Top-down Project Research Articles

REDD+ policy translation and storylines in Laos

This article examines the (re)production of discourses and storylines in the process of policy translation of Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD+) in Laos. Applying the concepts of policy discourses and policy translation, we first identify the prominent storylines at the various governance levels in Laos. Second, we compare and contrast these storylines with the global REDD+ discourses. Further, we discuss how different actors' capacities and political agendas shape REDD+ storylines at different levels of governance. We find that national and sub-national storylines portray REDD+ mainly as a tool for supporting Laos' forestry strategy and sustainable forest management; for capacity-building and donor funding; and for village forest management and education of villagers. At the village level, many see REDD+ as a project for various political elites and external actors to control forests and cheat villagers. We conclude that, while globally there is increasing attention to civic-environmentalism in REDD+, neoliberalist and techno-managerial discourses still dominate. At the village level, however, civic-environmentalist ideas, such as social safeguards, benefit sharing, and equity largely disappear and two opposing discourses emerge representing anti-civic ideas and REDD+ resentment. Furthermore, while techno-managerial ideas permeate all levels in Laos, neoliberalist ideas in terms of carbon trading are almost absent. During policy translation, REDD+ thus transforms into "just another" top-down development project. This serves the interest of Laos's techno-managerial elite well, but has little positive prospect for local people and forests. In this perspective, the lack of alternative discourse-coalitions promoting non-carbon benefits, social safeguards, and equity is striking.Key Words: REDD+, Laos, policy translation, environmental discourses, neoliberalism, civic environmentalism

Border Land, Border Water: A History of Construction on the US–Mexico Divide by C. J. Alvarez

Reviewed by: Border Land, Border Water: A History of Construction on the US–Mexico Divide by C. J. Alvarez Caitlin Blanchfield C. J. Alvarez. Border Land, Border Water: A History of Construction on the US–Mexico Divide. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2019. ISBN: 9781477319031 Hardcover: 352 pages If recent footage of panels of the US–Mexico border wall being toppled by high winds and of flood waters "smashing through" border wall construction sites is an indication, nature would rather see the border wall unbuilt.1 C. J. Alvarez's Border Land, Border Water: A History of Construction on the US–Mexico Divide capably illustrates the entangled history of the built and natural environments of the US–Mexico borderlands. This volume is a significant contribution to the field of architectural history as well as environmental history and borderlands studies. As Alvarez points out, histories of the border often focus on the borderlands as spaces of social and political construction while environmental histories tend to focus on how development has transformed the landscape around the international divide. Alvarez intertwines both of these approaches by "advancing the notion that the border is a literal construction site." "Paying attention to the built environment of the border," he writes, "can help us understand the way it functions and for whom."2 The first chapter of Border Land, Border Water traces boundary surveys of the nineteenth century and the construction of stone and iron obelisks that cleaved Baja California, Sonora, and parts of Chihuahua in California, Arizona, and New Mexico. These beacons marked larger state projects both by the US and Mexico of mapping, surveying, and subdividing the borderlands in anticipation of future private development. "Just one more property line" in a vast landscape of extractive industries, Alvarez says.3 One of the strengths of this chapter is its reading of the desert through frameworks of both environmental history and aesthetics. Border markers were symbols of environmental management in a territory that many government administrators and settlers found both topographically challenging and unattractive. These two reactions arose from epistemological assumptions that rendered the desert a hard-to-inhabit wasteland—assumptions that, Alvarez points out, were extended to Indigenous peoples who lived in the borderlands. For instance, the Tohono O'odham Nation, whose homelands span the US–Mexico border, were depicted by surveyors as being as uncivilized as the landscape itself. The richness of the desert that the O'odham knew and prospered within was lost on these government officials. By looking at built interventions into the border, cultural perceptions of the border environment, and the social worlds of the borderlands, Alvarez constructs a layered and interconnected account of border building across different nations. This would have been made even stronger by discussing other cross-border Indigenous communities—such as the Yaqui and Kumeyaay—and by continuing this discussion through the book's longer chronology.4 While the border is a means of division, it is itself also divided. To the west of El Paso, the border is an imagined line, and to the east, it is an arcifinious boundary following the deepest channel of the Rio Grande. Border Land, Border Water shows how regulation and control unite the different types of construction across these terrains. Chapters one and two oscillate between descriptions of efforts to demarcate the border through these divergent territories and the impacts of the Mexican Revolution on border building all along the northern frontier. Modern militarization of the border, Alvarez argues, began with the Mexican Revolution, as the United States military began testing surveillance technology and developing [End Page 131] infrastructure to transport equipment and troops—an origin point for the militarized landscape of the border today and the intense accretion of surveillance infrastructure and architecture of control that limn the international divide. Some of Border Land, Border Water's most lively sections come from the detailed archival work Alvarez has undertaken in these chapters, revealing the borderlands as a terrain of individual experiences and relationships, not solely a reflection of state policies and top-down building projects. Chapters three and four focus on large-scale damming projects and efforts to reshape, harness, and manage the Rio Grande for commercial gain. Even...

