scholarly journals Designing Global Public Policies in the Twenty-First Century

Author(s):  
Meng-Hsuan Chou ◽  
Pauline Ravinet

The rise of global initiatives in many policy sectors is an emerging phenomenon that deserves the attention of scholars interested in international relations, regional integration, and policy sciences, as well as practitioners seeking comparative examples beyond their national and regional borders. This chapter demonstrates the value-added of the design orientation in studying this phenomenon and the implications for the contemporary delivery of public services and goods. It begins by describing three waves of policy design studies and their insights for unpacking the relationship between instrument design and intended outcomes. The overview reveals a notable feature of the extant policy design approach: its empirical preoccupation with domestic-level developments, which inform but confine theory development. This chapter introduces the analytical steps required to operationalize policy design insights in examining global public policy and transnational administration. In so doing, it calls for a new metaphor for policy design that would incorporate the beyond-the-state dimension.

2013 ◽  
Vol 40 (2) ◽  
pp. 115-143 ◽  
Author(s):  
David N. Herda ◽  
Stephen A. Reed ◽  
William F. Bowlin

This study explores the Dead Sea Scrolls to demonstrate how Essene socio-religious values shaped their accounting and economic practices during the late Second Temple period (ca. first century BCE to 70 CE). Our primary focus is on the accounting and commercial responsibilities of a leader within their community – the Examiner. We contend that certain sectarian accounting practices may be understood as ritual/religious ceremony and address the performative roles of the Essenes' accounting and business procedures in light of their purity laws and eschatological beliefs. Far from being antithetical to religious beliefs, we find that accounting actually enabled the better practice and monitoring of religious behavior. We add to the literature on the interaction of religion with the structures and practices of accounting and regulation within a society.


2021 ◽  
pp. 014616722110244
Author(s):  
Steffen Zitzmann ◽  
Lukas Loreth ◽  
Klaus Michael Reininger ◽  
Bernd Simon

Our own prior research has demonstrated that respect for disapproved others predicts and might foster tolerance toward them. This means that without giving up their disapproval of others’ way of life, people can tolerate others when they respect them as equals (outgroup respect–tolerance hypothesis). Still, there was considerable variation in the study features. Moreover, the studies are part of a larger research project that affords many additional tests of our hypothesis. To achieve integration along with a more robust understanding of the relation between respect and tolerance, we (re)analyzed all existing data from this project, and we synthesized the results with the help of meta-analytic techniques. The average standardized regression coefficient, which describes the relationship between respect and tolerance, was 0.25 (95% confidence interval [CI] = [0.16, 0.34]). In addition to this overall confirmation of our hypothesis, the size of this coefficient varied with a number of variables. It was larger for numerical majorities than for minorities, smaller for high-status than for low-status groups, and larger for religious than for life-style groups. These findings should inspire further theory development and spur growth in the social-psychological literature on tolerance.


Author(s):  
Matteo Marenco

Abstract This article reviews three books that offer thought-provoking insights on a central political science question, namely the relationship between capitalism and democracy in the twenty-first century. First, ‘Democracy and Prosperity’ by Iversen and Soskice posits a symbiotic relationship between capitalism and democracy. Advanced capital thrives on nationally rooted institutions, hence it needs democratic politics. A majority of voters ask for pro-advanced-capital reforms, hence democratic politics needs advanced capital. Second, ‘Capitalism, Alone’ by Milanovic depicts a troubled coexistence between capitalism and democracy. The former's tendency to concentrate economic and political power in the hands of the few is the main reason why democratic politics is under pressure. Third, ‘The Age of Surveillance Capitalism’ by Zuboff suggests a negative relationship between digital capitalism and democracy. Surveillance capitalism increasingly acts as a control means of individuals' behaviour, which undermines democracy at its roots. The last section brings the three contributions together. It maintains that a mutually beneficial coexistence between capitalism and democracy currently faces both internal (from within) and external (from without) challenges. In line with Milanovic and Zuboff, it argues that the concentration of economic and political power in the hands of the few is the most apparent from-within challenge. Drawing on Milanovic, it contends that rise of China as a global power combining capitalism with non-democracy challenges the relationship between capitalism and democracy from without. Finally, it contends that the environmental question and the pandemic represent two windows of opportunity for democracy to recover lost ground and re-establish a more balanced relationship with capitalism.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (12) ◽  
pp. 5128
Author(s):  
Tsung-Chun Chen ◽  
Yenchun Jim Wu

