The aim of the article is to interpret the Hamas attack of October 7, 2023 in light of crisis management theories, seeking to draw from this event some general lessons about the nature of crises, their determinants, and how they are managed. More specifically, the article addresses three questions: (1) Why did Israel underestimate the warning signs and fail to prevent the attack? (2) What decision-making

Emerging technologies pose many new challenges for regulation and governance on a global scale. With the advent of distributed communication networks like the Internet and decentralized ledger technologies like blockchain, new platforms emerged, disrupting existing power dynamics and bringing about new claims of sovereignty from the private sector. This special issue addresses a gap in the literature

Assigning the preparation of decisions to specialized committees composed of member state representatives is a widespread response to the ‘governor's dilemma’, that is, the tension between competence and control, in international organizations (IOs). We theorize a causal mechanism referring to self-selection and agenda-setting effects and show how the resulting division of labor among IO bodies produces

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Although political economy (PE) has long engaged with environmental issues, climate change has remained at the margins of the field until very recently. This article argues that fully addressing the transformative challenges brought up by climate change requires a fundamental rethinking of core PE concepts related to the state, distributional struggles, economic growth, varieties of capitalism, and

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Public managers implement various types of external interventions, such as documentation requirements that hold public professionals accountable to legal protocols. Motivation crowding research finds that controlling perceptions of external interventions may reduce motivation and negatively influence performance. Thus, the way that managers build support for external interventions is crucial. This

New governance models increasingly employ self‐regulation tools like pledges and nudges to achieve regulatory compliance. These approaches premise that voluntary compliance emerges from intrinsic motivation to cooperate rather than coercive measures. Central to their success is trust—both in government institutions and among citizens. However, rising societal polarization raises critical questions

In this study we describe the potential of human‐centered design principles to identify burdens, reducing the effects of administrative checkpoints. Administrative checkpoints—mandatory requirements that must be satisfied in order to progress in an administrative process—have disproportionate negative effects in excluding the public from receiving public services. Mandatory interviews are one such

Skills formation is a pressing issue for middle‐income countries given the pace of technological change. In Latin America, scholars point to the hierarchical type of capitalism and its segmentalist skills formation system as the main roadblocks to exiting the middle‐income trap. Yet we contend that focusing on national models of capitalism is limited because they do not explain within‐country variations

Non‐take‐up of social benefits is a significant policy issue caused by factors such as lack of awareness, compliance costs, and stigma. While public information campaigns, default options, and in‐person assistance are increasingly used, their effectiveness remains poorly understood. This study provides a systematic review of field experiments evaluating nudges and simple behavioral interventions on

Given the ongoing climate crisis, the frequency and severity of natural disasters are increasing. These events result in enormous reconstruction costs, pose a high burden on state budgets, and potentially drive homeowners into private insolvency. One policy instrument for collectively covering such costs is a compulsory insurance scheme for natural hazards. As the impact of natural disasters is uneven

Urban flooding presents a growing challenge in metropolitan areas due to climate change and increasing impervious surfaces. This research proposes a Green Infrastructure (GI) planning approach to enhance flood control and resilience in the flood-prone Yeoksam-dong region of Gangnam, Seoul, South Korea. A mixed-method approach was employed, incorporating both residents’ preferences and hydrological

Agroecological and technological innovations are two important approaches in the transition towards agricultural sustainability. We lack knowledge about how current agricultural contexts may influence future development pathways and the relative importance of the two approaches. This study explores the alignment between past uptake of agroecological and technological practices and future visions of

Involvement with the juvenile justice system carries immense consequences both to detained youth and to society more broadly. Extant research on the “school‐to‐prison pipeline” has often focused on school disciplinary practices such as suspension with less attention on understanding the impact of school referrals to the juvenile justice system on students. Using novel administrative data from North

Forest Transition (FT) is a theoretical framework for understanding tree cover changes but often overlooks differences within countries, across forest types (e.g., second-growth forests, tree plantations replacing natural forests), regions, and climates. We quantified tropical tree cover dynamics across eight regions in four tropical countries, examining how these patterns relate to FT and how they

In the context of the most recent reform of the European Common Agricultural Policy (2023–2027), new voluntary environment-friendly measures have been introduced. These measures, termed eco-schemes, represent one-year arrangements with limited restrictions. They are, therefore, considered to be more flexible than the revised and more demanding agri-environment-climate measures (AECM). The introduction

Allan Rosenbaum was a dedicated public administration professor and administrator who made significant contributions to the field over his six‐decade career. He held various academic and administrative positions and played leadership roles in professional associations, becoming a global champion of public administration. Allan was known for his passion, humanity, decency, and friendship, which were

Understanding vegetation dynamics and their influencing factors is essential to regional sustainable development and ecological security. However, large-scale and long-term vegetation changes and attribution pose challenges due to temporal and quality discrepancies in multi-source remote sensing data. This study developed a research framework based on multi-source data integration and conducted a case

