Constructive Pressures And Incentives To Reform: Globalization and its impact on public sector performance and governance in developing countries

Contrary to widespread pessimism regarding the effects of globalization on nation states and the quality of governance in developing countries, this contribution stresses that several of its features can be made instrumental, and be beneficial, in terms of public policy making and state capability. Four ‘constructive pressures’ stemming from globalization could be seized constructively by citizens and governments in the developing world: First, better informed and better connected citizens, and an emerging global civil society, demand improvements in service delivery, transparency, and participation. Second, subnational governments, often backed by local NGOs and businesses, and keen to attract foreign investment, increasingly exert pressure vis-à-vis central governments. Third, global investment strategies by private businesses increase the demand for appropriate institutional arrangements within developing countries as well as credible government policies. Although with mixed results, forth, International Organizations, in particular IFIs, have been addressing public sector modernization in developing countries, also sponsoring global public policy networks in critical areas. Moreover, policy coordination and cooperation among states increases significantly, constraining arbitrary action by governments. Globalization, thus, advances the discussion about, and the demand for, new institutional arrangements, clearly with new opportunities for improvements in state capability and governance.     

Disclosure, Corporate Governance and Foreign Share Ownership on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange

We investigate the association of foreign share ownership with firm‐level disclosure and corporate governance structures in Zimbabwe, a developing country in Southern Africa. Our motivation for the study derives from the literature, which suggests that foreign investors: (1) generally have a preference for companies in which they are well informed and where their investments are more likely to be protected, and (2) avoid companies in developing countries because of weak corporate governance structures and low disclosure. Using data drawn from companies listed on the Zimbabwe Stock Exchange, we examine the effect of disclosure and corporate governance on foreign share ownership. We find that disclosure, proportion of non‐executive directors, institutional share ownership and audit committee independence are all positively and significantly associated with foreign share ownership. Our results also demonstrate that market capitalization, return on equity and liquidity ratios are significantly associated with foreign share ownership. These results are consistent with the notion that foreign investors have a preference for companies with effective corporate governance structures, companies with less information asymmetry, as well as companies with healthy cash positions. The results have implications for policy‐makers in developing countries in their endeavour to improve liquidity on stock markets through the participation of foreign investors. The results are also useful to managers in developing countries who are keen to increase the market value of their company, thereby reducing their cost of capital.     

From European Union to European Monetary Union: the new member states and accession countries of Central and Eastern Europe in 2004

The 10 new member states and candidate countries from Central and Eastern Europe have made the institutional reforms embodied in the acquis communautaire, including developing institutions of social dialogue which are supposed to ease the path to entry into the European Monetary Union (EMU). This review assesses the challenges facing the Central and Eastern European countries in achieving the targets set for EMU entry and questions whether the existing institutions of social dialogue will be able to bear the strain of achieving those targets.     

新兴经济体发展对国际社会的影响力研究

当今世界经济呈现多极化趋势,新兴经济体成为世界经济增长的主要动力,对世界政治经济格局产生深刻影响。本文阐述新兴经济体在政治、经济、社会等各方面发展状况,分析新兴经济体的发展对国际社会的影响力。新兴经济体的发展促进了世界经济、国际贸易的稳步发展和产业结构调整,为消除世界范围的贫困和维护世界和平做出了积极的贡献,为发展中国家加快发展和加强“区域化”多边合作提供了可借鉴模式,同时对全球治理结构转型和国际秩序重塑产生一定影响。     

关于构建基层社会治理新格局的几点思考

党的十九届四中全会提出了构建基层社会治理新格局的重大部署。构建基层社会治理新格局必须充分发挥党委核心和政府负责双管齐下的作用,充分带动社会团体与人民群众的参与,在科技引领和法治保障下,不断加强和创新社会的基层治理。十九届四中全会已经为新时代社会治理新格局指明了前进方向,各基层组织一定要着眼于现在、立足未来,为基层社会治理贡献应有的力量。     

Citizen Participation in Urban Governance in the Context of Democratization: Evidence from Low‐Income Neighbourhoods in Mexico

