In this special issue, we explore child rights governance as the intersection between the study of governance and the study of children, childhood, and children's rights. Our introduction puts forward a set of theoretical points of departure for the study of child rights governance, engaging with scholarship on human rights, international relations, history, and governance. It links the individual contributions to this special issue with four central dimensions of child rights governance, namely: temporality, spatiality, subjectivity, and normativity.
In this Special Issue, we interrogate and evaluate the concept of institutional work in the domain of environmental governance, by bringing together diverse papers spanning a range of substantive and theoretical approaches. The papers apply the concept of institutional work across fields of regional development, water governance, climate change adaptation, and urban planning, and disciplines of planning, sociology, political science, geography, and anthropology. As a whole, the Special Issue contributes to a growing body of literature exploring the role of agency in processes of institutional change. This has implications for environmental governance scholarship, which emphasises the role of institutions across all scales from local to global and to understanding transformations in governance systems within which institutional change plays a central role.
Agrobiodiversity relates to humans and their environments. It is the result of interactions between humans and nature, and thus is simultaneously social and biological by nature. Without humans, agrobiodiversity would not exist. Seeds, as carriers of major agrobiodiversity components, are not mere material objects that exist outside of social relations: they are also sociobiological artifacts embedded in these relations. The multifaceted, highly dynamic realities of agrobiodiversity mean that those interested in questions of governance need to understand the limitations and political implications of the complementary and sometimes contradictory instrumental and relational perspectives on seeds; that is, the understanding of seeds as a production input or as the subject of a social network, in which agrobiodiversity brings together production and social linkages. International instruments aim to provide a legal basis for mediating competing interests and methodologies. In addressing governance, the global framing of these instruments refl ects the dynamics of agrobiodiversity in global socioeconomic and environmental changes. From the earliest recognition of the potential value of crop diversity, crop genetic resources were treated as public goods in the public domain. Breeding companies have opposed this treatment. Breeders sought exclusivity and reward for their creative activities in using genetic resources to create novel varieties. Governance of agrobiodiversity—defi ned by a set of relationships that infl uences the access to and conservation, exchange, and commercialization of agrobiodiversity—refl ects underlying value systems. Confl icting approaches (e.g., "stewardship" vs. "ownership" approaches) toward governance based on divergent value systems and rationales can be distinguished. It is important to identify the actors involved, from local to global, to understand the power dynamics that infl uence the interactions among these various actors and their ability to infl uence or control the management of agrobiodiversity. The governance of agrobiodiversity and the power dynamics involved are increasingly crucial in the context of rapidly changing farming and food systems, especially in the context of globalization, migration, and urbanization. This chapter elaborates an emergent research agenda, focusing on aspects of power relations in agrobiodiversity governance, agrobiodiversity and food systems, nutrition, taste and health, and the governance of genetic information.
This republished Special Issue highlights recent and emergent concepts and approaches to water governance that re-centers the political in relation to water-related decision making, use, and management. To do so at once is to focus on diverse ontologies, meanings and values of water, and related contestations regarding its use, or its importance for livelihoods, identity, or place-making. Building on insights from science and technology studies, feminist, and postcolonial approaches, we engage broadly with the ways that water-related decision making is often depoliticized and evacuated of political content or meaning—and to what effect. Key themes that emerged from the contributions include the politics of water infrastructure and insecurity; participatory politics and multi-scalar governance dynamics; politics related to emergent technologies of water (bottled or packaged water, and water desalination); and Indigenous water governance.
