Key Actors in the Management of Crises: International and Regional Organizations

Author(s):  
Eva-Karin Gardell ◽  
Bertjan Verbeek

In crisis-ridden times, when events like the COVID-19 pandemic, acts of terrorism, and climate change-induced crises are making constant headlines, states, businesses, and individuals alike look to international organizations (IOs) to help them weather the storm. How can the role of IOs be better understood in the context of crisis and crisis management? For a start, it requires a distinction between objective and subjective crisis perspectives in studying IOs. From an objective perspective, IOs are examined as unitary actors that have the aim of contributing to the stability of the international political system. On the other hand, in a subjectivistic approach, IOs’ actual crisis management is the focus. In this perspective, the emphasis is on an IO’s internal life, that is, its perceptions, bureau politics, and decision-making. In the exploration of these issues, IOs can no longer by studied as entities but have to be unwrapped into small groups and individuals, such as members of secretariats or member state’s top politicians. As borne out by theories developed by scholars of crisis management and foreign-policy analysis, centralization and cognitive bias are of special interest in the study of IOs. IOs’ crisis management has four crisis phases and tasks: sense-making, decision-making, meaning-making, and crisis termination. Finally, crises may prove a threat to, or an opportunity for, IOs. Transnational crises may usher in IOs’ foundation and flourishing, or they may contribute to IOs’ demise.

2015 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
pp. 125-145
Author(s):  
Lee Dalgon

A number of scholars and media in South Korea have recently raised questions regarding the necessity of a "government administrative control tower" (GACT) for dealing with crises. This paper aims to conceptualize GACT as a crisis management system and suggests administrative methods for improving this model by examining issues raised by its operation. Since the control tower is critical in times of crisis, this paper limits its focus to the role of GACT as a crisis management control tower. In crisis, an on-site control tower focuses especially on prevention, and on-site response and management must be synchronized with a higher-level administrative decision making control tower for the system to operate properly. While a fully authorized on-site control tower should serve as the central agent, a higher-level administrative decision making control tower should mobilize additional organizations and resources to support on-site capability. The operating principle for the latter should be to create an environment in which heterogeneous parties work together to make decisions about what to do rather than the president or the prime minister directly making orders and taking control.


2020 ◽  
Vol 2020 (58) ◽  
pp. 147-157
Author(s):  
Александр Игоревич Черкасов

This article deals with the institute of mayor and his interaction with municipal councils in the countries of Eastern Europe. The author points out that the mayor personifies the whole urban governance mechanism and acts as an arbitrator in the struggle of various interests coming into confrontation at the level of a modern city. The article contains analyses of the trend towards “presidentialization” of the local political system and decollectivization of the decision making process at the municipal level common for many modern cities. On the basis of popular support and expectations the mayor begins to increasingly squeeze positions of local councils in the municipal mechanism. Direct mayoral elections are becoming more common and increase the independence of the head of local administration from political parties and slightly reduce the role of the latter in the decision making process


1999 ◽  
Vol 23 (2) ◽  
pp. 241-268 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ben Fallaw

Between 1935 and 1940, President Lázaro Cárdenas of Mexico mobilized a populist coalition in support of land reform, workers’ rights, and a more inclusive political system. For years, scholars either ignored the crucial role of the Mexican Communist Party (Partido Comunista Mexicano [PCM]) inCardenismo, or considered it a tool used and then discarded by the emerging national state (Shulgovski 1968; Anguiano 1975; Ianni 1977). Recently, Barry Carr’s monumental study (1992) of the ambiguous relationship between the PCM and the Mexican state argued convincingly that Cárdenas relied on the party to mobilize popular forces, while never incorporating either the PCM or Communist ideology into his project. Much less is known of Mexican Communism below the national level. Its social base, and its importance on the regional and local levels, remains largely unexplored outside of a few areas (Friedrich 1986: 128; Craig 1990; Carr 1987). Although the southeastern state of Yucatán boasted one of the PCM’s largest and most active regional organizations in the 1930s, and although Yucatán served as a crucial testing ground for Cárdenas’s reforms, the Yucatecan Left and its popular base has yet to be thoroughly examined.


