A Preliminary Test of the Impact of De-Globalization on MNC Performance

ABSTRACTWe offer a preliminary examination of whether national and organizational level contexts amplify or reduce the effects of de-globalization on the performance of MNCs. Theoretically, we borrow ideas from both event system theory and institutional fit to propose a model explicating key dimensions of the relationship between de-globalization, national and organizational context, and MNC performance. We then test our ideas using data assembled from 283 MNCs in 20 countries. We find that while de-globalization has a negative effect on MNC performance, national and organizational level contextual endowments do moderate this relationship. We discuss some implications of our findings and highlight attendant limitations.

Governance Challenges at the Interface of Food Security and Biodiversity Conservation: A Multi-Level Case Study from Ethiopia

Ensuring food security while also protecting biodiversity requires a governance system that can address intra- and intersectoral complexity. In this paper, we sought to explore the governance challenges surrounding food security and biodiversity conservation through an empirical study in Jimma zone, southwestern Ethiopia. We used bottom-up snowball sampling to identify stakeholders and then held semi-structured interviews with 177 stakeholders across multiple levels of governance. We also conducted 24 focus group discussions with local people. Data were transcribed and thematically analyzed for its contents. Challenges in the structure of institutions and policy incoherence were the key challenges identified for the governance of food security and biodiversity conservation. The challenges around institutional structure included incompatibilities of the nature of governing institutions with the complexity inherent within and between the two sectors examined. Incoherences in policy goals, instruments, and contradictions of policy output relative to the actual problems of food security and biodiversity further hampered effective governance of food security and biodiversity conservation. Notably, many of the challenges that influenced an individual sector also posed a challenge for the integrated governance of food security and biodiversity conservation, often in a more pronounced way. Based on our findings, we argue that governance in our case study area requires a more integrated and collaborative approach that pays attention to institutional interplay in order to ensure institutional fit and consistency across policy goals.

The Problem of Fit in Flood Risk Governance: Regulative, Normative, and Cultural-Cognitive Deliberations

Flood risk is a growing global concern that is not only affecting developing countries, but also the sustainable development of the most affluent liberal democracies. This has attracted attention to the systems governing flood risk across administrative levels, which vary between countries, but are relatively similar in the Nordic region, with both responsibilities and resources largely decentralized to the municipal level. However, floods tend not to be bounded by conventional borders but demand attention to the catchment area as a whole. Influential voices have long argued the importance of fit between the biophysical basis of an issue and the institutional arrangements of actors engaging in its governance. The article investigates such institutional fit in flood risk governance, based on a case study of flood risk mitigation in the Höje Å catchment area in Southern Sweden. Analyzing a unique dataset comprising 217 interviews with all individual formal actors actively engaged in flood risk mitigation in the catchment area illuminates a ‘problem of fit’ between the hydrological system behind flood risk and the institutional arrangements of its governance. This ‘problem of fit’ is not only visible along the borders of the municipalities composing the catchment area, but also of the spatial planning areas within them. The article deliberates on regulative, normative, and cultural-cognitive elements that align to lock flood risk governance into a regime of practices that, if not addressed, continues to undermine society’s ability to anticipate and adapt to the expected escalation of flood risk in a changing climate.

Exploring the Politics of Institutional Fragmentation in Transboundary River Basins

Institutional fragmentation has been less addressed by research when considering the specific context of transboundary river basins, settings that are often characterized by multiple regulatory frameworks as well as by a great range of uses and users of the river that intervene at different institutional levels. Considering that such contexts represent fertile ground for reinforced use rivalries and exacerbated power relations, it is key to focus on the very nature and results of such institutional fragmentation; in other words, it is necessary to explore the politics of institutional fragmentation in transboundary rivers. Three main bodies of literature are suggested as insightful perspectives to provide enhanced understanding of such contexts: (a) institutional fit literature: challenges of fits between institutions and ecosystems, (b) legal pluralism: interplay and co-existence of different normative orders, (c) polycentric governance: coordination modalities between different and independent decision-making centers.

Coordination or conflict? The causes and consequences of institutional overlap in a disaggregated world order

Institutional overlap emerges not only as an unintended by-product of purposive state action but also as its deliberate result. In two ways, this article expands existing research on the causes and consequences of institutional overlap. First, we establish that three different types of dissatisfaction may lead states to deliberately create institutional overlap: dissatisfaction with substantive norms and rules, dissatisfaction with decision-making rules and dissatisfaction with the institutional fit of an existing governance arrangement for a given cooperation problem. Each type of dissatisfaction triggers a distinct motivation for the creation of institutional overlap: to induce policy change, to increase influence on collective decision-making or to enhance governance effectiveness. Second, we demonstrate that whereas the motivation to induce policy change leads to interface conflicts, the motivations to increase influence on collective decision-making and to enhance governance effectiveness give rise to inter-institutional coordination. Three empirical case studies on global energy governance, the governance of global development banking and global environmental governance probe these analytical claims.