scholarly journals Politics versus Policy: Technocratic Traps of Russia’s Policy Reforms

2018 ◽  
Vol 3 (2) ◽  
pp. 282-304 ◽  
Author(s):  
Vladimir Gel’man
Keyword(s):  
Policy Making ◽  
Poor Quality ◽  
Institutional Constraints ◽  
Policy Reforms ◽  
Political Leaders ◽  
State Apparatus ◽  
The Social ◽  
Soviet Russia ◽  
Policy Proposals

A number of policy reforms in post-Soviet Russia have been conducted within the framework of the technocratic model. Policy proposals have been developed and to some extent implemented by certain teams of professionals appointed by legitimate political leaders. The leaders, in turn, have tended to monopolize policy adoption and evaluation and to insulate the substance of reforms from public opinion. This article is devoted to a critical reassessment of the technocratic model of policy-making in the context of changes of the 1990s–2010s. The main focus of the analysis is on the political and institutional constraints of policy-making resulting from the influence of interest groups and mechanisms of governance within the state apparatus. Poor quality of governance and rent-seeking aspirations of major actors create significant barriers for reforms, while insulation of policy-making, although beneficial for technocratic reformers themselves, has resulted in an increase to the social costs of reforms and distorted their substantive outcomes. In the conclusion, possible alternatives to the technocratic model are discussed.

scholarly journals PEREMAJAAN KOTA UNTUK PERMUKIMAN KUMUH DI PERKOTAAN: ANTARA STRATEGI DAN SOLUSI

2013 ◽  
Vol 13 (1) ◽  
pp. 41-50
Author(s):  
Oot Hotimah
Keyword(s):  
Sense Of Community ◽  
Community Involvement ◽  
Urban Poor ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Development Planning ◽  
Poor Quality ◽  
Living Environment ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Government

Improvement of social welfare is the responsibility of the government. One way to overcome poverty and improve the poor quality of the living environment of the urban poor is a more humane manner by involving them in development planning. The conventional approach in the form of eviction for urban renewal undertaken during this creates urban social problems more acute and complicated and not sustainable in overcoming poverty. One of the policies that need to be taken, among others, is to build low-rent flats and community involvement in public policy making. The advantage is the increased sense of community and they can become agents of development control.

The Greek Justice System: Collapse and Reform1

2017 ◽  
Author(s):  
Elias Papaioannou ◽  
Stavroula Karatza
Keyword(s):  
Justice System ◽  
Continuing Professional Development ◽  
Constitutional Amendment ◽  
Policy Agenda ◽  
Policy Reforms ◽  
Absolute Priority ◽  
System Collapse ◽  
Specialized Courts ◽  
Policy Proposals

This chapter discusses the key structural deficiencies of the Greek justice system and proposes concrete policy reforms. The first part provides an account of the Greek legal system using cross-country indicators reflecting the formalism, quality, and speed of resolution mechanisms. The analysis shows that the Greek justice civil system has failed to perform its basic tasks. Trials in all types of courts take years to complete, in some instances seven or even ten years. At the same the quality of laws protecting investors, contracts and property, is low. Using comparative data from other EU jurisdictions, the chapter shows that the key reasons behind these failures are the absence of information technology, the lack of support staff, the absence of specialized courts and tribunals, and a hugely dysfunctional administration. At the same time there is minimal assessment of the judges' performance and limited possibilities for continuing professional development. The second part details a set of policy proposals. The proposals consist of immediate measures for clearing the large backlog and a set of ambitious medium-term reforms, many of which require a constitutional amendment. They aim to make the Greek justice system professionally administered, less formalistic, suitably flexible, and more accountable. Given the strong link between legal institutions and development, justice reform should be an absolute priority of the policy agenda, though sadly it is not.

scholarly journals Mobility Justice, Phenomenology and Gender

2019 ◽  
Vol 20 (2) ◽  
pp. 171-188
Author(s):  
Sana Iqbal ◽  
Keyword(s):  
Social Exclusion ◽  
Public Transport ◽  
Gender Disparity ◽  
Poor Quality ◽  
Transport Sector ◽  
Cultural Foundations ◽  
The Social ◽  
And Gender ◽  
Experiences Of Women

Karachi is considered the economic hub of Pakistan, but it lacks a systematized public transport service. Although the demand-supply gap in the transport sector and the poor quality of this deregulated service affects everyone, it wreaks havoc for women, manifesting in the form of social exclusion. Men can benefit from alternative, (and sometimes cheaper) private modes of transport such as motorbikes, which are socially discouraged for women, making them dependent on their male counterparts. Despite the seriousness of this issue, there is little literature showing how women are differentially deprived of their agency due to gender disparity in society. To better understand this issue, the aim of this paper is to study the cultural foundations of transport poverty to assess their impact on women’s life opportunities. For this purpose, the experiences of women while using public transport have been analysed. The study has identified a variety of reasons why women curtail their mobility. It concludes that the social exclusion of women motivates a greater concern for their freedom of movement and that their needs be adequately reflected in transportation policies.

