Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The central question of this research is why international organizations for internally displaced persons (IDPs) act as they do in global-policy making. To solve the conundrum that the increasing number of IDPs and the absence of international system for IDPs, it will examine the effect of bureaucratic characteristics of international organizations and cultural changes on their policy positions for IDPs. Unlike existing research taking into consideration international organizations as instruments through which states try to realize their interests or arenas in which states are bargaining to resolve conflicts and achieve cooperation reducing transaction costs, it will regard international organizations as independent agencies, which interact with states and reshape their organizational purposes. Concerning international efforts to protect IDPs, it will analyze two cases of international organizations, the UNHCR and the IOM. In so doing, the analysis will be guided by two basic questions: First, why do both organizations show their strong reluctance to create a new focal point in the UN system and to accept the additional mandate demanded by the international community including the UN and member states? Second, under what conditions do they transform their dysfunctional, bureaucratic behavior into collaborate protection and assistance for IDPs with other organizations? By providing theoretical and empirical understanding of bureaucratic behavior of existing international organizations for IDPs, the findings this research project will help further studies to design the more predictable and systemic institution for international protection for IDPs.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: This paper investigates the politics of change in coordinated market economies, and explores why some countries (well-known for their highly cooperative arrangements) manage to sustain coordination when adjusting to economic transformation, while others fail. We argue that the broad category of “coordinated market economies” subsumes different types of cooperative engagement: macro-corporatist forms of coordination are characterized by national-level institutions for fostering cooperation and feature a strong role for the state, while forms of coordination associated with enterprise cooperation more typically occur at the level of sector or regional institutions and are often privately-controlled. Although these diverse forms of coordination once appeared quite similar and functioned as structural equivalents, they now have radically different capacities for self-adjustment.

The role of the state is at the heart of the divergence among European coordinated countries. A large public sector affects the political dynamics behind collective outcomes, through its impact both on the state’s construction of its own policy interests and on private actors’ goals. Although a large public sector has typically been written off as an inevitable drag on the economy, it can provide state actors with a crucial political tool for shoring up coordination in a post-industrial economy. We use the cases of Denmark and Germany to illustrate how uncontroversially coordinated market economies have evolved along two sharply divergent paths in the past two decades, and to reflect on broader questions of stability and change in coordinated market economies. The two countries diverge most acutely with respect to the balance of power between state and society; indeed, the Danish state—far from being a constraint on adjustment (a central truism in neoliberal thought) – plays the role of facilitator in economic adjustment, policy change, and continued coordination.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: The way policy is coordinated across jurisdictional boundaries is an important to understand the structure and functioning of multilevel politics both within and beyond the nation state. The extent to which lower-level governments (provinces, communities, member states) coordinate their interests and policies among each other determines their capacity to speak with one voice vis-à-vis the central level. The degree of horizontal policy coordination varies between multilevel systems as much as the repertoire of modes of policy coordination available to and used by lower-level governments, ranging from mere policy-emulation by individual governments up to legally binding and enforceable interstate treaties. In order to account for these variations in intergovernmental policy coordination, this paper develops a theoretical framework that links the literature on comparative federalism with neo-institutional approaches on types of democracy.

We argue that the representation of lower-level government interests at the central level does not necessarily depend on the way functional and territorial interests are balanced in the second chamber of the central legislature. Rather, it is the type and degree of power-sharing inherent in executive-legislative relations of lower-level governments which determines the extent to which they can individually and collectively represent their interests vis-à-vis the central level. The effective representation of territorial interests, in turn, is a necessary albeit not sufficient condition for a broad repertoire of modes of policy coordination. We demonstrate the validity of our argument comparing four multilevel systems, the US, Canada, Switzerland, and the European Union (EU). The comparison reveals that the EU shares more similarities with federal polities than it is often assumed in the literature. It is the US that diverges from the overall pattern most.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Review Method: Peer Reviewed
Abstract: The literature on economic behavior and institutions has identified three coordinating mechanisms in firms: market, hierarchy, and network. However, quantitative research on the relative significance of the three mechanisms is lacking. Based on a study of 859 Chinese rural firms in 1996, this paper examines their relative effects. It has found that: 1) network, market, hierarchy and their combinations all are used in Chinese rural firms; 2) their relative effects differ from firms to firms and from operation to operation, depending on the conditions an organization or an operation has or faces. Hierarchy and market play a crucial role in collective firms while informal network plays a pivotal role in private firms. Information collection is primarily coordinated by market while other four business operations - finance, lease or purchase of equipment and workplace, and recruitment- are coordinated by informal network in private firms and by hierarchy and market in collective firms.

Publication Type: Conference Paper/Unpublished Manuscript
Abstract: Implicit within contemporary discursive and institutional trends in the European Union is a new agenda for state-society relations, seeking a potentially dramatic reconstruction of state-society relations, in which individuals and organizations outside of the state apparatus play crucial roles in every aspect of the policy process, from agenda-setting and policy formation to policy implementation and evaluation. The state apparatus, in this view, is no longer seen as a bureaucratic ensemble dutifully carrying out the orders of legislators and executives, but rather as a dynamic, reflexive, even experimental entity, resulting from cooperation among state officials at all levels, international organizations, civil society actors, representatives of social groups, and other actors, which constantly reassess, redesign and redeploy problem-solving strategies. This presentation examines this nascent agenda through a case study of the Portuguese experience with the Open Method of Coordination (OMC), an EU policy coordination mechanism that is perhaps the foremost exemplar of this approach. I argue that the OMC has had important effects, encouraging innovative welfare state reforms, wider participation in the policy process, and shifting power relations among political actors. However, various institutional constraints, at the local, national and international levels, have considerably limited these achievements. After detailing these effects and constraints, I conclude by placing these developments in the context of a theory of institutional change, provisionally outlining several additions to it inspired by my case study.