Reshaping Louisiana’s Coastal Frontier: Managed Retreat as Colonial Decontextualization

This article describes social encounters produced through climate adaptation policy experimentation focused on managed retreat—a framework increasingly used by academics and planning professionals to describe various kinds of planned relocations from areas exposed to environmental hazards. Building on scholarship that examines the political ecology of resettlement and adaptation (Shearer, 2012; Maldonado, 2014; Marino 2015; Whyte et al. 2019), I draw on five years of ethnographic work conducted alongside Isle de Jean Charles Biloxi-Chitimacha-Choctaw Tribal leaders as their longstanding Tribal resettlement planning was transformed by government investment. I found that Louisiana’s Office of Community Development relied on Tribal-led planning to garner federal funds, used those funds to transform the resettlement, and used planning process and documentation to erase the rationales behind and aims of Indigenous-led planning—a process I liken to Dina Gilio-Whitaker (2019)’s notion of decontextualization as a colonial strategy of erasure. I contend that state decontextualization of the resettlement from a struggle for cultural survival to managed retreat policy experimentation reproduced a frontier dynamic whereby colonial and capitalist coastal futures are rested upon the erasure of Indigenous peoples and their lifeways, institutions, and self-determination. Constructions of risk and community and timelines published in planning documentation were particularly important state tools used for decontextualization. Ethnographic accounts of such processes can inform future resistance to eco-colonial schemes within climate adaptation.

Chinese Institutions and Policy Experimentation: The case of Zhongguancun

<p>The nature of institutional change lies at the heart of understanding China’s extraordinary transformation of the past 30 years. This thesis adopts an historical institutionalist approach, emphasising dynamic and path dependent processes, in examining Zhongguancun (ZGC), China’s premier science, technology and innovation zone in Beijing. The analytical framework deals with many of the critical issues of institutional analysis of large-scale economic development and social change: the Chinese experience as radical or gradual change; institutional convergence or divergence; formal and informal institutions; top-down design and bottom-up, spontaneous development. ZGC illustrates the ongoing importance of experimentation in Chinese policy as various institutional innovations have emerged from the zone, both spontaneously and through state-led trial schemes. However, increasing preponderance from the Chinese leadership and the highest state-level institutions may ultimately thwart attempts to turn ZGC into a world-class innovation hub.</p>

Chinese Institutions and Policy Experimentation: The case of Zhongguancun

<p>The nature of institutional change lies at the heart of understanding China’s extraordinary transformation of the past 30 years. This thesis adopts an historical institutionalist approach, emphasising dynamic and path dependent processes, in examining Zhongguancun (ZGC), China’s premier science, technology and innovation zone in Beijing. The analytical framework deals with many of the critical issues of institutional analysis of large-scale economic development and social change: the Chinese experience as radical or gradual change; institutional convergence or divergence; formal and informal institutions; top-down design and bottom-up, spontaneous development. ZGC illustrates the ongoing importance of experimentation in Chinese policy as various institutional innovations have emerged from the zone, both spontaneously and through state-led trial schemes. However, increasing preponderance from the Chinese leadership and the highest state-level institutions may ultimately thwart attempts to turn ZGC into a world-class innovation hub.</p>

The Right to Have Digital Rights in Smart Cities

New data-driven technologies in global cities have yielded potential but also have intensified techno-political concerns. Consequently, in recent years, several declarations/manifestos have emerged across the world claiming to protect citizens’ digital rights. In 2018, Barcelona, Amsterdam, and NYC city councils formed the Cities’ Coalition for Digital Rights (CCDR), an international alliance of global People-Centered Smart Cities—currently encompassing 49 cities worldwide—to promote citizens’ digital rights on a global scale. People-centered smart cities programme is the strategic flagship programme by UN-Habitat that explicitly advocates the CCDR as an institutionally innovative and strategic city-network to attain policy experimentation and sustainable urban development. Against this backdrop and being inspired by the popular quote by Hannah Arendt on “the right to have rights”, this article aims to explore what “digital rights” may currently mean within a sample consisting of 13 CCDR global people-centered smart cities: Barcelona, Amsterdam, NYC, Long Beach, Toronto, Porto, London, Vienna, Milan, Los Angeles, Portland, San Antonio, and Glasgow. Particularly, this article examines the (i) understanding and the (ii) prioritisation of digital rights in 13 cities through a semi-structured questionnaire by gathering 13 CCDR city representatives/strategists’ responses. These preliminary findings reveal not only distinct strategies but also common policy patterns.

Policy Experimentation in Committees: A Case against Veto Rights under Redistributive Constraints

We study optimal policy experimentation by a committee. We consider a dynamic bargaining game in which committee members choose either a risky reform or a safe alternative each period. When no redistribution is allowed, the unique equilibrium outcome is generically inefficient. When redistribution is allowed (even small amounts), there always exists an equilibrium that supports optimal experimentation for any voting rule without veto players. With veto players, however, optimal policy experimentation is possible only with a sufficient amount of redistribution. We conclude that veto rights are more of an obstacle to optimal policy experimentation than are the constraints on redistribution themselves. (JEL D72, C78, H23, D78, D71)