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Open Access
A new index of legislative oversight
(2012-01) Pelizzo, Riccardo
The purpose of this paper is to present a new index of legislative oversight. Building on the work by Stapenhurst (2011), who argued that a proper index of legislative oversight capacity should reflect not only legislatures’ internal oversight capacity but also the impact of contextual factors, we devise and propose a modified version of the Stapenhurst. The results of the empirical analyses presented in the paper sustain the claim that when properly operationalized and measured, legislative oversight capacity is a good predictor of legislative oversight effectiveness and other policy relevant results.
Open Access
A Study of Household Coal Demand and its Implications for Rural Energy Policies
(Resources Policy, 2016-03-29) Atakhanova, Zauresh; Howie, Peter
Household use of coal creates high levels of indoor and outdoor pollution affecting human health and the environment. However, millions of people across northern Asia and some parts of Europe continue using coal for space heating and cooking. As a result, the case of Kazakhstan is of interest because 70% of its rural households use coal for heating. Availability of a relatively large dataset allows for identifying determinants of household coal demand and making policy recommendations. By analyzing Kazakhstan’s household budget survey data, we find that lack or limited access to alternative heating systems, low coal prices, and low energy efficiency of the housing stock are the main factors leading to high rates of residential coal use in Kazakhstan. In addition, we find that in the absence of relevant policies, household demand for coal for space heating should be expected to grow with income. As a result, if the government implements policies to increase coal prices, it should introduce concurrent policies that increase access to alternative heating systems and incentivize energy efficiency improvements.
Open Access
Academic Performance in comparative perspective
(African Politics and Policy Newsletter, 2019-08-05) Pelizzo, Riccardo
East Africa has traditionally had good universities. The data collected and made available by Scimago allow one to assess how good East African universities are in comparative perspective....
Open Access
Access and Performance Inequalities – post-primary education in Northern Ireland
(Journal of Poverty and Social Justice, 2014) Borooah, Vani; Knox, Colin
Northern Ireland's schools system is undergoing a radical review. The first stage in this process is to reform the post-primary sector in response to the Education Minister's call to 'put pupils first' and raise the overall standard of educational performance. An excess of school places, reduction in public expenditure on education, and opportunities to examine segregated schooling have all hastened this reform. Drawing on data gathered by education bodies for the purposes of the review, this paper examines those factors which best explain education performance and highlights the social injustices in the existing system.
Open Access
Adapting University Education for Changing Expectations of Public Services Leaders and Managers: New Guidance for Designing and Delivering MPAs
(Public Money and Management, 2010) Coxhead, Francis; Grauberg, Janet; Joyce, Paul; Lawes, Tanya; Massey, Andrew; Knox, Colin
Guidance for designing and delivering Masters in Public Administration (MPA) programmes has just been approved by three key stakeholder bodies - the Public Administration Committee (of the Joint University Council), the Public Management & Policy Association, and the Public Administration Specialist Group of the UK’s Political Studies Association. The Guidance benefitted from contributions by staff of the National School of Government and of Government Skills. Why is the development of this Guidance timely, what was the thinking behind it, and what are the principles that should be followed in designing and delivering MPAs? As will be seen, we give a lot of attention to the needs of the civil service and the new skills agenda for central government, because this is an important recent development, but the Guidance has been drafted for central government, regional bodies, local government, and all other public services organizations.
Open Access
African Development at Risk
(African Politics and Policy Newsletter, 2019-07-30) Pelizzo, Riccardo
In 2018 Abel Kinyondo, Zim Nwokora and I co-authored a paper entitled ‘Development in Africa’ which was eventually published by World Affairs. In the article we claimed that the development progress that countries in Sub-Saharan Africa had experienced was the result of several factors...
Open Access
Africa’s wealth
(African Politics and Policy Newsletter, 2019-10-22) Pelizzo, Riccardo
For the past few years, we have summarized the key findings of the Africa Wealth Report produced by the AfrAsia bank....
Open Access
‘An Acceptable Level of Violence’ Community Response to Crime: Northern Ireland and South Africa
(The Journal of Conflict Studies, 2001) Knox, Colin; Monaghan, Rachel
This paper, drawing on focus group interview material, will therefore examine ways in which the communities in Northern Ireland and South Africa have responded to crime both during the conflict and thereafter. If the raison d’être for ‘political’ crime has been removed once a negotiated settlement is reached and the legitimacy of the State reaffirmed by agreement, can communities then subscribe to the formal system of criminal justice? Given the relatively recent, albeit fragile, arrival of a ‘peace’ settlement to Northern Ireland the paper considers what lessons, if any, can be learned from the South African post-conflict experience and its efforts to deal with community responses to crime.
