Governance Reforms

Resumen. La provisión del servicio del agua ha sido tradicionalmente considerada como una responsabilidad del Estado. A finales de la década de 1980, el sector privado emerge como un actor clave en el suministro de servicios públicos. La ciudad de México no escapa a esta tendencia y en 1993 las autoridades públicas firman contratos de servicios con cuatro consorcios privados. A través de este estudio de caso, dos preguntas son planteadas: ¿Por qué las autoridades públicas establecen partenariados con el sector privado? ¿Cuáles son las implicaciones de dichos partenariados en la gobernanza del agua? Este artículo aborda por una parte, el debate conceptual del agua como bien público y/o privado, identificando nuevas tendencias y estrategias de los operadores privados. Por otra parte, se analizan el rol y las relaciones del Estado con otros actores a través de un modelo de gobernanza, definido en términos de partenariados y redes multi-niveles.

Palabras clave: agua, gobernanza, partenariados públicos-privados, redes multi-niveles, ciudad de México.


Abstract. The provision of water services has traditionally been considered a responsibility of the state. During the late 1980s, the private sector emerged as a key actor in the provision of public services. Mexico City was no exception to this trend and public authorities awarded service contracts to four private consortia in 1993. Through consideration of this case study, two main questions arise: First, why do public authorities es- tablish partnerships with the private sector? Second, what are the impli- cations of these partnerships for water governance? This article focuses, on the one hand, on the conceptual debate of water as a public and/or private good, while identifying new trends and strategies carried out by private operators. On the other hand, it analyzes the role of the state and its relationships with other actors through a governance model characte- rized by
partnerships and multilevel networks.

Keywords: governance, Mexico City, multilevel networks, public and pri- vate partnerships, water


Résumé. Les services de l’’eau ont été traditionnellement considérés comme une responsabilité de l’’État. À la fin des années 1980, le secteur privé est apparu comme un acteur clé dans la fourniture de certains services publics. La ville de Mexico n’’a pas échappé à cette tendance et en 1993, les autorités publiques ont signé des contrats de services avec quatre consortiums privés. À travers cette étude de cas, nous nous interrogerons sur deux aspects : pourquoi les autorités publiques établissent-elles des partenariats avec le secteur privé ? Quelles sont les implications de ces partenariats sur la gouvernance de l’’eau ? Cet article s’’intéresse, d’’une part, au débat conceptuel sur l’’eau en tant que bien public et/ou
privé, en identifiant les tendances nouvelles et les stratégies menées par les opérateurs privés. D’’autre part y sont analysés le rôle de l’’État et ses relations avec d’’autres acteurs à travers un modèle de gouvernance, défini en termes de partenariats, et des réseaux multi-niveaux.

Mots clés : eau, gouvernance, partenariats public-privé, réseaux multi- niveaux, ville de Mexico

Previous studies of policy reforms that were undertaken during the recent global financial crisis mostly focused on fiscal consolidation, with much less attention paid to other structural reforms. Although the impact of such external shocks as crisis or change of government on systemic change is widely acknowledged, little agreement exists on which intervening factors can best account for successes or failures of reform commitments. In this article, we propose an innovative explanation that focuses on the variables of political attention and change leadership, and which analyses temporal political and policy dynamics of reform decision making. We conduct a comparative analysis of the four performance priorities of the 2008–2012 Lithuanian Government led by Prime Minister A. Kubilius. The article concludes that a combination of persistent high political attention to policy reforms and strong reform leadership aimed at mobilising coalition support are essential factors in fulfilling r...

This article presents a critical rhetorical analysis of the governing and reform ideology of the Norwegian school system of the 1990s. It uses Karl Popper’s The Open Society and its Enemies as a critical resource in the reading of the reforms, and discusses some of the consequences of the regime’s models of leadership and public management for important pedagogical qualities of the school system.

Prison reform is the attempt to improve conditions inside prisons, improve the effectiveness of the penal system, or implement alternatives to incarceration. It also focuses on ensuring the reinstatement of those whose lives are impacted by crimes. In modern times, the idea of making living spaces safe and clean has spread from the civilian population to the include prisons, on ethical grounds which honour that unsafe and unsanitary prisons violate constitutional (law) prohibitions against cruel and unusual punishment. In recent times, prison reform ideas include greater access to legal counsel and family, conjugal visits, proactive security against violence, and implementing house arrest with assistive technology.

... It eliminates the burden of carrying huge amounts of cash when one needs to make payments and purchases. More importantly, it is plastic money that gives cardholders easy access to instant cash loans, especially when they find themselves in tight financial situations. ...

