Institutions for Asian Connectivity

To make Asia more economically sustainable and resilient against external shocks, regional economies need to be rebalanced toward regional demand- and trade-driven growth through increased regional connectivity. The effectiveness of connectivity depends on the quality of hard and soft infrastructure. Of particular importance in terms of soft infrastructure which makes hard infrastructure work are the facilitating institutions that support connectivity through appropriate policies, reforms, systems, and procedures and through promoting effective coordination and cooperation. Asia has many overlapping subregional institutions involved in national and regional energy, transport, and telecommunications infrastructure connectivity. However, these institutions are characterized as being less effective, informal, and lacking a clear and binding system of rules and policies. This paper draws linkages between connectivity, growth and development, governance, and institutions. It details the benefits the region could achieve by addressing needed connectivity enhancements and the connectivity and financing challenges it faces. In addition, it presents various institutional options for regional infrastructure financing. To build seamless Asian connectivity, Asia needs an effective, formal, and rules-based institutional framework. The paper presents a new institutional framework together with the organizational structures of two new regional institutional mechanisms, namely the Pan-Asian Infrastructure Forum and the Asian Infrastructure Fund.asian infrastructure financing; asian infrastructure connectivity; asian institutions

From skepticism to mutual support: towards a structural change in the relations between participatory budgeting and the information and communication technologies?

Until three years ago, ICT Technologies represented a main “subordinate clause” within the “grammar” of Participatory Budgeting (PB), the tool made famous by the experience of Porto Alegre and today expanded to more than 1400 cities across the planet. In fact, PB – born to enhance deliberation and exchanges among citizens and local institutions – has long looked at ICTS as a sort of “pollution factor” which could be useful to foster transparency and to support the spreading of information but could also lead to a lowering in quality of public discussion, turning its “instantaneity” into “immediatism,” and its “time-saving accessibility” into “reductionism” and laziness in facing the complexity of public decision-making through citizens’ participation. At the same time, ICTs often regarded Participatory Budgeting as a tool that was too-complex and too-charged with ideology to cooperate with. But in the last three years, the barriers which prevented ICTs and Participatory Budgeting to establish a constructive dialogue started to shrink thanks to several experiences which demonstrated that technologies can help overcome some “cognitive injustices” if not just used as a means to “make simpler” the organization of participatory processes and to bring “larger numbers” of intervenients to the process. In fact, ICTs could be valorized as a space adding “diversity” to the processes and increasing outreach capacity. Paradoxically, the experiences helping to overcome the mutual skepticism between ICTs and PB did not come from the centre of the Global North, but were implemented in peripheral or semiperipheral countries (Democratic Republic of Congo, Brazil, Dominican Republic and Portugal in Europe), sometimes in cities where the “digital divide” is still high (at least in terms of Internet connections) and a significant part of the population lives in informal settlements and/or areas with low indicators of “connection.” Somehow, these experiences were able to demystify the “scary monolithicism” of ICTs, showing that some instruments (like mobile phones, and especially the use of SMS text messaging) could grant a higher degree of connectivity, diffusion and accountability, while other dimensions (which could risk jeopardizing social inclusion) could be minimized through creativity. The paper tries to depict a possible panorama of collaboration for the near future, starting from descriptions of some of the above mentioned “turning-point” experiences – both in the Global North as well as in the Global South

The 'place' of multi-level governance? Defining the policy agenda for regional development in Western Flanders

The policy-making function of the principal agency for regional development is examined. Are institutional and governance forms for Regional Development as much a product of specific local and regional conditions (the 'place' of multi-level governance) as they are a part of the mechanisms that facilitate their reproduction- such as the state, economy, society and the widely interpreted term ‘globalization’? Following on from this, are multi-level policy priorities for regional development influenced more by the ‘business-led agenda’ and its ‘positional elites’ than the regional- local institutional capacities and by the local actors ‘outside of the game’

Gender and European Integration

The paper assesses the contribution of gender approaches to understanding Europeanintegration. It offers a conceptualization of such approaches as including a distinctontology, epistemology and methodology. While feminist literature on the EuropeanUnion is diverse, all such literature sheds light on the gendered process of Europeanintegration. The authors identify two distinct contributions of this literature: (a) itillustrates the relevance of movement actors and other advocates in shaping EU policies;(b) it shows that economic integration entails the creation of new gender regimes. Thepaper illustrates these contentions presenting case studies of the EU’s response to sextrafficking, the reform of the common agricultural policy, and of enlargement.