Wasserversorgungsstrukturen nehmen ein immer zentraleres Thema ein, noch dazu Wasser als eine Lebensnot-wendigkeit und als ein Menschenrecht, dass jedem gewährleistet werden soll. Besonders jetzt in Zeiten der zuneh-mend realisierbaren Verantwortlichkeit, die die Menschheit gegenüber zukünftiger Generationen spürt, muss die Wasserversorgung in Bezug auf Bevölkerungswachstum und Klimawandel nicht nur technisch, sondern auch or-ganisatorisch verbessert werden. Dabei spielen Governance Formen eine entscheidende Rolle. Wie Wasserversor-gung unter österreichischen Gemeinden organisiert werden kann in Bezug auf Governance Prinzipien und zwar genauer auf die OECD Prinzipien, ist Thema dieser Arbeit. Dabei soll die Versorgungsstruktur sowie Vor- und Nachteile von Governance Prinzipien anhand der OECD Prinzipen im oberösterreichischen Wasserverband "Un-tere Gusen" mit Hilfe zentraler Stakeholder analysiert werden. Vorteile ergeben sich vor allem bei den Transakti-onskostenersparnissen, weil keine Fixanstellungen benötigt werden, jedoch muss die Zusammenarbeit zwischen den Gemeinden in puncto fairer Verteilung der Zuständigkeiten sowie gerechte Kostenaufteilung etc. in wirtschaft-lich rentabler Weise für alle Beteiligten funktionieren. Water supply structure are becoming more important, also because water is a vital necessity for humans. Especially in times where people realize what kind of responsibility they have for future generations in accordance to human population growth and climate change, water supply structures should focus on improving organisationally. There-fore governance principles play an important role. The questions how water supply in Austrian villages can be organised in accordance to governance principles especially OECD principles will be answered in this thesis. Particularly supplying structures and the pros and cons of governance principles by reference to OECD principles will be analysed in the upper Austrian water federation "Untere Gusen" with the aid of central stakeholders. First advantage of ...
This report examines the actors engaged in economic governance in Myanmar, the factors that shape their authority, and the ways they can contribute to improved economic governance outcomes. It connects the MBEI, which focuses on the views and experiences of Myanmar businesses, with The Asia Foundation's work on governance, particularly reports such as "State and Region Governments in Myanmar." In this report, we lay a foundation for further research into best practices in economic governance in Myanmar. This future research will outline actionable strategies that can be adopted by subnational levels of government to improve economic governance outcomes.
Multi-stakeholder sustainability certification schemes have become a favorite instrument for applying good governance, though studies indicate their inefficiency at the producer level. In this study, we used a mixed-method approach to first, map the institutional context of independent oil-palm smallholders in rural Sumatra while, second, reflecting upon the impact of the Smallholder Standard proposed by the Roundtable on Sustainable Palm Oil on smallholder management practices. We hold that non-recognition of micro-scale perspectives within governance processes may partially explain noncompliance with certification principles among smallholders. The Smallholder Standard appears unable to mitigate challenges important for smallholders, who in turn cannot properly comply with it, due to problems including weather instability and high management costs. We suggest that certification schemes need to work on some overlooked but essential preconditions of good governance, namely gaining micro-level visibility and acceptance. ; Peer Reviewed
Governing through technology has proven irresistibly seductive. Everything from the Internet backbone to consumer devices employs technological design to regulate behavior purposefully by promoting values such as privacy, security, intellectual property protection, innovation, and freedom of expression. Legal and policy scholarship has discussed individual skirmishes over the political impact of technical choices-from whether intelligence and police agencies can gain access to privately encrypted data to debates over digital rights management. But it has failed to come to terms with the reality that "governance-by-design"-the purposeful effort to use technology to embed values-is becoming a central mode of policymaking, and that our existing regulatory system is fundamentally ill-equipped to prevent that phenomenon from subverting public governance. Far from being a panacea, governance-by-design has undermined important governance norms and chipped away at our voting, speech, privacy, and equality rights. In administrative agencies, courts, Congress, and international policy bodies, public discussions about embedding values in design arise in a one-off, haphazard way, if at all. Constrained by their structural limitations, these traditional venues rarely explore the full range of other values that design might affect, and often advance, a single value or occasionally pit one value against another. They seldom permit a meta-discussion about when and whether it is appropriate to enlist technology in the service of values at all. And their policy discussions almost never include designers, engineers, and