Environmental, Social, and Governance Assets

This chapter presents a historical overview of the emergence and evolution of ESG assets and, in particular, analyses the main market trends that have been observed in recent years in relation to these assets. The authors intend to present a summary of the main moments and phases that these assets have gone through, from the moment of their appearance in 2007, the year in which the European Investment Bank carried out its Climate Awareness Bond as a test issuance. The movement associated with the issue of these assets is initiated by supranational entities with little homogeneity and no fixed conventions. To overcome this impasse, the green bond principles emerged and a process of defining the characteristics of these assets began, with a particular focus on transparency and the governance process. From this stage onwards, the market showed interest in these financial products and hence the emergence of a harmonising movement regarding green bond standards in which Europe seems to have taken a leading role.

The Role of Institutional Investors in Corporate Governance of Their Portfolio Companies – The Case of Croatia

The goal of this research is to examine the involvement of institutional investors in the corporate governance of companies in their portfolio by analyzing characteristics of institutional investors with respect to the type of investment, investment time horizon, and degree of involvement in the process of managing a company. The paper will outline the attitudes of managers on the level of investors’ involvement in the governance process in order to identify determinants of investment decisions, decisions to take corrective actions to enhance corporate governance, or decisions to leave the ownership structure. A qualitative approach was chosen, consisting of a series of structural interviews with 25 fund managers of different types of institutional investors. The results indicate that institutional investors are involved in the corporate governance of their portfolio companies, and that control mechanisms they use include voting rights, direct communication with the management with the aim of discussing strategies for future development, and collaboration with other institutional investors in the ownership structure.

Exploring crisis governance: Quest for functional resilience during COVID-19 in Lithuania

An effective, timely managed and interoperable governance process and its adaptive features are of the utmost importance in dealing with any type of crisis at the state level. This article explores civil society actors’ engagement in Lithuania to identify the functional resilience level in crisis governance of COVID-19. Social capital and adaptive capacity approaches were employed for theoretical consideration and analysis. We hypothesise that linking social capital is more important for enhancing resilience at the beginning of the crisis, while adaptive capacity gains prominence during and after the crisis. Mixed analysis methods were used in gathering data through content analysis, surveys (standardised questionnaires) and interviews with experts from civic (voluntary and non-governmental) and public (local and central government) sectors. The findings provide novel insights into the importance of civil society actors’ engagement in bolstering functional resilience and embedment of a whole of society approach in crisis governance during times of uncertainty.

The owners of information: Content curation practices of middle-level gatekeepers in political Facebook groups

Volunteer moderators play a key role when making judgements about which online content should be accepted and which should be removed. As such, their work fundamentally shapes the digital social and political spheres. Using the data obtained from 15 Facebook group moderator interviews as research data, this study focused on the content curation work by the middle-level gatekeepers of Finnish political discussion groups on Facebook. The findings show that the moderators feel strong ownership of the groups they moderate and of the information such groups provide, and as a result, they strongly shape the groups’ discussion and governing policy. Facebook’s governing policy for groups is vague, which gives space for group norms and identities to develop. The stakeholder groups (i.e. the platform administration, moderators and users) do not attend to the governance process all together, so negotiations among them are almost non-existent.

Dual Logic of Sports Violence Governance in China: A Comprehensive Survey of Law and Industry Autonomy

