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Involvement in the project of foreign experts on the "One Belt, One Road" initiative of the Renmin University of China has provided an opportunity to comprehend how and for what purpose information is formed on the initiative of Chinese President Xi Jinping, as well as the role of the mass media in the formation of a positive image of the proposed initiative. The study deals with the information component of the initiative of the People's Republic of China in the framework of the vector focused on the Russian Federation. More than five years have passed since Chinese President Xi Jinping announced in Astana, Kazakhstan a new Chinese initiative called "One Belt, One Road". From the reports of various Chinese agencies, it follows that the initiative of the People's Republic of China is quite successfully implemented in all areas. The forums held in Beijing in 2018 and 2019 showed that the main emphasis was made on the image component of the "One Belt, One Road" concept, which was a demonstration of the increased role of China as an independent center of power. According to some Chinese scientists, China no longer denies its desire to become a leader in the current world order. Moreover, while until recently China has been limited to economic domination, today its influence extends into the (geo) political sphere.

SPACERGY builds upon the need for planning authorities to develop new models to implement energy transition strategies in the urban environment, departing from the exploitation or reciprocity between space and energy systems. Several policies have been made by each EU nation, but effective and practical tools to guide the urban transformations towards a carbon-neutral future present several challenges. The first challenge is to confront long term changes in envisioning how a specific socio-cultural context can respond to the application of solutions for energy efficiency. Secondly, the engagement of communities in bottom-up approaches mainly includes the sphere of urban planning that underestimates the importance of relating spatial transformations with the energy performances generated in the urban environment. The third challenge regards the tools used for the assessment of the energy performance and the necessity of enlarging the scale in which energy demand is analyzed, from the scale of the building to that of the district. In this context, the project explores the role of mobility, spatial morphologies, infrastructural elements and local community participation in regards to the smart use of local resources. The project addresses a knowledge gap in relation to interactions and synergies between spatial programming, energy and mobility systems planning and stakeholder involvement necessary to improve models of development and governance of urban transformations.Based on detailed spatial morphology and energy use modeling, SPACERGY develops new toolsets and guidelines necessary to advance the implementation of energy-efficient urban districts. New toolsets are tested in three urban areas under development in the cities of Zurich, Almere, and Bergen, acting as living laboratories for real-time research and action in collaboration with local stakeholders. The results of this research project support planners and decision-makers to facilitate the transition of their communities to more efficient, livable and thus prosperous urban environments.

The implementation of urban Nature Based Solutions (NBS) projects is deeply determined by the novelty of the concept. Its innovation is both an opportunity and a challenge: as a new concept, it generates uncertainty due to lack of technical and operational preparedness, but it also allows to deploy innovative approaches, new ways to address old problems and more inclusive practices. Nature4Cities project has systematically conceptualized the barriers and drivers on NBS projects implementation by a review of the state of the art. To see how these barriers can be overcome by governance strategies, different urban and environmental governance models have been mapped and characterized to assess their suitability for different NBS projects. Five clusters have been identified where models are grouped according to the involved actors, their position in the spectrum from high to low government involvement and their level of participation. This theorical model has been applied to real cases to check the incidence of the different clusters. Results show that urban and environmental governance is a map where the different models coexist in different degrees regarding some key axes such as level of innovation, polycentric vs. monocentric, involved sectors, level of participation and scale. Collaborative, multisector, polycentric and adaptive governance models address significant number of previously identified cross-domain barriers showing their suitability. The work presented in this paper can be the basis to define new institutional and governance arrangements that will foster multi-stakeholder involvement, citizens' engagement, leveraging both public and private funding of NBS in cities. ; This work has been developed in Nature4Cities project that has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 research and innovation programme under grant agreement No 730468. The authors would like to thanks to Nature4Cities partners for the support received.

Efforts to revitalize the bureaucracy, including in institutional arrangements, good governance has become the main reference, especially in the context of building effective collaboration between 3 (three) main pillars, namely government, private sector, and civil society by carrying out values such as competence, transparency , accountability, participation, rule of law, and social justice. The transformation of government bureaucracy needs to continue to be directed into changes from old designs that are less conducive to new designs that are more conducive to continually developing innovation, managing innovation and managing risk and organizational integration in building collaboration and synergy. The transformation of government bureaucracy is not merely downsizing and procedural, but more fundamental to work patterns, organizational culture and strategic values developed. The transformation of government bureaucracy plays a strategic role in increasing national competitiveness, in institutional (institutional) approaches, 'traffic' of state administration from the executive 'down' to Administrative Policy, where organizational transformation with work culture and governance is the decisive determinant its success. The concept of e-governance is to create friendly, comfortable, transparent and inexpensive interactions between G2C-government to citizens, government and business enterprises (G2B-government to business enterprises) and intergovernmental relations (G2G-inter-agency relationship ) Revitalization of bureaucracy through e-governance offers an alternative strategy to change work patterns and bureaucratic behavior. The government's good will to implement e-governance in the era of industrial revolution 4.0, became a determining factor in its implementation. Then the Government policy through the Making Indonesia 4.0 roadmap, it turns out, is still facing obstacles, especially not enough human resources (HR) are sufficient in the managerial aspects of site management.