Knowledge transfer is a strategy used by high-tech companies to acquire new knowledge and skills. Knowledge can be internally generated or externally sourced. The access to external knowledge is a quick fix, but the risks associated with reliance on external sources are often overlooked. However, not acquiring such knowledge is even riskier. There have been a slew of litigations in the semiconductor industry in recent years. The acquisition and assurance of intangible assets is an important issue. This paper posits that internal R&D should take into consideration the knowledge intensity and capital investment in the industry. This study focuses on the relationship between intangible assets and financial performance. It sourced the 2004 to 2016 financial data of semiconductor companies in Taiwan for panel data modeling and examined case studies for empirical validation. This study found that the higher the R&D intensity (RDI) in the value-added component of human capital, the better the financial performance of the company. RDI has a positive influence on the accumulation of human capital and financial performance metrics, and such influence is deferred. Meanwhile, human capital is a mediating factor in the relationship between RDI and financial performance. RDI is integral to the semiconductor industry’s pursuit of business sustainability.


1998 ◽  
Vol 30 (9) ◽  
pp. 1585-1602 ◽  
Author(s):  
D M W N Hitchens ◽  
J E Birnie ◽  
A McGowan ◽  
U Triebswetter ◽  
A Cottica

The authors use a method of matched-plant comparisons between food processing firms in Germany, Italy, Northern Ireland, and the Republic of Ireland to investigate the relationship between environmental regulation and company competitiveness across the European Union. Comparative competitiveness was indicated by measures of value-added per employee, physical productivity, export share, and employment growth. The cost of water supply (public or well), effluent treatment (in-plant treatment and/or sewerage system), and disposal of sludge and packaging were also compared. Total environmental costs in Germany, Italy, and Ireland were small: usually less than 1% of turnover. Compared with the Irish firms, German companies had relatively high environmental costs as well as productivity levels. There was, however, a lack of a clear relationship between company competitiveness and the size of regulation costs: in Ireland and Italy environmental costs were similar but German firms had much higher productivity; compared with German counterparts, Italian firms had lower environmental costs but higher productivity.


2003 ◽  
Vol 67 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-45 ◽  
Author(s):  
Judy K. Frels ◽  
Tasadduq Shervani ◽  
Rajendra K. Srivastava

The last decade has witnessed a shift from a focus on the value created by a single firm and product to an examination of the value created by networks of firms (or product ecosystems) in which assets are comingled with external entities. The authors examine these market-based assets in the context of network markets and propose an Integrated Networks model in which three types of networks—user, complements, and producer—add value or enhance the attractiveness of the associated focal product. The authors empirically test the proposed model by surveying information technology professionals on their resource allocation decisions regarding the Unix and Windows NT operating systems. The findings suggest that the value added by these three networks is significantly and positively associated with resources allocated by business customers to competing products. The results also show that the three networks mediate the relationship between stand-alone product performance and resource allocation.


1988 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 3-16 ◽  
Author(s):  
Patricia W. Ingraham ◽  
B. Guy Peters

Despite obvious cross-national political and cultural differences, civil service reform policies exhibit strong similarities. An examination of reform efforts in the United States, the United Kingdom and Australia emphasizes the centrality of politics and political processes to administrative reform. This is true for mechanical or procedural reform, structural reform and what we termed “relational reforms,” or, reforms aimed at restructuring the relationship between politicians and career civil servants. The overriding influence of politics reduces policy design considerations and often results in solutions that do not match the problems being addressed. The outcomes are new bureaucratic problems and the need for additional reforms.


2016 ◽  
Vol 7 (1) ◽  
pp. 1-11 ◽  
Author(s):  
Lisa A. Robinson

Behavioral economics and happiness research have many important implications for the conduct of benefit-cost analysis as well as for policy design and implementation. By identifying ways in which we may act irrationally and providing new perspectives on the relationship between our circumstances and our sense of well-being, this research raises numerous questions regarding the evaluation of individual and societal welfare and the desirability of alternative policies. In this special issue, we present a series of articles that explore these concerns and provide significant new insights.


2021 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 87-102
Author(s):  
Louise D’Arcens

Abstract This essay focuses on the Polish film Cold War and the oeuvre of the French nationalist black metal band Peste Noire, examining them as twenty-first-century texts that disclose music’s capacity to solicit emotion in the service of ideology. Despite their aesthetic and ideological differences, each text demonstrates the importance of temporal emotions – that is, emotions that register a heightened sense of the relationship between present, past and future. Each text portrays these emotions’ ideological significance when attached to ideas of a national past. Dwelling on Peste Noire’s racist-nationalist use of the medieval past, the essay explores music as a medium for emotional performances in which white people appear to convey vulnerability while actually reconfirming white supremacy. Peste Noire’s idiosyncratic performance of aggressive vulnerability is a temporal emotion that self-consciously lays claim to a long emotional tradition reaching back to the French Middle Ages.


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