Civic Agency in Governance: The Role of Legitimacy with Citizens vs. Donors

Civil society strengthening programs aim to foster democratic governance by supporting civil society organization (CSO) engagement in advocacy. However, critics claim that these programs foster apolitical and professional organizations that have weak political effects because they do not mobilize citizen participation. This literature focuses on how donor programs lead to low legitimacy of CSOs with citizens, limiting the means to develop agency toward the state. Here I investigate the influence of CSO legitimacy with donors and citizens on civic agency. Empirical research was conducted in Bosnia–Herzegovina on CSOs considered legitimate by donors, citizens, and both. I found that different forms of legitimacy were associated with different strategies and agency. CSOs with both forms of legitimacy, which have not received much attention until now, turned out to be of particular interest. These CSOs demonstrated agency as intermediaries between donors, government, and citizens, which enabled greater agency and broader outcomes.     

Should NPOs Follow International Standards for Financial Reporting? A Multinational Study of Views

Financial reporting is an important aspect of not-for-profit organisations’ (NPOs’) accountability. Globally, numerous and varying regimes exist by which jurisdictions regulate NPO financial reporting. This article explores whether NPOs should be required or expected to follow sector-specific international financial reporting standards. We investigate stakeholder perceptions on the nature and scope of any such developed standards, interpreting our findings through the lens of moral legitimacy. Using an international online survey of stakeholders involved in NPO financial reporting, we analyse 605 responses from 179 countries. Based on our findings, we argue that diverse stakeholder groups, especially those who are involved with NPO financial reporting in developing countries, are likely to grant moral legitimacy to developed NPO international accounting standards if the consequences are to enhance NPO accounting and accountability information, subject to agreement as to whether all or only NPOs of a certain size should comply and whether any such standards should be mandatory.     

Democratizing the Refugee Regime Complex

This article considers how civil society organizations (CSOs) may be understood in relation to the global refugee regime complex. It describes how several leading scholars have conceptualized refugee/internally displaced person (IDP) governance and explores how the neoliberal cognitive frame is impeding the possibility of democratic agency among IDPs/refugees. It argues that CSOs can play essential roles in encouraging democratization of the refugee regime complex by working to reshape their prevailing frame or orientation. Civil society organizations can also work to foster critical reflexivity among the parties that govern refugees and within that population as well. As an example of one such effort, the article employs Fraser’s (Scales of justice: reimagining political space in a globalizing world. Columbia University Press, New York, 2010) democratization framework in a brief case analysis of the Sarvodaya Shramadana Deshodaya initiative in Sri Lanka that has sought to enable IDPs in that nation to embrace critical reflexivity to reimagine themselves as governing agents who can redefine state and international organization-based definitions of refugee protection. Overall, the analysis suggests that civil society organizations can act successfully and intentionally to open democratic spaces in which refugees/IDPs may find possibilities to exercise their innate agential possibility.     

Resisting to the Neoliberal Urban Fabric: Housing Rights Movements and the Re-appropriation of the ‘Right to the City’ in Rome,Italy

This paper scrutinises the phenomenon of collective squatting for housing in Rome (Italy), which has reached remarkable proportions and developed new characteristics since the start of the 2008 crisis. Based upon two pieces of ethnographic research within the housing movement organisations Coordinamento Cittadino di Lotta per la Casa (Urban Coordination of Housing Struggles) and Blocchi Precari Metropolitani (Precarious Metropolitan Block), the authors aim to enlarge empirical knowledge of the case under study and provide renewed analytical instruments for understanding housing mobilisations. These organisations appear to be more than grassroots approaches to housing deprivation; they also represent alternative forms of social reproduction in post-welfare neoliberal cities. Indeed, squats configure themselves as sites for broader political elaboration. For this reason, we propose to analyse housing squatting using the notion of ‘urban commons’. The introduction of this notion to analyse housing movements helps in the theoretical elaboration of a re-appraised ‘right to the city’, in line with current urban challenges.     

Capturing hearts and minds: The influence of relational identification with the leader on followers' mobilization and cardiovascular reactivity

The influence of relational identification (RI) on leadership processes and the effects of social identity leadership on followers' responses to stress have received scant theoretical and research attention. The present research advances theoretical understanding by testing the assertion that high RI with the leader drives follower mobilization of effort and psychophysiological responses to stress. Two experimental scenario studies (Study 1 and Study 2) support the hypothesis that being led by an individual with whom followers perceive high RI increases follower intentional mobilization. Study 2 additionally showed that high (vs. low) RI increases follower resource appraisals and cognitive task performance. A laboratory experiment (Study 3) assessing cardiovascular (CV) reactivity showed that, compared to neutral (i.e., non-affiliated) leadership, being led by an individual with whom participants felt low RI elicited a maladaptive (i.e., threat) response to a pressurized task. In addition, relative to the low RI and neutral conditions, high RI with the leader did not engender greater challenge or threat reactivity. In conclusion, advancing social identity leadership and challenge and threat theory, findings suggest that leaders should be mindful of the deleterious effects (i.e., reduced mobilization and greater threat state) of low RI to optimize follower mobilization of effort and psychophysiological responses to stress.     

