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This chapter illustrates how intergovernmental fusion challenges local government reform in Flanders. In this northern part of Belgium, regional and local governments are closely interwoven. For decades, this fusion has put the Flemish government in a leading role as far as local strategic policy planning is concerned. Since the 1990s, field administrations have steered their local counterparts to very divergent planning practices as a prerequisite for granting state money to various local policy branches. But this sectorial subsidisation caused so-called planning burden for local governments that hindered them from strategically planning in a holistic manner. The Flemish government recently endeavoured to coordinate its intergovernmental steering practice in ten policy fields. Drawing upon empirical data acquired by document analyses and interviews in these fields, this chapter aims at finding out if the regional field administrations have now streamlined and also limited their top-down steering to support the local reform towards holistic planning. At first sight, our analysis pointed to goodwill on their part to support the reform. However, a closer look revealed that strong path dependency towards their own historic-institutional logic clearly ruled in case of conflict. If possible, field administrations prefer to hang on to their way of steering and thus keep on playing a starring role in local strategic planning.

This chapter proffers policy and legislative recommendations for the preservation of performing authors’ creative autonomy. For policy recommendations, Gani emphasises the importance of copyright education for performing authors, and suggests practical actions performing authors can take in public relations campaigns, negotiating recording contracts, and observing certain protocols at recording studios and live events. In view of the problems analysed in the earlier chapters, she also makes legislative recommendations for a copyright amendment bill that would, among other priorities, vest authorship of sound recordings in performing authors and reintroduce the copyright reversion clause. Finally, she asserts the importance of implementing national copyright goals based on Nigeria’s developmental realities.

The balance of economic development is based on internal and external mechanisms that are influenced by strategic policy of economic subject’s development. The system of strategic development is required in the conditions of low demand, low offer, low quality, insufficient efficiency of state normative & legal influence, and barriers that hinder creation of economically substantiated decisions in effective management. The article is devoted to the forecasting approach to strategic development of economic subjects.

The history of European cities reflects the close, complex ties that unite urban planning and human health. An effective remedy against epidemics in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, city planning has, paradoxically, contributed to the appearance of many problems related to the health and well-being of people in the modern era. In September 2012, the European Member States of the WHO adopted “Health 2020”, a strategic policy framework for the twenty-first century. Health 2020 explicitly recognizes the influence of the urban environment on health and the role of healthy cities and national networks in carrying forward the objectives and themes of this European strategy. Health 2020 also recognizes the emblematic role of the leadership of local governments in the development of health. Urban planning should address this activism in European cities and the need to overcome what can be defined as the risk of “projectism”, the risk of a short-term vision relying on isolated interventions rather than long-term programs or policies that can profoundly modify the organization of contemporary urban models in favor of the health and well-being of city inhabitants.

This chapter presents the book and provides an outline of it: Europe faces ‘hard power’ challenges in Russian revisionism, mass migration, and terrorism. These are external shocks for Europe and they require strategic policy responses, employing hard power such as military and police force. These challenges present themselves at a time when the US puts pressure on Europe to manage its own security problems. The chapters discuss the transition to multipolarity and the return of Realpolitik, as well as the specific European approach to international politics based on a postmodern mindset. It sets the stage for the subsequent analysis of the central question of the book: Can Europe act strategically?

This chapter examines the relationship between governmental wellbeing agendas and welfare reforms in New Zealand and The United Kingdom. In both countries, a combination of legislative tools and strategic policy directives are changing how welfare and wellbeing are conceptualised, assessed and supported by government. With the question ‘wellbeing for who?’ at the forefront, this chapter critically discusses the negative impacts of welfare reform on women and the need for gender sensitive and gender-specific evidence on wellbeing. It argues that if wellbeing is consistently being undermined for a particular group of people, and there is insufficient attention to understanding their needs through appropriate methodologies, then this is discriminatory and seriously challenges the political claim of measuring and promoting national wellbeing.

This paper discusses the development of archaeological policy and practice in the City of York, UK, between 1989 and 2015, looking in particular at the development of municipal policies and procedures by City of York Council. The paper looks at three specific periods of development: before 1972; 1972–1989; and 1989–2015. The landscape of archaeological practice in York before 1972 is detailed. The impact of the creation of York Archaeological Trust the development of the Jorvik Viking Centre is described. The designation of an Area of Archaeological Importance one of only five such designations in the UK is discussed. The problems inherent in the lack of any active role by local government are highlighted, with particular reference to the events at the Queen’s Hotel site in the historic core of York. The key post-1989 policy and practice initiatives of preservation in situ and targeted archaeological research projects implemented and overseen by a dedicated post of archaeologist within City of York Council are described in detail.

This chapter is a study of the ecological policy process in the last four decades, showing the system input at the international, regional, and national levels. The international community and national governments were involved in an active process in the last decades, elaborating more concepts, objectives, and strategies on the issue of sustainable development. The main challenge the economy of Eastern Europe is facing nowadays is how to put economic development and sustainability on a dynamic equilibrium track, enabling its social system to provide functional well-being. The attitude of the individuals and enterprises plays a big role and they are very important actors in tackling this problem. The methodology of this study consists in applying the systemic approach in analyzing ecological policy input at all levels. In addition, the method of historical analysis and phenomenology plays an important role in studying the evolution of the process approached in this chapter. The systematization of all input made until today represents one of the achievements of this research. An important conclusion of this chapter consists in the idea that the economic policies of the countries from Eastern Europe must take into consideration all legal and strategic policy achievements and must try to continue to develop this process towards a transdisciplinary approach in all decisions and actions by transition to new levels of sustainable development.

Policy Delphi was first introduced in 1969, and it is a process that seeks to generate the strongest possible opposing views on the potential resolutions of a major policy issue, such as strategy and policy for infrastructure and engineering asset management within organizations. The objectives of the Policy Delphi are to: ensure that all possible options have been tabled for consideration; estimate the impact and consequences of any particular option; and examine and estimate the acceptability of all the individual options. There are six phases that include formulation of the issues, identifying options, determining initial positions on the issues, exploring and obtaining the reasons for disagreements, evaluation, and finally, reevaluation of options. The methodology relies on a two-round limit by utilizing the following procedures: (a) The monitor team devoting a considerable amount of time to carefully pre-formulate the obvious issues; (b) Seeding the list with an initial range of options but allowing for the respondents to add to the lists; and (c) Asking for positions on an item and establishing underlying assumptions in the first round. The research investigates what kind of asset management experts is needed to determine the scope of policy requirements for this process? The paper provides a case study of a Policy Delphi to elaborate the efficacy of this method for asset-intensive organizations to develop strategic policy.