Revisiting Medellin's Governance Arrangement After the Dust Settled

Governance is a polysemic prescription for contemporary government and at an urban level has been instrumental in some radical and often striking reshaping of cities. This paper examines the interests and power structures behind those changes through the critical examination of the case of Medellin, Colombia, until recently a model of “good governance,” internationally acknowledged for its early millennium transformation from “murder capital to model city.” Based on extensive literature reviews and interviews, we unveil the forces underlying concrete governance practices. Major characteristics emerging from this perspective concern i) market hegemony, ii) the disempowerment of grass-roots movements and iii) the influence of illegal actors in the complex and shifting dynamics within and between the city's major players. The notion of both “good governance” and model practice are strongly revisited.

Working Together for Grizzly Bears: A Collaborative Approach to Estimate Population Abundance in Northwest Alberta, Canada

Grizzly bears are a threatened species in Alberta, Canada, and their conservation and management is guided by a provincial recovery plan. While empirical abundance and densities estimates have been completed for much of the province, empirical data are lacking for the northwest region of Alberta, a 2.8 million hectare area called Bear Management Area 1 (BMA 1). In part, this is due to limited staff capacity and funding to cover a vast geographic area, and a boreal landscape that is difficult to navigate. Using a collaborative approach, a multi-stakeholder working group called the Northwest Grizzly Bear Team (NGBT) was established to represent land use and grizzly bear interests across BMA 1. Collectively, we identified our project objectives using a Theory of Change approach, to articulate our interests and needs, and develop common ground to ultimately leverage human, social, financial and policy resources to implement the project. This included establishing 254 non-invasive genetic hair corral sampling sites across BMA 1, and using spatially explicit capture-recapture models to estimate grizzly bear density. Our results are two-fold: first we describe the process of developing and then operating within a collaborative, multi-stakeholder governance arrangement, and demonstrate how our approach was key to both improving relationships across stakeholders but also delivering on our grizzly bear project objectives; and, secondly we present the first-ever grizzly bear population estimate for BMA 1, including identifying 16 individual bears and estimating density at 0.70 grizzly bears/1,000 km2-the lowest recorded density of an established grizzly bear population in Alberta. Our results are not only necessary for taking action on one of Alberta's iconic species at risk, but also demonstrate the value and power of collaboration to achieve a conservation goal.

THE GOVERNANCE OF FACEBOOK PLATFORM

Competition authorities and regulators worldwide recognise application programming interfaces (APIs) for powering the digital economy and driving processes of datafication and platformisation. However, it is unclear how APIs tie into the power of, and governance by, large digital platforms. This paper traces the relationality between Facebook’s APIs, platform governance, and data strategy based on an empirical and evolutionary analysis. It examines a large corpus of (archived) developer pages and API reference documentation to determine the technicity of platform governance – the technical dimension and dynamics of how and what platforms like Facebook seek to govern. It traces how Facebook Platform evolved into a complex layered and interconnected governance arrangement, wherein technical API specifications serve to enforce (changes to) platform policy and (data) strategy. Finally, the paper discusses the significance of this technicity in specifying the material conditions for app and business development on top of platforms and for maintaining infrastructural and evolutive power over their ecosystems.

Entrepreneurial orientation during adversity: differences across ownership categories

PurposeThis study seeks to highlight the dynamic nature of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) by investigating how firms respond to adversity, i.e. performance below aspiration levels through pertinent changes in EO, and if some of these changes can be accounted for based on the ownership of the firm.Design/methodology/approachThis study adopts a multiple regression using an ordinary least square methodology on a sample of 13,333 Indian firms within the period 2005–2016 to test its hypothesis.FindingsThis research sheds light on performance feedback as an antecedent to EO as also on the effect of ownership moderating this relationship, with diversity in resource configuration and governance arrangement being the key drivers.Research limitations/implicationsThis is a single country study; hence, there is a possibility of a country-specific bias. This study uses a secondary measure of EO and thus is unable to capture the entrepreneurial intentions and opinions of managers.Practical implicationsThe study establishes a nuanced understanding of how ownership impacts the entrepreneurial behaviour of firms during times of adversity.Social implicationsThis study may help policymakers draft appropriate policy interventions for firms at the time of adversity, so that they can improve their entrepreneurial spree.Originality/valueThis rare study from an emerging market establishes performance feedback as an important antecedent of EO. It further highlights the vital role of ownership in supporting/constraining EO.

Mental Health in Australia and the Challenge of Community Mental Health Reform

Australia was one of the first countries to develop and implement a national mental health plan, 30 years ago. This national approach belied the countrys federal structure, in which the federal government takes responsibility for primary care while state and territory governments manage acute and hospital mental health care. This arrangement has led to significant variations across jurisdictions. It has also left secondary care, often provided in the community, outside of this governance arrangement. This article explores this dilemma and its implications for community mental health, and suggests key steps towards more effective reform of this vital element of mental health care.