On computing a minimum secure dominating set in block graphs

In a graph \(G=(V,E)\), a set \(D \subseteq V\) is said to be a dominating set of G if for every vertex \(u\in V{\setminus }D\), there exists a vertex \(v\in D\) such that \(uv\in E\). A secure dominating set of the graph G is a dominating set D of G such that for every \(u\in V{\setminus }D\), there exists a vertex \(v\in D\) such that \(uv\in E\) and \((D{\setminus }\{v\})\cup \{u\}\) is a dominating set of G. Given a graph G and a positive integer k, the secure domination problem is to decide whether G has a secure dominating set of cardinality at most k. The secure domination problem has been shown to be NP-complete for chordal graphs via split graphs and for bipartite graphs. In Liu et al. (in: Proceedings of 27th workshop on combinatorial mathematics and computation theory, 2010), it is asked to find a polynomial time algorithm for computing a minimum secure dominating set in a block graph. In this paper, we answer this by presenting a linear time algorithm to compute a minimum secure dominating set in block graphs. We then strengthen the known NP-completeness of the secure domination problem by showing that the secure domination problem is NP-complete for undirected path graphs and chordal bipartite graphs.     

Improved mixed-integer programming models for the multiprocessor scheduling problem with communication delays

We revise existing and introduce new mixed-integer programming models for the Multiprocessor scheduling problem with communication delays. The basis for both is the identification of two major modeling strategies one of which can be considered ordering-based, and the other assignment-based. We first reveal redundancies in the encoding of feasible solutions found in present formulations and discuss how they can be avoided. For the assignment-based approach, we propose new inequalities that lead to provably stronger continuous relaxations and better performance in practice. Moreover, we derive a third, novel modeling strategy and show how to more compactly linearize assignment formulations with quadratic constraints. In a comprehensive experimental comparison of representative models that reflect the state-of-the-art in terms of strength and size, we evaluate not only running times but also the obtained lower and upper bounds on the makespan for the harder instances of a large scale benchmark set.     

Constant factor approximation for the weighted partial degree bounded edge packing problem

In the partial degree bounded edge packing problem (PDBEP), the input is an undirected graph \(G=(V,E)\) with capacity \(c_v\in {\mathbb {N}}\) on each vertex v. The objective is to find a feasible subgraph \(G'=(V,E')\) maximizing \(|E'|\), where \(G'\) is said to be feasible if for each \(e=\{u,v\}\in E'\), \(\deg _{G'}(u)\le c_u\) or \(\deg _{G'}(v)\le c_v\). In the weighted version of the problem, additionally each edge \(e\in E\) has a weight w(e) and we want to find a feasible subgraph \(G'=(V,E')\) maximizing \(\sum _{e\in E'} w(e)\). The problem is already NP-hard if \(c_v = 1\) for all \(v\in V\) (Zhang in: Proceedings of the joint international conference on frontiers in algorithmics and algorithmic aspects in information and management, FAW-AAIM 2012, Beijing, China, May 14–16, pp 359–367, 2012). In this paper, we introduce a generalization of the PDBEP problem. We let the edges have weights as well as demands, and we present the first constant-factor approximation algorithms for this problem. Our results imply the first constant-factor approximation algorithm for the weighted PDBEP problem, improving the result of Aurora et al. (FAW-AAIM 2013) who presented an \(O(\log n)\)-approximation for the weighted case. We also study the weighted PDBEP problem on hypergraphs and present a constant factor approximation if the maximum degree of the hypergraph is bounded above by a constant. We study a generalization of the weighted PDBEP problem with demands where each edge additionally specifies whether it requires at least one, or both its end-points to not exceed the capacity. The objective is to pick a maximum weight subset of edges. We give a constant factor approximation for this problem. We also present a PTAS for the weighted PDBEP problem with demands on H-minor free graphs, if the demands on the edges are bounded by polynomial. We show that the PDBEP problem is APX-hard even for bipartite graphs with \(c_v = 1, \; \forall v\in V\) and having degree at most 3.     

An $$O(|E(G)|^2)$$ algorithm for recognizing Pfaffian graphs of a type of bipartite graphs

A graph \(G=(V,E)\) with even number vertices is called Pfaffian if it has a Pfaffian orientation, namely it admits an orientation such that the number of edges of any M-alternating cycle which have the same direction as the traversal direction is odd for some perfect matching M of the graph G. In this paper, we obtain a necessary and sufficient condition of Pfaffian graphs in a type of bipartite graphs. Then, we design an \(O(|E(G)|^2)\) algorithm for recognizing Pfaffian graphs in this class and constructs a Pfaffian orientation if the graph is Pfaffian. The results improve and generalize some known results.     

Neighbor sum distinguishing list total coloring of subcubic graphs

Let \(G=(V, E)\) be a simple graph and denote the set of edges incident to a vertex v by E(v). The neighbor sum distinguishing (NSD) total choice number of G, denoted by \(\mathrm{ch}_{\Sigma }^{t}(G)\), is the smallest integer k such that, after assigning each \(z\in V\cup E\) a set L(z) of k real numbers, G has a total coloring \(\phi \) satisfying \(\phi (z)\in L(z)\) for each \(z\in V\cup E\) and \(\sum _{z\in E(u)\cup \{u\}}\phi (z)\ne \sum _{z\in E(v)\cup \{v\}}\phi (z)\) for each \(uv\in E\). In this paper, we propose some reducible configurations of NSD list total coloring for general graphs by applying the Combinatorial Nullstellensatz. As an application, we present that \(\mathrm{ch}^{t}_{\Sigma }(G)\le \Delta (G)+3\) for every subcubic graph G.