Explaining High Performance Among Indian Administrative Service (IAS) Officers: A Job Demands-Resources Perspective

Indian Administrative Service (IAS) officers are careerist senior civil servants (SCS) in the world’s largest democracy, holding senior roles of policymaking and implementation. Therefore, identifying exceptionally performing SCS to unravel their “job demands” along with “personal resources” should help with understanding how best to manage these critical human resources. Employing a qualitative approach, we interviewed 11 high performing IAS officers identified through a unique career progression index. Our data analysis revealed that the IAS suffers from the following job demands: difficulty in coordination with other departments and stakeholders, financial inadequacy, and dishonest subordinates or coworkers. This study also found that self-directed learning, personal reputation, empathy, and service orientation are essential personal resources for high-performing SCS. While expanding the list of job demands and personal resources in the public administration context, our research provides a deeper insight into the challenges confronting careerist SCS in lower-middle income developing countries.

Industrial Policies Under Xi Jinping: A Steering Theory Perspective

Xi Jinping’s ascension to power and subsequent developments in Chinese governance have stoked the flames on the debate on industrial policies, both in China and across the globe. At least partly, the debate results from the perception that industrial policies have been important for China’s economic rise, growing competitiveness and drive to innovate. Outside China, this perception has already prompted some governments to suggest that their countries should react to China’s rise by also promulgating industrial policies. But inspite of the growing interest in the topic, there is hardly a consensus on the character of China’s industrial policies nor their efficiency and effectiveness, neither inside nor outside of China. This paper will shed light on these issues by looking at Chinese industrial policies from the perspective of political steering theory. It will first review the political steering theory, identify key concepts (steering modes, steering objects and subjects, etc.) and then explain the rationale of applying the theoretical deliberations to industrial policymaking and implementation in China’s EV and solar sectors. Against this background, this paper will identify different types of industrial policies and look into Chinese industrial policy development and academic discussion over time with a specific focus on changes in industrial policy steering following the inauguration of the Xi Jinping administration. This paper aims to make a conceptual contribution based on the analysis of policy documents and academic texts as well as discussions and interviews with Chinese economists and political scientists. It is part of a larger research project that focuses on how political steering through industrial policies affects China’s energy transition under Xi.

Corporate political activity of baby food companies in Thailand

Background Recent studies show corporate political activity (CPA) can have detrimental impacts on health policy processes. The Control of Marketing Promotion of Infant and Young Child Food Act B.E. 2560 (the Act) was implemented in Thailand in 2017, but there have been no studies documenting CPA during its policy processes. Furthermore, the effects of CPA on the Act and how non-industry stakeholders dealt with the CPA have not been explored. This study aimed to analyze the CPA of baby food companies in Thailand, its effects on the Act, and how policymakers have responded to CPA around the Act. Methods This qualitative study applied an established framework developed by Mialon and colleagues to collect and systematically analyze publicly available information from seven baby food companies with the highest percentage market share in Thailand. In-depth interviews were also used to explore how people involved in the policy process of the Act experienced the CPA of baby food companies, the consequent effects on the Act, and how they responded to the CPA. Results During development of the Act, baby food companies used two main strategies, ‘information and messaging’ and ‘constituency building’. We found the companies met policymakers, and they employed evidence or provided information that was favorable to companies. Also, they established relationships with policymakers, health organizations, communities and media. The effects of CPA were that the scope of products controlled by the Act was reduced, and CPA led relevant people to misunderstand and have concerns about the Act. Officials and others countered the influence of CPA by raising awareness and building understanding among involved people, as well as avoiding contact with companies informally. Conclusions CPA consists of a variety of practices that resulted in a weakened Act in Thailand. Government officials and other non-industry stakeholders employed strategies to counteract this influence. This study suggests the Department of Health, and other relevant government agencies, would benefit from establishing safeguards and protections against CPA. Efforts to raise awareness about the harms of CPA within and outside of government and establish a systematic monitoring system, including avoid conflict of interest in policy process would improve policymaking and implementation of the Act.

Unions and Employers

This chapter reviews the main theoretical perspectives which focus directly or indirectly on the role of employers and unions in welfare state development. It also examines the conditions under which collective interests become organized and mobilized, and how well worker and employer interests have been organized and integrated into the overall political economy. The differences in the degree to which welfare states share public space are addressed; that is, the influence of the social partners on policymaking and implementation in different countries. It then explores wage bargaining, labour market policy, pension policy, and health care and shows how the interests of labour and capital are differentially affected and have varying influence across advanced economies. A final comparison of the developing societies and emerging market economies indicates that in these countries, corporatist intermediation is more fragile than in advanced economies, and organized labour and capital have less influence on employment conditions and social protection.

