The collaborative relationship between Shiga Prefecture and the United Nations Environmental Programme (UNEP) to create the International Lake Environment Committee (ILEC) was Japanâs earliest experience of sub-national participation in international cooperation with counterparts from the developing world and international organizations. The ILEC is an international nongovernmental standing committee, which has been hosted by Shigaâs prefectural government since 1986. One of its key missions is to support environmentally sound lake management activities, which UNEP promotes in developing countries. The objective of this chapter is to examine the local governmentâs autonomous capacity to mobilize resources across institutional boundaries of polity and independently participate in transnational environmental governance. From a state-centric view, a sub-national level of participation at the international level can only be feasible if it is an active part of national policy. In the case of the Shiga prefectural governmentâs initiative for international lake-environmental cooperation, however, as Table 5.1 indicates, sub-national actors came to see themselves as direct players in the absence of national policy. The chapter examines under what conditions and in what ways such a sub-national level of participation takes place by conducting a case study of Shigaâs collaboration with UNEP over lake-environment risk reduction. It reveals the formation process of transnational governance networks involving a sub-national government that is not operating on behalf of the national government. Shigaâs cooperation with UNEP was primarily driven by the ad hoc, bottom-up political mobilization of sub-national actors. In general, without institutionalized channels for subnational governments to participate in the international level, sub-national governments need to mobilize resources on such an ad hoc basis and pioneering sub-national actors need to be capable of effectively engaging in the formation process of transnational governance in unfamiliar territory. This chapter is about the management story of Lake Biwa in Shiga prefecture. The lake is completely located within Shiga prefecture, situated across most municipalities in the prefecture, with its surface area of 674.4 square kilometers occupying one-sixth of the prefectureâs total area. In the environmental policy area of Japanese history, as environmental impacts were manifested locally and adaptive capacity determined by local conditions, municipal governments became the ïŹrst movers. Given the geographical setting of the lake, however, the initiatives for environmental policy were taking place at the prefectural level. The Shiga prefectural government reached out for international environmental cooperation on behalf of voters who found it impossible to ignore the severity of lake pollution and whose concern with it prevailed over pro-development policies in electoral processes. While the worsening eutrophication of the rivers and lakes became known as a worldwide problem, local knowledge and experience in Japan was not sufïŹcient to cope with the Lake Biwaâs environmental stresses. This led the prefectural Environmental Bureau to develop a lake environment policy network with overseas counterparts, which provided them with the process of learning about lake environments.1 These actors transnationally engaged in policy innovation and coordination by diffusing ideas and inïŹuencing the policy measures adopted in other countries.2 In the process of policy networking, the under-funded and overloaded UNEP3 began to work with Shiga prefecture to meet the need to decentralize environmental governance functions, in order to pave the way for future environmental problem-solving.4
What factors shape the distribution of funds and functions in Latin American federations? In this chapter, I empirically assess the capacity of the theoretical argument developed in Chapter 1 to account for changes in the distribution of funds and functions across cases and time in Latin America. The main hypothesis is that changes in the distribution of funds and functions in Latin American federations are more likely when either the president or subnational actors hold more political power and when the fiscal context in which they interact is more critical. I present statistical evidence to sustain some of the expectations in the argument and discuss some of its limitations. The immense majority of countries in Latin America, being federal or unitary, with relatively strong or weak subnational governments, have transferred funds and/or functions (or initiated some kind of decentralization policies1) during the last two decades. In political terms, this means that where subnational officials are usually appointed, many Latin American countries are electing intermediate governments, and the vast majority of them (in fact, all South American countries) have now elected local authorities.2 In fiscal terms, new resources have been transferred to lower levels of government across the region (Falleti, 2000, 1; 2005, 327; Rodden, 2006, 25-26; World Bank, 1998, 2001, 2004a).3 Likewise, new functions and administrative capabilities have also been transferred to subnational governments in several countries. Lower levels of government in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, and Mexico (among other countries; see: Di Gropello and Cominetti, 1998; Falleti, 2000) now handle the administration of education and health care services. This dramatic convergence in Latin America toward the decentralization of funds and functions to subnational governments has generated a vast body of literature and theoretical frameworks to explain the dynamics and characteristics of these policies. A large share of the scholarly works on the topic have been interested in explaining the policy results rather than exploring the dynamics of the bargaining processes that led to the outcome. In the following sections, I first review some of the main arguments, which stress institutional factors (such as electoral rules or party nomination procedures), economic variables (such as fiscal crisis or the level of economic growth), external pressures (from international financial organizations), or demands from civil society as the main factors that promoted decentralization in the region. In this chapter, I attempt to, first, empirically assess the main theoretical contributions in these frameworks to explain changes in the distribution of funds and functions in all the federal countries in the region (Argentina, Brazil, Mexico, and Venezuela) and some unitary ones (Chile, Ecuador, and Uruguay), stressing some of their shortcomings and limitations. I selected these cases in order to have the widest possible range of variation in the dependent variables. Second, I examine the empirical strength of the argument developed in Chapter 1, according to which the distribution of funds and functions is the result of power struggles between central and subnational governments in federal democracies in conditions of fiscal crises. This claim is valid for federal democracies with relatively autonomous states or provinces. But I also include evidence for unitary countries with more dependent subnational governments (although in some of these countries subnational governments have recently gained more power). This argument can help us to account for the distribution of funds and functions across cases (federal and unitary), and it can provide dynamic explanations for decentralization and centralization processes alike. In the following sections, I first define what I mean by distribution of funds and functions. Second, I put forward the central hypothesis and operationalize it. Third, I develop a statistical analysis of the main and the competing arguments. I present the results, analyze them, and conclude in the final section.
