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This thesis is composed of three chapters. In the first chapter, I analyze the effect of change in product market competition on board composition and evaluate its consequences on firm performance. Using industry-specific exogenous changes in product market competition, I test whether firms respond to changes in the demand for board independence. I find that firms decrease their level of board independence by 5.52 percentage points in response to an increase in product market competition. Moreover, by exploiting the 2003 NYSE and NASDAQ rulings in a triple-difference design, I show that constraint on firm's ability to adjust its board structure in response to changes in competition has negative consequences on its performance; firms which are constrained by the regulation to reduce their board independence experience a 10.5 percentage points lower return on assets (ROA) compared to unconstrained firms. This suggests that the decrease in board independence is in the interest of shareholders. By showing that regulation may actually harm some firms, the analysis sheds light on the costs of "one size fits all" governance regulations. In the second chapter, I shed light on the political ideology of the CEO as an important determinant of firm performance. Using individual campaign contribution data, I measure the political ideology of U.S. CEOs over the period 1994 to 2014 and analyze the relation between CEO ideology and firm performance. To identify the causal effect of CEO ideology, I use a combination of time-varying effects and novel instruments based on the ideology of the pool of potential CEO hires. Across all specifications, I find that firms with Republican CEOs, on average, 6 percentage point higher ROA compared to firms with Democrat CEOs. Several alternate explanations such as time varying differences at state-industry level, political connections and firm fixed effects do not explain away the results. In the third chapter, joint work with Antonio Vazquez Lopez (UC3M), we test whether focal firms whose CEOs sit on multiple boards can suffer decreases in performance due to transient attention-grabbing events in firms where CEOs sit as independent directors. We exploit extreme returns (positive and negative), extreme earnings and extreme volatility in firms where CEOs sit as independent directors and find that such distraction leads to an average decrease of approximately 1% of focal firm's ROA, Q, market returns and ROE. This effect is stronger for focal firms that are geographically more distant to firms where CEOs sit as independent directors, which suggests that distraction is costlier in such situations. Additionally, we show that distraction is greater for CEOs that sit on the audit committee or chair a major sub-committee. Finally, we show that these distraction events also lead to lower CEO compensation and higher probability of forced turnover. ; Programa de Doctorado en Empresa y Finanzas / Business and Finance por la Universidad Carlos III de Madrid ; Presidente: Andrés Almazán; Secretario: Pedro Gete; Vocal: Miguel Antón

To explain the institutional developments of the EC/EU, the traditional theories of European integration used to build their arguments around two opposite and well-known models of public authority, the International Organisation one vs. the State one: But both of these yardsticks have proven to be of limited heuristic power, faced with the peculiarity of the EC/EU institutional configuration. The deadlock that classic theories run into, then, was just bypassed by the following studies, that left behind the "ontological question" to focus on middle-range fields or specific dynamics, driven by the idea that the system had a unique nature, but the way it worked could be known and named. Thus, the post-ontological studies often referred to the European institutional level as a "governance system", to indicate that the EC/EU is able to allocate values by shaping trans-boundary policy processes, but through an institutional interplay hardly referable to some conventional political model. Thus, this paper aims (1) to analyse the different contents attached to the "governance" label in European studies since the fixing Hix made when talking of a "new governance agenda" in 1998, (2) to recast the ontological question in the light of the "new governance", a theoretical framework linking Rosenau's concept of self-sustaining trans-boundary "Spheres of Authority" to policy cycles now decoupled from the nation-state jurisdictions, and (3) to define and apply this framework to the institutional development of the EC/EU, to identify the reasons beneath the common project actual stalemate.