2015 ◽  
Vol 10 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-3
Author(s):  
Corneliu Bjola ◽  
Costas M. Constantinou

The objective of this forum is to provide a framework for intellectual exchange and debate about the role of diplomacy in negotiating global crises and the impact of such crises on the evolution of diplomatic leadership, identity and method. Drawing on theories of leadership, decision-making, power and crisis management, the five contributions to this forum invite readers to reflect upon the analytical implications of theorizing crisis diplomacy.


2018 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 11-24
Author(s):  
Justyna Doroszczyk

Oprichina is the first security service in Russia. The main aim of oprichnina was to protect the stability of the political system and the reign of tsars. The main thesis is based on the conviction that secret services since Ivan the Terrible are one of the most important factors in the Russian political system. The purpose of the article is to analyze the functioning and the role of oprichnina, its organization, its structure and its main tasks in the context of the tendency of centralization of the state. The aim is to demonstrate that the establishment of the oprichnina initiated the process of forming state security organs as the foundation of maintaining power and implementing the priorities of internal and external politics.


2017 ◽  
Vol 8 (2) ◽  
pp. 144-168 ◽  
Author(s):  
Zarrina Talan Azizova ◽  
Pamela P. Felder

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to examine the racial and ethnic aspects of the doctoral socialization to provide a meaningful insight into the belief systems and decision-making processes related to academic success and degree completion. This paper addresses a gap in literature focusing on the racial and ethnic aspects of the doctoral student experience as they relate to student agency. Design/methodology/approach This narrative research of four doctoral students uses a postmodern active interview method to foreground the role of a doctoral agency as manifested in the ways students make meaning of their experiences as members of the science, technology, engineering, agriculture and math academic community. A dialectical approach to the traditional socialization models provides the framework for understanding the meaning-making processes within a critical context of academia. Findings Findings present the intrinsic foundations for a doctoral agency and forces that shape key decision-making processes for doctoral students. Research limitations/implications Implications for research and practice provide guidance for faculty, graduate school administrators and organizations interested in supporting degree completion for historically marginalized doctoral students. Originality/value This study examines doctoral socialization as a meaning-making process of racial/ethnic students in engineering and agricultural programs. Narrative research design provides depth into the individual experiences and the role of racial/ethnic histories in students’ socialization (meaning-making) processes in a predominantly White academic environment.


Author(s):  
Wissam Saleh Abdul-Hussein Jassim Al-Rub

The Iranian Constitution of 1979 and the amendment of 1989 considered the Supreme Leader of the Iranian Islamic Revolution the most powerful institution in influence and presence in the political system. The guide, directly or indirectly, through the agencies operating under his administration, and here we say that the political vision of the wali al-Faqih governs its authority over all the perceptions of decision-makers in their formulation and implementation of strategic decisions that achieve the goals of the Iranian regime at home and abroad.