Shifting back to a broader perspective, this chapter compares the answer the bookâs four case studies provide for the question: How does variation in institutional designs affect peacebuilding outcomes? The answer falls into two parts. First, comparison of the four missionsâ performance shows that EU peace operationsâcharacterized by centralization and a high degree of headquarters supervisionâperform worse than the two other missions with relatively decentralized and more autonomous operations. Given Afghanistanâs status as a least-likely case for successful peacebuilding, explaining the failure of operations in this context is a less compelling âpuzzleâ per se. In Kosovo, however, the negative impact of institutional design becomes more clear. As the case of EULEX Kosovo demonstrates, even when all external conditions are ostensibly ideal, poor organizational design and performance can still prevent meaningful progress in police reform. The second set of findings pertains to the performance of differently designed bureaucracies. The case studiesâ inductive analysis yielded four hypotheses, relating to specific methods of mission planning, implementation frameworks, leadership styles, and evaluation systems. Comparison of Germany and the two international organizations further suggests that bureaucracies with âcomplexâ principals require different institutional designs than their domestic counterparts. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
The empirical evidence and the academic literature point to the opposed directions on the capability of the territorial arrangements to extenuate conflict in ethnically divided and civil war-worn countries. Little is known about the diverse capacities of the territorial power sharing arrangements in diminishing violence in the post-conflict societies. Therefore, this thesis aims to contribute to the field through studying the conditions under which territorial power sharing arrangements reduce violence in the post-conflict settings. I argue that a resumption of violence is less likely following territorial power sharing arrangements in cases where a relatively high level of economic decentralization is provided for a subnational entity, as it allows the rebel groups to sustain their support base among key constituencies. To test the theoretical argument, a structured, focused comparison of territorial power sharing arrangements in Aceh province of Indonesia and Mindanao province of the Philippines is conducted. The empirical findings give support to the hypothesis in the expected direction. Aceh, where the resumption of violence did not occur, also was enjoying a relatively higher level of economic decentralization. While in ARMM, where the violence resumed after five years following the peace agreement, economic decentralization was relatively low. Nevertheless, the extended analysis reveals additional factors. Transformation of the rebel organization into the political parties and inclusive peace agreements potentially may have impact on the territorial power sharing arrangementsâ capability to contain violence in the post conflict environments.
