International audience ; International policy discourses related to the digital environment increasingly reference human rights and fundamental freedoms. From the early debates in the mid-1990s on the human rights implications of Internet use, to the new momentum created by Edward Snowden's revelations of State surveillance in 2013, the issue has received considerable attention over the last 20 years. At the global and regional levels, a historical perspective would identify several milestones of different kinds in this global evolution. To name a few of these milestones: the early WSIS steps (2002-2005), with the "Right to Communicate" vision opposed to one that promoted the identification of practical ways to realize and advance existing human rights in the online environment, with a special emphasis on the indivisibility and interdependence of all human rights; the IGF steps (2006-present), with different stakeholders, on their own or through multi-stakeholder dialogues, working on various initiatives aimed at strengthening the human rights perspective in Internet policy; the UN Human Rights Council and Universal Periodic Review proceedings where, since 2012, global NGO coalitions specializing in human rights on the Internet have closely cooperated with the previous UN Special Rapporteur on Freedom of Expression who was very attentive towards Internet-related issues and the need to address Internet policy from a human rights perspective. These efforts, together some government led actions dedicated to freedom of expression and privacy in particular, as well as other initiatives, have resulted in the adoption of the first two Resolutions focusing specifically on human rights protection on the internet, adopted at the UN Human Rights Council in 2012 and 2014, as well as the first two Resolutions on Privacy in the Digital Age, adopted at the UN General Assembly in 2013 and 2014.In parallel, the usual process of national and regional (e.g. in the European Union) Internet policy making has been going on as usual ...
The concept of power in political governance has traditionally focused on domination and the preservation of the status quo. In an economic context, institutional and organizational studies have expressed growing interest in the dynamics of agency and institutional change, captured in the concept of squot;institutional entrepreneurship." In the context of global free trade, the Fair Trade movement's experience shows that ongoing institutional entrepreneurship is important for entrepreneurs to transcend absorption by corporate hegemony. In this article I examine the capacity for agency in market institutions through the lens of "defiance" to illuminate the imaginative "game players" who evade institutional capture in the evolution of market governance.
The influx of refugees throughout the history of Jordan, from the Circassians of 1890 to the Iraqis of 2002, created moments of interruption in city planning and subsequently the opportunity for the lapse in accountability of the various municipal administrations to their intended planning and development goals. Indeed, each moment of interruption allowed for and inspired a reinvention of the city and a new modernist vocabulary for its development. In this way, the state (albeit not a monolithic actor) employed the disruption caused by each influx of refugees as an opportunity to rewrite systems of planning. These systems however, as history reveals, were only to be interrupted by the next influx of refugees, and so, planning in Amman has been historically unregulated.Development in Amman is complicated first by these refugee interruptions, second by the inadequacies of planning savvy on the part of the Greater Amman Municipality, and finally by a continual divergence between private and public interests, mainly problematic due to the lack of state land holdings and the power of tribal land owners and the political clout of their elite. The role of the state has been thus in constant competition with the shifting allegiances within tribes and amongst their elite. The state, throughout the 20th century, during the reign of King Hussein, exerted its power in an attempt to harness the various tribal, political, and ethnic allegiances into a united front, under the arm of the state. To accomplish this, Hussein's regime attempted to dismantle established systems of tribalism, redirecting allegiance towards the monarchy and its state led modernization and liberalization efforts. Modernization produced a series of bureaucratic systems, such as the Greater Amman Municipality, limiting the reach of tribes and their elite by dismantling tribal village councils. Additionally, the 1988 Master Plan proposed a new satellite city as prototype for a modern way of life, one outside the network of tribal communalism.Further, the state utilized the continual influx of refugees and subsequent lapses in planning administration to legitimize its intervention over the city or the making of parts of the city, particularly after liberalization. To this end, I will interrogate the role of the state first as an instrument of welfare, and, later, as a collaborator in the privatized enterprise of neoliberal development. In this way, the dissertation reframes neoliberalization as a process, and presents a new understanding of the relationship between state power, capital, and the built environment.First, as a rentier state, the monarchy was able, through the dispensation of welfare funds, to purchase allegiance and maintain political quietism. Later, after the loss of rentier capital, and operating as a neoliberal state, Hussein turned to social mechanisms of moderated governance, such at the manipulation of voting rights in order to ensure the election of favorable, pro-state candidates. As a result, governance systems in Amman were highly coercive and continually rescripted in such a way as to ensure first the autonomy of the state, and second, the security of the regime.A historical analysis of the political economy of urbanism in Amman makes clear the governance structure of the state, and reveals the limitations of civic democracy that it imposed on its public. Informed by a historical perspective of Amman's moderated governance structure, I conclude that the state, during the reign of King Abdullah (Hussein's son and heir), employed its coercive voice