The GOVERNANCE blog

Nathalie Delapalme, Director of research and policy for the Mo Ibrahim Foundation, will contribute the lead commentary for the January 2011 issue of Governance.  The Foundation is committed to supporting African leadership that will improve the economic and social prospects of the people of Africa.  Delapalme was previously a French senior civil servant and  specializes in Africa and development policies. Her most recent position was Inspector General at the Inspection Générale des Finances.

UPDATE: The Structure and Organization of Government Research Committee (SOG), sponsor of Governance, will hold its next conference in Berlin on November 4-5, 2010.  (This is a slight adjustment of dates.)   UPDATED CALL FOR PAPERS.  The conference’s hosts are the Hertie School of Governance and the Center for Social Investment, Heidelberg.  The theme for the conference is Crisis as Opportunity: States, Markets and Communities in Turbulent Times.

Governance is now ranked #3 for impact among scholarly journals in public administration, according to ISI’s Journal Citation Report for 2009, released yesterday.  Governance was ranked #8 in the 2008 rankings and #9 in the 2007 rankings.  Among journals in political science, Governance is now ranked #11, up from #22 in 2008 and #25 in 2007.

The board of SOG, the IPSA Structure and Organisation of Government Research Committee, has given the 2010 Ulrich Kloeti Award to Nicole de Montricher of Université de Paris II.

SOG is the academic sponsor of Governance.  The Kloeti award is given in honor of Ulrich Kloeti, a founding member of SOG and its co-chair for ten years.  It recognizes scholars who have made exceptional contributions to research in the field through a sustained career.  The award nomination credits Professor de Montricher for  having “an immense impact on the study of public and administration in France.”

In the current issue of Governance (23.2, April 2010), Arjan Schakel of the University of Edinburgh uses a new dataset to answer an old question: when is governmental policy provision likely to be decentralized?  Schackel’s study of forty European countries demonstrates that decentralization is heavily determined by two functional characteristics of policies — the availability of economies of scale, and the presence of significant externalities from provision — and by the degree of variation in policy preferences among localities.  Other factors — such as the extent of democratization, national wealth, and degree of integration into the European Union — play a less significant role.  Read more: Explaining Regional and Local Government: An Empirical Test of the Decentralization Theorem.

In the current issue of Governance (23.2), Alison Post reviews The Political Economy of Water and Sanitation by Matthias Krause.  Post says that the Krause’s book “provides a helpful reminder that the effects of privatization and other types of reforms in infrastructure sector will vary greatly depending upon both the broader institutional and political environment and sector-specific institutions and policies.”  Read the review.

And Eric Heinze of the University of Oklahoma reviews two books that examine changing ideas about state sovereignty.  The State of Sovereignty: Territories, Laws Populations, edited by Douglas Howland and Luise White, demonstrates how “the notion of sovereignty changes over time,” while Humanitarian Intervention: Confronting the Contradictions, edited by Michael Newman, illustrates “how international human rights and humanitarian principles are affecting traditional conceptions of state sovereignty.”  Read the review.