Participation has recently been subject to renewed attention and critique in the context of neoliberal urban governance. This is especially relevant in countries where decentralization and democratization in the context of neoliberalism have led to increased promotion of local‐level participation. This article suggests that current critiques of participation's potential for democratic citizen engagement in a neoliberal context would benefit from further reflection on how participation is implemented in contexts, particularly the global South, where neoliberalism and democracy may be understood differently. Different ‘cultures of engagement’ in specific settings suggest that understandings and practices of participation draw on different traditions, including corporatism and self‐help. This article seeks to add to the debate by exploring the socio‐spatial consequences of participation structures in low‐income neighbourhoods in a provincial Mexican city. Based on qualitative research in two low‐income neighbourhoods in Xalapa, Mexico, it examines how the provisions of the local citizen‐participation framework compare with residents' experiences of it. Formalized conceptions of participation, framed as involvement in service provision, interact with and shape residents' activities in developing their neighbourhoods. This has consequences for urban development there, including the reflection and reproduction of social and spatial marginalization.     

Policies for people on the move: the future of migration

The labor shortages that attracted major inflows of immigrant workers to several European Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) countries in the 1950s and 1960s have given way in the 1980s to persistent labor surpluses and high rates of unemployment. However, differences in economic conditions between the more and less developed regions of the world will continue to attract migrants from one country to another. With strict controls now imposed on the numbers entering host countries legally, many OECD countries are facing a growing illegal immigration problem. For the industrialized countries, the main challenge today is to meet the needs and demands of their existing stock of immigrant labor rather than to absorb new inflows. A 2nd or 3rd generation of young foreigners have emerged who often have only a rudimentary knowledge of their parents' native country and language. Immigrants usually fill the vacancies in industry and the service sector left by the domestic labor force which has gravitated into more highly skilled, better paid work, but with the introduction of automation and new technology, the demand for unskilled labor is diminishing. Although some host countries in Europe have tried to induce immigrants to return home, one should not expect any dramatic movement in that direction so long as there remains a major economic imbalance between sending and receiving countries. In the absence of this solution, countries with large pools of unemployed, low-skilled immigrant labor need to facilitate their passage into higher level jobs. It is necessary to establish the social and political rights of newcomers and to combat discrimination; positive policies (such as those in Australia, Canada, and the US) to promote the involvement and participation of immgrants in community and political life are needed as well.     

Does Monetary Aid Catalyse New Business Creation? Analysing the Impact of Global Aid Flows on Formal and Informal Entrepreneurship

Official development aid – monetary transfers to developing countries to promote social and economic development – reached more than $140 billion in 2016. However, traditional forms of government bilateral aid continue to decline, while private aid is rising. Nevertheless, the impact of this aid, including its potential to stimulate economic development through new business formation, remains uncertain. In this study, we examine the impact of three sources of monetary aid flows on formal and informal entrepreneurship. Drawing from the international political economy literature we argue that bilateral aid and private aid are associated with higher levels of informal entrepreneurship, while multilateral aid is accompanied by lower levels. Moreover, we show that bilateral and private aid are linked with lower levels of formal entrepreneurship, while multilateral aid has no impact. The analyses of a panel of 313 observations from 49 countries provide robust support for these arguments.     

Key Concepts in Ethnography

Abstract

As a reaction to recent corporate scandals, corporate law and accounting regulations have recently been modified in German-speaking countries. Despite changing corporate contexts and agendas, accounting research in these countries has been comparatively silent on issues of corporate governance. In this paper, we discuss this limited response, focusing particularly on the field of management accounting. In German-speaking countries, management accounting is conceived of in a specific way (usually referred to as Controlling). The traditions of such a practice and the associated academic school of thought have made it difficult for researchers to consider issues of corporate governance and internal control in more empirical depth. Pointing to the importance of investigating the actual use of accounting systems and, thus, the social and institutional context of accounting, we propose a strategy for research and education that would allow for more comprehensive insights into the role that (management) accounting might play in corporate scandals.     