The impact of Europeanisation on local social & labour policy : some HR considerations

Europeanisation is here to stay. Our insularity may proclaim a natural state of separatism; but geography conceals a deeper truth: the inevitability of externality management for small island states like ours.The Maltese have braved waves of Gallicisation, Italianisation and Anglicisation (in that order) over the last two centuries (MalliaMilanes, 1988). External powers have attempted to acculturalise the Maltese at large, with the support of local elites, in order to ensure and secure their sympathy and loyalty as the citizens of a strategic fortress colony (Hull, 1993). The 1990's have seen a new trend: the systematic attempts at Europeanising Malta, not by foreigners this time, but from a broad coalition within.peer-reviewe

Organizational choices of banks and the effective supervision of transnational financial institutions : [Version: 19 Juli 2012]

This paper outlines relatively easy to implement reforms for the supervision of transnational banking-groups in the E.U. that should not be primarily based on legal form but on the actual risk structures of the pertinent financial institutions. The proposal also aims at paying close attention to the economics of public administration and international relations in allocating competences among national and supranational supervisory bodies. Before detailing the own proposition, this paper looks into the relationship between sovereign debt and banking crises that drive regulatory reactions to the financial turmoil in the Euro area. These initiatives inter alia affirm effective prudential supervision as a pivotal element of crisis prevention. In order to arrive at a more informed idea, which determinants apart from a perceived appetite for regulatory arbitrage drive banks’ organizational choices, this paper scrutinizes the merits of either a branch or subsidiary structure for the cross-border business of financial institutions. In doing so, it also considers the policy-makers perspective. The analysis shows that no one size fits all organizational structure is available and concludes that banks’ choices should generally not be second-guessed, particularly because they are subject to (some) market discipline. The analysis proceeds with describing and evaluating how competences in prudential supervision are currently allocated among national and supranational supervisory authorities. In order to assess the findings the appraisal adopts insights form the economics of public administration and international relations. It argues that the supervisory architecture has to be more aligned with bureaucrats’ incentives and that inefficient requirements to cooperate and share information should be reduced. Contrary to a widespread perception, shifting responsibility to a supranational authority cannot solve all the problems identified. Resting on these foundations, the last part of this paper finally sketches an alternative solution that dwells on far-reaching mutual recognition of national supervisory regimes and allocates competences in line with supervisors’ incentives and the risk inherent in crossborder banking groups

Nobody Said IT Was Easy - Managing Government-Initiated Information Systems in Addressing and Preparing for Health Crises

COVID-19 served to teach governments many painful lessons about their pitfalls and challenges in managing public health crises. Although both practitioners and academics have been aware that crisis information systems (CIS) constitute a valuable tool for crisis prevention and management, their implementation to counteract COVID-19 lagged by months. To analyze this crisis management mismatch, in this paper, we examine and identify the structural challenges and shortcomings of government-initiated crisis management through CIS. This paper analyzes two CIS projects tackling the COVID-19 crisis, funded by the German government. Drawing on a complexity-lens and the NASSS-framework, key shortcomings are identified. We derive propositions for future CIS projects to enable crisis preparedness. Our outcomes suggest that adopting a complexity perspective in planning, initiating, and developing governmental CIS provides a promising avenue for achieving successful crisis management. We contribute to literature by highlighting the suitability of the complexity-lens in health crises

A Review Of Interoperability Standards And Initiatives In Electronic Government

Being important at organizational, process and semantic levels, interoperability became a key characteristic of the new electronic government systems and services, over the last decade. As a crucial prerequisite for automated process execution leading to “one-stop” e-Government services, interoperability has been systematically prescribed, since the dawn of the 21st century: Standardization frameworks, that included guidelines ranging from simple statements to well defined international Web-Service standards started to appear at National and Cross-Country levels, powered by governments, the European Union or the United Nations. In parallel, most international software, hardware and service vendors created their own strategies for achieving the goal of open, collaborative, loosely coupled systems and components. The paper presents the main milestones in this fascinating quest that shaped electronic government during the last 10 years, describing National Frameworks, key Pan-European projects, international standardization and main industrial and research achievements. Moreover, the paper describes the next steps needed to achieve interoperability at technical, semantic, organizational, legal or policy level – leading to the transformation of administrative processes and the provision of low-cost, high-quality services to citizens and businesses

Financing Asia’s Infrastructure: Modes of Development and Integration of Asian Financial Markets

Asia faces very large infrastructure funding demands, estimated at around US$750 billion per year for energy, transport, telecommunications, water, and sanitation during 2010-2020 (ADB/ADBI 2009). Asia has large savings, significant international reserves, and rapid accumulations of funds that could be utilized for meeting these infrastructure investment needs, but Asian markets have failed to use available resources to channel funding into highly needed infrastructure projects. This paper explores issues and challenges in financing infrastructure for seamless Asian infrastructure connectivity and for other high priority development financing needs, and seeks methods and instruments to help direct Asian and international resources to cost-effectively and efficiently support infrastructure and other development needs. The paper discusses three important topics: First, what are the lessons for Asia from the European Union's experience of developing and integrating financial markets and using development banking institutions to support infrastructure investment? Second, how can Asian public and private resources, such as pension funds, social security funds, sovereign wealth funds, and private portfolio funds contribute to infrastructure development across Asia? Third, can Islamic financial markets provide funds for Asian infrastructure development? Finally, the paper makes recommendations regarding financing options and how Asian financial markets and infrastructure companies could be further developed and integrated to mobilize Asian and other regions' savings for financing priority infrastructure projects in the region.asian financial markets; asian infrastructure; asian infrastructure financing