations, including sub-national and local effects in schooling. For example, the PISA-based test for schools programme can be used directly by schools and sub-national systems as part of the new policy spaces in education. In this paper, we document the role of the OECD’s education work in respect of these matters. We focus specifically on a video, PISA 2012 - Representing Your Country, produced by the Scottish Department of Education and anchored by the Scottish National Party Minister for Education. The aim of the video is to inspire the participation and strong performance of Scottish students in the 2012 PISA sample. As we will show, using a ‘videological analysis’, this video demonstrates how Scottish independence and nationalism involve reaching out to draw on the expertise of supranational organisations such as the OECD, while at the same time the OECD is reaching in to nations to shape policy agendas in sub-national spaces.

Democracy, size of bureaucracy, and economic growth: evidence from Russian regions

This article considers the impact of sub-national political systems on economic growth by applying the case of Russian regions from 2000 to 2004. It investigates two dimensions of the sub-national systems. First, it studies the influence of democracy on economic performance, providing evidence of a non-linear relationship between democracy and economic growth. Regions with high levels of democracy, as well as strong autocracies, perform better than hybrid regimes. Second, this article considers the influence of the size of the bureaucracy on economic outcomes and confirms the “grabbing hand” view on bureaucracy rather than the Weberian idea. Increasing the size of the bureaucracy is associated with a decline in economic performance. In addition, this article analyzes the potential interaction between these two characteristics of sub-national politics as factors of economic growth, but does not establish any robust results.

Application and use of the ISEW for assessing the sustainability of a regional system: A case study in Italy

The Index of Sustainable Economic Welfare (ISEW) was introduced by Daly and Cobb in 1989 in order to integrate the information embodied in GDP. Since economic growth implies externalities and market failures, and a portion of it can be defined as “uneconomic”, the ISEW method introduces some corrections and adjustments to the GDP calculation framework. The ISEW has been calculated for a number of nations but it has been rarely applied to sub-national systems. Its calculation at the local level is important especially in case of administrative decentralization, and autonomy and responsibility of local authorities in certain fields. For this reason, a more and more comprehensive knowledge of the characteristics and peculiarities of the territorial system they manage is necessary. This paper presents the results of the ISEW calculation for Tuscany, a region in central Italy, in the period 1971–2006. This is one of the few attempts to apply the ISEW in time series at the regional level. Final results show that a discrepancy between ISEW and GDP appeared in the 1970s. Social and environmental pressures increased during the period under study making the gap equal to about 30 percent of regional GDP in 2006. The ISEW can be used also as a tool for evaluating policies, but further adjustments in calculation of certain items are considered necessary for taking into account and evaluating punctual policies. A case of energy policy is presented.

MISALIGNMENT OF SUBSTANTIVE AND ENFORCEMENT TAX JURISDICTION IN A MOBILE ECONOMY: CAUSES AND STRATEGIES FOR REALIGNMENT

When a state asserts substantive jurisdiction over the subject matter of a tax, the state generally should also have enforcement jurisdiction over a person who can remit the tax. In the American subnational system, transaction costs, tax assignments, and legal barriers are the major causes of misalignment between substantive and enforcement jurisdiction. Strategies for achieving greater jurisdictional alignment include (1) reducing administrative and compliance cost through reform vehicles such as the Streamlined Sales Tax, (2) adopting simplified compliance regimes for foreign taxpayers, (3) repealing the physical-presence test and RL. 86-272, and (4) "reverse engineering" substantive jurisdiction rules in recognition of existing limits on enforcement capabilities.

Laboratory capacity building for the International Health Regulations (IHR[2005]) in resource-poor countries: the experience of the African Field Epidemiology Network (AFENET)

Laboratory is one of the core capacities that countries must develop for the implementation of the International Health Regulations (IHR[2005]) since laboratory services play a major role in all the key processes of detection, assessment, response, notification, and monitoring of events. While developed countries easily adapt their well-organized routine laboratory services, resource-limited countries need considerable capacity building as many gaps still exist. In this paper, we discuss some of the efforts made by the African Field Epidemiology Network (AFENET) in supporting laboratory capacity development in the Africa region. The efforts range from promoting graduate level training programs to building advanced technical, managerial and leadership skills to in-service short course training for peripheral laboratory staff. A number of specific projects focus on external quality assurance, basic laboratory information systems, strengthening laboratory management towards accreditation, equipment calibration, harmonization of training materials, networking and provision of pre-packaged laboratory kits to support outbreak investigation. Available evidence indicates a positive effect of these efforts on laboratory capacity in the region. However, many opportunities exist, especially to support the roll-out of these projects as well as attending to some additional critical areas such as biosafety and biosecuity. We conclude that AFENET’s approach of strengthening national and sub-national systems provide a model that could be adopted in resource-limited settings such as sub-Saharan Africa.

