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Institutional Approach (institutional + approach)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	76%

Selected Abstracts

The North American Naturalization Gap: An Institutional Approach to Citizenship Acquisition in the United States and Canada,

INTERNATIONAL MIGRATION REVIEW, Issue 1 2002
Irene Bloemraad
Using 1990 U.S. Census 5% PUMS and 1991 Canadian Census 3% public and 20% restricted microfiles, this article demonstrates the existence of a North American naturalization gap: immigrants living in Canada are on average much more likely to be citizens than their counterparts in the United States, and they acquire citizenship much faster than those living south of the border. Current theories explaining naturalization differences , focusing on citizenship laws, group traits or the characteristics of individual migrants , fail to explain the naturalization gap. Instead, I propose an institutional approach to citizenship acquisition. States' normative stances regarding immigrant integration (interventionist or autonomous) generate integrated or disconnected institutional configurations between government, ethnic organizations and individuals. Evidence from a case study of Portuguese immigrants living in Massachusetts and Ontario suggests that in Toronto government bureaucrats and federal policy encourage citizenship through symbolic support and instrumental aid to ethnic organizations and community leaders. In contrast, Boston area grassroots groups are expected to mobilize and aid their constituents without direct state support, resulting in lower citizenship levels. [source]

Examining the Potential of Indigenous Institutions for Development: A Perspective from Borana, Ethiopia

DEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 2 2003
Elizabeth E. Watson
This article examines an institutional approach to development in which indigenous institutions are viewed as a resource for achieving development. It concentrates on indigenous natural resource management (NRM) institutions which have been seen by some development agencies to be a means to address the needs of people and the environment in a way that is also participatory. Using material from Borana, Ethiopia, the article describes the indigenous NRM institutions and examines the outcome of one attempt to work with them. In the process, it shows that partnerships between development agencies and indigenous NRM institutions are often fragile, and tend to dissolve when they fail to meet the preconceptions of the developers. Through an examination of this approach to development, the article also examines the usefulness of recent broad approaches to institutions. [source]

Some Notes on Institutions in Evolutionary Economic Geography

ECONOMIC GEOGRAPHY, Issue 2 2009
Ron Boschma
abstract Within the evolutionary economic geography framework, the role of institutions deserves more explicit attention. We argue that territorial institutions are to be viewed as orthogonal to organizational routines since each territory is characterized by a variety of routines and a single firm can apply its routines in different territorial contexts. It is therefore meaningful to distinguish between institutional economic geography and evolutionary economic geography as their explanans is different. Yet the two approaches can be combined in a dynamic framework in which institutions coevolve with organizational routines, particularly in emerging industries. Furthermore, integrating the evolutionary and institutional approach allows one to analyze the spatial diffusion of organizational routines that mediate conflicts among social groups, in particular, those between employers and employees. An evolutionary economic geography advocates an empirical research program, both qualitative and quantitative, that can address the relative importance of organizational routines and territorial institutions for regional development. [source]

The North American Naturalization Gap: An Institutional Approach to Citizenship Acquisition in the United States and Canada,

Democracy and Diversionary Military Intervention: Reassessing Regime Type and the Diversionary Hypothesis

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES QUARTERLY, Issue 1 2005
Jeffrey Pickering
This article concentrates on two limitations in the literature on diversionary force. First is the common assumption that major powers are the only actors capable of diversion. Second is the narrow conceptualization of regime type prevalent in the literature. Instead of dichotomizing regimes, we distinguish mature democracies and autocracies from consolidating variants of these regimes. We draw hypotheses from the institutional approach and test them with time series cross-section negative binomial first-order autoregressive process estimates of 140 countries from 1950 to 1996. We find that not all democracies and not all autocracies divert. Mature democracies, consolidating autocracies, and transitional polities are the only regime types prone to this type of force. Our results suggest that the diversionary literature would benefit from more discriminating operationalizations of regime type and by looking beyond major powers to the actions of less powerful states. [source]

Mixed tree-vegetative barrier designs: experiences from project works in northern Vietnam

