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The authors study how communication agencies became important sites for the rise of measurement expertise in the government of consumer conduct following the development of online consumption. The purpose of this paper is to focus on the processes by which digital measurement developed (within the agencies) as a new legitimate form of expertise, able to produce relevant and detailed knowledge about the government of web users.

The authors carried out a field examination in France, predicated on 100 interviews with actors involved in communication consultancy. Drawing on the concepts of governmentality and inter-jurisdictional experimentation, the authors examine how digital measurement expertise acquired legitimacy within agencies. The authors also analyze how contemporary technologies of measurement and surveillance, as operated by in-house digital experts, provide advertising specialists and advertisers with increasingly precise data on consumer conduct and thought.

The constitution and legitimization of digital measurement expertise was characterized by experimentation, culminating in the production of persuasive claims of tangibility concerning communication impact, and in relative agreement on the relevance of digital expertise in operating increasingly powerful technologies of measurement and surveillance.

While the role of experts in promoting and implementing neoliberal governmentality is emphasized in the literature, the study indicates that considerable work is needed to develop and legitimize expertise consequent with neoliberalism. Also, the analysis highlights that the spread of digital measurement expertise and knowledge production in the government of web users constitutes a noteworthy step in the neoliberalization of society. Behind the front of “free” conduct lies an increasingly powerful network of technologies and expertise aimed at rendering consumer conduct knowable and predictable.

The purpose of this study is to show under what conditions a special economic zone will succeed at spurring development and at sparking broader liberalization.

The authors use a combination of formal modeling and case studies.

Most special economic zones fail because of rent-seeking. Successful zones create positive economic and political externalities to other regions. Credible reforms are associated with turning the opposition to the zones into supporters, as a consequence to the positive externalities.

The authors add heterogeneity to the model of political elite dynamics, which leads to significant enhancements of the model and removes the pro-centralization bias of the Blanchard and Shleifer's (2001) model. They also criticize Weingast's federalism model as applied to China. Success of China is explained by a different mechanism, which we put forth in this paper.

Since the publication of the 1987 Brundtland Report, discussions about sustainable development have been nothing short of a buzz among politicians and academics. This chapter takes stock of an emerging strand of the sustainable city literature that recognizes local political dynamics, conflicts of interest, and power struggles.

The review is organized into three sections. The first section reviews how past studies have utilized sustainable urban development as an opportunity for advancing theories of urban politics, highlighting recent developments in the growth machine, regulatory state, and risk society theses. The second section examines a range of studies that place the questions of scale, unit, and boundary at the center of inquiry. The third section draws together a body of research that interrogates different meanings of sustainability.

The first section discusses the extent to which social and political processes in the sustainability age exhibit a pattern consistent with established theoretical accounts. The second section focuses on studies that address how urban sustainable development has brought challenges to existing configurations of spatial relations. These studies pose important methodological and epistemological questions for studying environmental politics. In the third section, the focus is placed on political implications of urban sustainable development, which is subject to multiple interpretations.

This chapter ends with a review of an emerging thesis – strategic urbanism, which draws attention to the patterns of change in urban politics. Much of the contributions to this thesis are based on urban sustainability politics in recent years.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the origin of the development of insolvency laws in China and Russia and explores the evolving role of the states in the legislative process.

The study is conducted based on the analysis of historical materials and the relevant secondary sources written in Chinese and Russian.

The paper argues that the development of the insolvency laws in China and Russia underlines the diverging perceptions by the states about the ways to improve economic performance through reforming their respective state enterprise system. On the other hand, the unsatisfactory utilisation of the laws in the these countries revealed the incompleteness of the wider institutional reform that opened up possibilities for predatory exploitations and corruptive practices which in turn upset the market-building in these developing economies.

This study highlights that by bring back the state into the analysis, the competing ideas, interests and institutions in the development of insolvency laws can be identified.

The purpose of this paper is to conceptualise the chief aspects of policy interest in blockchain technology.

The paper outlines policymaking processes in the context of innovation and technological change, assesses generic variations in policy treatment towards blockchain, and identifies manifestations of policy entrepreneurship using national case studies of blockchain policies.

Favourable policy dispositions towards blockchain technology are interpreted as political efforts to develop local, blockchain-enabled economies. So-called “crypto-friendly” jurisdictions proactively clarify regulatory and tax treatments of cryptocurrency and other blockchain applications, and trial blockchain uses in fields predominated by public sector activity. Policymakers in countries hostile towards blockchain-related activity have instigated bans or strict limitations with respect to blockchain engagement by developers and users.

Reliance upon case studies suggests the need for alternative study approaches (e.g. index construction, empirical research) as blockchain use consolidates throughout the global economy.

This paper provides insight to policymakers and blockchain practitioners regarding the attributes of accommodative policies towards distributed ledger technology.

Countries and sub-national regions exhibiting a more welcoming policy stance are more likely to attract entrepreneurs and investors in the crypto-economic blockchain space.

This paper develops a policy “crypto-friendliness” construct to assess the extent to which policymakers enact accommodative policies for blockchain development.