Driving in the middle of the road: Paradoxes of women’s role under the New Saudi Arabian Nationalism

King Salman and prince Mohammad bin Salman yearn to shift Saudi Arabia away from oil dependency via the project Vision 2030, which includes a set of liberalisations for women, such as legalisation of driving and economic empowerment. Topics related to women have been a taboo to Saudi society; thus, it is interesting to understand their role in these reforms and their negotiation of rights within the state. I argue that these reforms are not politically liberalising, as they do not rearrange the patriarchal structure. Moreover, they walk in line with a top-down nationalist project that excludes and arrests, among others, female activists that previously fought for the right to drive, stressing the limitations on women’s freedom under Salman’s rule

Systems Analysis as Infrastructural Knowledge

This article explores the political effects of the development of systems analysis as a form of “infrastructural knowledge”—that is, as a form of knowledge concerned with infrastructure, and an infrastructure of knowledge—that contributed to internal dissensus among scientific experts in the Soviet Union. Systems expertise is largely missing from existing work on the history of Soviet infrastructure. The article analyzes the development of governmental, managerial, and industrial applications of systems analysis in the Soviet context, as well as the transfer of Soviet systems expertise to developing countries. It argues that systems analysis constitutes a form of infrastructural knowledge that enabled Soviet scientists to criticize governmental policies, particularly largescale, top-down infrastructure projects. This critique is interpreted as an expression of a new normativity about what constitutes good governance; it became particularly salient when Soviet scientists were facing infrastructural projects in the global South. Systems analysis, in this way, constituted an important intellectual resource for endogenous liberalization of the authoritarian regime.

Growth machines and social movements in mature tourist destinations Costa del Sol-Málaga

The purpose of this study is to analyse the new processes of tourism growth and its conflicts from the perspective of social movements. First, the urban growth machine analysis model is applied by the systematisation of six projects. Second, the resistance movements against those projects and whether this resistance could be the start of local tourism degrowth policies are examined. The methodology is qualitative, based on documentary analysis, participatory observation, discussion groups and interviews. The case study is the destination of Costa del Sol-Málaga. The results enable the development of the urban growth machine model in tourist destinations. Meanwhile, social movements demystify the argument based on neoclassical economic progress. The social movements condemn the effects of large-scale top-down projects, and implement alternative bottom-up proposals. Although the social movements do not reject tourism, they call for greater control over its impact, denounce unlimited growth, overtourism and the loss of urban quality of life. These movements advocate a lifestyle linked to the everyday space, which they believe is threatened by excessive urban-tourism growth. They are a symptom of the need to devise a proposal using the principles of degrowth.

Is REDD+ More of an Institutional Affair than a Market Process? The Concealed Social and Cultural Consequences of an Ongoing REDD+ Project in Kolo Hills, Tanzania

The neo-liberal rationale behind REDD programs aims to create a market for common resources, with monetary payment incentives as the most important driver for conservation initiatives. In reality, however, the chain of implementation from UN to village, encompassing numerous processes of design, planning, and practices at distinct levels and contexts, is more institutional and political than economic. This research project follows the planning and implementation process of a REDD+ project in the Kolo Hills, Tanzania. The analysis showed that the project’s main objectives were poorly understood by the men and women of the target group, who interpreted it as yet another top-down postcolonial project. The target group’s interpretations also made them act in accordance with their own cultural rationality and logic of practice and not as the donors and project implementers had assumed. The project objectives of the payment system, consciousness awareness and engagement of the target population, thus, seem to have failed, despite the donors’ and implementers’ claim of success.