LAND DEGRADATION AND DEVELOPMENT, Issue 4 2002
A. Fahlén
Abstract There has been an increased interest in the use of vegetative barriers in acid-infertile upland management systems in Southeast Asia. This paper analyses the experimental designs and policies in early-1990s of using vetiver grass barriers (Vetiveria zizanioides L.) in microwatersheds with short-rotation tree plantations in Vinh Phu Province, Vietnam. Four different mixed tree-vetiver models on degraded Ferric-Plinthic Acrisols are discussed. It is concluded that the institutional approach of demonstrating vetiver barriers as a model had a poor cost-wise performance, and that the model itself did not address the underlying issues of land degradation due to uncontrolled harvest of organic matter from the forest floors. The institutional approach was tainted with price distortions and ,disbursement-oriented' actions. Alternative and more flexible on-farm approaches, using V. zizanioides or the indigenous leguminous shrub Tephrosia candida (Roxb.) DC as vegetative barriers, were found to be more cost-effective and likely to have a higher rate of adoption among farmers. The institutional changes in land allocation policies (securing long-term usufruct users and transfer rights of agricultural and forest land) that took place in Vietnam in the early 1990s, in combination with a reorientation of programme policies to support needs of individuals and farmers' households, are hypothesized to have contributed more to the ,regreening' of the hills, than any single approaches of technical barrier designs by the Swedish-Vietnamese Forestry Co-operation Programme (FCP) in northern Vietnam. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

New Institutional Economics' contribution to strategic groups analysis

MANAGERIAL AND DECISION ECONOMICS, Issue 3 2007
Stephane Tywoniak
Rather than consider the two broad strands of strategic group research,performance-based and behavior-based studies,as competing approaches, we argue that they relate to complementary levels of analysis. We present a four-level framework for analyzing structures within industries drawn from New Institutional Economics (NIE) which covers different approaches to strategic group formation from institutional isomorphism and embeddedness through to the firm-level effects of certain resource deployments. We apply an institutional approach to a case study of the Australian banking industry and supplement this with a quantitative approach based around key strategic variables. This analysis suggests that distinct groups have emerged due to the institutional environment and the different regulatory environments experienced by various banks in the industry. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [source]

Presidential-Congressional Budget Agreement, 1949,1995

POLITICS & POLICY, Issue 3 2001
Steven A. Shull
In this paper, presidential-congressional budget agreement, measured as the percentage of presidential budget requests appropriated by Congress, is explained. Budget agreement reflects a pivotal point in the struggle between the president and the Congress to enact their respective preferences since funding brings such preferences to life. In order to explain budget agreement, the existing tandem institutions approach to studying presidential-congressional relations is expanded by positing a multiple perspective encompassing a three environment model: executive, legislative and exogenous environments. Three variables tap each institutional environment, comprised of the executive and the legislative, and two variables are included in the exogenous environment. Findings reflect that a multiple perspectives approach better captures the complexities of presidential-congressional relations than a strictly institutional approach. The institutional resources available to both the president and Congress contribute little, but the exogenous environment has the greatest influence on budget agreement. Differences in explanation are observed when budget agreement is divided by domestic and foreign policy. [source]

Fertility and Distorted Sex Ratios in a Rural Chinese County: Culture, State, and Policy

POPULATION AND DEVELOPMENT REVIEW, Issue 4 2003
Rachel Murphy
This article explores how gender bias in population policies interacts with local culture to reinforce distortions in sex ratios among infants and young children in rural China. It argues that population policies introduce new sources of inequality into local culture while, conversely, gender inequalities embedded in local culture influence formal population policy and practice. Applying an institutional approach to the study of an agricultural county in Jiangxi province, southeast China, the analysis identifies four ways in which an interplay between gender bias in policy and culture produces gendered fertility outcomes: (1) the creation of gendered official categories such as "daughter-only households"; (2) a male bias embedded in local government; (3) the use of local gender norms in state pedagogy; and (4) the reworking or subverting of official norms in ways that reinforce gender inequalities in local reproductive culture. The article concludes that despite indications of contestation of village patriarchy, discrimination against daughters is likely to persist. [source]