The ordinances passed in India to ease agricultural trade merely open options, which need to be followed by second order of implementation by development agencies. Without a suitable supply chain orientation towards agricultural development, these market reforms in India will merely end up in incremental changes and not in the desired transformation in the agri-business ecosystem

This paper studies the applicability of theoretical models of university governance from the international research literature to the Polish system. The overarching research question is whether these models are reflected in actual governance patterns found. It is based on large-scale internationally comparable quantitative material. Its empirical evidence comes from 3,700 returned surveys in Poland (and more than 17,000 in eleven European countries) produced in two international research projects focused on the academic profession (CAP: “Changing Academic Profession” and EUROAC: “The Academic Profession in Europe”). The paper shows that Polish universities are operating according to the traditional collegial model of the university as a “community of scholars” to an extent unparalleled in Western Europe. A detailed study of selected variables and specifically construed indexes indicates that the defining feature of the Polish academy today is the power of academic collegial bodies. The influence of collegial bodies on academic decision-making in Poland is the highest in Europe, and, in contrast, the power of the government and external stakeholders is the lowest. Academics, sharing the “republic of scholars” institutional vision of the university, and still highly influential in university decision-making, are currently confronted with higher education reforms grounded in an instrumental vision of university (in which it is a tool for national political agendas), though. Consequently, powerful value-driven clashes between the academic community and the community of policymakers and reformers are expected to intensify. Major theoretical concepts used in this paper come from Johan P. Olsen’s, Ian McNay’s and Robert Birnbaum’s studies of university governance. Its findings are presented in a European comparative quantitative perspective.

Investigations of irrigation in the USA convinced the young Victorian politician, Alfred Deakin of the necessity for active state interventions, including taking control of water resources before the vested interests of commercial irrigators became too entrenched.

The Victorian Irrigation Act of 1886 gave legislative effect to his ideas that “the state should exercise the supreme control of ownership over all rivers, lakes, streams and sources of water supply ” [Brett ] (p. 114).

The Victorian Act became the foundation of
Australian water law, partly dispensing with the British “riparian doctrine” und.

As the owner, states granted “water rights” to develop irrigation. These were attached to land titles until late in the
20th century, when, consistent with prevailing market orientated political ideologies governments created tradable titles to water, effectively “privatising” publicly owned water resources. Throughout the 20th century boosterism dominated Australia’s water policies. Due to an alignment of prevailing ideologies and technologies, most rivers in Southern and Eastern Australia, including in the MDB, were dammed at the nation’s expense to supply irrigation.

While irrigation secures agricultural production in a variable climate, these impressive water storages are more than pragmatic responses to a variable climate. Large dams provide potent symbols of the modern state satisfying dreams of taming rivers, greening deserts and making land productive that run deep in the nation’s psyche.

Irrigation development was enabled by technology but driven by ideals of progress, agrarianism and national development.

Od momentu zakończenia zimnej wojny i rozpadu dwublokowego podziału świata w Ameryce Łacińskiej następowały istotne przemiany o charakterze politycznym, gospodarczym i społecznym. Państwa latynoamerykańskie rozpoczęły w latach dziewięćdziesiątych XX wieku proces przeobrażeń systemowych, a także przeprowadziły liczne reformy gospodarcze, które korzystnie i skutecznie wpłynęły na wzrost znaczenia tych państw w stosunkach międzynarodowych. Brazylia — największe państwo Ameryki Południowej — odgrywa rolę mocarstwa regionalnego, a także zaliczana jest do mocarstw wschodzących. W pierwszej dekadzie i połowie drugiej dekady XXI wieku do miana coraz bardziej liczących się rynków w międzynarodowych stosunkach politycznych i gospodarczych aspirują także inne kraje regionu Ameryki Łacińskiej, jak na przykład: Chile, Meksyk czy — w regionie Ameryki Środkowej — Panama. Współpracę z państwami Ameryki Łacińskiej intensyfikują nie tylko tradycyjni partnerzy tego regionu, jak USA, Rosja, Niemcy, Hiszpania czy Włochy, ale także rozwijające się gospodarki azjatyckie, jak Chiny, Indie czy Singapur.

An in depth study of the thoughts and actions of the Belgian advisers in Siam in relation to the 'standard of civilisation'.

This thesis was written in order to graduate as a Master of History at the History Department of  the University of Antwerp. [ temporally offline - send a request]

This article examines how Russian SOS Villages are undergoing foster reform, which prescribes a transition from institutional care for children deprived of parental care to family care model. The article analyses the problems and transformations experienced by SOS Villages, outlining the aims, instruments, and priorities of the reform. Empirically, the article is based on qualitative investigation of two Russian SOS Villages. Officially, SOS villages have the status of non-state children's homes. However, they were originally concep-tualised as a means to implement family care by specially arranged SOS families (headed by SOS mothers). Comparing the activities of SOS Villages with the theoretical concepts of development, resilience, and attachment shows that children raised in SOS Villages avoid the typical problems associated with institutional care. SOS families provide favourable conditions for sociali-sation, protection, overcoming of social isolation, while maintaining sustainable contact with a significant adult. The normative context created by Decree 481, which changed the status of children's homes, alongside innovations in family policy and the general upsurge of traditionalist discourse, has made SOS Villages vulnerable. As a result, they are forced to protect both forms of their existence: institutional and family. Despite their conceptual adherence to the goals of the reform, in the eyes of the state the SOS Villages remain institutional entities targeted for closure or transformation into temporary residences for children. My research shows that under these new conditions SOS Villages have developed various strategies of involuntary mimicry. The most significant is the re-registration of SOS families as foster families. This helps keep children with their SOS families but significantly increases the level of responsibility and risks for SOS mothers. SOS Villages have also developed new activities, which may be useful in these new conditions. The establishment of consulting

