Search results

Brazilian federalism was important in the political game of combating the pandemic for three reasons. First, Brazil's public health system depends heavily on intergovernmental relations between Union, states, and municipalities because there is a policy portfolio based on federative cooperation. Second, the subnational governments' autonomy to act against COVID-19 was constantly questioned by the Federal Government – the conflict between the President and governors was a key piece in all health policy. Finally, states and local governments were primarily responsible for policies to fight against pandemic, but the absence and/or wrong measures taken by the Federal Government (such as the delay in purchasing vaccines) generated intergovernmental incoordination, increased territorial inequality, and reduced the effectiveness of subnational public policies, especially those linked to social isolation. In this context, Brazilian federalism played a dual role in the pandemic. On the one hand, the federative structure partially succeeded in averting an even worse scenario, mitigating the impact of mistaken presidential decisions. The role of subnational governments, especially of the states, was critical as a counterweight to federal decisions. On the other hand, the President actively acted against governors and mayors and, above all, sought to weaken intergovernmental articulations within the Unified Health System (SUS), the federative model designed three decades ago. One could say that the federative actors, such as the Supreme Court (Supremo Tribunal Federal – STF) and subnational governments, were the main obstacles for the Bolsonarist antiscientific agenda. The success of this reaction to President Bolsonaro's negationist populism was partial, but the results of the fight against COVID-19 would have been much worse without these federalist barriers.

If intergovernmental relations are necessary in normal times, it should be even more required to face complex intergovernmental problem (CIP) as the COVID-19 pandemic. However, collaboration between governments depends on institutional rules as well as on political will. To discuss this issue, the analytical model is based on two dimensions: institutional design and political agency. As for the first dimension, since COVID-19 pandemic is considered as a CIP, three aspects are relevant when discussing how federations can organize the coordination between different levels of government: autonomy of subnational governments, mechanisms of coordination, and policy portfolio. As for political agency, the performance of political leadership (national presidents and governors) will be analyzed. The possibility of sharing collective goals across the federation is also a consequence of the political agency that takes place within the institutional systems of each federation. In short, it seeks to analyze the relationship between institutional design and political agency to deal with this CIP in five American federations.

This chapter captures and summarises the public sector auditing practices of Swiss subnational and local governments. Following the federal structure of Switzerland and the constitutional principle of decentralisation, lower government levels independently self-elaborate their audit institutions and structures, which is why a large variety of public sector audit arrangements exists. Local government audit mainly varies between the subnational states/cantons regarding the allocation of the external audit function and the qualitative requirements underlying the constitution of the auditing bodies. Depending on the cantonal legislative framework, local government audit is performed by a body of direct-democratically elected lay-auditors, a professional audit firm, an own independent auditing office or in a shared arrangement involving multiple of these actors.

The present study investigated the nature of Public–Private Partnership (PPP) in various subsectors of social and commercial infrastructure in India for better understanding of significant characteristics, attributes and factors governing the public private participation. The Indicator Analysis approach has been adopted to study a total of 119 Public–Private-partnered projects involving four qualitative and three quantitative indicators to help build a detailed profile of partnered projects in various subsectors of social and commercial infrastructure in India. The subnational government has been unravelled as the dominant form of government participation across all the subsectors of the social and commercial infrastructure in India. The infrastructure projects in the subsector of tourism have registered high average cost and time overruns. Further, Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) mode has been identified as the most preferred PPP entry mode in the social and commercial infrastructure in the Indian economy. Since, the Indian economy comprises a large workforce, investment in social and commercial infrastructure projects through PPP mode can tap and harness the demographic dividend, which is critical for sustaining the growth of developing and emerging economies. The study provides a detailed account of qualitative and quantitative information about the nature of social and commercial infrastructure sector that shall facilitate successful implementation of the PPP projects in this soft infrastructure sector, which has a substantial bearing on the economic growth and human development in the Indian economy.

This paper explains, illustrates, and defends the importance of an international business (IB) policy for any government jurisdiction affected by international regionalization and globalization that is lacking in direct control of traditional international trade and investment policies. It describes efforts in Indiana that comprise much of the state’s IB policies, explains the basic foundation or rationale for such policies, defends the general case for subnational IB policy, uses Indiana as a case study of the need for such policies, and presents conclusions and recommendations for subnational policy.

Advanced economies have a significantly longer history of using fiscal decentralization to tackle inequality, poverty and promote inclusive growth than those in developing Asia. However, in the recent years, developing Asia has explored the more active use of fiscal decentralization for inclusive purposes. India and China are no exception. As newly emerging economic powers on the global stage, China and India are interesting cases in the light of their remarkable record of economic growth in the recent years. But the cause of concern is that the poor in both these countries, especially in India, are not fully sharing the benefits of rapid economic growth. While in India, the poverty headcount ratio at $1.90 a day (2011 PPP$) stands at 25.01% and the GINI index at 35.7% in 2021, China’s poverty headcount ratio stands at 0.2% and the GINI index at 46.6% in 2021. Using the System GMM approach for data ranging from 2000 to 2022 the study finds that fiscal decentralization reduces poverty levels and the inequality in the distribution of income when size of the government spending is large.

Soil is a non-renewable and increasingly deteriorating resource, yet it is barely protected by European Union (EU) legislation. This constitutes a puzzling gap within the otherwise encompassing and progressive environmental policy of the EU. To explain the integration resistance of soil protection, I draw on insights from rationalist and sociological institutionalist theory. The institutional rigidity of the community method of environmental decision-making limits policy change to favorable interest constellations, but this constraint is usually compensated by agenda competition among the national environmental pioneers. However, successful agenda-setting depends on the skillful combination of political venues and issue frames. Matters of land politics, such as soil protection, are difficult to frame in terms that make them suitable for European policy venues. The theoretical argument is illustrated using an in-depth case study of the agenda-setting, negotiation, and eventual withdrawal of the ill-fated proposal for an EU soil framework directive, with a focus on the changing role of Germany. Reframing of soil politics as locally bound and as essentially national affair, subnational actors extended the conflict to include the German federal chamber as policy venue. As a result, Germany turned from “pusher by example” and first mover to “defensive front-runner,” successfully pursuing a blocking strategy.

This chapter focuses on a new school-level instrument for international benchmarking and policy learning – the OECD’s PISA-based Test for Schools (“PISA for Schools”) – and how it helps to constitute new global spaces and relations of education policymaking and governance. Unlike main PISA, PISA for Schools assesses school performance in reading, mathematics, and science against the schooling systems measured by the main PISA test. Schools are thus positioned within a globally commensurate space of measurement and comparison, and are encouraged to engage with, and learn from, the policy expertise proffered by “high-performing” international schooling systems and the OECD itself. Drawing suggestively across literature and theorizing around new spatialities associated with globalization, the “becoming topological” of culture and “power-topologies,” and informed by document analysis and interviews with 33 policy actors from across the PISA for Schools policy cycle, the chapter examines how PISA for Schools helps the OECD to directly “reach into” local schooling spaces. This respatialized PISA for Schools, or “PISA to Schools”, provides the OECD with the means to influence how schooling is practised and conceived at the level of local policy implementation, while limiting mediation by national and/or subnational politics. Moreover, the school-to-system performance comparisons enabled by PISA for Schools arguably provide one of the first – if not the only – international data-driven catalysts of school-level reform. This furthers the relevance and diffusion of “lessons” from main PISA and the OECD to schools themselves, and helps extend the epistemic communities through which the OECD practices its global epistemological governance of education.