Scholars and practitioners are increasingly questioning formal disaster governance (FDG) approaches as being too rigid, slow, and command-and-control driven. Too often, local realities and non-formal influences are sidelined or ignored to the extent that disaster governance can be harmed through the efforts to impose formal and/or political structures. A contrasting narrative emphasises so-called bottom-up, local, and/or participatory approaches which this article proposes to encapsulate as Informal Disaster Governance (IDG). This article theorises IDG and situates it within the long-standing albeit limited literature on the topic, paying particular attention to the literature's failure to properly define informal disaster risk reduction and response efforts, to conceptualise their far-reaching extent and consequences, and to consider their 'dark sides.' By presenting IDG as a framework, this article restores the conceptual importance and balance of IDG vis-à-vis FDG, paving the way for a better understanding of the 'complete' picture of disaster governance. This framework is then considered in a location where IDG might be expected to be more powerful or obvious, namely in a smaller, more isolated, and tightly knit community, characteristics which are stereotypically used to describe island locations. Thus, Svalbard in the Arctic has been chosen as a case study, including its handling of the 2020 Covid-19 pandemic, to explore the merits and challenges with shifting the politics of disaster governance towards IDG.

International Journal of Advanced Computer Science and Applications(IJACSA), 4(2), 2013 ; Information and Communication Technology today has become an indispensable part in our lives, gaining wide application in human activities. This is due to the fact that, its use is less expensive, more secure, and allows speedy information transmission and access. It serves as a good base for the development and success of today's relatively young technologies. It has relieved people of manual day-to-day activities in such areas as businesses organizations, transport industry, teaching and research, banking, broadcasting, entertainment amongst other. This paper takes an overview study of e-governance, one of the most demanding applications of information and communication technology for public services. The paper summarizes the concept of e-governance, its major essence and some ongoing e-governance activities in some parts of the world. ; http://thesai.org/Downloads/Volume4No2/Paper_33-Egovernance_justified.pdf

International governance is increasingly defined by multilevel governance; with short-term projects, transnational cooperation between different groups, and unclear institutional space. In this situation, a key issue is the resilience of governance arrangements or the ability of governance arrangements to respond to political and ecological shocks to the system. Using international biodiversity governance, this study explores the question: What social and political processes produce resilient governance? This study argues that the key to understanding resilient governance is the network structure within and outside of the governance arrangement. Modular network structures are able to generate ideas from multiple sources, able to solve political problems on small scales, and able to insulate institutions from political contagion. Centralized network structures, in contrast, often result in top-down learning, politicization of the entire governance arrangement, and inability to adapt in response to problems. Those governance arrangements with limited network structures are unlikely to learn at all. The network structure theory argues that network dynamics are shaped by the structure and result in different learning and different adaptive outcomes. This argument is made in the context of international biodiversity governance which presents has a number of cases of resilience in difficult to explain cases. Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 look at the network impacts in 10 different international biodiversity governance arrangements. Chapter 4, Chapter 5, and Chapter 6 explore these dynamics in the context of the Mesoamerican Biological Corridor (MBC) and the Caribbean Challenge. These empirical cases present a complex and robust analysis showing that network structures, more than the governance institutions or national context, shape the resulting impact of governance arrangements. The implication of this finding is that effective institutions also need resilient modular networks in order to have lasting environmental impacts. Strong institutions can be constrained by centralized networks which limit learning opportunities following shocks. This study thus complements studies of effectiveness in international relations by providing a crucial dynamic piece of the overall situation. Response to shocks is shown to be shaped by network structure and importantly by early learning and network connections. Without these, effectiveness can be disrupted by political or environmental shocks.

Stabilisierungsfonds haben in den vergangenen Jahren, insb. während der letzten Energie- und Rohstoffpreishausse bis zum Sommer 2008, an Bedeutung gewonnen. In diesem Beitrag wird der Frage nachgegangen, welche strategische Rolle diese Fonds für die makroökonomische Governance von Ländern spielen. Es kann in zwei sehr unterschiedlichen Modellrahmen gezeigt werden, dass Stabilisierungsfonds die Lösung von Glaubwürdigkeitsproblemen der Politik entweder weniger dringlich machen oder herbeiführen. Beiden Modellrahmen ist gemein, dass die Verfügbarkeit von fiskalischen windfalls bzw. deren Anlage in Stabilisierungsfonds institutionelle Fortschritte behindern können. In diesem Sinn kann der in der Literatur seit langem bekannte Ressourcenfluch um eine institutionelle Komponente ergänzt werden.

