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This article reviews the orientation of the European regulation on pension fund governance in the international context of the OECD's recommendations. It outlines the features judged to be essential for a sound private pension scheme's governance. It then describes the orientation of the European regulations in this area and sets out some criticisms. The focus is on private sector 'defined-contribution' occupational pension plans managed by a pension fund, in light of the shared perception that the 'governance' issue is particularly sensitive for these types of schemes.

PurposeThis paper aims to assess the concept of managerial discretion with respect to its theoretical and empirical usefulness for corporate governance research.Design/methodology/approachThis paper scrutinises applied theoretical claims, definitions and methods, as well as a number of empirical studies on managerial discretion.FindingsTo date, no empirical definition of the concept has been presented and no measurement has been developed and tested for reliability and validity that contains all three factors of the managerial discretion concept, as proposed by Hambrick and Finkelstein (1987).Practical implicationsResearch on managerial discretion does not provide owners and directors of boards with any advice on granting top managers a high or low degree of discretion.Originality/valueThis paper concludes that corporate governance scholarship will improve if it abandons the concept of managerial discretion.

This study investigates the effect of globalization on governance in 51 African countries for the period 1996–2011. Four bundled governance indicators and four globalization (political, economic, social, and general) variables are used. The empirical evidence is based on instrumental variable quantile regressions. The motivation for using this estimation technique is that blanket governance–globalization policies are not likely to succeed unless they are contingent on initial levels of governance and tailored differently across countries with low, intermediate, and high levels of governance. The following findings are presented. First, globalization does, in fact, appear to promote good governance. Second, for the most part, the effect of globalization is higher in terms of magnitude in the bottom quantiles of the political, institutional, and general governance distributions. Third, the impact of globalization is overwhelmingly higher in terms of magnitude in the top quantiles of the economic governance distribution.

The paper discusses the co-evolution of the EU mode of governance and the objectives of European Union cohesion policy. As EU integration proceeds, collective decision-making in an increasingly diverse political arena has become a central concern for research on EU governance. The literature on experimentalist governance suggests consensus-seeking deliberation and policy-experimentation as two key mechanisms to reduce the trade-off between overall policy responsiveness and democratic legitimacy. However, this paper argues that the inconsistencies which result from making cohesion policy deliver the Lisbon Agenda and EU 2020 objectives growth are a characteristic of meta-governance rather than of reflexive adaptation. These findings emerge from an analysis of the cohesion policy programming periods since 1988 and the parallel developments in European Union governance.

AbstractParticipatory governance in developing countries is broadly viewed as an essential prerequisite for successful implementation of public projects. However, it poses many challenges for public bureaucrats in terms of their skills and willingness to engage citizens. Despite the growing evidence of the pervasiveness of participatory governance, research to date has not explored bureaucratic readiness to adopt participatory practices. This research presents findings of a bureaucratic readiness assessment for participatory governance in Bangladesh by exploring how public bureaucrats perceive the value of participation; how they are educated to collaborate with stakeholders; and the extent to which their attitudes are amenable to enhancing participatory governance. Our findings suggest that we can classify readiness in terms of both motivational and educational factors. The study has implications for how readiness can be developed in public officials that may assist in fostering participatory governance in Bangladesh and be informative to other countries experiencing similar issues.

Drawing from theories of regime interplay and social learning, this article investigates linkages between hybrid governance schemes and intergovernmental regimes. My analytic framework suggests that, by enhancing cooperation among stakeholders, transnational public-private partnerships will facilitate policy-makers' learning, and accordingly advance the formation of intergovernmental regimes. Here I use qualitative methods to examine the influence of the UNEP Global Mercury Partnership on negotiations over different components of the Minamata Convention on Mercury. Technical and scientific information provided by this partnership helped relevant policy-makers understand the problems to be addressed and some appropriate solutions, thereby accelerating the consensus-making process and shaping the features of certain provisions. I also compare the influences of different partnership areas, revealing that inclusive stakeholder engagement and boundary coordination between different governance schemes are two important conditions for transnational partnerships to promote cooperation in intergovernmental fora.

AbstractThe policy debate over embryonic stem cell (ESC) research in the United States mainly focuses on the extent to which the government ought to provide resources for that research. This article addresses the strategic use of network positions to mobilize an effective coordination system for lifting the moratorium on funding of ESC under the Obama administration since March 2009. By identifying patterns of interactions between members in a network of embedded ties, we can explore the major actors who play the role of brokers or entrepreneurs in stem cell research funding policy under the Obama administration. For that, this article utilizes social network analysis and the G&F brokerage roles framework to identify key brokers in facilitating coordination among various members engaged in funding human stem cell research in the governance network.

China's party‐controlled elite appointment system has been praised for contributing to growth and order in recent decades. Inspired by Mancur Olson's insight into elite incentives and governance, we examine how the Chinese practices of elite management affect the character of governance using unique survey and interview data on township leaders and social contention. We find that, first, externally appointed party secretaries experience more petitions and mass incidents during their tenure and are more likely to use coercion to deal with petitions than internally appointed secretaries. Second, these tendencies are moderated when externally appointed party secretaries are paired with internally appointed township heads We explore the implications of such behavioral differences and suggest our findings are of broad significance for understanding governance in China.