Institutional Accountability or Individual Agency in China’s Public Administration System

How to improve the performance and efficiency of a public administration system has been an eternal challenge and a regular item on the government agenda. In contrast to an institutional check-and-balance mechanism, cadre education and training plays a special role in the Chinese socialist system. Educational work to inculcate desirable contents in cadres’ thoughts has taken up a large part in the Party’s efforts to enhance cadres’ capability since the years of revolutionary struggle. It is a strategy adopted by the Party-state for the sake of making cadres loyal to the CCP in bothpolitical and administrative e aspects. The study reviews the conceptual and theoretical discussion on the term ‘responsibility.’ The practices that the CCP adopted to create cadre responsibility in China are analysed through the perspective of “structure-and-agency.” The paper argues that individual agency goes beyond institutionalaccountability within China’s Public Administration System.

Governing Democracy Outside the Law: India's Election Commission and the Challenge of Accountability

Comparative law and politics literature widely recognizes the role of election management bodies (EMBs) in securing the well-being of constitutional democracies. Scholars have noted the political desirability of both independence and accountability of these institutions. But striking balance between these two values is easier said than done. This Article highlights the dilemma of accountability by focusing on India's Election Commission (ECI) as a paradigmatic version of a powerful EMB. Scholars of Indian politics have long noted the institution's widening powers – often beyond the original constitutional intent or parliamentary legislation – over the last few decades. This, they argue, has impaired its institutional accountability. This Article adopts a fresh perspective on the ECI's expansive functions, and the attendant concerns these raise. It argues that the ECI regulates the electoral process not through what we may ordinarily identify as the law. The most compelling and consequential of its functions are through extra-legal modalities of regulation. Drawing from recent scholarship on regulation, the Article argues that the ECI shapes the electoral environment and behaviour through non-legal modalities of architecture, nudge and notice-based regulations. Much like the other fields where they are deployed, these extra-legal modalities exhibit unique, and in many ways, inherent limitations with respect to transparency. It is thus this character of the ECI's functions – rather than only their widening breadth – that poses the most significant challenge for democratic accountability. Based on this assessment, the Article notes that for powerful EMBs like the ECI, accountability in the form of on-going operational accountability is inherently limited in compelling ways. This increases the stakes for accountability of these institutions through other means, particularly by securing their constitution, composition and tenure.

OVE’s Validation Methodology: IDB Group's Evaluation Recommendations Tracking System (ReTS)

The IDB Group's ReTS is a monitoring system aimed at providing the Boards of Executive Directors of the IDB and IDB Invest with periodic information for decision-making on Bank and IDB Invest actions and progress in implementing the endorsed recommendations issued by OVE. Assessing to what extent recommendations have been addressed is essential for institutional accountability and learning.

Cultural Humility: The Bias Checker

Historically we have been taught to understand and embrace cultural competency, however, this focus has often led to a superficial understanding of others and seldom required one to better understand themselves. Cultural humility is based on one’s ability to engage in individual accountability and institutional accountability. Individual accountability is based on critical self-reflection and critique, lifelong learning, and the challenging of power imbalances. Institutional accountability requires one to challenge structural power. This session will: (1) explore ways to engage in critical self-reflection and critique; (2) describe how values and beliefs impact the interactions of our personal and professional lives; and (3) strategize ways to collectively model and practice in cultural humility in one’s personal and professional life.

Demanding Power: Do Protests Empower Citizens to Hold Governments Accountable over Energy?

Energy protests are becoming increasingly common and significant around the world. While in the global North concerns tend to centre around climate issues, in the global South the concerns are more often with affordable energy. Both types of protests, however, have one issue in common: the undemocratic nature of energy policymaking. This paper draws together findings from research conducted in three countries, Mozambique, Nigeria, and Pakistan to ask how and under which conditions do struggles over energy access in fragile and conflict affected settings empower the powerless to hold public authorities to account? In exploring this theme, the study examines what factors support protests developing into significant episodes of contention within fragile settings, and whether these energy struggles promote citizen empowerment and institutional accountability.

The Disjuncture between Medication Adherence and Recovery-centered Principles in Early Psychosis Intervention: An Institutional Ethnography

To examine how recovery principles are enacted in an early psychosis intervention (EPI) clinic, we used an institutional ethnographic approach focused on how the ideology of medication adherence organizes young people’s experiences of EPI services. Methods included ethnographic observation, in-depth interviews with 27 participants (18 clinic staff, four young people, and five family members), and textual analysis of clinic documents (e.g., case files, administrative forms, policy reports). The disjuncture between service providers’ intent to provide recovery-principled care and the actual experiences of young people is actualized in institutionalized practices of informal coercion around medication adherence, which we identify as “enticing,”“negotiating,” and “taking responsibility.” We link these practices to institutional accountability, risk, and efficiencies, and discuss the need for a shift in medication management approaches in EPI settings.

Does democratization process lead to positive environmental public policies in the Colombian case?

Does democratization process lead to positive environmental public policies in the Colombian case? By focusing on variations in authoritarianism and democratic rule during the 1990s, this paper tests the hypothesis that an increase in democratic rule produces changes to environmental protection along two levels, legal framework and institutional accountability. The dependent variables are democratization and authoritarianism. The independent variable is the level of environmental protection in the public policy outcome. The qualitative analysis is focused on the factors and causal mechanism that allows to evaluate the hypothesis. The findings are that the periods of authoritarian rule and democratic rule are highly influenced by two factors. The first is domestic (postcolonial institutions, regime’s organizational strength, elites’ cleavages, revolutionary and counterrevolutionary movements, and the strength of environmental movement) and second international (western linkage and international organizations’ influence). The Colombian case in the 1990s allows for an identification of these different characteristics of authoritarian and democratic regimes and the causal mechanisms that promote or avoid environmental protection.

Sexual Violence by the State: The Role of Political Institutions in Sexual Violence Perpetration

What explains the variation in sexual violence perpetrated by state-security forces? Prior research has suggested sexual violence is an explicit strategy of violence. More recent work has suggested sexual violence in certain contexts acts as a tolerated practice. I argue that the type of regime institutions influences the perpetration of sexual violence by deterring behavior of individuals and providing pathways to accountability. Authoritarian regimes in general have weaker institutional accountability compared to democracies. Institutions in personalist regimes in particular are geared toward preservation of personal power, rather than accountability for the regime. Regimes with higher accountability will experience lower sexual violence, while those with lower accountability experience higher perpetration. Moreover, the gendered nature of regime institutions influences perpetration of sexual violence where masculine institutions predominate. I test these predictions using cross-national data on the incidence of sexual violence, during both peace and conflict. The results suggest that personalist regimes, and especially regimes with weaker female empowerment or higher levels of corruption, experience more sexual violence. This analysis links political institutions to the toleration of sexual violence by state-security forces, underscoring the importance of institutional structure and behavior in the perpetration of sexual violence.