Study on the governance mechanism of rural e-commerce service centers in rural China: agency problems and solutions

Agency problems, such as moral hazard and adverse selection, are prevalent in the public service sector, and the Chinese rural e-commerce service sector is no exception. With the focus on the top-down project ‘information and communication technology for development’ implemented in the underdeveloped areas in China, the rural e-commerce service center (RESC) operation mechanism was analyzed in this study. Based on the tension between RESC operators, local governments, and e-commerce service providers that was reported in a field survey, this study further employs the principal-agent framework to analyze the problems of asymmetric information. Based on this analysis, solutions are suggested that can remedy the moral hazard issues in rural e-commerce service delivery, including developing a service evaluation system, promoting the usage of ICTs, and enhancing rural social capital. To address the problem of adverse selection, the RESC recruitment process should be improved. Moreover, by dividing the potential RESC employees into native villagers and e-commerce entrepreneurs, the optimal subsidy schemes can be designed for both types of applicants according to their ability and sensitivity to incentive.

Nursing innovation: The joint effects of championship behaviors, project types, and initiation levels

BackgroundFrontline nurse champions are key innovation-implementation agents. Despite the growing interest in nurse champions’ innovation, whether project novelty is a product of championship behavior (e.g., expressing confidence in the innovation's success and network building), the project's contextual characteristics (project type and initiation level), or their joint effects, remains unsolved. PurposeTo develop and test an interactionist model of project novelty in nursing. MethodsA cross-sectional design with a multisource approach to data collection. FindingsResults demonstrated a direct effect of project type, a two-way interaction effect of level of initiation and project type, a two-way interaction effect of championship and project type, and a three-way interaction effect of project type, initiation level, and championship on project's novelty. DiscussionBottom-up service and administrative projects require champions’ championship behaviors to foster novelty, whereas for bottom-up quality-improvement projects, such behaviors can harm project novelty. For human-resource projects and for top-down projects, championship behaviors do not matter.

Rural development in Belarus: the “agrogrodok”: between rural and urban?

The article explores a phenomenon of agrogorodok originated and implemented as state policy of rural revitalization in the former Soviet country of Belarus beginning with 2005-2010 State Programme for Rural Revival & Development and continuing in further 5-years programmes up till now. The term “agrogorodok” is defined as a new type of rural settlement which features public facilities, industrial, social and transport infrastructures to ensure a high (here: compared to urban) standard of living for its residents and residents of adjacent territories [1].Wherein in terms of population it remains well below the size of a town and belongs to the lowest level of rural settlements. Currently over 1500 such settlements have been created (against targeted number of 1481 till 2010 as set in [1]). The article is to assess critically the policy against the so-called heroic tradition of modernist thinking to reform way of living via large-scale top-down state-led planning projects combining affordable housing, built public infrastructure as applied to declining rural areas. Further, for the current discourse on territorial development is focused almost exclusively on urbanisation, such specific approach targeting rural while having in its core the idea of some sort of urbanisation (understood as approaching urban standard of living in rural areas) is needed to be conceptualised to find its place in addressing and reinventing rurality in urban world. Such invention of a new type aiming at reconciling urban and rural is to be defined and conceptualised as a contribution into typology. The historical context of a post-soviet country, where continued aggressive state intervention into inter alia rural areas had produced distinct configurations of rural settlements in their transition from traditional to modern, also enriches such exploration of transformative power of ideologies / policy towards landscape. The article, tracing almost 15 years of policy implementation, reveals yet one more failed promise of salvation grinning through the gap between concept and its real appearance.

