Suchergebnisse

"Traditional Institutions of Governance in Africa" published on by Oxford University Press.

Despite political scientists' growing appreciation of the ways in which institutions influence political processes, the "new institutionalism" has so far had a limited impact on the comparative study of welfare state development. This article discusses some broad issues concerning institutions and public policy by exploring the implications of one set of institutions — those associated with federalism — for the politics of social policy. Federal institutions encourage three distinctive dynamics: they influence the policy preferences, strategies, and influence of social actors; they create important new institutional actors (the constituent units of the federation); and they generate predictable policymaking dilemmas associated with shared decision‐making. Comparisons between social policy development in Canada and the United States are used to demonstrate that while federalism clearly matters, how it matters will depend on the characteristics of a particular federal system and the ways in which federal institutions interact with other important variables.

A global transition towards renewable energy is key for a sustainable future, and effective global governance is required to make this possible. However, global renewable energy governance is often regarded as fragmented and ineffective. Existing research has provided useful insights into the multiplicity of governance goals and diversity in institutions, but an understanding of underlying frames is yet lacking. Frame analysis explores how actors interpret and define a problem in different ways, based on which different solutions can be put forward of which some are more adequate than others. It thus provides a compelling new angle to the scientific debate on fragmentation. This paper therefore poses the question how the global energy challenge and the role of renewables are framed throughout the overall institutional complex for renewable energy, among different institutional types, and across individual institutions. To facilitate the search for an answer, it applies an innovative computational method that allows for a large-scale and multi-level frame analysis. The results demonstrate that renewable energy institutions currently prioritize climate change, with a stronger growing focus on universal access to energy services, while undermining concerns of energy scarcity. Nevertheless, frames vary strongly across different levels of governance, and among various types of institutions. The paper therewith forms an important contribution to our understanding of global renewable energy governance and its fragmented nature.

Engaging with gender equality norms is increasingly becoming a prerequisite for being considered a legitimate partner in international development cooperation. South Africa has often been acknowledged as having one of the world's most progressive constitutions for promoting gender equality. However, gender equality norms are heavily contested in the national political context. Situated in the gap between policy and implementation, this article explores how South Africa engages with gender equality norms as a leading actor in South–South Cooperation. It argues that contestations in competing normative environments and organizational restructuring processes are impeding the push for a policy guiding gender equality work in South Africa's development cooperation.

In a regime in transition with a legacy of civil war, in which institutions that govern a society are often destabilized as a host of state and non-state authorities vie for legitimacy in order to gain or maintain power, land often becomes central to such power struggles. This is the case in Myanmar - a country that is undergoing a regime in transition and which has faced challenges to unification since its independence in 1947 as a result of armed conflict between numerous ethnic minority groups and the Burman-dominant state. To understand how this impacts the local communities, research was conducted since 2013 about Chin State. This study uses the concept of "fragmented sovereignty" (Lund 2011), which refers to how state and non-state actors compete to define institutions that govern society, to explain the way not only the land itself, but also the institutions that govern it are fought over. Referred to as property institutions, this indicates that there are relations among social actors with regard to the land that "exist at the level of laws and regulations, cultural norms and social values" backed up by "the state or some other form of politico-legal authority" (Sikor and Lund 2009: 4). Like citizen rights, property rights are political in the sense that they influence who gets what resources. Both, "in their broadest sense exist only to the extent that they are produced, endorsed, and sanctioned by some form of legitimate authority," but since legitimacy must be "continuously (re)-established through conflict and negotiation" (ibid: 8), a central question over property in the context of state-building is: Who has the authority to sanction the rights that determine access and control to land, and what is this authority based on? Answering this question requires a conceptualization of the state as a "site of contestation" (Jessop 2007: 37) when the post-independence Myanmar state was formed. Ethnic groups saw themselves as forming distinct nation-states that opted to create a multi-national state called ...

Diese Studie untersucht die Transformation zu nachhaltiger Wasser-Governance anhand eines sozial-ökologischen Konflikts in Petorca (Chile). Die Autorin deckt die Mechanismen hinter einer marktbasierten institutionellen Struktur auf, die das Vertrauen zwischen den Akteuren schwächen sowie Kooperationen unterbinden und analysiert, inwiefern soziale Innovationen diese Mechanismen überwinden. Basierend auf einer Fallstudie mit umfangreicher qualitativer Interviewanalyse trägt die Arbeit sowohl zum theoretischen Diskurs des Institutionalismus und sozialer Innovationen als auch zu einer breiteren Diskussion über nachhaltige Wasser-Governance bei. Die Autorin ist promovierte Politikwissenschaftlerin mit Schwerpunkt auf nachhaltiger (Raum-) Entwicklung und langjähriger internationaler Arbeitserfahrung insbesondere in Bezug auf Chile.