those that study the impact of socio-technical systems on values. When technology is designed to regulate without such discussions-as it often is-the effects can be even more insidious. The resulting technology often hides government and corporate aims and the fundamental political decisions that have been made. In this way, governance-by-design obscures policy choices altogether. Such choices recede from the political as they become what "is" rather than what politics has determined ought to be. This Article proposes a detailed framework for saving governance-by-design. Through four case studies, the Article examines a range of recent battles over the values embedded in technology design and makes the case that we are entering an era of policymaking by "design war." These four battles, in turn, highlight four recurring dysfunctions of governance-by-design: First, governance-by-design overreaches by using overbroad technological fixes that lack the flexibility to balance equities and adapt to changing circumstances. Errors and unintended consequences result. Second, governance-by-design often privileges one or a few values while excluding other important ones, particularly broad human rights. Third, regulators lack the proper tools for governance-by-design. Administrative agencies, legislatures, and courts often lack technical expertise and have traditional structures and accountability mechanisms that poorly fit the job of regulating technology. Fourth, governance-by-design decisions that broadly affect the public are often made in private venues or in processes that make technological choices appear inevitable and apolitical. If we fail to develop new rules of engagement for governance-by-design, substantial and consequential policy choices will be made without effective public participation, purposeful debate, and relevant expertise. Important values will be sacrificed-sometimes inadvertently, because of bad decisions, and sometimes willfully, because decisions will be captured by powerful stakeholders. To address these critical issues, this Article proposes four rules of engagement. It constructs a framework to help decision makers protect values and democratic processes as they consider regulating by technology. Informed by the examination of skirmishes across the battlefields, as well as relevant Science and Technology Studies (STS), legal, design, and engineering literatures, this framework embraces four overarching imperatives: 1. Design with Modesty and Restraint to Preserve Flexibility 2. Privilege Human and Public Rights 3. Ensure Regulators Possess the Right Tools: Broad Authority and Competence, and Technical Expertise 4. Maintain the Publicness of Policymaking These rules of engagement offer a way toward surfacing and resolving value disputes in technological design, while preserving rather than subverting public governance and public values.
Good governance is always concerned with directing, controlling, and influencing public affairs. The government performs that function, to regulate society and business actors by using public policy. In terms of public goods arrangements, the government is required to have consistency of bureaucrats, from top bureaucrats to street level bureaucrats. This consistency is essential to good policy implementation. This study finds relevance between the role of bureaucrats in the field and the implementation of public policy. In the case of black public goods (prostitution) arrangements, the role of bureaucrats in the street level should be the policy of prohibiting prostitution, but these bureaucrats actually do the reduction and modification of policies with their own wisdom. Ultimately, prostitution is still consumed by the public in disguise. Reduction and modification of prohibited prohibition policies, which can be called 'real policies' to organized and manage these public black goods stakeholders. This study recommends one thing. The achievement of good governance in the regulation of public goods, should heed the policy-making process that adopts the votes of bureaucrats in the field, because basically, they are the real decision-makers. Policy-making based solely on 'desk-over' analysis, will be forced to face modifications and policy reductions, which have been decided. It is a failure of policy implementation. Keywords: Good Governance, Prostitution, Bureaucrats 'Street Level'
In this article, we present measures of democratic governance to give a sense of how Latin American countries have fared since the early 1990s. The rest of the book discusses reasons for success and failure in democratic governance, but first it is necessary to provide a descriptive map of which countries have been more or less successful on which dimensions of democratic governance. óur evaluation is concerned with the extent to which democracies enhance citizen well-being and protect citizen rights. We provide an empirical mapping of how Latin American countries have fared since the early 1990s on a wide array of governance issues that are infrequently brought together to provide a medium time perspective. In addition to providing this descriptive map, we hope to stimulate thinking about how to conceptualize and measure democratic governance. the closest existing measures are of effective governance in general (e.g., Kaufmann, Kraay, and