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Institutional Dynamics (institutional + dynamics)

Distribution by Scientific Domains

Humanities and Social Sciences	50%
Business, Economics, Finance and Accounting	37%

Selected Abstracts

Social Policy Under One Country, Two Systems: Institutional Dynamics in China and Hong Kong since 1997

PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION REVIEW, Issue 3 2003
Ian Holliday
Hong Kong's 1997 reversion to Chinese sovereignty brought two hitherto distinctive social policy systems into one country. As Hong Kong is gradually assimilated into China in the coming decades, the two social policy systems will need to identify elements of convergence. In this article, we argue those elements can be found in parallel efforts to curtail the reach of the state, extend the role of the market, enhance individual responsibility, and in the development of a productivist social policy orientation in both societies. The social policy systems of the two societies remain strikingly different in many ways, reflecting their diametrically opposed starting points. But their reform trajectories appear to be pointing in similar directions. [source]

Transnational Governance: Institutional Dynamics of Regulation , Edited by Marie-Laure Djelic and Kerstin Sahlin-Andersson

BRITISH JOURNAL OF INDUSTRIAL RELATIONS, Issue 3 2007
Colin Crouch
No abstract is available for this article. [source]

Why bartering biodiversity fails

CONSERVATION LETTERS, Issue 4 2009
Susan Walker
Abstract Regulatory biodiversity trading (or biodiversity "offsets") is increasingly promoted as a way to enable both conservation and development while achieving "no net loss" or even "net gain" in biodiversity, but to date has facilitated development while perpetuating biodiversity loss. Ecologists seeking improved biodiversity outcomes are developing better assessment tools and recommending more rigorous restrictions and enforcement. We explain why such recommendations overlook and cannot correct key causes of failure to protect biodiversity. Viable trading requires simple, measurable, and interchangeable commodities, but the currencies, restrictions, and oversight needed to protect complex, difficult-to-measure, and noninterchangeable resources like biodiversity are costly and intractable. These safeguards compromise trading viability and benefit neither traders nor regulatory officials. Political theory predicts that (1) biodiversity protection interests will fail to counter motivations for officials to resist and relax safeguards to facilitate exchanges and resource development at cost to biodiversity, and (2) trading is more vulnerable than pure administrative mechanisms to institutional dynamics that undermine environmental protection. Delivery of no net loss or net gain through biodiversity trading is thus administratively improbable and technically unrealistic. Their proliferation without credible solutions suggests biodiversity offset programs are successful "symbolic policies," potentially obscuring biodiversity loss and dissipating impetus for action. [source]

China's Rangelands under Stress: A Comparative Study of Pasture Commons in the Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region

DEVELOPMENT AND CHANGE, Issue 2 2000
Peter Ho
China's economic reforms have exacerbated the problems of over-grazing and desertification in the country's pastoral areas. In order to deal with rangeland degradation, the Chinese government has resorted to nationalization, or semi-privatization. Since the implementation of rangeland policy has proved very difficult, however, experiments with alternative rangeland tenure systems merit our attention. In Ningxia, in northwest China, local attempts have been undertaken to establish communal range management systems with the village as the basic unit of use and control. Some of these management regimes are under severe stress, due to large-scale digging for medicinal herbs in the grasslands. This digging has resulted in serious conflicts between Han and Hui Muslim Chinese, during which several farmers have been killed. It is against this backdrop that this article explores the institutional dynamics of range management in two different villages. [source]

Coalition Cabinet Decision Making: Institutional and Psychological Factors,

INTERNATIONAL STUDIES REVIEW, Issue 1 2008
Juliet Kaarbo
This essay reviews the intersection between institutional and psychological conditions that occurs in multiparty coalition cabinets and the effects on foreign policy and decision making. Parallel research in social psychology and foreign policy can provide clues to the underlying mechanisms linking institutional context to policymaking and policy choices. The psychological processes involved in group polarization, persuasion, and other influence strategies as well as psychological factors affecting the quality of decision making are important in coalition cabinets and are reinforced by the particular institutional dynamics of multiparty governance. Indeed, this essay proposes that future research focus on contingency factors in the policymaking process, given the competing views on the effects of multiple advocacy on the quality of decision making and on the types of foreign policies associated with multiparty cabinets. More broadly, this essay supports the view that a highly structural understanding of the effects of institutions on politics and policies is incomplete and that research on the interplay among structures and human agents is critical. [source]