Disorder or Reorder? The Spatial Production of State-Level New Areas in China

With rapid urbanization in the world, new town construction has become prosperous. In particular, new emerging towns in China are unique because of the most significant movement of “building cities”. Over four decades of reform and opening-up, this movement has brought about a special development model known as State-level New Area (SLNA) which, like a new town, is causing a growth spurt in national and regional economic development. By applying the critical theory of production of space, this paper gives an overall analysis. SLNAs generate a new expansion pattern of urban space in the regionalization process dominated by governments. To reveal the spatiotemporal evolution logic of SLNA, the framework identifies the main characteristics contributing to spatial production: both bottom-up and top-down project on construction; a sharp and unordered trend of increment in time scale; an unbalanced regional distribution in the sequential order of “Eastern–Western–Northeastern–Central” among regions; complex spatial overlaying with different development zones and administrative divisions; and large-scale spatial expanding. This paper finds that the ongoing growth of SLNAs is a rapid process of spatial production with more contradictions, which is especially marked by tension between disorder and reorder. We hope to provide theoretical reference and practical guidance for the sustainable urbanization and orderly regional development of SLNAs.

Characteristics and behaviours of formal versus informal nurse champions and their relationship to innovation success.

To identify the sociodemographic attributes, project characteristics and champion strategies that differentiate formal from informal nursing champions, and to test their success in terms of project spread and novelty. Champions spread innovation in healthcare organizations. Empirical research has not explored the differences between formal and informal champions in terms of their antecedents and success. A quantitative cross-sectional design. Data were collected on 93 nursing champions in three hospitals from 2015 - 2016. Champions were identified according to a validated approach; data on their sociodemographic attributes, project characteristics and strategies were assembled through interviews and validated questionnaires. Their success in terms of novelty and spread was assessed via expert ratings and validated questionnaire. Informal champions had longer tenure and were involved mainly in bottom-up projects aimed mostly at improving human resources and services; formal champions were mostly involved in top-down projects aimed at quality control. Informal champions expressed more enthusiasm and confidence about the innovation; formal champions tended to use more online resources and peer-monitoring strategies. Projects of informal champions were more novel than those of formal champions. Project spread did not differ between the two groups. Formal and informal champions differ in their characteristics and implementation strategies. To encourage project's innovation, the organizational climate should encourage the emergence of informal champions; formal and informal champions should be chosen wisely, assuring that they possess enough organizational resources; and coaching programmes for junior champions should be planned to equip them with championing behaviours.

Not Citizens of a Classical Mediterranean: Muslim Youth from Marseille Elude a Linguistic Gentrification by the French State

A moral panic is afoot in contemporary France surrounding what place French-Muslim youth hold within the national identity. The French state, in particular, is actively engaged in regimenting what it means to be a young Muslim person from France. This article examines how, during Marseille’s year (2013) as the European Capital of Culture, the municipal government and the local branch of the Ministère de l’Éducation Nationale spearheaded several initiatives, a number of which focused on Arabic-language education, with the aim of transforming French-Muslim youth from Marseille’s housing projects into secular, upwardly mobile individuals. Ethnographic inquiry with the youth targeted by such “linguistic gentrification” programs reveals that the state’s reimagining of them in these terms remained largely at odds with how they themselves understood their identities. This article, as such, illustrates the analytical importance of attending to people’s uptake when evaluating the eventual scope of top-down discourses and projects, while also offering an example of how the label “Mediterranean” functions as a spatiotemporal shifter, deployed by different groups to activate alternative accounts of history, the present, and the future.

Rural Partnership: An Approach to Achieve Development and Poverty Reduction (Case Study: Saravan Dehestan of Rasht County)

Rural Partnership: An Approach to Achieve Development and Poverty Reduction (Case Study: Saravan Dehestan of Rasht County)

Fostering a chronic care strategy in the basque country through the evaluation of health care providers