Learning by Doing: Co-Benefits Drive National Plans for Climate and Air Quality Governance

What drives countries to realize more integrated policymaking? The co-benefits concept highlights the win–win situations that can arise if one policy measure addresses two or more policy goals, e.g., air quality and health benefits resulting from a climate policy. Scholars have suggested that decision makers, if confronted with the evidence of co-benefits, would update their beliefs and adopt stronger or more ambitious climate policies. In other words, a learning process takes place. This paper looks at the policy processes in two countries, Mexico and Nigeria, as part of the Supporting National Action and Planning (SNAP) initiative under the Climate and Clean Air Coalition (CCAC). The SNAP initiative supports governments with policymaking and implementation for a reduction in short-lived climate pollutants (SLCPs). This paper seeks to reveal how learning processes and their outcomes are influenced by co-benefits as a specific type of information. Looking at an example of how the co-benefits concept is applied in political practice offers valuable insights into how learning is part of the policymaking process and can shape its outcomes, such as national (climate) action plans.

Inequality and Corruption

Corruption is a primary problem for the quality of government. Since most corrupt exchanges favor the wealthy and the powerful rather than the poor and the powerless, corruption tends to reinforce and widen existing inequalities of wealth and power. Higher inequalities in income and wealth may lead to higher levels of corruption by undermining democratic accountability mechanisms. The wealthy elite may capture policymaking and implementation processes and corrupt electoral process through sponsoring clientelistic politics. Also, high inequality is likely to affect norms and perceptions about corruption, eroding social trust and encouraging corruption. The reciprocal causality may create a vicious cycle of high corruption and high inequality as well as a virtuous cycle of low corruption and low inequality, especially in democracies.

Take the Initiative, Stop Being Passive to NCDs: A PCA-Weighted Composite Indicator towards Prevalence of NCDs in Malaysia

In today’s highly dynamic socio-economic environment, the high degree of non-communicable diseases (NCDs) poses both direct and indirect health problems for nations. This study constructed a composite Non-Communicable Diseases Risk Indicator (NCDRI) that comprises leading characteristics to predict the movement of NCDs’ prevalence, which serves as an early signaling tool for policymakers and public health sectors. A weighting scheme for both non-weighted and principal component analysis (PCA)-weighted was applied from the PCA loading factor. The findings verified that the constructed PCA-weighted approach had a remarkable lead time, which also produced better lead times and was consistent in predicting the direction of change in the fluctuations caused by NCDs’ prevalence. An appropriate regime for policymaking and implementation is required, followed by periodic monitoring and rapid action, to reduce the deadly diseases. The findings of this study demonstrate that the cost indicator marked the most significant risk factor to indicate the prevalence of NCDs; therefore, policymakers should converge on this indicator so that cost-effective interventions can result in more valuable outcomes.

Bureaucracies and Policy Ideas

The idea of a clear separation between policymaking and implementation is difficult to sustain for policy bureaucracies in which public officials have “policy work” as their main activity. A diverse body of scholarship indicates that bureaucrats may enjoy substantial levels of discretion in defining the nature of policy problems and elaborating on policy alternatives. This observation raises questions about the conditions under which bureaucratic policy ideas make their way into authoritative policy decisions, the nature of those policy ideas, and how bureaucratic policymaking has evolved. A main point is that bureaucratic policy ideas are developed in a political context, meaning that bureaucrats have to anticipate that political decision makers will eventually have to endorse a policy proposal. The power relations between politicians and bureaucrats may, however, vary, and bureaucrats may gain the upper hand, which is likely if a bureaucracy is professionally homogenous and able to develop a coherent policy idea. Another perspective concerns the origins of policy ideas. There is limited evidence for individual-level explanations of policy ideas, according to which bureaucrats pursue exogenously defined preferences to maximize their own utility. A competing organizational perspective, which considers policy preferences as the result of organizational specialization, the development of local rationalities, and the defense of organizational turf, stands out as a more plausible explanation for the origins of bureaucratic policy ideas. The policymaking role, and thereby the importance of bureaucratic policy ideas, is being challenged by the rise of ministerial advisors, agencification, and better regulation reforms. Those developments have the potential to change the substance of bureaucratic policy ideas, but they may also generate strategic behavior, which should be of interest to scholars of the politics of bureaucracy.

A “K” to bridge Korea and the world: the state-led formulation of K-lit and its contradictions

This study examines the activity of the Literature Translation Institute of Korea (LTI), a South Korean state agency promoting Korean literature internationally through translation. Analyzing LTI programs and participants in LTI policymaking and implementation, I advocate reconsideration of the conventional theorization of the state as either “strong” or “weak” in its control over national culture, corresponding to the degree of liberalization of market and politics. Instead, the institutional strength of the state and the marginal status – globally – of a given literature are intertwined and mutually transformative for the global formulation of a national literature. This study articulates how LTI's embeddedness in networks of domestic and international literary actors, such as translators, publishers, academics, and critics, both enables and constrains LTI policy. Based on the analysis, I argue that LTI as an intermediary formulates Korean literature with multiple components, combining the marketization of prominent writers with cultural consecration of non-commercial works, and universal literary values with nationalist cultural pride. Consequently, this study reveals the contentious nature of the state-led literary project, under which a national literature in global context is shaped collectively by actors both within and without the state.