Making and Remaking State Institutional Arrangements: The Case of U.S. Trade Policy in the 1970s*

JOURNAL OF HISTORICAL SOCIOLOGY, Issue 1-2 2005
NITSAN CHOREV
The analysis of the struggle and its impacts offers several modifications to historical institutionalist analysis of institutional dynamics and change. First, the uneven distribution of benefits by institutions is an intended outcome of institutional designers. Second, institutions are causally effective when they reflect a balance of forces that no longer exists. Third, unanticipated effects within given institutional arrangements are the outcome of intended counter-strategies. [source]

Contested hybridization of regulation: Failure of the Dutch regulatory system to protect minors from harmful media

REGULATION & GOVERNANCE, Issue 2 2010
Bärbel R. Dorbeck-Jung
Abstract The hybridization of regulatory modes and instruments is currently a popular way to improve public regulation. However, it is still unclear whether combinations of hard law and soft law, co-regulation, and legally enforced self-regulation really make regulation more effective. Using the analytical framework of the "really responsive regulation" approach, in this article we explore effectiveness problems in a hybrid regulatory system that tries to protect minors from harmful media. In our analysis of low compliance rates in the context of system failures, we argue that effectiveness problems seem to arise from poorly informed staff members, lack of internal and external controls, low rule enforcement, insufficient overlap between public and private interests, poor social responsibility in the Dutch media sector, deficiencies in the institutional framework, an inconsistent regulatory strategy, and inadequate responses from responsible regulators. Furthermore, based on our case study we argue that institutional dynamics of standard-setting activities can be detrimental to regulatory goal achievement if there is no compensation at the systemic level. Ongoing "regulatory care" through control, corrective responses, and rule enforcement seems to be crucial for a hybrid regulatory system to perform well. [source]

Equity and purpose in financing universities: the case of Nova Scotia

CANADIAN PUBLIC ADMINISTRATION/ADMINISTRATION PUBLIQUE DU CANADA, Issue 3 2000
David M. Cameron
This is because some of its rather large number of universities and colleges are in very different situations as compared with others. How is an equitable distribution to be achieved under such circumstances? The longstanding solution has been to combine fixed grants based on a historically determined base allocation, with a variable component based on enrolment. But this grew increasingly problematic as the original institutional patterns evolved and, especially, when the province adopted a formula of fixed shares combined with actual reductions in funding. A new formula was required and this article tells the story of its development by the Nova Scotia Council on Higher Education. This article explores both the issues that had to be addressed and resolved and the institutional dynamics and personalities that shaped their resolution. In the end, it became apparent that an equitable redistribution of grants to Nova Scotia's universities could be achieved through this process only if additional resources were forthcoming. Sommaire: La Nouvelle-Écosse se débat avec le problème du financement de ses uni-versités depuis l'adoption des subventions provinciales en 1963, éant donné la situation très particuliére de plusieurs de ses nombreux colléges et universités. Comment réaliser une répartition équitable dans de telles circonstances? Pendant longtemps, la solution fut de combiner des subventions fixes s'appuyant sur une allocation de base établie de longue date, avec une composante variable fondée sur le nombre d'inscrip-tions. Mais, cette méthode est devenue de plus en plus problématique face à l'évolu-tion des modèles institutionnels et, en particulier, lorsque la province a adopté une formule de parts fixes combinée à des coupures de financement. II a fallu alors trou-ver une nouvelle formule, et cet article présente l'historique de son élaboration par le Conseil de l'enseignement supkérieur de la Nouvelle-Écosse. II explore à la fois les questions qu'il fallait régler et la dynamique institutionnelle ainsi que les personna-lités qui ont influé sur leur résolution. En dernière analyse, il devint évident qu'une redistribution équitable des subventions aux universités de la Nouvelle-Écosse ne pouvait se réaliser par l'entremise de ce processus qu'avec l'allocation de ressources supplémentaires. [source]