The Health Regulation Act of the Basque Country establishes the Contract - Program (CP) as a regulation tool between the commissioner (Department of Health) and health providers (Osakidetza/Basque Health Service, etc.). In order to meet the objectives of the Health Plan (that has a clear focus on chronicity) the CP is adapted in 2014 with the objective of transforming it into a planning tool to run and regulate the design and organisation of the Health System, the type and volume of activity and its levels of efficiency, quality and equity. By using the Kelley & Hurst framework (https://www.oecd.org/els/health-systems/36262363.pdf), a performance evaluation manual was designed and a set of outcomes measures from suppliers were introduced in the 2014 CP to show the development of the Health Department's policies and allowing comparison between similar providers (i.e. Integrated Care Organisations- ICOs) and with other health providers from different countries and / or regions. Moreover, it allows to identify best practices (benchmarking). The manual is structured in 9 dimensions (1.Resources, 2.Services, 3.Integrated Care, 4. Clinical Safety, 5.Effectiveness, 6.Equity, 7.Patient centered care, 8.Accessibility, 9.Efficiency), with indicators to measure the implementation and deployment of: new professional roles (hospital liason nurses, referral internists, …), integrated care, coordination with social, mental and long term care; Patients/caregivers empowerment, Multimorbidity, Palliative care strategy, chronic diseases (Diabetes, Hypertension, COPD, CHF), Acute heart attack and Stroke, comprehensive pain management, Clinical safety, Efficiency in prescription, patients/users and interest groups participation in the design of care processes, Equity, etc. But it also keeps the more traditional metrics such as delays, mean length of hospital stay and other indicators of Efficiency. Each indicator follows the following structure: FOCUS (Definition and revision of strategy), DEPLOYMENT (strategy development, analysis) and RESULTS. Evaluations have been carried out in two phases: 1) Self-evaluation, 2) External contrast by multidisciplinary teams of professionals from the Basque Health Service and from the Department of Health (60 professionals). The evaluation is complemented by scoring the Bottom-Up / Top-Down projects. Evaluation criteria, required standards and methodology used are reviewed and adjusted annually. Results: 3 evaluations (2014, 2015 and 2016). Overall compliance: 64.7%, 72.22% and 78.6%. Integrated Care Organisations´ Satisfaction: 7.1; Evaluators Satisfaction: 7.9 and 7.4 out of 10. There has been a clear progress in the development of the Health Plan action lines and an improvement in health outcomes.

Hungarian-Russian bilingual schools in Hungary during the Soviet occupation (1945–1989)

Through the example of the establishment, functioning, and closing of bilingual schools during the Soviet occupation of Hungary, this paper aims to introduce this segment of public education in Central-Eastern Europe. In the period between 1945 and 1989, the learning of Russian as a compulsory subject was introduced, teaching other languages was restricted, and Hungarian-Russian bilingual schools were launched. The features of their establishment can be connected to political and professional power relations in different sub-periods within the structures of closed language policy. The objective in both states was the education of committed political elite. The first school was established by direct political control and closed because of the 1956 revolution. The second school was established in 1974, through professional and political compromises. The third school opened at the end of the period, as part of a top-down development project involving 14 schools. A number of European target languages (still including Russian) were introduced, which can be regarded as the opening up of language education policy. Relying on sources, documents, and personal recollections, the study aims to reveal the dynamics of the interrelations between controlled language education, University and the changes in Hungarian economic, social, domestic, and foreign policy in the given periods.

"To be followed up in general practice" - developing and implementing a shared care model for prostate cancer.

Introduction: The prevalence of PC is rising and upon completion of the initial treatment PC patients are followed-up in the hospital OPD frequently and for many years. Guidelines recommend that patients with PC in stable phase can be monitored, controlled and treated in general practice. We describe how a shared care model for patients with PC was developed and implemented in a Region in Denmark covering 1.2 mill people Methods: (Intervention model): A shared care model was developed by a steering committee, which consisted of general practitioners, patients, urologists and nurses from all urological departments in the Region. The model included (1) a clear description patient categories suitable for transferral to shared care and how follow up should be done, (2) a fixed structure for communication with GPs and (3) systematic patient involvement. With these “hard core” elements in place each department was allowed a “soft periphery” for local adaptation of the model. _Implementation_: The “hard core” elements in the implementation process that should bring the model into the daily clinical life included: Cross-departmental learning, continuous monitoring of patients transferred to shared care and feedback. The “soft periphery” allowed for local decision on how the different elements of the shared care model should be introduced. Results: A total of 2585 patients with PC were enrolled in the study. A total of 758 (29%) patients were elegible for transferral to their GP, and 531 patients (21%) were, in fact, transferred. The main reason that a patient could not be transferred to GP follow-up was unstable PSA and a patient wish to continue hospital follow-up. Patients transferred to shared care were followed up with a questionnaire with a response rate of 71% of which 69% stated that they felt safe “to a great extent” and 27% ” to some degree”. Only 4 % answered ”to a lesser extent/not at all”. The new model was successfully implemented in the study period in all three outpatient departments. However, change was only sustained in the departments where a bottom-up, nurse-led approach, without extra resources had been followed whereas things went back to “usual care” when a top-down project manager based approach was applied. Conclusions: An intervention model for transferral of patient from OPD to general practice was implemented across a Region which freed the equivalent of one month appointments in the OPD. An inclusive implementation process ensured sustainability. Lessons learned: A cross sectorial model for shared care can be successful if developed from a GP perspective and if it includes all stakeholders. The model can be implemented with little external support, but will only be sustainable if implementation is flexible and driven by clinical staff on the ground. Limitations: It is difficult to determine which elements of the model was more important and to what extent and how the specific context influenced the finding. Future research: More cases across different topics and in diverse context will improve generalisability of the implementation principles found in this study

