Governance Indicators and the Level of Analysis Problem: Empirical Findings from South America

2012 ◽  
Vol 43 (3) ◽  
pp. 505-540 ◽  
Author(s):  
Daniel W. Gingerich
Keyword(s):  
South America ◽  
State Capacity ◽  
National Level ◽  
Public Employees ◽  
Analysis Problem ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Governance Indicators ◽  
Development Outcomes ◽  
Bureaucratic Agencies ◽  
Level Of Analysis

Studies of the link between state capacity and development often utilize national-level governance indicators to explain fine-grained development outcomes. As capacity in some bureaucratic agencies matters more for these outcomes than capacity in others, this work proxies for capacity within the set of relevant agencies by using a measure of ‘mean’ capacity across all agencies in a polity. This practice is problematic for two reasons: (1) within-country, cross-agency diversity in capacity often overwhelms the variation encountered across public sectors considered in their entireties; (2) national-level reputations for capacity are not particularly informative about differences in capacity in functionally equivalent agencies in different countries. The article draws on the author's survey of public employees in Bolivia, Brazil and Chile to establish these points.

Water for Life

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Madeline Baer
Keyword(s):  
Human Rights ◽  
Citizen Participation ◽  
Urban Areas ◽  
Water Policy ◽  
State Capacity ◽  
National Level ◽  
Human Right ◽  
Political Will ◽  
Water And Sanitation ◽  
The Right

Chapter 5 provides a case study of the human rights-based approach to water policy through an analysis of the Bolivian government’s attempts to implement the human right to water and sanitation. It explores these efforts at the local and national level, through changes to investments, institutions, and policies. The analysis reveals that while Bolivia meets the minimum standard for the human right to water and sanitation in some urban areas, access to quality water is low in poor and marginalized communities. While the Bolivian government expresses a strong political will for a human rights approach and is increasing state capacity to fulfill rights, the broader criteria for the right to water and sanitation, including citizen participation and democratic decision-making, remain largely unfulfilled. This case suggests political will and state capacity might be necessary but are not sufficient to fulfill the human right to water and sanitation broadly defined.

Reflections on Contemporary South American Democracies

2001 ◽  
Vol 33 (3) ◽  
pp. 599-609 ◽  
Author(s):  
GUILLERMO O'DONNELL
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
South America ◽  
National Level ◽  
South American ◽  
Science Literature ◽  
Political Rights ◽  
Opinion Expression ◽  
Definition Of ◽  
The Third World ◽  
Indefinite Future

The occasion of honouring the memory of John Brooks, a great friend of Latin America, has helped me vanquish my initial reluctance to tackle a topic that is as broad, varied and still open-ended as the present situation of democracy in South America. As a first measure of my limitations, with the exception of some references to Costa Rica and Mexico, I will not discuss Central America and the Caribbean, not because I feel these regions are unimportant but because, simply, I do not know enough about them. However, when I feel that I am on sufficiently solid ground so as to refer to Latin America as a whole, I will do so.I begin by noting that in contemporary South America some countries satisfy the definition of political democracy. Those countries share two main characteristics. One is that they hold elections under universal adult franchise that, at least at the national level, are reasonably fair and competitive. These are standard criteria in the political science literature. However, having in mind the experience of Latin America and elsewhere in the third world, I believe that we should add that such elections must be institutionalised. By this I mean that all relevant actors expect that elections of this kind will continue being held in the indefinite future so, whether they like or not, it is rational for them to play democracy, not coup-making or insurrection. We should also stipulate that these elections are decisive, in the sense that those who are elected do occupy the respective offices and end their terms in the constitutionally prescribed way; they are not, as it has happened too often in Latin America, prevented from occupying office or thrown out of it because some supra-constitutional power feels that they are the ‘wrong people’.The second characteristic is the enjoyment of certain political rights, especially of opinion, expression, association, movement and access to a reasonably free and pluralist media. Of course, these and other rights are important per se; in addition, they are instrumental – necessary conditions – for the effectuation of the kind of elections I have just specified.