The study analyzes the "International Law and the constitution of Mozambique: Consensus and dissent in the light of the Global Legal pluralism". This reflective analysis will converge in the problem of the internationalization of law in contemporary society, i.e., the interaction between International Law and the Constitutional Law in the light of the global legal pluralism. After reflecting on past political, economic and social changes, it is concluded that, on the one hand, constitutionalism is neither limited nor satisfied only with the structure of the state legal space (national) and its legal order. On the other hand, International Law is no longer limited to issues related to global international policy. The phenomenon of emerging globalization has created a challenge to the international law as to the idea of a pluralist synchronization and polycentric notion of Law that could respect the legal diversity or legal specificity, within the global Legal Pluralism. The older idea of International Law entered into crisis for not having achieved the unity and cohesion within the global legal system. This crisis driven by the polycentric force of globalization dictated the diversification and the expansion of international law. This diversification has imposed the constitution and strengthening of various autonomous international legal regimes, the multiplication of organs of international conflicts resolution and the emergence of a new normative configuration. With the emergence of new instances of international and global legal production, the debate on the internationalization of Law imposes itself as an urgent need, in the framework of the globalization process and the global legal pluralism. The great debate today, on this theme, departed from general International Law and is set in the context of the new global international legal order. The debate on the internationalization of law took two aspects: one on the protagonism of new instances of autonomous global and international legal production and its influence in the construction of the global international legal order. Another aspect is that of regional economic and political blocks and of organizations and institutions of humanitarian aid and development, under the same prism. This debate brings back the old or new problem of interaction between International Law and the Constitutional Law in the new global international legal order, i.e., the problem of internationalization of national law. In fact, some international rules emanating from autonomous international legal production organs, within the framework of hegemonic globalization, are imposed directly to citizens and States, sometimes without knowledge of such rules, or of its existence. The action of these organs or agents can be considered as a latching and destructive phenomenon within the national legal orders? These rules are imposed on citizens and States not only as strategies or means of operationalization of flows, for the success of the process of globalization and economic development, but also, sometimes, for unclear purposes and within wide range economic interests. With the introduction of the new international legal regimes, the relationship with National Law has decentralized, thus creating a polycentrism, where each regime seeks to draw to itself the protagonism. This phenomenon has created conflicts within National Law and between the various legal systems. It is noted that each legal regime has its specific rules of internationalization of law. The National Law, in the face of this diversity, must meet several distinct rules and sometimes contradictory. There are times when the same matter is subject to various internationalizations by different legal regimes and through distinct rules to that effect. The proliferation of various regimes and agents in the internationalization of Law has weakened the policies and measures of protection and rule production in peripheral States because of the overlap and complexity of the phenomenon. In this new global legal order, unfortunately, we are witnessing the phenomenon of international legislative hegemony led by the major powers with regard to the demands of globalisation. This unusual phenomenon, lived in the global society, is translated into anti-constitutional and anti-democratic practices in the creation and internationalization of law in peripheral countries. The study starts from the analysis of the relationship between international law and the constitution of Mozambique and returns to the debate on the problem of the relationship between International and National Law, in the framework of the new global international legal order.
The Asian and especially the global crisis of 2008 have catalyzed decentralization of the developing worldâs financial governance architecture. I understand this state of affairs via the concept of âproductive incoherenceâ which is apparent in a denser, multilayered development financial architecture that is emerging as a consequence of heterogeneous practical adjustments to changing circumstances rather than as the embodiment of a coherent doctrine. Drawing on Albert Hirschman, I argue that the absence of an encompassing theoretical blueprint for a new economic systemâi.e. a new âismâ to replace neoliberalismâis in fact a vitally important virtue. If we cannot live without a new âism,â I propose âHirschmanian Possibilismâ as a new doctrineâone that rejects an overarching theoretical framework from which to deduce the singly appropriate institutional structure of the economy. Hirschmanian Possibilism asserts instead the value of productive incoherence as a framework for pursuing democratic, ethically viable development institutions.
If the South Asia region hopes to meet its development goals and not risk slowing down or even halting growth, poverty alleviation, and shared prosperity, it is essential to make closing its huge infrastructure gap a priority. Identifying and addressing gaps in the data on expenditure, access, and quality are crucial to ensuring that governments make efficient, practical, and effective infrastructure development choices. This study addresses this knowledge gap by focusing on the current status of infrastructure sectors and geographical disparities, real levels of investment and private sector participation, deficits and proper targets for the future, and bottlenecks to expansion. The findings show that the South Asia region needs to invest between US$1.7 trillion and US$2.5 trillion (at current prices) to close its infrastructure gap. If investments are spread evenly over the years until 2020, the region needs to invest between 6.6 and 9.9 percent of 2010 gross domestic product per year, an estimated increase of up to 3 percentage points from the 6.9 percent of gross domestic product invested in infrastructure by countries in the region in 2009. Given the enormous size of the region's infrastructure deficiencies, it will need a mix of investment in infrastructure stock and supportive reforms to close its infrastructure gap. One major challenge will be prioritizing investment needs. Another will be choosing optimal forms of service provision, including the private sector's role, and the decentralization of administrative functions and powers.