through various political campaigns to rewrite systems of planning and development and produce two major projects with agency that act on, or neoliberalize a city.Through my research on Amman in the contemporary moment, I demonstrate that neoliberalism is not only a process, but also a placed based, or site-specific process. In this way I recognize buildings and the sites they occupy as having more agency as a neoliberal construct, as opposed to neoliberalism as solely an economic project. In so doing, the critique shifts to the built environment, and recognizes the architecture within it as a significant actor in the process of transformation. Specific to Amman, two neoliberal projects, the Jordan Gate Towers and The Abdali Plan, prompted transformation and challenge the discussion of neoliberalism as the sole agent of global change. Further, by measure of impact, these urban transformations demonstrate that neoliberal restructuring can manifest as not only a site-specific process, but also as a political project.Un-planning is a derivative of the historic condition of unregulated planning in Amman and is defined by conditions of unregulated policy, the re-scripting or continual reconceptualization of the states role in planning, and finally, the constant battle with entrenched systems of tribalism that compete with the state for allegiance, and ultimately obstruct the formation of a national identity.These three components of interrupted planning in Amman (unregulated policy, rescripting the role of the state, and the fight for allegiance) have evolved from a provisional system of planning into a system of intentional un-planning, one that allows for an informalization of planning policy that has since culminated in unregulated development in the city.The dissertation will reveal that the primary reason unregulated planning is preferred is that it allows a certain range of autonomy for the state when it is not confined to planning regulations. In so doing, the state has released itself from liability to the often-detrimental cost of development decisions made in Amman, allowing it to pursue development in terms of capital incentive rather than impact study.
International organizations frequently lack accountability to both states and civil society groups. States often face difficulties monitoring the actions of international organizations. Civil society groups do not often enjoy direct influence over decision-making within international organizations. To address these challenges, states have created accountability mechanisms for international organizations. Accountability mechanisms allow civil society groups to submit complaints about the performance of international organizations. They take the form of ombudsmen offices, accountability panels, and complaint procedures. Little is known about when and why these mechanisms constrain behavior by international organizations that runs counter to the mutual interests of states and civil society groups. Using the World Bank Inspection Panel as a test case, I show that monitoring by civil society groups alters lending at the World Bank when it enhances oversight by powerful states. By combining their abilities in sanctioning and monitoring, states and civil society groups can promote accountability at international organizations.
Why do institutions fail? With a focus on non-state market-driven governance, this paper explores the failures of the Flower Label Program and the Marine Aquarium Council. To date, research on private governance has tended to focus on the most robust and 'successful' cases of non-state institution-building. While it makes sense to study the most developed systems, we posit that much can be learned by examining failed institutions and an analysis of these 'non-cases' is long overdue. In developing our argument about institutional failure, we draw on previous efforts examining the legitimation dynamics surrounding private forestry governance. The central argument of our framework is that processes of delegitimation can lead to institutional failure if they deprive private governance systems of key resources and competencies that they require to attain their stated goals. We show that poorly executed legitimation strategies in combination with inhospitable institutional environments are important factors causing delegitimation and ultimately institutional failure.
This study examines the relationship between political governance and extractive industry performance in Nigeria. It tends to know the contributions of political governance structures in the Nigerian extractive economy sector and whether the political sector has been able to achieve effective regulatory framework leading to revenue transparency which is the key factor in the attainment of sustainable development. In carrying out this research we made use of secondary data, mostly, the relevant literatures on the subject matter. Descriptive analytical approach was employed, while structural functionalism approach was adopted as the framework of analysis. The study revealed among other things that weak political institutions to undertake effective checks and balances and the virtual absence of regulatory framework created opportunistic gaps for predatory elites to institutionalized corruption in the oil extractive industry. The end result is loss of revenue, deep poverty and poor standard of living. Based on this, the paper recommended amongst others, the development of effective framework for transparency and accountability through strengthening of political governance, effective implementations of the Nigerian Extractive Industry Transparency Initiative (NEITI) Act of 2007, and fundamental restructuring of the Nigerian political and administrative structure and socialization of the social mode of production. DOI:10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n2s1p596