Gegenstand dieser kumulativen Habilitationsschrift sind teils publizierte, teils zur Publikation vorgesehen Beiträge zur wirtschafts- und sozialwissenschaftlichen Theoriebildung im Bereich Governance und Public Policy. Die Beiträge befassen sich insgesamt mit theoretischen Grundfragen der Evolution von Staatlichkeit und den institutionellen Bedingungen der Steuerung politisch-ökonomischer Prozesse. Hierbei wird ein theoretisches Feld abgedeckt, dass von der ökonomischen Theorie der Wirtschaftspolitik über die politikwissenschaftliche Theorie des Wohlfahrtsstaates bis hin zur politischen Ökonomie der europäischen Integration reicht. Gemeinsam ist all diesen theoretischen Perspektiven die Zugehörigkeit zum Diskussionszusammenhang des neuen Institutionalismus in den Wirtschafts- und Sozialwissenschaften. Er wird in der vorliegenden Arbeit vor allem hinsichtlich seiner Erklärungskraft für volkswirtschaftliche und politologische Fragestellungen zu Rate gezogen. Mit den Bezügen zur den Konzepten der Governance und der Public Policy lässt sich die Arbeit daher insgesamt als Beitrag zur aktuellen staats- und steuerungstheoretischen Debatte im ökonomischen und politikwissenschaftlichen Institutionalismus werten. Beide Bereiche sind dann als Pfeiler eines gemeinsamen staatswissenschaftlichen Paradigmas zu verstehen. Die Arbeit setzt sich aus zehn Einzeltexten zusammen. Sieben liegen in englischer Sprache vor, drei in deutscher Sprache. In der vorliegenden kumulativen Habilitationsschrift sind diese Einzelbeiträge systematisch in fünf Teilen mit jeweils zwei Kapiteln angeordnet.

This article focuses on two sets of literature that have developed out of a shared concern with networks: the network governance school, which has been engaged in a set of macro-level questions about the extent to which networks are changing the nature of state-society relations; and the policy network analysis school, which has focused on the relationship between processes of interest intermediation and their impact on policy-making outcomes. We examine how each school is underpinned by important epistemological differences between positivist, interpretivist and critical realist approaches. We argue that these differences complicate and make contestable what would otherwise seem to be an intuitively attractive argument in favour of combining these two schools. In seeking to understand better how these two schools might be combined, we adopt a critical realist approach and make a distinction between vertical coordination on the state-society axis and horizontal coordination on the interest integration axis. This produces a typology of governance arrangements, which are evaluated according to the level of input and output legitimacy that they are likely to generate, two criteria that are taken as overarching measures of how governance outcomes vary between different governance arrangements. This provides the basis for a broader discussion of how these outcomes are conditioned by both a network's structural characteristics and the way in which it is managed.

Contested Governance in Japan extends the analysis of governance in contemporary Japan by exploring both the sites and issues of governance above and below the state as well as within it. This volume discusses the contested nature of governance in Japan and the ways in which a range of actors are involved in different sites and issues of governance at home, in the region and the globe. It includes chapters on global governance, local policy-making, democracy, environmental governance, the Japanese financial system, corruption, the family and corporate governance.

We identify an important feature of current digital governance systems: "third-party funded digital barter": consumers of digital services get many digital services for free (or underpriced) and in return have personal information about themselves collected for free. In addition, the digital consumers receive advertising and other forms of influence from the third parties that fund the digital services. The interests of the third-party funders are not well-aligned with the interests of the digital consumers. This fundamental flaw of current digital governance systems is responsible for an array of serious problems, including inequities, inefficiencies, manipulation of digital consumers, as well as dangers to social cohesion and democracy. We present four policy guidelines that aim to correct this flaw by shifting control of personal data from the data aggregators and their third-party funders to the digital consumers. The proposals cover "official data" that require official authentication, "privy data" that is either generated by the data subjects about themselves or by a second parties, and "collective data." The proposals put each of these data types under the individual or collective control of the data subjects. There are also proposals to mitigate asymmetries of information and market power.