Public demand for the restoration of degraded French peatlands is strong, as they contribute to climate change. A French carbon offset accreditation is being developed to facilitate private investment in peatland restoration. Assessing the costs of restoration programs and projects is vital to target cost-efficiency. Studies on acquisition costs are non-existent in the peatland scientific literature

We use a baby formula “food scare” in Israel in 2003 as a plausible natural experiment to study the causal relationship between breastfeeding and mothers’ return to work after childbirth. Analysis of administrative data covering the universe of births in the country shows that first‐time mothers who gave birth shortly after the scare delayed their return to work. Their average months worked in the

Propelled by the New Public Management reforms, the infusion of market values in the public‐nonprofit interface is argued to have increased nonprofit organizations' (NPOs) capacity to influence public policy through increased access to government, yet often at the cost of abandoning their critical stance toward the said government. Drawing on cross‐country survey data collected from NPOs across three

Digital governance has become a key means of improving the quality of urban governance, particularly the green utilization efficiency of urban land. Then, using panel data from 284 cities and exploiting the implementation of the ‘National Pilot for Information Benefiting the People’ policy, this study uses a double machine learning model to explore the impact of digital governance on the green utilization

This study advances a deeper understanding of the antecedents and mediators of goal ambiguity within public organizations. Expanding upon the established notion of the negative relationship between goal ambiguity and performance in public organizations, this study goes one step further by exploring how exogenous shocks may exacerbate this adverse impact. Focusing on the unprecedented Covid-19 pandemic

In the age of collaboration and shared governance, paradoxically, distrust manifests frequently in government and political institutions and is seen as dysfunctional to democracy, making governing networks challenging. Yet, previous studies emphasize the significance of promoting trust more than addressing distrust in networks. Distrust differs from the absence of trust. It involves relationships characterized

Differential coverage across demographic groups in a census or survey can reduce the accuracy and representativeness of the resulting statistics. Researchers traditionally have used community‐level measures to study response behavior and coverage, which can obscure patterns for small population groups. We illustrate this using household‐level citizenship and immigration status. We construct household‐level

Land degradation and water challenges threaten sub-Saharan Africa's agricultural productivity and food security. This study uses panel secondary data from the World Bank Living Standards Measurement Study—Integrated Surveys on Agriculture project to evaluate land degradation variations, the adoption of sustainable land and water management (SLWM) practices, and their impacts on crop yields among smallholder

This research note explores how policymaking can manage the spill-over effects of digital and social infrastructures to support social cohesion, particularly in "left-behind places" (LBPs). While digitalization is often seen as a tool to reduce regional disparities, its implementation frequently neglects the critical role of social infrastructure, risking the reinforcement of existing inequalities

Conflicts of Interest The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

The adoption of conservation practices on working farmland has proven effective in mitigating environmental externalities created by agricultural production. The widespread use of these practices, among other factors, depends on the private benefits and costs associated with them, as well as the timing of the outcomes. Around 40 % of all farmland acres in the U.S. are rented by operators who do not

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Conflicts of Interest The author declares no conflicts of interest.

This research examines how actors responsible for leading organization‐wide efforts use “influence tactics” in pursuit of intraorganizational, or functional, collective action. We draw from intraorganizational influence theory and propose a revised taxonomy of tactics that vary along two dimensions: coerciveness (soft and hard) and orientation (relational and rational). We test factors associated with

For decades, various Austrian spatial planning strategies have emphasized the need to curb land consumption and land sealing. The growth paradigm in concrete land use planning is prevalent to this day: land consumption is still closely coupled to income (GDP) growth, while existing and newly introduced policy instruments were basically ineffective in curbing land consumption. Local decision-makers

This paper proposes a transdisciplinary approach to design future degrowth‐oriented industrial policies in pursuing a well‐being economy in the case of a specific growth model. Specifically, we show that the case of the Visegrad countries (Czechia, Hungary, Poland and Slovakia, V4s) is a clarion call for the degrowth literature to be much more modest and self‐critical. It addresses the puzzling question

Although red tape remains a significant policy concern and despite meta‐analytical research showing that it impacts employee and performance outcomes, research elucidating why and under which conditions it does so remains scarce. Using social cognitive theory, we first hypothesize that the relationship between red tape and job satisfaction is mediated by self‐efficacy. Second, we argue that red tape

Scientific prediction and assessment of land use types and their carbon storage potentials in urban areas under various future development scenarios hold significant practical importance for guiding urban territorial spatial planning and landscape regulation. This study, based on three phases of high-precision land use data in the central urban area of Guiyang City, utilizes the PLUS-InVEST model to

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Though often framed as a technocratic tool, impact assessment is a core element of the political agenda‐setting process. In this article, we show that decisions about what is subject to legislative debate are made during impact assessment; specifically, during the drafting of the assessment report. Using a social process tracing methodology, we analyze the removal from the agenda of provisions for

