Andor Lips, PhD FIMMM’s Post

It was a lovely book launch at the Utrecht University School of Governance library yesterday afternoon. Special thanks to Anoeska Buijze for chairing and Evelien Brouwer and Eugène Loos for their wonderful reflections on the book! Many thanks also to the wonderful EU Platform of our Utrecht University strategic theme Institutions for an Open Society, especially Martijn Huysmans, for helping organise the seminar. I will announce it here once the recording of the seminar goes online. Until then, here's a very brief overview of notable things that were said: "The book is diverse in its themes, positions, and disciplinary backgrounds in a way that I haven't seen before." "I must now read the book by [co-editor] Ida Koivisto!" "Time to start working in a second part?" (And during the drinks after the event: "That was not just a friendly remark.") "I very much enjoyed Päivi Leino-Sandberg's reflections on our relation to the subject of transparency. We are not only citizens, but also researchers. Many times I considered requesting access to relevant documents, but then I shy back from it because of the time involved." "Transparency is a valence issue, or in McGee's terms, an ideograph. It sets a goal that every subscribes yet everyone understands in their own way. It's in fact this ambivalence that makes it politically so useful." "I can understand why the Commission withheld access to the documents of the ongoing legislative procedure until the negotiations were concluded. But by the time I received them, there was no way they were going to help me influence the negotiation outcome." "European decision making is terribly complex. Consultations between policy actors take place left and right and it's all a delicately calibrated consensus. At municipal level, considering what the outcome of an FOI decision should be is far more straight forward." "The European Ombudsman recently said: 'It's as if Regulation 1049/2001 [on public access to documents] doesn't exist for the Commission.' They just do as they please, break all the rules and get away with it." "I don't just want to know where the decision makers get their ideas from. Equally importantly, I want to know what the lobbyists get up to." "Doesn't demanding more proactive disclosure open the door widely to more performative effects of transparency? They would then simply bury information, swamp you with mass disclosures, and more such things." "I like the fact that a research project produces such an outcome. Often, many good seminars are organised, discussions are head, a few papers written. But here, the project culminated in a nice tome that will stay with us." In short: many interesting ideas and personal experiences were exchanged in our shared hour and a half. I enjoyed it very much! More about the book:

Many policy concepts try to sum up the same story about modern governance. First, complex policy problems do not respect traditional government boundaries, and require collaborative responses across government and between governmental and non-governmental actors. Second, there is a gap between requirement and reality. This post summarises that common narrative and promises something more positive to say in the future. https://lnkd.in/dpvPyT8S

A COLLECTION OF EMPIRICAL AND THEORETICAL PAPERS ON INDEPENDENT DIRECTORS’ PERFORMANCE (UPDATED NOVEMBER 24, 2023) The editorial team of the Publishing House “Virtus Interpress” has updated the collection of empirical and theoretical papers published in Corporate Ownership and Control journal during last few years dedicated to the performance of independent directors (outside directors, non-executive directors). We hope that the aforementioned collection of papers will be useful for those scholars pursuing research in the field of corporate governance (specifically the role of independent directors). There are almost 40 open-access full-text papers. Find the link below https://lnkd.in/eCxgsgfr

👏 We are delighted to share that Florence STG Professor Michael Bauer was one of the most-read authors at Wiley, with the paper "Under what conditions does bureaucracy matter in the making of global public policies?". 🎉 The paper was written with co-authors Jörn Ege, Nora Wagner, and Eva Thomann and published in Governance, an international journal of policy administration and institutions. It has received enough downloads to rank within the top 10% of papers published. 🚀📊 📖 Read the paper: https://loom.ly/ROd2DEk

Call for Papers in Scandinavian Journal of Public Administration! Scandinavian Journal of Public Administration (SJPA) invites you to contribute to a dynamic and forward-thinking discussion on the contemporary issues that Scandinavian public organizations are facing. In an era of rapid change and complexity, these organizations are navigating a myriad of challenges while harnessing innovative strategies to shape their futures. Global political instability, increasing risks of pandemics, global migration, social and environmental (un)sustainability, and fiscal declines are only a few large wide-spread obstacles that the public sector faces and needs to handle. The Scandinavian context offers a unique perspective given its long tradition of inclusion, political stability, and (progressive) use of managerial techniques. This special issue targets issues of such grand obstacles as described above and invites contributions of conceptual or empirical character that specifically deals with coping strategies and (progressive) managerial tactics under times of uncertainty and economic and fiscal turmoil, to explore the multifaceted landscape of public management in this region. We encourage scholars from different traditions and disciplines to submit papers to this special issue, and especially welcome heterogeneity in terms of theoretical approaches and perspectives. Some examples of questions that may be of interest are: * Managerial issues: The impacts of neoliberal economic thinking and general trust in performance measurements and output controls (generally under the NPM-umbrella) has been challenged by concepts such as post-NPM, new public governance, public values, and trust-based leadership. In what way have these concepts become materialized in public organizations, and to what extent can they ‘survive’ the coming times of uncertainty? * Accounting and fiscal issues: In times of increasing economic and fiscal pressure, public organizations are hard pressed to deliver public services of a timely and high standard to its citizens. In what way are local and national authorities adapting to the new standards of living and in what way is this affecting society? * Organizational issues: How can organizational elements and innovations be used to cope with global challenges affecting local and national authorities? How are public organizations adapting to increasing demands of social, economic, and environmental sustainability, and are ‘modern’ public organizations fit to work with important topics such as inclusion and equality when they are simultaneously pressured from global crises? Read more on the following link. Deadline for full paper submission is December 31st 2024.

Here we explore the issue which is very much ignored but essential to any policy experimentation - accountability. It is OA paper https://lnkd.in/d_m7ch6k

Exciting to see the chapter by Milka Sormunen and myself as part of this great collection! Our contribution is about secrecy in informal readmission arrangements (EU external migration policy).   In our chapter we describe the process of filing access to document requests with the EU institutions to get public access to the texts of the readmission arrangements concluded by the EU and several African and Asian countries between 2016 and 2019. Using an understanding of secrecy that distinguishes between ‘known unknowns’ and ‘unknown unknowns’, we discuss the potential of access to document requests as a method to uncover non-transparent practices in the EU.   You can find the full chapter here - https://lnkd.in/eugjziav

It is finally out, fully open access, in Policy Sciences, a paper I wrote with Benedetto Lepori, in which we propose a way to bridge a crucial gap between policy design and implementation. https://lnkd.in/egNGjvG2

Thanks to CPA Ireland for inviting me to write an article in your recent journal edition! Also interesting to look at the generational profile of professional bodies!

In this paper, Professor Wei Cui proposes a novel conceptual framework for predicting and interpreting the course of Pillar Two’s global adoption. The author analyses self-interested incentives for adopting Pillar Two on the part of governments aiming to maximize national income. The analysis strives to demonstrate that there is nothing inevitable about Pillar Two adoption. It argues that nations from where MNEs originate will likely suffer deep losses, and most will be better off pulling out of Pillar Two. Pillar Two’s enforcement mechanisms lack effectiveness; accounts of their purported clever design are plagued by logical inconsistencies. The piece concludes with a bold assertion that "whatever sense of novelty in institutional design Pillar Two introduces, it is sustained only by a refusal to consider fundamental normative questions about consistency with international law." Document Courtesy: SSRN This document may be accessed at: https://lnkd.in/gvCbdp9X The University of British Columbia; Peter A. Allard School of Law at UBC; Reuven Avi-Yonah; Nigar Hashimzade; Daniel Hemel; Michael Keen; Peter Merrill; Noam Noked; Daniel Shaviro; Heydon Wardell-Burrus