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COMPARING LOCAL GOVERNANCE: TRENDS AND DEVELOPMENTS


Bas Denters and Lawrence E. Rose (eds)
Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, xiv + 293 pp., £18.99 (pb) ISBN: 0333995562

PurposeTo identify the organisations that provide global governance within the sports industry, to discuss their role, and to suggest that they have self‐governance problems due to both their evolution and the massive commercialisation of sport of recent decades.Design/methodology/approachAn empirical‐based argument is conducted. Standing at the apex of a hierarchy of national governing bodies and playing organisations, global sports organisations (GSOs) are defined and classified in terms of their governance functions, their commonalities and differences and their interconnections described and analysed. The GSOs for soccer, the Olympics and athletics are used as illustrative cases. Deficiencies in the small sports governance literature are identified. It is argued how the GSOs have maintained their authority as governance organisations despite being private organisations. Hirschman's "Voice, exit and loyalty" model is offered as a partial theoretical interpretation of their situation.FindingsAlthough one of the GSOs' original major functions of formalising international sport is now complete, they have retained not only their sport governance monopolies and authority but also the original structures designed for amateur sport. This creates problems when the governance monopoly can be used as a revenue device.Originality/valueSport is an important part of global culture and an industry worth hundreds of billions of dollars where accusations of corruption are common but global governance is little examined. The GSOs, present‐day commercial roles and enormous revenues create unresolved governance problems and these are described.

"This paper is a snapshot of the potential of Chinese environmental NGOs to
effectively address environmental problems and needs, alone and in partnership
with others. As environmental NGOs have only be on stage for the last ten years
or so and as they undergo dynamic changes, a thoroughly conducted scientific
analysis about the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and risks is not possible
yet. However, as the author has more than six years working experience with
different Chinese environmental NGOs across the country, some empiric
findings can be given, and some trends and tendencies be predicted.
The paper starts with a look at the history of NGOs in China with a specific
focus on environmental NGOs, followed by problems and chances caused by the
present legal status of the groups. It then describes the main working areas of
Chinese environmental NGOs, illustrating them by giving some representative
examples. After a brief analysis, the paper proposes current trends and
tendencies about the development of China's environmental NGOs. The main
trend is that Chinese NGOs, independently on their origin (grass root, semistate
organizations or Government-organized non-profit environmental
organizations) will gain more respect and influence in both environmental
awareness raising and as competent partners in policy formulation and law
enforcement, if the State institutions concerned will involve them in planning
and developing processes in an early stage and assist them in their capacity
building. NGOs in this paper means citizen and not-profit organizations, such as charities, social organizations, environmental groups, intermediary groups, and so forth." (author's abstract)

"This paper explores the role of social capital and governance in rural development within Slovensky Raj National Park. Based on the theory of Common Pool Resources and Network Governance, the case study explores the external and internal influences on cooperation. Current decision making in the Park is still affected by post socialist relations. In particular inefficient institutional design and non-robust governance of the resources have resulted in over-exploitation of natural resources and treating common property as open-access. On one hand, evidence emerged on domination of interpersonal trust and failure of institutional design. These were found as barriers for the National Park to be viewed by various actors as an asset. On the other hand, municipal and tourism networks show that cooperation is gradually moving from being externally to internally driven, while displaying characteristics of bottom-up development. A hierarchical governance structure is thus slowly opening up, shifting towards networks." (author's abstract)

"Angesichts der Globalisierung und der Erosion nationalstaatlicher Steuerungsfähigkeit wird unter dem Begriff Global Governance politikwissenschaftlich über die Möglichkeiten neuer internationaler Regelsetzung gestritten. Bislang wird dabei Globalen Gewerkschaften und transnationalen industriellen Beziehungen kaum Bedeutung beigemessen. Umgekehrt hat die Governance-Debatte bisher die Industrial Relations- und Gewerkschaftsforschung kaum erreicht. Der vorliegende Artikel will die teildisziplinären Suchbewegungen zur Identifikation neuer internationaler Regulationsmechanismen und die Möglichkeit ihrer Zusammenführung im Governance-Konzept diskutieren. Es wird argumentiert, dass Gewerkschaften genauso wie andere gesellschaftliche Akteure eine Artikulations-, Steuerungs- Partizipations- und Legitimationsfunktion ausüben und damit einen Beitrag zur Etablierung einer 'Weltsozialordnung' leisten. Rudimentäre Ansätze eines globalen sozialen Regelwerks lassen sich feststellen, wenn gleich internationale Regulationsgewinne die Steuerungsverluste innerhalb des Nationalstaats - gerade in der Tarifautonomie und Wirtschaftspolitik - nicht kompensieren können. Es teilt zudem die Strukturfehler der Global Goverance-Architektur insgesamt: nämlich begrenzte Reichweite, Implementations- und Demokratiedefizite." (Autorenreferat)