Financing Agreement (Additional Financing for the Second Decentralized City Management Project) between the Republic of Benin and the International Development Association (with schedules, appendix and International Development Association General Conditions for Credits and Grants, dated 1 July 2005, as amended through 15 October 2006). Cotonou, 12 September 2008
Emil TeÈliuc, Lucian Pop, Margaret Grosh, Ruslan Yemtsov
Outlines the institutional and financing arrangements of the last-resort income support (LRIS) programs in seven country cases and distills lessons from the programsâ various approaches to administrative and financial decentralization. The implementation arrangements of LRIS programs in Eastern Europe and Central Asia were shaped, to different degrees, by two factors: (1) the legacy of the social protection systems of the former socialist regimes and (2) the decentralization reforms affecting all transition countries during the 1990s. Most countries in the Eastern Europe and Central Asia region have several tiers of administration involved in the management and implementation of LRIS programs, and in general, the institutional map of the programs is complex. An important issue in almost all countries reviewed in this study is the lack of clear procedures for program administration. Lessons include a prominent warning against decentralized funding, which runs the risk of creating inequities and may lead to serious resource constraints.
Conceptual discussions on development alternatives often tend to swing between extremes. This is true, for example, when the discussion centers on inward versus outward oriented strategies, open versus regulated capital accounts or centralized versus decentralized decision-making. Such âextremismâ affects actual decision-making as well. But more often than not, ground realities and/or pragmatism induced by circumstances forces policy to lag behind advocates of change when economic transitions occur. Moreover, institutions and policy instruments that are seen as typical of one kind of regime often persist, even if in differentiated or changed form and serving different objectives, when the policy environment varies or changes. But the element of similarity or continuity is substantially different across geographies and time. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.
Assesses the extent to which the shift toward local participatory poverty reduction projects and decentralization efforts have enhanced the pace of development, increased equity in access to public programs, and improved the sustainability of development efforts. The evidence appears to indicate that local capture can overwhelm the benefits of local information, and demand-driven, competitive application processes can exclude the weakest communities and exacerbate horizontal inequities. Co-financing requirements can worsen the exclusion of the poorest households and communities and attenuate the impacts of poverty reduction programs. Greater community involvement tends to improve resource sustainability and the quality of infrastructure, and the most successful programs are implemented by local governments that have some discretion but are downwardly accountable. Few studies of participatory poverty reduction programs show clear poverty impacts, though some evidence indicates that projects with large livelihood components perform better than other participatory projects, and need more evaluations.
Negotiators preparing for Rio+20 are missing an important opportunity. Private sustainability governance (PSG) is thriving: organizations created by business and civil society groups, as well as publicâprivate partnerships, adopt and apply significant regulatory standards and undertake valuable operational activities, including pilot projects and financing. However, even though reforming the institutional framework for sustainable development is a central part of the Rio+20 agenda, negotiators are focusing almost exclusively on inter-governmental organizations such as the UN Environment Program (UNEP), the Commission for Sustainable Development and the Economic and Social Council. This publicâprivate engagement gap isolates international governance from the energy and innovation of PSG, and impedes efforts to coordinate the bifurcated and decentralized system of sustainability governance. This article argues that states, and especially international organizations, should actively support PSG as part of the institutional framework for sustainable development, while steering private and publicâprivate schemes towards good organizational practices and the pursuit of public goals. Engagement with PSG would help international institutions pursue their sustainability missions more effectively, promote the emergence of effective and legitimate private schemes, manage fragmentation, promote experimentation and learning, and enhance citizen participation. The article outlines two fruitful modes of engagement pioneered by UNEP: regulatory cooperation, in which international authorities engage directly with business firms, industry groups and other âtargetsâ, influencing them to adopt more sustainable behaviors; and orchestration, in which authorities engage with intermediary organizations, such as multi-stakeholder private governance schemes, catalyzing, supporting and steering them as they seek to influence the ultimate targets of policy.
Climate finance has been the dominant instrument and narrative with which the international community has approached the challenge of climate change. In particular, it has become the main way in which developed countries attempt to account and pay for their historic role in contributing to climate change. Climate finance, however, encourages the use of rigid negotiating tactics in international negotiations, and suffers from many of the endemic problems observed in other large-scale, international public resource transfers. It is argued that it would be better to move away from thinking of solutions in terms of âleast-cost mitigation + adaptationâ, to thinking of it in terms of âlow-carbon economy + developmentâ. Such a move permits the involvement of different political and economic actors (in particular, the private sector) and relevant institutions, and allows for greater cooperation, decentralization and competition. This avoids both the kind of intractable situations observed in the international climate negotiations and the endemic problems that large-scale international institutions inevitably suffer from, and moreover encourages national self-determination. The potential for this approach to climate change is illustrated by the case of the South African Renewables Initiative (SARi).