Open Access
Analysis of the Relationship between Women’s Participation and the Rate of Corruption in the Post-Soviet States
(Pusat Penelitian Ilmu Sosial dan Humaniora Kontemporer, 2020-04) Baktybayev, Bektas
Corruption remains one of the main problems of Post-Soviet states. Georgia, Belarus, Lithuania, and Latvia are doing relatively well compared to other Post-Soviet states. Popular explanations for high corruption rates are underdevelopment of democratic institutions and the limitation of human rights. However, the lack of women’s participation can be also another factor that could explain the widespread corruption level. According to popular stereotypes, women are considered as more honest and “fairer” gender, which has an impact on the decrease in corruption rate. There is a belief that women have a perception of risk aversion which makes them less likely to engage in corrupt activities. There is no consensus regarding whether women’s participation has an effect on reducing corruption. The purpose of this paper is to test to what extent women’s participation in parliament, school and or with tertiary education, labor force affects corruption rate in Post-Soviet states. The SPSS software was used to assess a relationship between aforementioned variables. According to findings, there is a strong, positive, and statistically significant impact of women enrollment in school and/or with tertiary education on a country’s score in the Corruption Perception Index. I argue that promoting women’s education is the best way to lower corruption in the post-Soviet states.
Open Access
Analyzing the Experiences of Female Leaders in Civil Service in Kazakhstan: Trapped between Economic Pressure to Earn and Traditional Family Role Expectations
(International Journal of Public Administration, 2017-10-26) Kuzhabekova, Aliya; Janenova, Saltanat; Almukhambetova, Ainur
This paper analyzes the experiences of female leaders in civil service in a rapidly changing political, socio-cultural, and economic context of Kazakhstan. The research presents an analysis of the views of female managers on advantages and disadvantages of having women-leaders in civil service; on challenges and opportunities they are facing; on strategies they use to advance to and succeed in leadership positions. The important finding of this research is that female leaders in Kazakhstan are challenged with a clash of western, neo-liberal values and traditional expectations of women in the society. The analysis is based on primary data with women holding managerial positions in civil service.
Open Access
ASSESSING INITIAL CONDITIONS AND ETS OUTCOMES IN A FOSSIL-FUEL DEPENDENT ECONOMY
(Energy Strategy Reviews, 2022) Howie, Peter; Atakhanova, Zauresh
We analyze the energy market and ETS outcomes in Kazakhstan, a major fossil-fuel exporter. The energy market was characterized by the presence of large state-owned enterprises, prevalence of fossil fuel subsidies, and dominance of coal-fired generation. Despite the ETS, Kazakhstan’s CO2 emissions and CO2 emissions intensity of its power sector continued to grow. Power sector investment and prices declined while CO2 emissions intensity of GDP reversed its downward trend. To increase ETS effectiveness it is necessary to prioritize stakeholder engagement, address deficiencies in carbon allowance allocation and trading, and enhance the carbon cost pass through mechanism. Finally, formulating and implementing a comprehensive low-carbon transition strategy should improve ETS outcomes.
Open Access
A BIBLIOMETRIC REVIEW OF THE WATER SECURITY CONCEPT IN CENTRAL ASIA
(Environmental Research Letters, 2021) Xenarios, Stefanos; Assubayeva, Aliya; Xie, Lei; Sehring, Jenniver; Amirkhanov, Daulet; Sultanov, Alisher; Fazli, Siamac
Engineering, economic, social sciences, geophysical, and integrated modeling studies have approached the assessment of water security in Central Asia (CA) in distinct ways. Different indicators and indexes have been introduced to assess the most vulnerable aspects of water use in this region. Until now, though, the suggested approaches are often represented in a fragmented manner, while the relevant indicators cannot fully attribute the vulnerability status of a country or on a regional level. This can result in diverging perceptions of the water security situation in policy dialogues, also affecting bilateral and multilateral relations among the countries in CA. In this study, we conduct a bibliometric review on the approaches and methods that directly or indirectly touch upon the water security perceptions in CA. ....