The integration of constrained resources into top-down project control

The timely completion of a project is one of its main factors for success. During the scheduling phase, a project buffer can be installed to protect the project deadline. During the execution phase, tolerance limits that generate warning signals when the project deadline is endangered should be constructed to monitor the buffer consumption. These tolerance limits will be constructed for the dynamic progress data provided by the Earned Value Management/Earned schedule methodology (EVM/ES).In this paper, we incorporate information on the availability of scarce resources into the construction of analytical tolerance limits for EVM/ES, in order to improve the efficiency and reliability of these tolerance limits. In order to review the performance of the limits, a computational experiment has been carried out in which they are compared to analytical tolerance limits that disregard the availability of resources. Results have shown that the performance of analytical tolerance limits can be significantly enhanced by incorporating the available resource information.

Conceptualizing citizen participation in open data use at the city level

PurposeOpen data initiatives represent a critical pillar of smart cities’ strategies but remain insufficiently and poorly understood. This paper aims to advance a conceptualization of citizen participation and investigates its effect on open data use at the municipal level.Design/methodology/approachBased on 14 semi-structured interviews with citizens involved in open data projects within the city of Montréal (Canada), the paper develops a research model linking the multidimensional construct of citizen participation with initial use of open data in municipalities.FindingsThe study shows that citizen participation is a key contributor to the use of open data through four distinct categories of participation, namely, hands-on activities, greater responsibility, better communication and improved relations between citizens and the open data portal development team. While electronic government research often views open data implementation as a top-down project, the current study demonstrates that citizens are central to the success of open data initiatives and shows how their role can be effectively leveraged across various dimensions of participation.Originality/valueThis paper proposes a conceptualization of citizen participation on open data use at the municipal level. Citizen participation is a found to be a key contributor to the use of open data through four distinct categories of participation, namely, hands-on activities, greater responsibility, better communication and improved relations between citizens and the open data portal development team. This paper demonstrates the critical role of citizen participation in open government.

A buffer control method for top-down project control

Timely completion of projects is an important factor for project success. However, projects often exceed their predefined deadline, which results in a late project delivery and an increase in the total project cost. In order to increase the probability of timely completion, a project buffer can be planned at the end of a project. During project execution, an assessment of the total buffer consumption at the project completion date can be made in order to periodically monitor the project progress. When the expected buffer consumption is higher than 100%, the project deadline is expected to be exceeded and the project manager should take corrective actions to get the project back on track.In this paper, a new buffer monitoring approach is introduced, which sets tolerance limits for Earned Value Management/Earned Schedule (EVM/ES) schedule performance metrics by allocating the project buffer over the different project phases. The purpose of these tolerance limits is to provide the project manager with accurate and reliable information on the expected project outcome during the project execution. A computational study is carried out to assess the performance of the proposed approach and to compare its performance with traditional buffer consumption monitoring procedures. Additionally, existing performance metrics for tolerance limits have been put into a hypothesis testing framework, and new metrics have been developed in order to fill the detected gaps in performance measurement. Results have shown that the proposed tolerance limits improve the performance of the monitoring phase, especially for parallel projects. Consequently, the underperformance of EVM/ES for parallel projects is mitigated by these limits.

Action-Oriented Responses to Sexual Harassment in Egypt

Action-Oriented Responses to Sexual Harassment in Egypt