New Regionalism Reconsidered: Globalization and the Remaking of Political Economic Space

Amid the near frenzied exaltation of economic globalization and a purported decline of the nation state, a range of subnational regional economies and urban metropoles are increasingly being canonized as the paradigmatic exemplars of wealth creation. Indeed, across many of the advanced developed countries a whole host of academics, consultants, influential commentators, politicians and bourgeois interest groups are readily invoking the region to be the appropriate site for regulating global capitalism. In a recent article in IJURR, though, John Lovering disputes this emerging New Regionalism, viewing it to be seriously compromised by several practical and theoretical inadequacies. This article has two principal aims. First, and while sympathetic to the general tenor of Lovering’s critique, it offers a rejoinder through some sobering reflections on what might be recovered from the range of New Regionalist perspectives currently vying for attention within critical studies of regional development. Second, it presents a series of future theoretical directions for a geopolitically sensitive regional research agenda, drawing on recent thinking from the new regional geography, globalization and the politics of scale, institutional‐relational state theory and the regulation approach. An argument is made that a synthesis of these perspectives might intensify our understanding of the social and political construction of regions, the uneven geography of growth, and the moments of re‐scaled regionalized state power that now enframe the process of economic governance.     

Globalization and Economic Development: Impact of Social Capital and Institutional Building

Countries engaged actively in globalization have experienced phenomenal changes in economic, social, cultural, political, and technological progress. Some countries have benefited significantly from greater integration, while others have held globalization accountable for their economic failure and instability. Globalization introduces new political and social challenges. Benefiting from globalization requires complementary institutions and social development to deal with the changes and risks introduced by greater openness. This article examines whether globalization benefits economic development and how the developing countries could gain from globalization through their social capital and institutional building.     

Self‐Governance for Sustainable Global Supply Chains: Can it Deliver the Impacts Needed?

The world community convened in Rio de Janeiro in June 2012 for the third UN Conference on Sustainable Development. We are, however, increasingly facing major persistent threats, which despite being known for a few decades are still far from being solved – or are even still increasing. On the individual business level, this has four major implications: increased social pressures; possible reputational damage; exposure to resource wars; and front‐running competitors adjusting their value chain strategies. In supply chain governance this leads to four main types of strategies: do it yourself; join forces; the 5C‐approach and harmonising. The key question is: is this sufficient? Imagine 2022 – where will we be 10 years after Rio 2012? Is a rapid and structural transition to a circular and fair global economy possible, using this path of self‐governance for products traded in the global economic arena? This will strongly depend on four key factors: rapid growth of consumer demand; ‘all‐inclusiveness’ of these supply chain governance approaches; successful uplifting production practices of all suppliers; and addressing the major issues of unsustainability. Here we see various serious weaknesses, like the lack of third‐order evaluation and biases causing some of the more recent issues to be overlooked and less visible supply chains. The challenge is to develop a form of ‘meta’‐governance, including new approaches by governments, combining public policy strategies with the demonstrated virtues of self‐governance. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

The ethics of corporate governance in public sector organizations

The current climate of increased accountability in public sector organizations has brought to public attention the ethical dimension of corporate governance. This article presents a conceptually informed method for undertaking of an ethically focused audit corporate governance. The conceptual-theoretical terrain is set out in three dimensions: ethics as applied moral philosophy; equity as social justice; and corporate governance as the moral health of an organization. At an operational level, the conceptual model proposed provides a framework to evaluate the overall integrity of an organization and embraces the inter-related themes of individual responsibility, social equity and political responsibility. A method for ethical audits is also set out. It emphasizes the significance of key personnel in (re)producing and challenging the organizational ethos, while recognizing the necessary limitations placed on researchers' commitment to anonymity and confidentiality in the collection, interpretation and analysis of data, and in the eventual sharing of such data.     