Sports violence is a critical issue that has hindered China’s sports development. Dual logic is currently the mainstream rule of law and industrial autonomy, although it has not produced satisfactory results. In this paper, we used expert interviews, text analysis, and case analysis to investigate the flaws in the current governance process and found that the dual logic of sports violence governance has problems of varying degrees. The low degree of legislative specialization, the hazy limit of judicial intervention, and disparate law enforcement are examples of the rule of law. The clash of rights and interests between the association and the state, the association’s ineffectual control over the junior leagues, and the limited scope of governance are all examples of industry autonomy. Based on the issues mentioned above, this paper proposes dual logic strengthening measures and the notion of integrated governance. In particular, we should improve the rule of law thinking and construct a legal system for sports violence in China from legislation, justice and law enforcement, and law-abidingness to compensate for the current lack of law in sports violence. Second, we define the scope of the association’s “postdecoupling era” powers and obligations, resolve conflicts through state involvement based on the rule of law, and remove governance hurdles. Finally, we thoroughly investigate three aspects of integrated governance between the rule of law and industry autonomy: respecting industry autonomy and providing specific implementation space for industry norms, not excluding the rule of law’s intervention, and establishing an industry autonomy supervision mechanism. The rule of law and industry autonomy permeate each other and realize integration.

Multilingualism in Cameroon: An Expression of Many Countries in One Country

Cameroon is a country with many languages interacting together. The languages have a complex history reflecting its complex culture. This paper focuses on some of these complexities and demonstrate how people belonging to different linguistic groups construct and deconstruct the concept of country using local languages. I will expand on the feeling of belonging to the country when a local language is used. The paper will set the context, provide a historical background of Cameroon, explain the language situation and settle on how the multiple languages spoken in Cameroon make village and ethnic entities countries within a country. It may not be possible to discuss the possible interactions between the multiple languages but levels of interaction of these languages will be established. The notion of country will be explained through the use of the languages and linked to the complexity in the governance process undermining the unity of the people of Cameroon.

Water Resources and Governance Approaches: Insights for Achieving Water Security

Integrated river basin management (IRBM) has been proposed as a means to achieve water security (WS), maximizing economic and social well-being in an equitable manner and maintaining ecosystem sustainability. IRBM is regulated by a governance process that benefits the participation of different actors and institutions; however, it has been difficult to reach a consensus on what good governance means and which governance perspective is better for achieving it. In this paper, we explore the concept of “good water governance” through the analysis of different governance approaches: experimental (EG), corporate (CG), polycentric (PG), metagovernance (MG) and adaptive (AG) governances. We used the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) water governance dimensions (effectiveness, efficiency and trust and engagement) as a “good enough water governance” that regards water governance as a process rather than an end in itself. Results indicate that each of the five governance theories presents challenges and opportunities to achieve a good governance process that can be operationalized through IRBM, and we found that these approaches can be adequately integrated if they are combined to overcome the challenges that their exclusive application implies. Our analysis suggests that a combination of AG and MG encompasses the OECD water governance dimensions, in terms of understanding “good enough water governance” as a process and a means to perform IRBM. In order to advance towards WS, the integration of different governance approaches must consider the context-specific nature of the river basin, in relation to its ecologic responses and socioeconomic characteristics.

Revealing the Dark Side of the Internet

The purpose of this study is to reveal the dark side the Internet and establish a hierarchical framework to provide its governance path based on users' negative psychology. However, this hierarchical framework must consider unnecessary attributes and the interrelationships between the aspects and the criteria. Hence, fuzzy set theory is used for screening out the unnecessary attributes, a decision-making and trial evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) is proposed to manage the complex interrelationships among the aspects and attributes, and interpretive structural modeling (ISM) is used to divide the hierarchy and construct a hierarchical theoretical framework. The results show that: (1) the institutional system is the driver of Internet governance improvement (2) personal values are the last link in the governance process (3) the governance transition from institutional system to values must cross the barriers of ethics and technology. This paper proposes a more systematic and integrated hierarchical framework which provides theoretical guidance to govern the dark side of the Internet.

Price stability - major macroeconomic objective

Price is a basic element of the market economy system and has become a leading economic category, due to its functions within it. Ensuring price stability is a major objective of the governance process, as it contributes to creating a relatively stable economic framework that allows for economic development and ensuring a sustained level of economic growth. The global economic crises, in parallel with the regional political instability, aggravated by the devastating consequences of the pandemic situation, emphasize once again the importance of the dynamics of price developments on the macroeconomic situations of contemporary states.