The West African States are known as States with endowed natural and human resources that ought to have an enlargement in the area of economic growth and development. This will help yield results to the countries in West Africa through economic cooperation among states within the region. It is therefore, the goal and objective of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to promote regional integration and co-operation for the purpose of ensuring economic growth and development in the sub-region. The endowed resources in West African states are mostly untapped due to challenges that face the region such as lack of technological know-how, bad governance, political instability, lack of adequate diversification, infrastructure problem, lack of political will and the inability to involve the private sector adequately. Therefore, the objectives of this study is to firstly, create an enabling environment where peace and security is sustainable for West African states to engineer economic governance through regional integration and economic co-operation among the countries in West Africa, and secondly, to enable partnership with the private sector. The methodology used in this research is review of previous literature and the use of content analysis which will also provide useful information on the region. The findings from this study reviews that, peace and security sustainability can only be maintained when the West African States employ the measures that would lead to economic growth and development of the region through provision of job opportunities to the youths, employing the early-warning mechanism, transparency and accountability in governance and good leadership to foster growth of ECOWAS community. DOI:10.5901/mjss.2015.v6n3p257
Persistent inequality and poverty in ethnic minority areas have long been thorns in the side of the Chinese Communist Party. While coastal cities have grown at a rapid pace, life in minority areas has changed little since the onset of economic liberalization. At first blush, this is hardly surprising: ethnic minorities typically live in remote, mountainous areas, conditions that hardly lend themselves to rapid economic growth. But what makes the stagnation of minority areas particularly puzzling is the fact that it has occurred in spite of large-scale policy interventions designed to prevent it. Out of fear of the kind of ethnic unrest that occurred in Tibet in 2008 and Xinjiang in 2009, the central government has made investment in minority areas a clear priority, targeting domestic and foreign aid to these areas and granting them preferential access to subsidized loans, infrastructure development projects, and teacher training and recruitment programs, among others. And yet, these areas have remained poor—and poorly served by local governments—even as once comparably poor Han areas have grown.This dissertation argues that local governance in multiethnic areas of China is plagued by a set of distinctive problems that lead to poor provision of public goods and services—a key component of the failure of these areas to develop. Social and institutional elements come together to produce public goods and services that benefit only those citizens who are already relatively advantaged, give officials little incentive to provide high-quality public services to the population as a whole, and make citizens reluctant to use the services that officials do provide. Several factors come together to produce these outcomes. First, the formal mechanisms for monitoring, promotion, and punishment of local officials in rural China work poorly in areas that are geographically remote or contain large minority populations. Mid-level officials in these areas are poorly supervised by officials at higher levels in the geographic- administrative hierarchy of the Party-state, and have little formal incentive to provide high-quality public goods to citizens as a result. When they do provide high-qualityservices to citizens, they only have an incentive to serve those areas that are likely to be observed by higher-level officials, which places geographically central, Han areas at an advantage. Second, informal mechanisms of accountability operating through social networks, which are often effective at constraining local officials in Han areas, break down in ethnically diverse ones. The way that China's ethnic representation policies are implemented impedes the formation of these networks in ethnically diverse areas. Furthermore, ethnic divisions in local leadership mean that even when citizens do try to use social ties to hold their coethnics in government accountable, officials are often unable to act in accordance with the wishes of their coethnics. And third, while non-state public service providers are often eager to work in minority areas with the specific intent of ameliorating inequalities in public service provision by the local state, they are highly dependent on the local state for access and information. Although relationships between service providers and the state can vary, nonstate providers' dependence on the local state often means that they exacerbate rather than ameliorating existing spatial and ethnic inequalities. Local officials treat nonstate services as another resource to distribute in ways that maximize their own prospects for promotion.
Quobo, M.; Soko, M.: The rise of emerging powers in the global development finance architecture : the case of the BRICS and the New Development Bank. - S. [277]-288
We offer a typology of settings to bridge scientific and indigenous knowledge systems and to enhance governance of the environmental commons in contexts of change. We contribute to a need for further clarity on how to incorporate diverse knowledge systems and in ways that contribute to planning, management, monitoring and assessment from local to global levels. We ask, what settings are discussed in the resource and environmental governance literature to support efforts to bridge indigenous and scientific knowledge systems? The objectives are: 1) to offer a typology that organizes various settings to bridge knowledge systems; and 2) to elaborate on how these settings function independently and in concert, using examples from a diverse literature in addition to field research experience. Our focus is on indigenous and scientific knowledge, but the typology offers lessons to bridge diverse knowledge systems more generally, and in ways that are sensitive to a moral, political and process-based approach. The typology includes specific methods and processes, brokering strategies, governance and institutional contexts, and the arena of epistemology. We describe each setting in the typology, and provide examples to reflect on the function and potential outcomes of different settings. Insights from our synthesis can inform policy and participatory action.