The UK Department for International Development's country office in Nigeria (DFID Nigeria) has gradually adopted a thinking and working politically (TWP) approach in its governance programming. The initial focus on strengthening analysis has progressively been linked to discussion about the country and programme strategy, as well as programme-management practices. Important lessons can be learned from this experience on how the TWP approach can be applied in practice. The article addresses three research questions: (1) To what extent have DFID Nigeria and its governance programmes adopted a TWP approach? (2) How has the TWP approach influenced the design and delivery of programming? (3) Has the application of the TWP approach enhanced the results of the DFID governance programming? Using project documentation and wider theoretical literature, but mainly relying on extensive participant observation within DFID Nigeria programmes, the article uses a historical perspective to outline how the TWP approach has been applied in Nigeria over 15 years of programme design, delivery, lesson-learning and refinement. Published evaluation reports are used to provide evidence of programme results. DFID Nigeria and its programmes have progressively adopted TWP principles. This has led to clear changes in country strategy and programme design, as well as programme-management practices. There is some evidence that the adoption of these principles has enhanced the results of DFID Nigeria programmes. By focusing on experimentation and "small bets," TWP has proven relatively successful in generating and supporting 'islands of effectiveness,' but has had more limited impact in terms of generating more systemic, transformational change. The results obtained in Nigeria using the TWP approach have depended not only on Nigeria's political economy but also on the political economy of the development agency and donor country. DFID Nigeria's ability to engage in critical self-reflection and to create an authorizing environment for ...

In 2010, the concept of destination management organization (DMO) was applied as an effort to improve the weakness of tourism management in Pangandaran. This concept stresses the form of collaboration among stakeholders who are involved in tourism from community groups, private sectors, and government. The stakeholders are led by a destination management organization: Forum Tata Kelola Pariwisata (FTKP/Pangandaran Tourism Governance Forum) which serves as a mediator, facilitator, and coordinator for the three groups of stakeholders. This research was conducted using a case study approach which was deliberately applied to a Pangandaran Village. Besides, this research also employed a mix method approach that practically combines quantitative and qualitative research methods aimed to find out the effectivity of stakeholders' collaboration in implementing the concept of DMO in Pangandaran. The results of this research show that collaboration among stakeholders in DMO-based tourism destination governance has run quite effectively. This is manifested by the existence of common goals, equality, and high commitment from stakeholders. FTKP leadership is fairly good to support collaboration among stakeholders. However, trust and communication among stakeholders need to be improved.

The aim of this thesis is to analyse the Finnish media discourse around LULUCF-regulation (land use, land use change and forestry) between 2017 and 2018. In Finland, the regulation is not a small matter, since it connects the Finnish forests to global climate politics closely. More specifically, this thesis concentrates on how science was referred to and utilized within this discourse. The case of the LULUCF regulation gives an excellent insight for that because environmental issues, including climate change, are vague and abstract to begin with and in the need of expert knowledge to be translated both to the decision-makers and to the public. Research done along this line is important in a wider perspective as the case presents an example of multifaceted environmental problem in the public spotlight. Finally, the main objective of this thesis is to explore the relationship between science and politics in climate action. This is done by reflecting the findings of this thesis with a wider global perspective in these times that are said to be so very crucial in climate emissions control. The research questions were, first, to identify the narratives within the discourse and, second, to identify how scientific authority was used within these narratives. By answering these questions guiding the main aim, it was possible to give some insights in understanding the complicated relationship between science and politics in environmental problems. World society theory works as the theoretical background explaining the rise of environmental regime and the expansion of international climate agreements. The epistemic governance approach complements the theory by guiding the focus on three dimensions of social world: ontology of the environment, identifications and norms as well as ideals. The data consisted of articles published in all five national newspapers as well as the Finnish government's press releases that mentioned 'LULUCF' and were published online, all in all 232 articles. The methods included discourse analysis, which allowed to study the language more closely, concentrating on words and their usage. In addition, the discourse is divided into narratives to make sense of the complicated and multifaceted discourse. The narratives constructed each stakeholders' values and aims, and they were treated as a way of interpreting communication and social life. Four types of narratives from the data are identified: (1) Development for Economic Prosperity, (2) Saving the Environment, (3) Protecting the Nation and (4) Fostering Cultural Heritage. In addition to the identified narratives and the use of science within them, the main finding of this thesis lay with gaining understanding of power and knowledge. They are closely intertwined even though the people in power do not necessarily have all the necessary information at hand. Science has reached all parts of human lives and experts are needed to work as interpreters to ordinary people and to the decision-makers. Politics at play determine who and what kind of knowledge gets the attention needed for policy change. The findings are in line with previous research and they highlight the hybrid nature of climate action both on national and global level.

Research Report #1: Collaboration between local governments and community-led initiatives can be considered a wicked problem. Municipalities in Transition is a grassroots policy innovation that looks for synergies by using systems thinking and finding innovative ways to govern transformative change.

The purpose of this article is to propose the integrated index of Public Governance efficiency based on the Fishburne's method, considering the impact's power and direction of the different sub-indexes (Worldwide Government Indicators) on macroeconomic stability and eliminating the issue of multicollinearity. The object of the study was 11 European countries that had two common features: 1) in the political sphere, during 1990–1992 the countries started the political transformation process by refusing the monopoly of the communistic regime; 2) in the economic sphere, the countries experienced transformation from planned to market economy. Based on these criteria, the following countries were selected: Lithuania, Latvia, Poland, Bulgaria, Croatia, Romania, Armenia, Belorussia, Georgia, Moldova, and Ukraine. The research findings proved a connection between the political and social determinants and the macroeconomic stability for the all the countries. Moreover, the research results confirmed the existence of a cycle of social and political conflict, which depends on inter-relation of Public Governance and the society, where the efficiency of Public Governance cannot be achieved without the support from the society, and the society cannot cooperate with non-effective Public Governance.