Masahiro Kawai, Peter A. Petri, Elif ĆiĆliâCiamarra
The global economic crisis refocused attention on the governance of international economic institutions (IEIs). This study uses the analytical framework of club theory to highlight structural obstacles to reform in international macroeconomic management, development finance, trade, and financial stability. The authors argue that reforms currently being discussed - for example, in voting power in the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank - are important, but not sufficient to make IEIs adaptable to the demands of a rapidly changing world economy. The authors propose transforming IEIs by shifting more decisions from the global to sub-global level. Partially decentralized decision making already exists in some policy areas (for example in regional development banks) and could expand and improve the provision of international public goods.
Post-1991 Decentralization reform in Ethiopia reveals that regional governments have technically separate power to self administer their regions, formulate and implement their socio-economic policies and strategies, bear all financial expenditures, raise revenue from specified tax bases, get subsidies from the central government and borrow from internal sources. The implementation of the reform, however, shows sustained central government dominance on expenditure and revenue assignment, continued regional dependence on central subsidy, absence of borrowing, and sustained central government interference in the administrative affair of regions. By conducting detailed field research in three regional governments, this article exposes how public sector management system (public finance and human resource management system) determines decentralization outcomes. It contends that outcomes of decentralization reforms are shaped not only by political and economic factors, as suggested in the decentralization literature, but also by the de facto public sector management system.
This paper focuses on the IMFâs training program as part of the MediumâTerm Strategy (MTS) for capacity building in member countries.1 It updates Executive Directors on the current features of the program, reviews the efforts that have been made in recent years to strengthen the curriculum and to enhance value for money, and considers options for boosting external financing of training through charging and increased donor contributions. The paper also provides background for addressing the following issues: â Are the objectives of IMF training fully consistent with the broader objectives of the institution? And are these training objectives being met? â Is Fund training efficiently organizedâi.e., is the current degree of decentralization sensible? â Are adequate evaluation and feedback mechanisms in place? âIn the absence of market signals and with a large unsatisfied demand, how can we determine the ârightâ volume of training and how can we assess its worth?
Only for the recipients of foreign aid is something akin to central planning seen as a way to achieve prosperity. The end of poverty is achieved with free markets and democracyâwhere decentralized âsearchersâ look for ways to meet individual needsânot Poverty Reduction Strategy Papers (PRSPs) to achieve Millennium Development Goals (MDGs). The PRSPs and MDGs create lots of bureaucracy but hold no one specific agency in foreign aid accountable for any one specific task. Planners in foreign aid use the old failed models of the pastâthe âFinancing Gapâ, the âpoverty trapâ, the government-to-government aid model; and the âexpenditures = outcomesâ mentality. Searchers in foreign aid would imitate the feedback and accountability of markets and democracy to provide goods and services to individuals until homegrown markets and democracy end poverty in the society as a whole. An example of the more promising âsearchersâ approach in foreign aid is 2006 Nobel Peace Laureate Mohammad Yunus and Grameen Bank.
Abstract In 2002 the World Bank issued a US $ 300 million loan to Mexico to finance an education reform project. The loan is the second phase of a threeâpart Adaptable Program Loan (APL). A brief description of the 136âpage World Bank reform project is initially detailed and contrasted with a historical perspective. The Multiple Streams Model is used to determine why this education reform has come to fruition. Finally, the Frank Model is used to assess viability of this phase of the APL. It is concluded that this loan takes great national steps toward modernization, decentralization, and democratization. The adaptability of the loan is quite evident and proactive. Success of this project is promising, but the World Bank must not forget the cultural needs of the indigenous peoples.
The previous chapter has outlined an international development system defined by continuous transformation and by growing complexity. Its institutional architecture, constructed in an earlier era when international aid policies were a straightforward matter of project identification, financing and management, has evolved into a dense and at times almost impenetrable forest of development assistance organizations. The demands on these organizations have expanded in a virtually exponential manner such that today they are challenged to operate simultaneously at global, regional and grassroots levels; to function in new and ever-expanding partnership arrangements with decentralized authorities, the private sector, bilateral, multilateral and NGO agencies; to decentralize and increase operational strengths âon the groundâ, while simultaneously reducing operating expenses and administrative costs; and to embrace and operationalize a myriad of often incompatible or conflicting priorities. Many are simultaneously criticized for âmission creepâ and urged to assume larger roles in new areas and respond to a greater variety of concerns. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.