Good Governance, State Capacity, and the Millennium Development Goals

2011 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 339-360 ◽  
Author(s):  
Devin Joshi
Keyword(s):  
International Development ◽  
Millennium Development Goals ◽  
Good Governance ◽  
State Capacity ◽  
Statistical Correlations ◽  
Governance Indicators ◽  
Alternative Approach ◽  
The World ◽  
Development Goals ◽  
Per Capita

AbstractInternational development agencies argue that “good governance” is crucial to attaining the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), but there are many ways to define and measure good governance. The paper begins by examining the World Bank’s minimal state conception of governance and then proposes an alternative approach based on strengthening state capacity. The paper tests this framework by developing a provisional Millennium Governance Index (MGI) for 126 countries. In comparative empirical analysis, the MGI has noticeably higher statistical correlations than the World Bank’s governance indicators on six out of seven MDGs even after controlling for per capita income levels.

scholarly journals A 21st Century Vision for Neotropical Snake Systematics

2018 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
pp. 58
Author(s):  
Robert Alexander Pyron
Keyword(s):  
Species Richness ◽  
Natural History ◽  
Global Change ◽  
South America ◽  
Ecosystem Function ◽  
Museum Specimens ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
The Past ◽  
The Caribbean ◽  
Recent Synthesis

We live in an unprecedented age for systematics and biodiversity studies. Ongoing global change is leading to a future with reduced species richness and ecosystem function (Pereira, Navarro, & Martins, 2012). Yet, we know more about biodiversity now than at any time in the past. For squamates in particular, we have range maps for all species (Roll et al., 2017), phylogenies containing estimates for all species (Tonini, Beard, Ferreira, Jetz, & Pyron, 2016), and myriad ecological and natural-history datasets for a large percentage of species (Meiri et al., 2013; Mesquita et al., 2016). For neotropical snakes, a recent synthesis of museum specimens and verified localities offers a fine-grained perspective on their ecogeographic distribution in Central and South America, and the Caribbean (Guedes et al., 2018).

scholarly journals Measuring institutional respect and State capacities in South America. A relational analysis on four dimensions of the Worldwide Governance Indicators (2017-2018)

AWARI ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 1 (1) ◽  
Author(s):  
Nicolás Vladimir Chuchco
Keyword(s):  
South America ◽  
Good Governance ◽  
Private Companies ◽  
International Investments ◽  
Four Dimensions ◽  
Developed Economies ◽  
Governance Indicators ◽  
The World Bank ◽  
Relationship Network ◽  
The Relationship

The measurement of “good governance” has become an object of (e) valuation by international actors. In this regard, it has occupied the attention of investors, donors, private companies, development agencies, academics, journalists, governments, and credit organizations in the last 30 years, accompanied by a greater flow of international investments to under developed economies. Among these indicators, the Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) produced by the World Bank stand out. Although these numbers are not used directly by the Bank to condition resources, they are used by organizations such as the Millennium Challenge Corporation (MCC) to decide in which countries allocate financial aid based on the results of some of the dimensions of these indicators. For this reason, this work seeks to investigate the relationships networks that exist between the indicators and the organizations that participate in providing data, asking about what type of organizations produce inputs of certain dimensions, what relationships they have with each other and with others, in terms of participation, and where the central houses that produce these inputs are located geographically. For this, we have analyzed and characterized the relationship network of production about four dimensions of the WGI indicators, according to the organizations that provided data for South America during the period 2017-2018. The main results obtained indicate that a small number of international organizations in the Northern hemisphere have greater participation in the supply of inputs, highlighting private companies or organizations linked to them.

How State Presence Leads to Civil Conflict

2020 ◽  
pp. 002200272095706
Author(s):  
Luwei Ying
Keyword(s):  
Census Data ◽  
State Capacity ◽  
National Level ◽  
State Power ◽  
Civil Conflict ◽  
Policy Makers ◽  
Civil Conflicts ◽  
Province Level ◽  
Local Leaders

Political scientists and policy-makers have long argued that state weakness leads to civil conflict while enhancing state power helps prevent violence. Why, then, has increased state capacity worldwide recently coincided with more civil conflicts? This study argues that enhanced state presence at the sub-national level—a symptom of growing state capacity—may induce violent resistance from the established non-state powers such as local leaders and communities in the short term. Empirically, I conduct two analyses, one at the province level and the other at the ethnic group level. To measure state presence, I use accuracy of census data in the first analysis and global ground transportation data in the second analysis. Results demonstrate that increased state presence triggers civil conflict, particularly in the first five years of such increasing state presence, and this effect is stronger in remote and ethnically heterogeneous regions. Evidence also suggests that ethnic groups settled in peripheral regions are prominent resisters to state penetration. This paper thus expands prior understanding of the role of state power in civil conflicts.