Prawo ◽  
2020 ◽  
Vol 328 ◽  
pp. 109-151
Author(s):  
Leonard Górnicki

Codification Commission of the Second Polish Republic: position within the political system, organisational structure and decision-makingEstablished one hundred years ago, the Codification Commission of the Second Polish Republic initiated and prepared draft legislation dealing with private, criminal, substantive and procedural law as well as the judiciary and the legal profession. The Commission served as de facto legislator, that is lawmaker in the sociological sense, for it had a genuine impact on the content and form of legislative acts.In the article the author analyses the position of the Codification Commission of the Second Polish Republic within the legal system, on which opinions differ in the literature on the subject. He defends the thesis that is was a central state institution, the existence of which was not, however, coordinated with the political system of the Second Polish Republic. Next, he investigates the impact of the transformations of the organisational structure and decision-making methodology on the efficiency of the Commission’s codification process. He takes into account the management and administration of the Codification Commission, organisation of work in Departments, Sections Subsections, Subcommittees, role of the delegates of the Minister of Justice and delegates of ministries, finally — decision-making mechanisms, including adoption of drafts as well as work in the Sections Subsections and Subcommittees. The author concludes that the experiences of the Second Polish Republic’s Codification Commission, a central state institution of advisory nature, established for an indefinite period, demonstrate that the best solution is to entrust codification to a special, apolitical and expert codification commission, operating with a degree of independence, of internal autonomy. Within such a commission a more effective mode of operation is preparation of drafts by teams of several people and then consultation of these drafts by larger bodies.Die Kodifikationskommission der Zweiten Polnischen Republik: institutionelles System, organisatorische Struktur, EntscheidungenDie Kodifikationskommission der Zweiten Polnischen Republik, die vor hundert Jahren entstandt, hat Entwürfe von Rechtsakten aus dem Bereich des Privat- und Strafrechts des Sachen- und Verfahrensrechtes sowie betreffend die Struktur der Gerichte und der Anwaltschaft eingeleitet und vorbereitet. Sie war praktisch ein Gesetzgeber, also soziologisch gesehen ein Rechtgeber, denn sie hatte einen realen Einfluss auf den Inhalt der Rechtsakten und die Bestimmung ihrer formellen Gestalt.Der Autor analysiert zuerst den staatsrechtlichen Rahmen der Kodifikationskommission der Zweiten Polnischen Republik, der in der Fachliteratur verschieden gesehen wird. Er verteidigt die These, dass die Kommission eine zentrale staatliche Institution war, deren Bestehen mit dem strukturellen System der Zweiten Polnischen Republik jedoch nicht koordiniert war. Dann untersucht er den Einfluss der Umwandlungen der Organisationsstruktur und der Methodik der Entscheidungen auf die Effektivität des Prozesses der Kodifikation des Rechts durch die Kodifikationskommission. Er berücksichtigt also die Führungsorgane und die Verwaltung der Kodifikationskommission, die Organisation der Arbeit in den Abteilungen, Sektionen Untersektionen und Unterkommissionen, die Rolle der Abgeordneten des Justizministers und der Abgeordneten der Ministerien, und zum Schluss die Mechanismen der Entscheidungen, darunter die Beschließung der Entwürfe und die Arbeit in den Sektionen Untersektionen sowie in den Unterkommissionen.Der Autor kommt zum Schluss, dass die Erfahrungen der Kodifikationskommission der Zweiten Polnischen Republik, die eine für unbestimmte Zeit berufene, zentrale staatliche Organisation eines beratenden Charakters war, bewiesen haben, dass die beste Lösung wäre, eine speziell dazu berufene, apolitische Fachkodifikationskommission, die über gewisse Selbständigkeit und interne Autonomie verfügen würde, mit der Kodifikation des Rechts zu beauftragen. Im Rahmen einer solchen Kommission stellt eine Arbeitsgruppe, die aus ein paar Personen besteht, die Entwürfe zuerst vorbereitet und sie erst später breiteren Gremien zur Konsultation vorlegt, ein effektiveres Modell dar.


2015 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-8
Author(s):  
Scott Timcke

This paper attends to the moral thought of Robert Brandom as it appears in his 1994 magnum opus Making It Explicit. Insofar that it is necessarily to outline Brandom’s thought the presentation will refer to the conception of deontic commitments as providing a basis for inference and entitlements for the purposes of meaning making. Accepting these remarks as sound enough, the paper directs attention at the role of inference in moral-decision making. Finally, it offers an appraisal of Brandom’s moral thought system.


Author(s):  
no name Leading Korean scholars

The paper deals with various aspects of economic and social crisis in the DPRK on the eve of 2010’s. Basically, there is an evident functional paralysis of the command economy that leads to its complete decay and breakdown. The result is emergence of a set of isolated sectors and segments living by different rules. Also, it triggers major social processes which undermine the stability of North Korean political system and its ideology. Different options of future developments are considered in the light of possible similarities with processes characteristic of the Soviet Union, East European countries and China in the past. Special attention is paid to actual and potential role of external factors, primarily to the influence of Chinese policy towards North Korea and the recent contacts with South Korea.


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