scholarly journals The critical spirit of Alexandru I. Philippide: Un specialist român la Lipsca

Diacronia ◽  
2015 ◽  
Author(s):  
Simona-Andreea Șova
Keyword(s):  
19Th Century ◽  
Poor Quality ◽  
Scientific Development ◽  
High Quality ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Social ◽  
Science And Culture ◽  
Responsible Attitude ◽  
The 19Th Century

Benefiting from the consequences of cultural and scientific development which kicked off in the 19th century, the Romanian space also felt the lags up till then. The development and organisation deficit of science and culture, the poor quality of their relationships with the social complex, were augmented frequently not necessarily by the poor quality of the Romanian scholars, but by a certain superficiality of theirs in the approach and presentation of the treated matters. Trying to confer reliability, accuracy and transparency to the scientific construction in which he took part, A. Philippide often felt in a negative manner some of the scientific behaviours and results presented by his generation colleagues. In this context, beyond the high quality of his results and his highly responsible attitude, the way in which the scholar from Iași tried to improve the process was the scientific polemic.

scholarly journals The problem of quality of economic growth in Ukraine: theoretical approaches and policy routines

2019 ◽  
pp. 7-20
Author(s):  
Anatolii Sirko
Keyword(s):  
Economic Growth ◽  
Economic Development ◽  
Economic System ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Raw Materials ◽  
Cheap Labour ◽  
Social Risks ◽  
Theoretical Approaches ◽  
The Social

The article considers the main theoretical approaches to assessing the quality of economic growth. More specifically, the paper covers the evolution of the concepts of economic development and quality of economic growth and their meanings. The concept of qualitative growth of economy, which has gained world recognition, is defined and characterized in detail. The nature of economic growth in Ukraine is explained and extensive factors that dominate in the economy are revealed. The research paper highlights the main government’s failures in policy-making for economic development. They are born out of using cheap labour and exporting raw materials. The analysis made it possible for the author to view the government’s initiatives in the economy as policy routines that contradict the theory of qualitative economic growth. The social risks of freezing the current situation are specified and characterized. The results indicate that one of the major obstacles to the qualitative economic growth of Ukraine is the quasi-market, oligarchic-clan economic system which is capable to self- reproduce. Therefore, the proposals on the transition to a model of qualitative growth of the economy are formulated.

scholarly journals Breaking the Tyranny of the Semester: A Phase-Gate Sprint Approach to Teaching Colorado School of Mines Students Important Engineering Concepts, Delivering Useful Solutions to Communities, and Working on Long Time Scale Projects

2014 ◽  
pp. 222-239 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jered H Dean ◽  
Douglas L Van Bossuyt
Keyword(s):  
Poor Quality ◽  
Colorado School ◽  
Capstone Courses ◽  
The Social ◽  
Long Time ◽  
The Usa ◽  
Phase Gate ◽  
Humanitarian Engineering ◽  
Academic Year

The Colorado School of Mines (CSM) hosts the oldest Humanitarian Engineering (HE) minor program in the USA, originally started in 2004.  During the 2012/2013 academic year the program was overhauled and new curriculum was introduced.  Several deficiencies in senior capstone courses were noted including poor quality of designs resulting from the tyranny of the rigid semester schedule; students focusing on the technical aspects of a design project while largely ignoring the social, financial, and sustainable aspects; and a loss of knowledge between academic terms due to turnover of students.  These were addressed in the development of the Projects for People course through several methods.  The course has been offered for two semesters and will be offered in multiple sections in the immediate future.  Students, CSM faculty, and NGO partners have all found the course to be useful and rigorous, and the HE faculty have found the resulting designs to be of high quality.

scholarly journals Defying the Resource Curse: Explaining Successful State-Owned Enterprises in Rentier States

2010 ◽  
Vol 62 (2) ◽  
pp. 261-301 ◽  
Author(s):  
Steffen Hertog
Keyword(s):  
Economic Policy ◽  
Policy Making ◽  
Developing World ◽  
Resource Curse ◽  
Poor Quality ◽  
Two Factors ◽  
Public Sectors ◽  
Rentier States

The article explains how several Gulf rentier monarchies have managed to create highly profitable and well-managed state-owned enterprises (SOEs), confounding expectations of both general SOE inefficiency and the particularly poor quality of rentier public sectors. It argues that a combination of two factors explains the outcome: the absence of a populist-mobilizational history and substantive regime autonomy in economic policy-making. The author concludes that it is necessary to rethink the commonly accepted generalizations both about rentier states and, arguably, about public sectors in the developing world.