Metropolitan government and governance in western countries: a critical review

The failure of top-down imposed institutional reform for metropolitan areas in the western world has called for new conceptions of institution-building. A bottom up, governance type approach is now considered in various countries which focuses on flexible, voluntary and partnership elements of collective action through which institution is no longer considered as a ready-made object but as a process. A large part of the literature insists upon the effectiveness of this approach through the search for consensus and highlights its internal elements as conditions of success. However, this conception forgets the political and ideological dimensions of institution-building and, consequently, the likely conflicts and obstacles unresolved by governance. This article discusses the relationships between metropolitan government and governance taking a few western urban areas as examples and questions the apparent success of the ongoing metropolitan experiences.     

Empowered Participation in Urban Governance: The Minneapolis Neighborhood Revitalization Program

In the early 1990s, the Neighborhood Revitalization Program (NRP) allocated $400 million in public funds for Minneapolis neighborhood groups to spend on improvement projects over the coming 20 years. NRP created the most financially empowered structure of neighborhood governance in any American city. This article describes the institutional design of NRP and then explores several of its political, social and economic consequences. In particular, we examine the character of participation, deliberation and conflict in several NRP neighborhoods, the tensions between neighborhood groups and city offices over this decentralization initiative, the effects of decentralization upon neighborhood‐level social capital, and the nature of goods funded under the Program.     

公众参与对政府审计腐败治理效果的影响研究——基于国家治理视角的实证分析

十九大报告中提出打造共建共治共享的社会治理格局,其中公众参与是重要的组成部分。事实上,我国政府一直以来都在强调公众参与在社会主义民主政治体系中的作用,尤其在反腐败以及国家监督领域。基于此,选择国家监督体系中的政府审计对腐败的治理作为研究情境,以验证现阶段公众参与在其中的作用。实证检验结果发现：相对于公众参与程度低的地区,在公众参与程度高的地区,政府审计的预防功能和抵御功能能够更好地发挥腐败治理作用,而政府审计揭示功能对腐败的治理作用在两组之间并无区别。     

试论社会转型期农民的非制度政治参与

当前中国农村社会转型过程中最突出的政治现象是农民的非制度政治参与。它源于农村经济体制改革,与农村传统政治思想、历史文化积淀、自然地理特点、阶层结构变迁等密切相关,并对农村基层政权建设和社会政治稳定产生重大影响。如何把农民的非制度政治参与逐步转变为合法有序的制度化政治参与,不仅是目前农村民主政治建设过程中亟待解决的现实问题,而且也是建设社会主义新农村过程中值得深入探讨的理论问题。     

Population Growth and its Implications for Global Security

Between 2015 and 2050 world population is projected to increase by nearly 2.5 billion, rising from 7.3 billion to an estimated 9.8 billion. The vast majority of that projected increase—an estimated 97 percent—will occur in the developing world. Demography is not destiny, but population growth in the developing world is a challenge‐multiplier. In recent decades, notable gains have been made in reducing the incidence of hunger and poverty in the world, but progress has been slow in countries with high fertility rates. The nations with the fastest growing populations tend to rank high on global indices of hunger, poverty, environmental degradation, and fragility; and many of these countries face enormous obstacles to economic development in the form of climate change, regional or ethnic conflict, or water scarcity. Most of these countries also have large numbers of unemployed young people between the ages of 15–24, a demographic factor that can contribute to, or exacerbate, political instability and conflict. Unless fertility rates in these countries fall faster than currently anticipated by demographers, many of these countries face an uncertain future. Lack of progress in improving living conditions in these countries could lead to greater political instability and conflict and increase the growing number of refugees and internally displaced persons in the world.     

Towards Better Regulatory Governance?

Abstract

This article looks at regulatory reform in selected developing countries in Asia and Africa, by making use of the data collected through two existing questionnaire surveys conducted in 2003 and 2007 respectively. It is found that regulatory reform in these countries has not shifted from making ad hoc improvements to regulatory structures to taking a systematic view of regulatory governance and the means of promoting and enhancing it. For regulatory reform to improve regulatory governance, changes should be brought to both formal and informal institutions. Regulatory reform should also be integrated into the general reform of the public administration.