Kako je Hrvatska postala članicom Europske unije 1. srpnja 2013., 2014. bila je prva puna godina njezina članstva u EU. Kroz tu se prizmu anali-ziraju važniji društveni i politički događaji te indikatori ekonomskog sta-nja Hrvatske u toj godini. Analiziraju se: nastavak europeizacije javnih institucija u godini u kojoj su održani izbori za Europski parlament (I), ekonomska recesija i racionalizacija javne potrošnje (II), nastavak borbe protiv korupcije kroz analizu istražnih i sudskih procesa protiv poznatih političara (III), društvene i političke podjele u kojima se institucije vlasti sve češće zaobilaze korištenjem neposredne demokracije (referendumi i javni prosvjedi) (IV), izbori za predsjednika Republike (V) i (nedostatni) kapacitet javne uprave da adekvatno odgovori na sve složenije društvene probleme te ekološke i druge krize, što naglašava potrebu za korjenitim upravnim reformama (VI).

This chapter summarises my PhD on "The Political Economy of National Fiscal Rule Reform in EU Countries". It provides an overview of the key findings and derives policy implications. Essentially, it finds that fiscal reform is mostly driven by debt service costs and that policymakers only accept additional constraints in the short term, because they expect less constraints in the medium term, due to falling debt service costs. Fiscal reform typically builds on an informal coalition of budget politicians and is generally driven the the administration or the legislature, not the government.

La France a engagé une profonde réforme administrative et entend renouveler les cadres territoriaux et politiques qui l’ont jusque-là organisée. Trois grands objectifs ont été mis en avant : la réduction des coûts de fonctionnement de l’administration territoriale, la clarification des compétences des différents échelons d’encadrement et l’ajustement de leur fonctionnement  aux réalités métropolitaines. Ce dernier point mérite en particulier d’être discuté, car c’est assurément le principal levier théorique qui permet d’éclairer les logiques de la réforme mais aussi ses limites.

This doctoral thesis, submitted to the London School of Economics in February 2014, has two interconnected goals. First, it attempts to unpack and redefine ‘hybrid regimes’ – a concept that has emerged from the ‘third wave’ democratisation literature in the late 1990s and shares with this literature its underlying cultural, ideological and teleological assumptions. I start with a critique of these dominant assumptions and point to the need to rethink hybrid regimes outside of these parameters. I then propose a more limited and lucid definition for hybrid regimes as political systems built on two contesting sources of legitimacy – elitist and popular – and corresponding institutions of guardianship and democracy. Hybrid regimes, in other words, are not ‘diminished democracies’ or ‘competitive autocracies’, but an altogether separate regime type that feature clearly defined tutelary and electoral institutions. Based on this redefinition, I present five hypotheses regarding the dynamics of change in hybrid regimes, which are subsequently applied to the two case studies: the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Republic of Turkey.

The second goal of the thesis is to present a new comparative framework to analyse the post-Cold War dynamics of change in the Islamic Republic of Iran and the Republic of Turkey, two countries with political systems that scholars have found difficult to categorise and observers often treated as polar opposites due to their seemingly inimical official ideologies, Khomeinism and Kemalism. Through studying their hybrid institutional characteristics and the role of structural factors and human agency at the critical political junctures that the two countries experienced in the late 1990s and the 2000s, I endeavour to contribute to the scholarly discussion on the dynamics of interaction and legitimation between popular and elite rule.

This is the first of my series of talks as Guest Faculty of Kuvempu University, Shimoga, Karnataka. I begin with a sneak peak at the role that the Indian govt plays in the business and economy of the country. I then trace the historical perspective, the history of govt intervention in the economy, which has undergone considerable transformation from 1947, when India became independent, until today. The break came in 1991 when there was great turnaround and many changes were made. In the light of this historical background, I look individually at the different roles that the Govt plays, as regulator, promoter, entrepreneur, planner and partner. I close with an assessment of the achievements of the state , and the challenges that still remain to be overcome.

During World War I, the US Congress made it unlawful to speak against the war. The executive prosecuted many for doing so and when tried at the Supreme Court it upheld the sentences. During the Iraq War it was not a crime to speak against the war, but it was almost impossible to be heard if you had anything critical to say. Mass media practiced a self-imposed censorship. The op-ed below was written a few days after the invasion of Iraq and sent to main media in the US, but none wanted to print it on the grounds that critique of the war was considered untimely.

Latest GRECO interim compliance report highly critical of Germany
Germany has implemented fully only four out of 20 recommendations
Lack of political will in Berlin to meet international anti-corruption commitments
UNCAC still not ratified
FATF 2010 assessment highly critical of Germany
Germany is a “money-laundering paradise”
Italian mafia has invested in Germany for decades largely unperturbed
Fresh public debate about extra-parliamentary incomes of MPs
Details still not fully published despite recent changes
Germany’s international reputation severely tarnished