Mit kurzer Erklärung vom 16. März 2015 schaffte das japanische Justizministerium die Regelung ab, nach der jede in Japan registrierte Gesellschaft oder Zweigniederlassung einen Repräsentanten mit Wohnsitz in Japan haben muss. Obwohl die gesetzliche Regelung zur Registrierung der Wohnadresse des Repräsentanten im Handelsregister nicht explizit vorschrieb, dass es sich dabei um eine Adresse in Japan handeln muss, war man bisher davon ausgegangen, das Gesetz sei unter der Annahme erlassen worden, dass der Repräsentant selbstverständlich eine ständige Adresse in Japan habe. Die Abteilung für Zivilangelegenheiten des Justizministeriums hatte deshalb bereits mit verbindlichen Stellungnahmen erklärt, dass "der Antrag auf Registrierung einer Wahl oder Wiederwahl eines vertretungsberechtigten Verwaltungsratsmitglieds einer japanischen Aktiengesellschaft (K.K.) ohne Adresse in Japan (.) nur akzeptiert werden [kann], wenn mindestens eines der vertretungsberechtigten Verwaltungsratsmitglieder der Gesellschaft einen Wohnsitz in Japan hat". Das wurde in der Praxis so verstanden, dass alle in Japan registrierten Gesellschaften zu jeder Zeit einen oder mehrere vertretungsberechtigte Verwaltungsratsmitglieder mit ständiger Adresse in Japan haben mussten, auch die Tochtergesellschaften ausländischer Unternehmen, die – oft ohne dass dies operativ notwendig war – nur zur Erfüllung des formalen Erfordernisses einen Mitarbeiter der Muttergesellschaft dauerhaft nach Japan entsenden oder eine in Japan ansässige Person als vertretungsberechtigtes Verwaltungsratsmitglied ernennen mussten.Als Teil der gegenwärtigen Reformbestrebungen der japanischen Regierung, die auch unter dem Schlagwort "Abenomics" zusammengefasst werden, wurde nun das Erfordernis des sog. "resident representative directors" abgeschafft. Das eröffnet neue Chancen für ausländische Unternehmen, die interne Struktur ihrer japanischen Tochtergesellschaften zu gestalten. Es ist jetzt möglich, das Board einer japanischen Tochtergesellschaft komplett mit nicht in Japan ansässigen Mitarbeitern der Muttergesellschaft zu besetzen. Es ist nicht mehr notwendig, neu eingestellte Mitarbeiter oder Dritte, die kein eigenes Interesse am Unternehmen haben, mit einflussreichen Positionen zu betrauen. Bestehende Strukturen sollten allerdings nur behutsam geändert werden, insbesondere, wenn japanische Mitarbeiter der Tochtergesellschaft schon zu Gründungszwecken in die Position eines vertretungsberechtigten Verwaltungsratsmitglieds gehoben wurden, schon eine Weile in der Position verblieben sind und womöglich persönlich gegenüber Banken, Vermietern etc. gebürgt haben. ; On 16th March 2015, the Ministry of Justice issued a notice abolishing the requirement that at least one representative of a company incorporated in Japan or branch offices registered in Japan be a resident there. Until then, although there is no provision stating expressly that the representative's address, which must be registered in the commercial register, has to be in Japan, the law was interpreted to have been passed presupposing that the representative director had a permanent address in Japan. Hence, in accordance with binding statements from the Ministry's Civil Affairs Bureau that "unless at least one representative director is a resident of Japan, the application for registration of establishment cannot be accepted", it was generally understood that all companies registered in Japan shall at any time have one or more representative directors with a permanent residence in Japan. This rule was applied equally to all foreign-affiliated companies registered in Japan. As a result, even if it was not necessary for operative purposes, foreign companies had to send staff of the mother-company to Japan or had to appoint a representative director hired in Japan only for that particular purpose. Now, as part of "Abenomics", the resident representative requirement has been abolished and new chances, particularly for foreign companies to re-structure the corporate governance of the Japanese subsidiaries, emerged. It is now possible to have all board members of a Japanese subsidiary be staff members of the mother company, not residing in Japan, and no newly-employed persons or third persons with no real interest in the company must be entrusted with these highly influential positions any more. However, existing structures involving such persons should only carefully be changed, in particular, if Japanese staff of the subsidiary have functioned as resident representative directors of a subsidiary for registration purposes and considerable time thereafter and probably have given personal guarantees to institutions such as banks, landlords etc.
This article discusses some of the results of a five-year-long (and ongoing) investigation of alternative approaches to the design of internet services, based on decentralized network architectures. In particular, the paper focuses on the implications of this research for the study and the practice of internet governance, inasmuch as architectural changes affect the repartition of responsibilities between service providers, content producers, users and network operators; contribute to the shaping of user rights, of the ways to produce and enforce law; reconfigure the boundary between public and private uses of the internet as a global facility. I argue that delving into the tensions between the dwarfs and the giants of the Net – between different technical and organizational architectures, and their political consequences – helps us to disengage from what is often a predominantly institutional view of internet governance, and give due emphasis to its less visible, infrastructure-embedded arrangements, its materiality and its practice.
