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This study addresses the research question of how the tensions between urban commons and 'the public' might be resolved through boundary spanning. Urban commons offers a new lens for public managers and politicians to rethink ways that urban resources could be governed to enhance public problem-solving and co-create public-value outcomes. Through in-depth case analyses of commoning initiatives at five public markets in Hong Kong, we find that tensions with bureaucratic modes of governance, marketisation of public space, land politics, and little trust in the government were major barriers of commoning. The results also pointed to the unique boundary spanning strategies to facilitate commoning such as using co-creation and political framing to align community interests and public agenda and using legal framing to enable the reallocation of property rights among property owners and community actors. This research also revealed distinct dynamics of boundary spanning in illiberal democratic systems.

The South Pacific region has become a top foreign policy priority for Jakarta. This essay explains Indonesia's utilisation of the cultural approach in its diplomatic engagement with the South Pacific. Cultural dissemination as a tool of international relations is scantly studied even though its use in diplomacy has successfully forged mutual understanding between people of discrete backgrounds. Indonesia uses a cultural approach to catch up diplomatically in its neighbouring, but previously overlooked, region and to address its 'poor image' problem that has persisted there for more than three decades. The cultural approach is intended to complement political and economic approaches. This study aims to bridge the gap in the literature vis-à-vis the role of culture in shaping foreign policy goals. Indonesia undertakes this 'soft diplomacy' based on its long-term orientation toward its national identity, politico-business and strategic interests. The Indonesian government is optimistic that cultural diplomacy will succeed in enhancing Indonesia's status in this zone.

AbstractSince its creation a decade ago, the Pacific Alliance has established itself as one of the most important regional blocs in Latin America. Its free‐market orientation, clearly neoliberal, and its pragmatic decision‐making strategy have been highlighted as its main strengths. This article will demonstrate that, despite the ideological changes that have taken place in its members, the Alliance will continue to be an important tool in these members' respective foreign policies. Precisely because of its pragmatism, the coming to power in Peru and Chile of governments critical of neoliberalism did not affect the development of the Pacific Alliance. Likewise, the political changes that have occurred more recently in Chile, Colombia, Mexico, and Peru do not seem to imply a weakening of the of it. By contrast, following its pragmatic profile, the new ideological framework prevailing in the Alliance could serve to face the difficult situation and advance in bloc's process of deep integration.

Summary
The growth of human activity in outer space is attracting more International Relations (IR) scholar's attention, enabling an understanding of the involvement of specific groups of actors and the dynamics of political negotiations that lead to concluding agreements on using outer space for peaceful purposes. This article provides analysis based on the triangulation of qualitative data gathered via document analysis and in-depth semi-structured expert interviews to gain insight into the involvement of the actors responsible for the negotiations that led to the Artemis Accords and their diplomatic communication style. The results identified different uses of public and private diplomatic communication for advancing norms of behaviour and transparency. Negotiators used public diplomatic communication in order to influence foreign governments on the need for norms of behaviour and transparency to further peaceful space exploration beyond low Earth orbit. Private diplomatic communication facilitated the inclusion of commercial partners.

On 10 May 1981, French voters elected a socialist president, François Mitterrand, whose programmes promised to change their daily lives. Less than two years later, his government definitively endorsed economic austerity. The adverse international context, it was argued at the time, forced France to prioritise its European commitments over radical reform of capitalism. Since then, most commentators have interpreted this decision either as a betrayal by the socialist elites or as a symbol of their economic incompetence. This article reappraises these narratives. Based on archival research and a large body of lesser-known critical French-language scholarship, it contends that the 1983 austerity plan was neither a sudden shift nor a neoliberal turn. Without denying the crucial political and symbolic dimensions of the decisions of the left in 1983, the article also shows that the crucial stages of the liberalisation of French capitalism occurred in fact later in the decade.

In recent years, the EU Youth Dialogue (EUYD) gained significant popularization as an important political mechanism through which young people in dialogue with policymakers from the local to the EU level jointly formulate youth policies. In an ethnographic study of the sixth cycle of the EUYD, I applied the Foucauldian analytics of government to analyze how the voice was constructed. In contrast to the representations that EUYD annuls hierarchies and offers a space for equal discussion between young people and policymakers, thus producing a genuine voice, I argue that the construction of the voice is always under the influence of various power relations that form specific voices. I illuminate how, through concrete techniques and micro-practices, EUYD worked as a disciplinary technology that sought a docile voice of the youth and at the same time offered a space for shaping the subjectivity of young delegates as active and responsible EU citizens.

The gender-blind 'workless' frame has been increasingly prominent in UK welfare discourse in recent decades and has played a significant role in the political justification of Universal Credit – a key plank of UK welfare reform since 2013. Meanwhile, Universal Credit has been highlighted as problematic for gender equality. This article seeks to 'fill in the middle' between the use of the 'workless' frame in recent welfare discourse, including at the agenda-setting stage of Universal Credit, and the gendered implications of Universal Credit. It does this by analysing how the frame functions in government evaluation frameworks and impact assessments (including equality impact assessments), and in the implementation of Universal Credit (drawing on secondary analysis of interviews with claimants and focus groups with welfare practitioners). The analysis suggests that the 'workless' frame is promoting gender rowback by de-gendering welfare, devaluing care – particularly that performed by lone parents – and undermining the sharing of care in couple households.