Open Access
Bridging the divide
(Politics and Policy, 2016-12) Pelizzo, Riccardo; Nwokora, Zim
Party systems research has proceeded along two parallel lines of inquiry, one predominantly “qualitative” and the other “quantitative.” This article attempts to bridge this divide in two ways. First, by showing that qualitative information can be valuable in the construction of quantitative measures. Second, by showing that the results from applying theoretically- sensitive measurement tools can be useful for qualitative classification. These analyses are performed using an original dataset of party system changes in Sub-Saharan Africa.
Open Access
Building Public Service-Oriented Government in China
(The International Journal of Public Sector Management, 2007) Knox, Colin; Qun, Zhang
Purpose: Legislative hearings are a relatively new way of encouraging citizen participation in administrative law making within China. The first such hearing in Liaoning Province (Dalian City) was held in April 2005. This paper examines the detail of the hearing process and attempts to assess its effectiveness as a mechanism for engagement between citizen and the state. Methodology: The authors consider both the practicalities of running a public hearing and its influence on the legal regulations under scrutiny. More generally, and within the limits of one case study, we consider whether hearings have the potential to shift the balance of power away from the state and its officials towards a more inclusive form of decision making. Research implications: Finally, the paper examines whether citizen participation, as a means of public service-oriented government in China, has been influenced by the wider global reform process of New Public Management (NPM) and modernisation, synonymous with developed countries
Open Access
Building Trust amidst Corruption in Bangladesh
(Journal of International Affairs, 2009) Knox, Colin
The People’s Republic of Bangladesh, formerly East Pakistan, became an independent state after the civil war of 1971 and joined the Commonwealth in 1972. It is a densely populated South Asian country with some 142 million people who commonly experience natural disasters in the form of floods and cyclones in the flat land and delta of rivers on the Bay of Bengal. Poverty is widespread with GDP per head estimated at just $444 in 2007, or almost half the population living on less than one dollar per day (Oxford Economics, 2008). Since independence, Bangladesh has experienced political turbulence and spent 15 years under military rule until democracy was restored in 1991. Continuing unrest and violence have been a major impediment to economic growth set alongside the increasing strength of Islamic fundamentalism. Politics have been dominated and polarised by the two largest political parties, long-time rivals the Awami League (AL) and the Bangladesh Nationalist Party (BNP). The October 2001 elections produced a BNP victory in the form of a 4-party alliance. The opposition party, Awami League, refused to accept the result and from 2001-2006 their attendance at parliament was sporadic, claiming discrimination by the BNP speaker. Violence and political strikes/hartals have accompanied the political turmoil. In August 2004, twenty people were killed and more than 100 injured in a grenade attack at an Awami League political rally. In January 2005 the former finance minister, Shah Kibria, was assassinated along with four colleagues and over 70 injured in an attack at an AL rally in Northern Bangladesh. Since summer 2006 opposition parties, directed by Awami League, claimed that the BNP-led government was seeking to manipulate the electoral infrastructure and announced in January 2007 a boycott of the general election. The parliamentary elections were cancelled. On 11th January 2007, the President declared a state of emergency and a reconstituted unelected military-backed caretaker government was put in place. Under the constitution, executive power rests with the caretaker government until a prime minister heading a new administration is sworn in following a parliamentary election. Foreign governments were keen to see emergency rule lifted and the restoration of full constitutional rights amidst reports of human rights abuses and mass arrests. Parliamentary elections were held on 29th December 2008 to a new civilian government after two years of emergency rule. One of the most fundmental obstacles to building trust in Bangladesh is the pervasiveness of corruption at many levels: parliament, elections, and the delivery of core public services. People feel powerless to address the excesses of corruption and have lost faith in the democratic system. The role of the caretaker government was to tackle polarization and patronage and, in so doing, to establish trust in the democratic process. This paper considers the ‘success’ of building and maintaining trust in Bangladesh’s parliamentary democracy
Open Access
Bureau Shuffling? The Review of Public Administration in Northern Ireland
(Public Administration, 2006) Knox, Colin; Carmichael, Paul
The Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement 1998 resulted in the return of devolved government to Northern Ireland and, with it, a decision by the Executive and Assembly to conduct a radical review of public administration. As the review reaches its final stages this paper considers the likely outcomes. It argues that the parameters of the review will limit its impact and describes the reform proposals as structural changes or administrative rationalisation, devoid of a wider modernising approach to improving public services. The on/off nature of devolution could result in ‘one of the major tasks for devolved government’ (according to the Northern Ireland Executive) being implemented by Direct Rule ministers
Open Access
CENTRAL ASIA PERFORMANCE REVIEW IN LAND GOVERNANCE INDICES AND ASSESSMENT FRAMEWORKS
(Deutsch-Kasachische Universität, 2021-09-22) Mukhtarova, Akbikesh
Academic scholarship captures different land governance dimensions while focusing mainly on agrarian, legal, and economic aspects. However, little to no attention is paid to land governance consideration through public policy lenses. In particular, this holds for Central Asian (CA) countries where there is a noticeable lack of academic works on land governance effectiveness and anti-corruption strategies in the land sector. This review paper analyzes the question of how Central Asian countries are presented in land governance indices and assessment frameworks such as the World Bank's Land Governance Assessment Framework (LGAF), Global Property Rights Index (Prindex), Global Land Governance Index (LANDex), and The Open Data Barometer. The paper uses the integrative review of academic works and the author's empirical data on Central Asian performance in land governance indices and assessment programs. The findings revealed that while the Prindex results for the region are promising, the underperformance and lack of active engagement of Central Asian countries in the Open Data Barometer, LANDex, and LGAF are still visible. This fact could be explained by various reasons, including the lack of institutional and legal capacities in CA countries and the limitation in methodology and data collection techniques observed in present land indices. Considering that the subject is understudied, it is anticipated that this review paper will give both scholars and practitioners from the region and abroad the impetus to improve Central Asian performance in global land governance indices and assessment programs. Keywords: Central Asia, land corruption, LANDex, Prindex
Open Access
Cohesion, sharing, and integration in Northern Ireland
(Environment and Planning C: Government and Policy, 2011) Knox, Colin
The devolved government in Northern Ireland pledged to work for a `shared and better future for all' in its Programme for Government 2008 ^ 11. In pursuit of this goal it launched a consultation document entitled Programme for Cohesion, Sharing and Integration which challenged the assumption that division and segregation is a `normal' pattern of living. I locate the policy proposals contained within the new programme in the research on community cohesion in Great Britain. I interrogate, using attitudinal data, people's preferences for the kind of society they want Northern Ireland to become and the policy consequences of their choices. Using two case studies in education and housing, I highlight the benefits of a shared society and question whether Northern Ireland can embrace the core elements of an intercultural society.
Open Access
Conflict and Cooperation in Global Commons: Theory and Evidence from the Caspian Sea
(IGITUR, UTRECHT PUBLISHING & ARCHIVING SERVICES, 2019-06) Orazgaliyev, Serik; Araral, Eduardo
The conventional literature on the commons involves small, local resources such as coastal fisheries, community forestry, small-scale irrigation, and community pasture. We focus on conflict and cooperation in the Caspian Sea - a global commons - involving five claimant countries as well as interests of major powers (the United States, European Union, and China). Building on the work of Stern and Young on the study of conflict and cooperation in global commons, we model the case as a prisoner's dilemma game with the two different outcomes. In the North Caspian Sea, competing claimant countries - Russia, Kazakhstan, and Azerbaijan - have agreed to cooperate and solve their differences over ownership of oil fields. In contrast, claimants in the South Caspian Sea - Azerbaijan, Iran, and Turkmenistan - have failed to cooperate despite decades of trying. Using analytic narratives, we suggest that politics (or strategic calculations) could help explain these two different outcomes. In making these calculations, countries will act in their rational self-interest, given the prospects of international anarchy. We suggest that this realist account can be partly explained by the convergence of economic interests, geopolitics, and cultural distance. We argue that the study of global commons would benefit from understanding realist theories of international relations.
Open Access
Consolidating peace: Rethinking the community relations model in Northern Ireland
(Administration, 2018) Knox, Colin
Northern Ireland has now moved from ‘negative’ peace (the absence of violence, largely) to ‘positive’ peace (confidence-building measures to consolidate gains in voting practice and in reducing discrimination against the minority community in employment and housing allocation). This transition has involved funders at the European, regional and local levels investing in peace and reconciliation measures to consolidate political gains made since the Belfast (Good Friday) Agreement in 1998....