Fiscal decentralization in China and India: A comparative perspective

The paper analyses trends in fiscal decentralization in the two largest countries of the world — China and India. Both countries are in transition from a planned to a market system. The paper identifies the emerging challenges in achieving fiscal decentralization in the two countries. The challenges arise firstly from the transition to the market economy and secondly from the replacement of the old command and control systems with institutions developed to administer market-based policies and instruments. The paper argues that the approach to meet the emerging challenges has to be holistic and should deal with the sub-national budgeting system underpinning central fiscal control and not just the various components of the sub-national systems. The overall approach should ideally encompass all levels of government.

Beyond Westminster: The New Machinery of Subnational Government: Political Management in the Australian States

Government in Australia is three-tiered—commonwealth (or federal), state and local. The Australian states and territories operate within a Westminster tradition, although demonstrating significant departures. As large sub-national systems, they have developed central mechanisms for providing direction and co-ordination at the state level, and for seeking control of and responsiveness from the public service. This article reviews the patterns of change at the state level in Australia with regard to three sets of design issues: the organization of the political executive and central political direction; the vertical and horizontal aspects of the policy function; and the relations between the public service and politicians.

Social capital and the public‐private divide in Greek regions

This article argues that the concept of social capital, by facilitating collective action among the actors within institutional networks, constitutes a prerequisite for overcoming the public‐private divide and achieving synergies at the regional and local levels. Thus, within the framework of European regional policy, it is considered to be the crucial factor for the processes of institutional learning and successful adaptation/Europeanisation of the subnational systems of governance. The case of Greece demonstrates that the combination of a centralised state structure and a weak civil society breeds the creation of hierarchical, clientelistic networks that undermine the process of crossing the public—private divide and inhibits the Europeanisation function of subnational governments.

Are National Cultures and Identities an Optional Extra?

In writing this paper I assume the existence of three interrelated systems, anincipient world political system, a global economy, and an incipient worldglobal culture. These three systems coexist with three lower level systems ofgovernance, those of transnational regions1 (Europe, Latin America), the asyet preeminent nation-states, and subnational systems, such as Quebec, Cata-lonia, or Tamil Nadu. Regional, national, and subnational systems subdivideinto the same categories as does the global system, that is political, economic,and cultural aspects.

International handbook of local and regional government: a comparative analysis of advanced democracies

This major new reference work is an authoritative, detailed guide to subnational systems of government in advanced democracies. The Handbook offers a comparative analysis of local and regional government in a wide range of countries, discussing their histories, traditions, national and internal institutional structures, financing, competences and functions. Inter-governmental relationships, electoral systems and public participation in local administration and the governance of metropolitan areas, are also reviewed extensively. The book draws upon a wide range of official and academic sources in several languages, published and unpublished, many of which are not otherwise available in English. The first part surveys principal aspects of the subject through a cross-national comparison of Western Europe, English and French-speaking North America, Japan and Australasia. Later chapters examine individually the cases of France, Italy, Germany, Sweden, Denmark, Great Britain, the USA, Canada and Japan. In order to facilitate comparison within a global perspective the contents of each of these chapters are organised under the same headings as those in the first part. Offering an unparalleled history of western systems of local democracy and the concepts and values that sustain them, the Handbook will be an aid to constructive thinking for politicians and administrators, as well as a comprehensive reference source for teachers, students and researchers.

Central Coordination and the Policy Network

Where responsibility for a public service is divided between the centre and sub-national government, legislative intention is unlikely to match service delivery. This is the implementation gap or control deficit, which, it is claimed, will always arise because of inherent limitations on central coordinative capacity. However, this claim seems to be derived from states like West Germany where conditions are such that the centre is severely handicapped. In states where the centre has fewer constrictions, like the United Kingdom, the centre appears to be able to minimize control deficits by a number of means, including the co-option of national associations of sub-national professionals, and sub-national units themselves. The UK centre is also able to restructure the sub-national system itself in order to enhance its control capacity.

The Effects of Central Finance on the British Local Government System

The introduction of more rigorous policy analysis into comparative politics reveals an important discontinuity in empirical democratic theory. The problem is not an entirely new one, but the dilemmas presented in looking more carefully at sub-national political systems, and in trying to compare sub-national systems cross-nationally, lend new urgency to this issue. On the one hand, policy studies of budgetary change and resource allocation over time in industrial democracies show that change occurs very slowly; indeed, the budgetary performance of most such governments can be predicted with very small errors given modest longitudinal information. On the other hand, the institutional infrastructure of the industrial democracies is geared to making major shifts in political control, presumably in response to popular preferences and with some notion of desired adjustments in governmental performance: yet the choices actually confronted by governments almost never take such simple politically determined forms; policy choices instead take the form of relative gains and benefits, trade-offs in expected impact of marginal resource changes, and gradual increases as new expenditures and investments can be absorbed in the public sector.