AbstractThis paper introduces mukaddesatçılık as a Cold War ideological position that reconciles Turkish nationalism, religious conservatism, and Islamist revivalism. Mukaddesatçılık channels senses of disempowerment and alienation among people with Islamic and nationalistic sensibilities to a sense of ressentiment against the Turkish modernization process. The paper analyzes mukaddesatçılık's ideational and emotional components based on the writings of Necip Fazıl Kısakürek. In addition to being the name-father of the concept, Kısakürek was distinguished from other Islam-inspired conservative intellectuals by his appeal to popular mobilization around mukaddesatçı ideology through his eloquent and powerful speeches and poems. The paper argues that Kısakürek's mukaddesatçılık reconstructed Muslimness as the political identity of the popular masses, who are the supposed victims of the Turkish modernization process, to mobilize them against the so-called Western-minded modernizing elite. Mukaddesatçılık informs the current populist policies of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's government that seek to maintain the divisive polarization between religious and secular identities.

AbstractWhile the Chinese government's responses to COVID‐19 since its outbreak have been widely discussed, scant attention has been paid to the cross‐regional variation in China in handling the pandemic in the early stage. This article adopts and synthesizes the theory of regionally decentralized governance and the institutional collective action dilemma framework to offer a novel analytical characterization of the pattern of sub‐national governments' counter‐COVID‐19 initiatives in different policy areas and highlights the peer effect and regional competition dynamics. We provide three brief case studies to illustrate various institutional collective action dilemmas under this framework that emerged in pandemic responses and must be addressed through re‐centralization. Despite its focus on China's regional responses to COVID‐19, this paper prompts the construction of a broad analytical framework for precipitating a better understanding of the complex structure of China's political and governance system in a time of crisis.

This paper outlines a theoretical perspective informed by the field of public choice, using empirical elements as examples. The field of public choice has been shaped by many thinkers and strives to understand and explain political behavior from economic motivations such as voters, candidates, parties, and bureaucrats. This approach is aligned with methodological individualism and was created as a reaction to the notion that governments act for the benefit of the common good. In this paper, we propose elements to build a model to analyze partisan competition by transposing elements from Porter's Five Forces Model. This model has been applied for decades to competitive analysis among firms in the fields of economics and management. Economics, through Public Choice theory, postulates an "electoral market"; in this arena, parties and candidates compete for ballots ("preferences revealed," like prices). In management, there is discussion about strategies and strategic management in the competition among firms.

Since the early 2010s, a low-profile "dig deep and reach wide" campaign led by local Chinese Communist Party (CCP) committees has unprecedently institutionalized and embedded academic opinions into the regimes' decision-making processes. This research aims to deepen the existing understanding of the intricate relationship between players in the CCP's decision-making process by analysing the Party's deliberation on scholarly opinions through an academic lens. It argues that the local Party committees' incentives to incorporate academic opinions into their information channels are not only a reaction to the central CCP's increasing need to "reach wide" for high-quality and critical policy proposals but are also a move to seek political endorsement from the central authorities. This process has transformed government–academic relations in China from a patron-client model to one of increasing interdependence in which Chinese academia has become increasingly attuned to the thinking and needs of the CCP. (China Q/GIGA)

The proliferation of provinces and districts in Indonesia since 1998 has led to an array of new local laws across the country. This study focuses on how laws made at the national level become enacted at the local level. We offer a cross-comparison of three case studies of the implementation of smoke-free area regulations, as mandated by Government Regulation No. 109/2012. We investigate this process in Aceh province and the cities of Bandung and Malang, exploring the process of law creation and the context that influences it. We find that local political dynamics shaped unique regulations and outline how these differences manifested, both in the law-making process and in its outcomes. We also reflect on the decentralised law-making system, arguing that top-down diffusion of policy is problematic, with the case studies raising concerns in terms of inconsistencies due to localised variations, as well as inefficiencies and tobacco industry influence. (JCSA/GIGA)

This article argues that Karl Lauterbach accomplished the office of federal secretary of health mainly due to his Twitter activities and the concomitant exposure in political TV talk shows . Lauterbach had little intraparty support after his failed bid for SPD leadership . He did not hold a senior office within his parliamentary group or within the health policy community . The Land party of North Rhine-Westphalia had placed him on a hopeless position of the Land list for the federal elections . Finally, he played a minor role in the coalition negotiations and did not lead the talks on health policy for his party . With a view to all known informal rules for the selection of government ministers, he was certainly not part of the pool of likely candidates . The detailed quantitative analyses of Lauterbach's Twit ter and media activities show that it was most likely this self-generated public visibility which explains his appointment .

China's environmental crackdowns under Xi Jinping have led to a sweeping shutdown of private enterprises. To circumvent this, enterprises have developed different survival strategies including direct lobbying to government officials and indirect lobbying through business associations. Based on comparative case studies of environmental lobbying in Chinese cities, our research finds that larger enterprises, enjoying more economic leverage, tend to lobby directly using their own political connections to sway environmental enforcement. By contrast, smaller enterprises are excluded from these clientelist networks and have to lobby through business associations, the effectiveness of which hinges on the support of large enterprises. Therefore, we argue that although the Chinese government's increasingly stringent environmental policies have shrunk the lobbying (and living) space for private enterprises, the existence of environmental clientelism protects economically powerful and politically connected private enterprises but sacrifices the others in the implementation of environmental policies. (China Q / GIGA)

ABSTRACT: Ireland's answer to transitioning, greening and securing energy production is essentially to develop offshore wind, thereby leveraging its large maritime territory. Ireland supplies and runs an all-island grid, and has export potential to other EU countries by means of interconnectors. This article argues that energy transition is an opportunity for Ireland to rank as a key energy supplier and technological leader for offshore wind. Reaching these positions requires a range of political and industrial measures to achieve strategic management of Irish waters. The Irish government, together with the national electricity company, the Electricity Supply Board, is now rolling out a roadmap of programmes and investments to dramatically increase offshore wind share in the national energy mix by 2030. A very clear governmental transition strategy, the recent launch of several infrastructure construction works and significant financial firepower, combined with strong EU support, give confidence that Ireland can deliver on its objectives.