Grounded procedures: A proximate mechanism for the psychology of cleansing and other physical actions

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-78 ◽  
Author(s):  
Spike W. S. Lee ◽  
Norbert Schwarz
Keyword(s):  
Cognitive Processes ◽  
Empirical Support ◽  
Grounded Cognition ◽  
Multiple Perspectives ◽  
Physical Processes ◽  
Psychological Variables ◽  
Sympathetic Magic ◽  
Proximate Mechanism ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Level Of Analysis

Abstract Experimental work has revealed causal links between physical cleansing and various psychological variables. Empirically, how robust are they? Theoretically, how do they operate? Major prevailing accounts focus on morality or disgust, capturing a subset of cleansing effects, but cannot easily handle cleansing effects in non-moral, non-disgusting contexts. Building on grounded views on cognitive processes and known properties of mental procedures, we propose grounded procedures of separation as a proximate mechanism underlying cleansing effects. This account differs from prevailing accounts in terms of explanatory kind, interpretive parsimony, and predictive scope. Its unique and falsifiable predictions have received empirical support: Cleansing attenuates or eliminates otherwise observed influences of prior events (1) across domains and (2) across valences. (3) Cleansing manipulations produce stronger effects the more strongly they engage sensorimotor capacities. (4) Reversing the causal arrow, motivation for cleansing is triggered more readily by negative than positive entities. (5) Conceptually similar effects extend to other physical actions of separation. On the flipside, grounded procedures of connection are also observed. Together, separation and connection organize prior findings relevant to multiple perspectives (e.g., conceptual metaphor, sympathetic magic) and open up new questions. Their predictions are more generalizable than the specific mappings in conceptual metaphors, but more fine-grained than the broad assumptions of grounded cognition. This intermediate level of analysis sheds light on the interplay between mental and physical processes.

Scaling-Up and Zooming-Out: Understanding How and When Participatory Institutions Matter

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jared Abbott ◽  
Benjamin Goldfrank
Keyword(s):  
Public Service ◽  
Service Provision ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
National Level ◽  
Democratic Governance ◽  
Quality Of Democracy ◽  
Fine Grained ◽  
Participatory Institutions ◽  
New Generation

The three books reviewed here represent a new generation of rigorous scholarship on participatory institutions (PIs). They demonstrate that – under certain conditions – it is possible to build large-scale PIs that strengthen democratic governance and improve citizens’ lives. Nonetheless, significant challenges remain. Due in part to the absence of either high-quality national-level comparative data or fine-grained subnational data, and in part to research design choices of existing studies, the literature remains limited in its capacity to make general claims about the causes and effects of large-scale PIs. Ultimately, the key question collectively addressed, but not fully answered, by the works reviewed is whether governments can build PIs that deliver on their promise to improve the quality of democracy and enhance public service provision on a large scale in diverse contexts beyond Brazil.

The well-being and productivity link: a significant opportunity for research-into-practice

2016 ◽  
Vol 3 (3) ◽  
pp. 289-311 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jill Miller
Keyword(s):  
National Level ◽  
Well Being ◽  
Economic Policies ◽  
Content Type ◽  
Implementation Gap ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Practice Implementation ◽  
Productivity Gains ◽  
Practical Implications ◽  
Level Of Analysis

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to position well-being as a necessary component of the productivity debate and highlights the need for a deeper understanding of the nature of such a link. It first considers productivity at the national level in order to show how this affects both the climate and the economic policies within which organisations operate. Design/methodology/approach The paper presents an overview of current research and practice in the area. It treats the organisation as the primary level of analysis, and before highlights some of the apparent challenges in conceptualising well-being. Findings The importance of well-being is rising up national and employer agendas. Organisations need people to perform at their best in a sustainable way. The paper argues that an organisation with well-being at its core will reap productivity gains. It supports the view in the literature that improvements at national level can only be made on the back of sophisticated strategies across numerous organisations. However, for this to happen shared actions and understanding of these challenges has first to be created and acted upon across institutions and organisations. There are notable costs of poor well-being to productivity, and identifiable benefits of promoting and supporting employee well-being for productivity. Practical implications There is a clear practice implementation gap. Some organisations are embracing the opportunities to invest in their staff, but those who make employee well-being a business priority and a fundamental part of how the organisation operates are in the minority. There is also an ongoing challenge of measuring the impact of well-being programmes which can inform ROI assessments and enable organisations to demonstrate the business benefits of employee well-being. Originality/value There remain many unanswered questions about both the nature of the link between well-being and productivity and the economic impact of an association. This paper sparks further interest in expanding the understanding of the well-being and productivity link or peripheral issues.

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