Mastruzzi 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008) rather than specifically democratic governance, and of the quality of democracy based on its procedural ideals (diamond and Morlino 2005; Levine and Molina 2006). Our enterprise is different, and we believe it merits an effort to create a systematic approach to measurement. ; En este artículo introducimos las medidas de la gobernanza democrática, para así analizar cómo los países latinoamericanos se han desenvuelto desde los inicios de los años 90. El resto del libro Democratic Governance in Latin America, discute las razones para el éxito y fracaso en la gobernanza democrática, pero primero es necesario proveer un mapa descriptivo de los países que han tenido mayor o menor éxito en las diferentes dimensiones de la gobernanza democrática. Nuestra evaluación está enfocada en la medida en que las democracias mejoran el bienestar ciudadano y protegen los derechos de los mismos. Así, proveemos un mapeo empírico de la manera cómo los países latinoamericanos se han desempeñado en varios temas de gobernanza, los cuales en conjunto permiten establecer una perspectiva a mediano plazo. Adicionalmente, queremos promover la discusión sobre la forma cómo debería conceptualizarse y medir la gobernanza democrática. Las medidas existentes hacen referencia a la gobernanza en general (e.g., Kaufmann, Kraay, and mastruzzi 2003, 2005, 2006, 2007, 2008) en lugar de basarse en la gobernanza democrática en particular y en la calidad de la democracia basada en los ideales de procedimiento (diamond y morlino 2005; Levine y molina 2006). Nuestra iniciativa es diferente y creemos que responde al esfuerzo de crear un acercamiento sistemático para la medición.
This paper reviews the political economy of extractive resources and the associated resources sector governance agenda. The consensus that good sector governance improves the developmental impacts of extractive resources exploitation is premised on the understanding that institutions matter for development. However, there is no straightforward answer to the question of what exactly 'institutions' are, how they change, or how they can be made to change to become more supportive of an extractives-led development agenda. The paper suggests reframing the political economy of extractive resources away from the negative question how can poor outcomes be prevented? and towards the positive question how can positive institutional change for better outcomes be brought about? It organizes and presents the main strands of a substantial body of literature that can help to inform answers to these questions.
The concept of good governance plays a very important role in the modern government system. Today people are conscious and they always aware of the day to day functioning of the government. So the government also tries to satisfy the general people. Where good governance creates an environment which fosters strong and equitable development and it is an essential to complement to sound economic policies. With the advent of the new economic order, manifested in the form of globalisation, liberalisation, and Privatisation has brought in a new governance paradigm prescriptively being referred to as good governance. Since the 1990s the concept of good governance has become one of the most widely used in debates in development, public policy and international relations. The first part of this paper is related to be an overview of Governance, Good Governance in India and second part of this paper is related to Good governance and development with different sectors. Article DOI : 10.5958/2347-6869.2017.00008.5
The purpose of the article is to assess how the provisions resulting from international programmatic norms in the field of human genetic data are implemented. The presented study, adopting the perspective of institutional rationalism extended to the paradigm of legalism, considers examples of the implementation of these standards in selected legal systems – Germany, the United States of America and France. The selection of the research paradigm is preceded by a theoretical introduction, which presents three ways of conceptualizing the notion of soft law in the legal sciences. Following an outline of this legal regime in positivism, and the theories of rationalization and constructivism, the author focuses on the provisions of the International Declaration on Human Genetic Data of 16 October, 2003, which are compared with the legislative initiatives of Germany, the United States of America and France, to show the influence that the choices of states has on selection of the implemented standards and how they are implemented.
Using a qualitative methodology (interviews), we examine the relationship between the effectiveness of corporate governance mechanisms and elitist interventions. In doing this, we identify three elitist groups – political, cultural and religious, and investigate how they shape the legitimacy and effectiveness (or otherwise) of the institutional drivers of corporate governance in Nigeria. We caution the widely-held notion in the literature which suggests that institutions act as a check on the behaviour of elites and influence how elites compete and emerge. Alternatively, we argue that elites, in the presence of institutional voids, can invent, circumvent and corrupt institutions.