In politically polarized environments, presidential administrations rely on executive and administrative action to advance their social policy agendas. This article conducts a systematic review of the early Trump and Biden administration's use of unilateral action to influence PK‐12 policy. We find that despite President Trump's campaign rhetoric around deregulation, both administrations employed unilateral

The theoretical literature on social capital and disasters, as well as conventional wisdom, suggests the importance of pre-disaster relationship building among leaders of responding organizations and agencies for disaster readiness and response. Often implied, but rarely tested empirically, research presumes a positive and linear relationship associated with investments in social capital for effective

The use of mini-publics to enable some citizens to feed policy recommendations into public policy processes is gaining popularity. However, assessing whether and to what extent mini-publics have policy impact is extremely challenging due to the complexity of policy processes. We make the case for a new approach to analysing mini-public policy impact with respect to an analysis of the journeys made

Although the results of paradigmatic change are a common focus of the literature, significantly less attention has been paid to the process through which public administration reform takes place. In particular, the role of meso‐level induced changes has only recently started to receive some attention, and not much is yet known about how collaborative systems at the managerial level affect pathways

Transaction cost (TC) theoretical constructs are central to research throughout the social sciences, yet key concepts, such as measurability and asset specificity, often defy systematic empirical measurement. In government contracting research, empirical measurements of key TC theoretical constructs are limited to the International City/County Management Association's surveys of US municipal and county

How do provisions for administrative sanctioning affect the implementation of loose legal norms? To streamline regulation, governments have increased their penal capacity by authorizing administrative sanctioning, and they have decentralized regulatory responsibility by loosening legal norms. A case study of Norway's animal welfare governance shows how using administrative sanctions to enforce loose

In the past decades, scholars have provided novel insights on the role of media within regulation. Still, this strand of research has received less attention to the networked nature of contemporary regulatory governance. This article studies surrogate inspectorates, who focus on motivating the implementation/enforcement of regulatory rules, often temporary and without formal capacity. Based on a quantitative

We study how civilian complaint investigators affect officer behavior in Chicago. We exploit quasi‐random assignment of complaints to supervising investigators and use variation in whether supervisors tend to acquire sworn affidavits that substantiate the complaints. When the assigned investigator opens more investigations through obtaining affidavits, accused officers accumulate fewer complaints in

Understanding the use of evidence by public organizations and public officials is a key issue for public administration scholars and practitioners. In this study, we examine how individual‐ and organizational‐level factors relate to evidence informed policy making. Using the Norm of Evidence and Research in Decision‐making (NERD), we conduct an online survey to analyze evidence informed policy making

With the rapid growth of the world's urban population, urban land expansion has become an inevitable trend, with Africa being one of the primary locations for both global urban population growth and urban land expansion. Small and medium-sized cities are gradually recognized as playing an important role in the urbanization process in Africa. However, there is relatively little attention has been paid

There is a growing recognition that cities are both vulnerable and significant contributors to climate change (CC). In the last two decades, the Global South nations have surpassed developed countries in energy-related carbon emissions, highlighting the need for greater mitigation responsibilities. Despite the increasing appreciation of the crucial role of urban planning in tackling the root causes

A commonly expressed concern about distributional weighting in benefit-cost analysis is that the informational burden is too high and the practical challenges insurmountable. In this paper, we address this concern by conducting distributional weighting on a number of real-world examples, covering a range of different types of policy impacts. We uncover and explore a number of methodological issues

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Attention of rural policies in Europe is increasingly shifting away from agricultural production towards economic multifunctionality, environmental sustainability, and social development, including the impact of farmland on quality of life. This study examines the relationship between population and agricultural land use in Europe, estimating the proportion of people living at various distances from

The National Land Credit Program in Brazil has succeeded in providing land access to over 68,000 rural workers in just over 20 years. However, the program faces the challenge of defaulting on part of the contracts. Quantifying default on land credit is important to understand the reasons for it and propose improvements. This study sought to quantify the default rate and explore its causes. To do so

This study employs Cultural Theory to study perceptions and conflicting worldviews of key actor groups in EU forest policy. Forests are central to different human demands for ecosystem services such as biomass, biodiversity, and climate mitigation. Tradeoffs occur between these ecosystem services, involving the necessity to set priorities. Related to increasing uncertainties inter alia caused by climate

Decarbonization forces societies to cope with the restructuring and outright unwinding of assets, firms, workers, industries, and regions. We argue that this problem has created legitimacy for industrial policies managing the reallocation of resources. We illustrate this dynamic by documenting incremental state-building in the European Union, an administration institutionally tilted toward regulatory

This article investigates how the use of discretion in public-private contracts interplays with transactional complexity in influencing contract renegotiations. Motivations for contract renegotiations may be positive, negative (e.g., opportunistic), or neutral, and we argue that allowing discretion at the award stage may promote a more relational approach to contracting that fosters cooperation and