This study describes the Indian corporate governance system and examines how the system has both supported and held back India's ascent to the top ranks of the world's economies. While on paper the country's legal system provides some of the best investor protection in the world, enforcement is a major problem with slow, over-burdened courts and significant corruption. Ownership remains concentrated and family business groups continue to be the dominant business model. There is significant pyramiding and tunneling among Indian business groups and, notwithstanding copious reporting requirements, evidence of earnings management. However, corporate governance in India does not compare unfavorably with any of the other major emerging economies: Brazil, China and Russia. India ranks high on the ease of getting credit, and has a well-functioning banking sector with one of the lowest proportions of nonperforming assets. The two main Stock Exchanges have among the highest number of trades in the world, and the relatively young Securities and Exchanges Board of India has a rigorous regulatory regime to ensure fairness, transparency and good practice. Most importantly, the corporate governance landscape in the country has been changing fast over the past decade, particularly with the enactment of Sarbanes-Oxley type measures and legal changes to improve the enforceability of creditor's rights. If this trend is maintained, India should have the quality of corporate governance necessary to sustain its impressive current growth rates.

This symposium examines the challenges and opportunities of recent efforts at embedding participatory governance. It draws together original research that engages theoretically and empirically with some fundamental questions: •What are the challenges of embedding participatory governance in policy-making? •What happens when social movements have opportunities to shape the institutionalization of PG processes? Can they reanimate the radical potential of citizen participation for social transformation? •How can the tensions between the different demands of lay citizens, organized civil society, political parties, and public officials be managed? In this introductory article, we provide a definition of embeddedness, outlining its spatial, temporal, and practices dimensions, in so doing distinguishing embeddedness from institutionalization, with which it has often been used interchangeably. Our aim is to delineate the breadth of the concept, drawing together its many uses into a systematic framework that can both guide future research and practical experimentation. In particular, our hope is to turn more attention to the informal practices that are essential for embedding. The contributions to the symposium shift attention from institutional design to embedding dynamics and how these work to open or close spaces for meaningful citizen input.

Many of today's public policies aimed directly or indirectly at regulating the behaviors of individuals and organizations provide for the implementation of a certain type of instrument which can be qualified as a label. They share some features with what the literature tends to identify as proper standards (e.g., they aim at defining the best practices, they may represent – at least – a symbolic resource for those who adopt them), but they also have some peculiarities, which we will present here. In this paper, we propose to analyze the characteristics and dynamics underpinning this mode of governance as part of a study of two particular public policy domains chosen for their complementarity as well as their contrasts: the fight against obesity, and sustainable consumption. In both of these fields, labels have become a preferred mode of governance – and even, we might say, a kind of standard. Based on Foucault (2004), we emphasize the fact that the logics of distinction, which regulate utilities and sanctions in a particular social field, are instrumentalized by public policy as an incentive to the actors to deliberately take action whose value is endorsed by a label. Hence, the aim and outcome of this mode of governance are not the uniformity of a field, but the ongoing creation of increasingly demanding labels that only some of the participants can hope to obtain.

Many of today's public policies aimed directly or indirectly at regulating the behaviors of individuals and organizations provide for the implementation of a certain type of instrument which can be qualified as a label. They share some features with what the literature tends to identify as proper standards (e.g., they aim at defining the best practices, they may represent – at least – a symbolic resource for those who adopt them), but they also have some peculiarities, which we will present here. In this paper, we propose to analyze the characteristics and dynamics underpinning this mode of governance as part of a study of two particular public policy domains chosen for their complementarity as well as their contrasts: the fight against obesity, and sustainable consumption. In both of these fields, labels have become a preferred mode of governance – and even, we might say, a kind of standard. Based on Foucault (2004), we emphasize the fact that the logics of distinction, which regulate utilities and sanctions in a particular social field, are instrumentalized by public policy as an incentive to the actors to deliberately take action whose value is endorsed by a label. Hence, the aim and outcome of this mode of governance are not the uniformity of a field, but the ongoing creation of increasingly demanding labels that only some of the participants can hope to obtain.