Formal and Informal Governance Arrangements to Boost Sustainable and Inclusive Rural-Urban Synergies: An Analysis of the Metropolitan Area of Styria

In the past, the contrasts between rural and urban regions were the primary feature of analysis, while today, spatial dynamics are realized by the interactions between spaces and focus on the dependencies of rural-urban areas. This implies that boundaries are not anymore perceived as fixed but as flexible and fluid. With rising spatial interrelations, the concept of the “city-region” has been increasingly regarded as a meaningful concept for the implementation of development policies. Governance arrangements working at the rural-urban interface are often highly complex. They are characterized by horizontal and vertical coordination of numerous institutional public and private actors. In general, they provide opportunities to reap benefits and try to ameliorate negative outcomes but, due to asymmetric power relations, rural areas are often challenged to make their voice heard within city-region governance structures which can too easily become focused on the needs of the urban areas. This paper addresses these issues of rural-urban partnerships through the case of the Metropolitan Area of Styria. It presents analyses on the core issue of how to recognize the structure and driving challenges for regional co-operation and inter-communal collaboration in this city-region. Data were collected through workshops with regional stakeholders and interviews with mayors. Although the Metropolitan Area of Styria occupies an increased reference in policy discourses, the city-region has not grown to a uniform region and there are still major differences in terms of economic performance, the distribution of decision-making power, accessibility and development opportunities. If there should be established a stronger material and imagined cohesion in the city-region, it requires enhanced assistance for municipalities with less financial and personal resources, and tangible good practices of inter-municipal co-operation. The ability to act at a city-regional level depends highly on the commitment for co-operation in the formal and informal governance arrangement, and on the willingness for political compromises as well as on the formulation of common future goals.

Planning for Exclusion: The Politics of Urban Disaster Governance

Many disaster risk reduction (DRR) initiatives, including land use planning, tend to ignore existing long-term inequalities in urban space. Furthermore, scholars working on urban disaster governance do not adequately consider how day-to-day DRR governing practices can (re)produce these. Hence, following a recent interest in the political dimensions of disaster governance, this article explores under what conditions the implementation of DRR land uses (re)produce spatial injustice on the ground. We develop a theoretical framework combining politics, disaster risk, and space, and apply it to a case study in Santiago, Chile. There, after a landslide disaster in the city’s foothills in 1993, a multi-level planning arrangement implemented a buffer zone along the bank of a ravine to protect this area from future disasters. This buffer zone, however, transformed a long-term established neighbourhood, splitting it into a formal and an informal area remaining to this day. Using qualitative data and spatial analysis, we describe the emergence, practices, and effects of this land use. While this spatial intervention has proactively protected the area, it has produced further urban exclusion and spatial deterioration, and reproduced disaster risks for the informal households within the buffer zone. We explain this as resulting from a governance arrangement that emerged from a depoliticised environment, enforcing rules unevenly, and lacking capacities and unclear responsibilities, all of which could render DRR initiatives to be both spatially unjust and ineffective. We conclude that sustainable and inclusive cities require paying more attention to the implementation practices of DRR initiatives and their relation to long-term inequities.

Understanding the governance dynamics of a supranational university: The African pioneering model

Since the 1990s, university governance has attracted the attention of scholars. However, most of the extant studies focus on the governance of national-level universities and use national regulatory frameworks. Therefore, there is a dearth of studies that hinge on the governance of supranational higher education institutions, such as the Pan African University (PAU), with the aid of regional regulatory frameworks. Consequently, little is known about the governance architecture of supranational universities, which are a post-2010 phenomenon. In view of the above, the article answers the following question: How is the Pan African University governed within a multi-layer environment? Using an interpretive lens, data was collected from the Revised Statute of the Pan African University, 2016. Content analysis was used to analyse the resultant data. The findings revealed that observance of the values of higher education, adoption of the steering-at-a-distance university governance model by the African Union Commission and of the shared governance arrangement, and merit-based selection of staff are the hallmarks of the PAU governance architecture. The governance model of the PAU resonates with the governance architecture of country-level universities in form rather than in substance. The notable variations in the substance include the partial adoption of the philosophy of ‘letting the managers manage’, the existence of multi-governance layers, lay domination of the University Senate, the presence of ‘universities’ in PAU governance arrangement, the existence of a ‘quasi-governance’ organ with external representation at the level of the Institute, and the continental outlook of the PAU Council. Therefore, it can be concluded that the missions of the universities and their context shape universities’ governance architecture. Received: 04 May 2020Accepted: 29 July 2020

Evaluating Climate Change Governance Using the “Polity–Policy–Politics” Framework: A Comparative Study of China and the United States

Climate change governance has attracted increasing academic interest. However, holistic reviews on the dynamic complexity and stability of climate change governance have received little attention. This study addresses this research gap by conducting a structurally comparative analysis between China and the United States based on the “polity–policy–politics” framework. Three analytical facets are identified for each dimension of the framework, including institutional settings, the nature of policy mechanisms used in climate change practices, and the degree of multi-actors’ involvement under two governance scenarios. Results show that climate change governance in the two countries differs substantially. The process of climate governance in China is driven by strong leadership at the national level alongside policy continuity, whereas well-functioning market mechanisms and robust regulatory systems are still lacking. A more meaningful involvement of social forces is also critically needed when addressing increasingly complex and uncertain climate change. By contrast, the US federal climate policies are considered inadequate compared with sub-national actions and persistent efforts of non-state actors, to which the success of climate practices is largely attributed. This study systematically uncovers the divergence of climate mitigation under different political–institutional contexts, and evaluates the effectiveness of governance arrangement in the two countries, which helps policymakers to understand the potential of improving the performance of climate change governance.