W. Lloyd Warner and the Anthropology of Institutions: An Approach to the Study of Work in Late Capitalism

ANTHROPOLOGY OF WORK REVIEW, Issue 2 2009
Marietta L. BabaArticle first published online: 16 SEP 200
Abstract W. Lloyd Warner is re-interpreted as an institutional anthropologist whose approach to the study of work in a capitalist context has relevance to contemporary disciplinary problems and issues. The essay traces the development and influences upon Warner's thought and research strategies from their origin in Durkheim's sociology and Warner's fieldwork among the Murngin, to the Hawthorne Project, where Warner held an intermittent yet significant consultancy, and on to the seminal contributions of the Yankee City Series where, it is argued, the anthropological approach to contemporary institutions took its initial form. Warner's approach to the study of work in formal organizations at Yankee City was ground-breaking because it led away from the more conventional strategy of confining ethnography to a single organization (e.g., Hawthorne) by examining social relations and meanings that cross-cut the larger society and in which all formal organizations are embedded (i.e., class, rank, and status). Warner's commitment to rigorous empiricism, and to engaging the problems of an era, led him beyond functionalist theory to the hallmarks of an institutional approach to work in late capitalism that still resonates today. [source]

Transport and the rural economy: Institutions and institutional change in Ambeso Village, Indonesia

ASIA PACIFIC VIEWPOINT, Issue 2 2007
William SabandarArticle first published online: 20 JUL 200
Abstract: This paper is concerned with the interaction between transport improvements and the rural economy. An institutional approach, based primarily on the new institutionalism theory, was used as the theoretical basis for the analysis. Using the evidence from Ambeso Village of Tana Toraja District, Indonesia, the paper examines the way transport improvements have been introduced and provided opportunities for positive change as well as individual responses to these opportunities. The paper ends by emphasising the role of institutions in the interaction between transport and the rural economy and the need for transport policy and research to transcend its traditional boundaries and address the complexities of institutions and institutional change. [source]

Ethnic Inequalities in the Public Sector: A Comparative Analysis

DEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 2 2006
Yusuf Bangura
This article uses empirical data to discuss the links between ethnicity, inequality and governance in a framework that divides countries according to their levels of ethnic polarization. It makes three main arguments. First, types of diversity, not the existence of diversity per se, explain potentials for conflict or cohesion in multiethnic societies. Ethnic cleavages are configured differently in different social structures and are less conflictual in some countries than in others. Second, relative balance has been achieved in the public sectors of countries that are highly fragmented or those with ethnicity-sensitive policies, but not in those with ethnicity-blind policies. Third, the article is critical of institutional approaches to conflict management that underplay background conditions in shaping choices. Consociational arrangements may not be relevant in unipolar ethnic settings or fragmented multiethnic societies, where governments may be ethnically inclusive under democratic conditions. They seem unavoidable in ethnic settings with two or three main groups or in settings with strong ethnic/regional clusters. [source]

Collaborative Research: Policy and the Management of Knowledge Creation in UK Universities

HIGHER EDUCATION QUARTERLY, Issue 2 2001
David Smith
Collaboration in research activity is now the rule not the exception. It is encouraged by government, funding bodies and research councils. However, the concept of collaboration is difficult to define. It occurs at many different levels, driven by a complex research system-policy dynamic. Three different models of collaboration , inter-personal, team and corporate , are identified, each with their own rationale, structure, benefits and costs. The paper examines the institutional implications of these models. It argues that institutions and individual researchers conceptualise and operationalise research collaboration in different ways. Although vital to institutional mission, collaborative research is rarely mapped by senior managers with any precision. In general, institutional approaches to the management of collaborative research lag behind the policy rhetoric. The paper concludes with an overview of the key dilemmas for institutional strategists and policy makers posed by the shift towards more collaborative approaches to research. [source]