In dieser Dissertation wird die Hedgefonds-Industrie erstmals aus einer umfassenden Governanceperspektive betrachtet. Das Anreizgeflecht zwischen Hedgefonds und ihren wichtigsten Stakeholdern wird analysiert, um darzustellen, welche Interessenskonflikte zwischen Hedgefonds und ihren Stakeholdern, aber auch innerhalb der Stakeholdern-Society der Industrie existieren. Einige dieser Konflikte können das operative Risiko und somit die Kreditrisiken einzelner Fonds erhöhen und strahlen durch die verbreitete Intransparenz und die zunehmenden Ansteckungsgefahren innerhalb der Hedgefonds-Industrie auf weite Teile der Industrie ab. Diese Arbeit ergänzt die wissenschaftliche Literatur, indem erstmals die grundlegenden Interessenskonflikte der Hedgefonds-Industrie gegenüber ihren wichtigsten Stakeholdern (Investoren, Gläubigern & Gesellschaft) identifiziert, umfassend dargestellt und Lösungsansätze diskutiert werden. Zur Identifizierung und Analyse dieser grundlegenden Anreizprobleme und der daraus resultierenden Interessenskonflikte wird sich eines Datensatzes bedient, der bisher noch keine Behandlung in der wissenschaftlichen Literatur über Hedgefonds gefunden hat: Den Hedgefonds-Anklagen der U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) zwischen den Jahren 2000 und 2011. Der Blick aus der Stakeholderperspektive ermöglicht es, die Anreize, denen ein Fondsmanager oder verschiedene Stakeholder ausgesetzt sein können, besser zu verstehen, zentrale Anreizprobleme der Industrie zu identifizieren und potenzielle Lösungsansätze vor dem Hintergrund der Governancetheorie zu diskutieren. Zudem wird der Zusammenhang zwischen den Governanceproblemen und den systemischen Risiken der Hedgefonds-Industrie hergestellt. Es wird gezeigt, dass verbesserte Governancestrukturen, die transparenzerhöhend und anreizangleichend wirken, nicht ausschließlich Investoren und Gläubigern, sondern auch der Gesellschaft als zentraler Stakeholder der Industrie einen Mehrwert bringen können. Denn die Governanceprobleme, die noch immer Teile der Hedgefonds-Industrie prägen, wie immer neue und größere Betrugsskandale andeuten, zeigen auch, dass sie aus einer Governance- beziehungsweise operativen Perspektive für ihre wachsende Rolle im Finanzsystem noch nicht gerüstet zu sein scheint. Diese operativen Risiken können die Kreditrisiken vieler Fonds erhöhen und negative Auswirkungen auf systemrelevante Gläubiger haben, die im Brokerage/Depotgeschäft den Risiken einer Vielzahl von Hedgefonds ausgesetzt sein können. Im Lauf der vergangenen Dekade hat zusätzlich noch die Vernetzung innerhalb der Hedgefonds-Industrie und mit systemrelevanten Institutionen zugenommen. Daher sind nicht mehr nur die Kreditrisiken großer Fonds, sondern durch potenzielle Ansteckungsgefahren innerhalb der Industrie werden auch die Kreditrisiken kleinerer Fonds relevant, wenn diese korreliert ausfallen. So können Governanceprobleme in der Hedgefonds-Industrie durch die Erhöhung des operativen und des Kreditrisikos die systemischen Risiken der Industrie beeinflussen. Daher können durch geeignete Governancemechanismen den einzelnen Stakeholdern, der Wissenschaft sowie der Politik grundlegende Informationen und Steuerungsinstrumente zugänglich gemacht werden, die die Mess- und Steuerbarkeit von operativen Risiken erhöhen, potenzieller Überregulierung besser vorbeugen und Kredit- und systemische Risiken abschwächen.