scholarly journals HIV/AIDS in Russia: Governmental and Activist Constructions of the Social Problem

2019 ◽  
Vol 18 (3) ◽  
pp. 49-76
Author(s):  
Iskender Yasaveev
Keyword(s):  
Sex Education ◽  
Social Problem ◽  
Poor Quality ◽  
The Social ◽  
Drug Policies ◽  
Russian President ◽  
Late Treatment ◽  
Public Health Institutions ◽  
Hiv Aids

The article deals with the constructions of the social problem of HIV/AIDS created by both the authorities and HIV activists in Russia. The work is based on the study of the rhetoric of Russian authorities, participant observations, and interviews with HIV activists. The constructions of HIV/ AIDS that were formed by authorities and HIV activists are significantly different. The Russian President and Prime Minister constructed HIV/AIDS not as an epidemic in the country, but as a “global problem”, representing Russia as a participant in the international efforts to combat AIDS. The authorities problematized the spread of the virus through the rhetoric of endangerment, while at the same time de-problematized HIV in Russia with the strategy of naturalizing the issue (“this is a problem that all countries face”). The HIV activists problematized the violations of the rights of people with HIV in public health institutions, the poor quality of antiretroviral therapy, the practice of late treatment, the lack of HIV prevention that includes sex education in schools, and repressive drug policies. Unlike the authorities’ construction, the problem constructed by HIV activists does not include the rhetoric of moral values. The main discursive way of problematization used by activists is the anti-discriminating rhetoric of entitlement. At the same time, HIV as a threat and a reason for fear is de-problematized by activists through the strategy of disproving stories where HIV activists talk about themselves, and directly interact with people to eliminate their fear of the virus.

Is the Character of Institutional Leadership Central to the Quality of Higher Education (HE) Management?

2021 ◽  
pp. 1740-1761
Author(s):  
Nwachukwu Prince Ololube
Keyword(s):  
Higher Education ◽  
Poor Quality ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Institutional Leadership ◽  
Quality Of Higher Education ◽  
The Social ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
The Relationship

This study employed a descriptive, empirical and suggestive approach. The purpose of this study is to determine whether the character of institutional leadership is central to the management of higher education (HE). First, the study x-rayed the role of character in institutional leadership and management of HE. Second, it highlights the character of institutional leadership in combination with values, morals, principles and ethics in the management of HE, and third, the implication of the character of institutional leadership on the quality of HE. To address the descriptive part of this study, this article reviewed literature on the relationship between the character of institutional leadership with particular focus on values, morals, principles and ethics, and the quality of HE management. The empirical part of this article included the collection of data from 250 respondents through a structured questionnaire, and data were analyzed using the statistical package for the social sciences (SPSS) version 21. While the suggestive part portrayed the study's findings, which redolent that the neglect of the role of character in institutional leadership as being central to HE management might possibly explain the dysfunctional and poor quality state of HE particularly in Nigeria and perhaps many sub-Saharan Africa countries. Therefore, appointment of institutional heads should be based on technical qualification and character of institutional leaders, and must be a continual effort towards the integration of positive thoughts, both in words and in actions. The target audiences for this article include educational managers and planners, researchers, academics, professionals, students, and leadership practitioners.

scholarly journals “You feel you don’t actually belong:” Attending High School in the Sioux Lookout Zone, 1969-1996

2019 ◽  
Vol 87 (2) ◽  
pp. 6-8
Author(s):  
North De Pencier ◽  
Ian Puppe ◽  
Carrie Davis ◽  
Drishti Dhawan ◽  
Mithila Somasundaram ◽  
...  
Keyword(s):  
High School ◽  
Poor Quality ◽  
High School Education ◽  
University Of Toronto ◽  
Northwestern Ontario ◽  
The Poor ◽  
The Social ◽  
Time To Learn ◽  
The University

From 1969-1996, in the Sioux Lookout Zone of Northwestern Ontario, there were no local high schools, and teenagers travelled to boarding schools in larger communities further south. During these years, the University of Toronto coordinated medical services in the Sioux Lookout Zone, and many documents in the University of Toronto Archives capture the challenges faced by adolescents from the Zone while pursuing a high school education. In this paper, I use Indigenous voices in the records of the Sioux Lookout Zone Hospital to study the experience of going to high school from the perspective of the Social Determinants of Health. I argue that the poor quality of on-reserve elementary schools and the isolation of leaving home for high school combined with less time to learn traditional skills to set students up for failure in their academic studies.

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