The Power of the Presidency in EU Council Decision-making

Research on the presidency of the EU shows mixed results. Although most scholars agree that the EU presidency is not able to advance its domestic interests in the European forum, Tallberg (2006) provides evidence for presidency effects. In the present paper, we empirically estimate presidency-based power in the Council of the European Union on the DEU data — a large-scale data set containing EU policy issues from various policy areas. We show that holding the presidency does significantly and positively contribute to the bargaining power of member states, but only in the final stages of decision-making

Samenwerking en sturing in gemeentelijke beleidsprocessen

De Wet maatschappelijke ondersteuning (Wmo) roept gemeenten op om lokale gebruikers, uitvoerders en bestuurders op een goede manier te betrekken bij de totstandkoming, uitvoering en verantwoording van het beleid op het gebied van maatschappelijke ondersteuning (artikel 11). Daarnaast worden gemeenten geacht de levering van diensten en voorzieningen zo veel mogelijk aan derden over te laten (artikel 10), waarbij de gemeente de regie dient te voeren over de beleidsketen (memorie van toelichting). De gedachte daarachter is enerzijds dat integraliteit – samenhang binnen en tussen beleidsterreinen – en maatwerk – beleid passend bij de gemeentelijke situatie – gebaat zijn bij een goede samenwerking tussen gemeente, cliëntenorganisaties en uitvoerende organisaties. Tegelijkertijd wordt, anderzijds, verwacht dat de tucht van de markt de kwaliteit van de (levering van de) producten van individuele aanbieders waarborgt. Dit vraagt om heldere afspraken tussen de gemeente en de andere betrokken partijen

Biodiversity protection through networks of voluntary sustainability standard organizations?

This paper explores the potential for voluntary sustainability standards (VSS) organizations to contribute to policy-making on biodiversity protection by examining their biodiversity policies, total standard compliant area, proximity to biodiversity hotspots, and the networks and p

Making Good Use of Partners: Differential Effects of Managerial Networking in the Social Care Domain

Public managers engage in networking relationships with a wide variety of external actors and organizations from which they can draw different types of support and resources. Most empirical studies on managerial networking merely present different intensities of external networking in general, as if it were a unidimensional concept. In practice, however, public managers strategically differentiate between functional or task-related groups of external partners, based on the specific policy context. Moreover, such differentiation in networking behavior can be expected to systematically impact agency and public program performance outcomes. This article derives contextualized hypotheses on how managerial networking affects the performance of Dutch local governments in the social care domain. Multilevel structural equation analyses of 3,257 social care clients in 71 local governments provide evidence that bilateral client-interest networking is more beneficial to the Social Support Act’s overall goal of improving the level of social participation of clients than professional networking. Moreover, the effect is indirect: managerial networking with client interest groups improves the physical self-reliance of clients, enabling them to engage in social activities

Network relationships and standard adoption: diffusion effects in transnational regulatory networks

The soft law measures that transnational regulatory networks produce have become increasingly important in regulating cross‐border market activity. However, domestic agencies vary considerably in terms of the rate by which these soft law measures are adopted, and the ways in which they spread across jurisdictions are not well understood. This article argues that existing theoretical explanations referring to socialization or power dynamics have a specific network‐structural pattern associated with them, and that longitudinal network analysis can be used to test their hypothesized effects. In particular, we study the widespread adoption of the International Organization of Securities Commissions’ (IOSCO) Multilateral Memorandum of Understanding (MMoU). Based on a longitudinal dataset (2002–15) of the inter‐agency relationships between securities regulators (n = 109), we use Stochastic Actor‐Oriented Models (SAOM) to predict the rate at which transnational standards are adopted by domestic agencies. The results indicate that standard adoption is contagious in the network of securities regulators

Making Good Use of Partners: Differential Effects of Managerial Networking in the Social Care Domain

Public managers engage in networking relationships with a wide variety of external actors and organizations from which they can draw different types of support and resources. Most empirical studies on managerial networking merely present different intensities of external networking in general, as if it were a unidimensional concept. In practice, however, public managers strategically differentiate between functional or task-related groups of external partners, based on the specific policy context. Moreover, such differentiation in networking behavior can be expected to systematically impact agency and public program performance outcomes. This article derives contextualized hypotheses on how managerial networking affects the performance of Dutch local governments in the social care domain. Multilevel structural equation analyses of 3,257 social care clients in 71 local governments provide evidence that bilateral client-interest networking is more beneficial to the Social Support Act’s overall goal of improving the level of social participation of clients than professional networking. Moreover, the effect is indirect: managerial networking with client interest groups improves the physical self-reliance of clients, enabling them to engage in social activities

The Power of the Presidency in EU Council Decision-making

Research on the presidency of the EU shows mixed results. Although most scholars agree that the EU presidency is not able to advance its domestic interests in the European forum, Tallberg (2006) provides evidence for presidency effects. In the present paper, we empirically estimate presidency-based power in the Council of the European Union on the DEU data – a large-scale data set containing EU policy issues from various policy areas. We show that holding the presidency does significantly and positively contribute to the bargaining power of member states, but only in the final stages of decision-making.

Community structure and the behavior of transnational sustainability governors: Toward a multi-relational approach

Hundreds of transnational private governance organizations (TPGOs) have emerged in recent decades to govern social and environmental conditions of production using voluntary standards. A debate persists over whether the ties among different TPGOs and other organizations create a professional community that affects the behavior of TPGOs. To help resolve this debate, we analyze multiple ties among agriculture TPGOs to offer a more robust exploration of community structures and their potential effects for three forms of TPGO behavior - coordination, collaboration, and isomorphism. Our aggregate measure of ties reveals a thin community dominated by older TPGOs and TPGOs advancing a broad notion of sustainability that were created by Solidaridad, the World Wildlife Fund, and/or Unilever. The clearest community structures are built from ties that exhibit the potential for not actual collaboration, coordination, and isomorphism. Thus, while there exists convergence toward an emergent TPGO-community, obstacles remain to more intense behavioral effects for TPGOs