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The purpose of this study is to apply a model of regional networks and governance to cross‐border cases for the purpose of identifying determinants that help local governments overcome barriers and promote interaction in border areas most susceptible to globalization realities, namely “old economy” manufacturing and industrial centers. It aims to draw together research from a variety of perspectives on regional networks and explore efforts by two local European communities and one local US community to respond to the challenges posed by the global economy by interviewing stakeholders in territories that have experienced significant deindustrialization.

Interviews were conducted with local, regional and central government officials, as well as private sector actors, in the Italian region of the Marches and in the countries of Luxembourg and the USA.

The study's preliminary findings show a range of networks across several arenas closely associated with economic development, but fail to show direct associations with economic development alone. The authors attribute this to the centrality of geographic space in development augmented by local competition and presence of the international border.

The authors conclude by identifying a set of determinants that will guide future research into local networking in cross‐border economic development and related arenas.

The purpose of this paper is to present the main themes in this special issue focusing on the impact of transformations in the global economy on public management.

This paper takes the from of a presentation of articles in this special issue.

The paper finds that focusing on examples form Europe and North America, public management adaptability varies across states and regions. Capacity is identified as an important indicator of adaptability.

The paper introduces an issue that highlights concrete examples of adaptability in public management. It opens the door to further research tracing linkages between changes in the global environment and the practice of public management.

Using regional incomes as the reference group, disposable income poverty rates are computed for the two most recent waves of Luxembourg Income Study (LIS) data available for the following countries: Australia, Canada, Finland, France, Germany, Italy, the United Kingdom, and the United States. In addition, we aggregate the regions of the five western European countries we examine so that we can better assess the effectiveness of Europe's efforts to reduce the economic gaps between regions. We find that the countries we examine have patterns of regional poverty that help us better understand the national aggregate measures, and we are able identify areas where antipoverty efforts should be made a priority.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the accuracy of program performance measurement in US financial regulatory programs.

This research uses the US Government's Program Assessment Rating Tool (PART) system of output and outcome data collection, performance data from financial regulatory programs were examined to determine: if PART data revealed any degradation in external financial conditions or internal regulatory performance prior to the Great Recession of 2008, and whether output performance influenced outcome performance.

The results indicate that outcome measures did “capture” some deterioration in the performance of the financial industry before the Great Recession, but these measures were arguably not influenced by program outputs. This represents a potentially problematic use of performance measures in that programs used outcome measures which were not controlled by programmatic actions.

This project adds to a growing body of literature on the challenges of program performance measurement in government. However, this analysis is unique in that it specifically examines the performance of the US Government's financial regulatory programs, as measured by PART, before the Great Recession of 2008.

The purpose of this paper is to consider financial services sector macro‐prudential and micro‐prudential supervisory reforms in the European Union (EU). It aims to critically examine the new system, reviewing in particular the adequacy of the reform to address financial crises.

The paper is based on a qualitative analysis of the relevant academic and trade literature.

In considering the new EU supervisory system's constitutional and legal foundation and its organizational structure, the study highlights the revamped and complex architecture's strengths and limitations.

The paper makes a contribution to the understanding of the new financial services sector supervisory system in the EU; few studies have analyzed its constitutional legality and satisfactoriness for the prevention of new crises.

This paper aims to analyze the opportunities and challenges of public policy governance in industrialized democracies in the context of a globally integrated economy on the one hand and institutional decentralization on the other. The implications of these transitions suggest the need for horizontal collaboration and coordination between policy stakeholders (domestic and international) as well as among agencies across various levels of government. The case of regional economic development policy governance in Canada over the past two decades illustrates some of the complexities of public, private and community partnerships in policy governance as the country seeks to maintain and enlarge its niche in the global economy.

Data were collected through content analysis of policy and program documents relating to regional economic development in Canada, as well as in‐depth interviews of about 15 public officials directly involved in the administration of the policy.

The comparative analysis of regional economic development policy governance in two Canadian provinces over the past two decades illustrates some of the complexities of public, private and community partnerships in policy governance as the country seeks to maintain and enlarge its niche in the global economy.

The paper is based on an original research undertaken by the author and raises critical questions about the changing context of public management in an age of increasing globalization of economies and societies. It also addresses the distinct challenges of managing multi‐level systems in the face of the added complexities brought about by global integration.

The paper aims at contributing to the cutback management and organizational decline streams of research by providing an in‐depth analysis of the main challenges that public managers have to address in managing public spending and activity cutbacks as a response to the current financial crisis.

After a literature review of the field, an analysis of the activities of international cooperation between public managers is carried out and the strategies adopted at the global level are compared to the challenges and complexities identified by the literature.

Recovery policies adopted at the international level follow some literature indications such as the clear long‐term forward‐looking focus and the attention to post‐crisis challenges. In turn, the crisis is perceived to have politicized decision making. There are concerns that the pressure to reduce levels of staff and services poses the risk that the public sector will not have the ability to manage future crises.

Much of the discussion on the crisis focuses on macroeconomic policies and the business sector. Public sector policies are a powerful instrument to overcome the crisis. The article compares recommendations from the theory on crisis management, both in the public and in the private sector, with concrete strategies adopted at the international level.

The purpose of this paper is to document Canadian financial services regulatory reform, illustrating how existing institutional fragmentation has undermined capacity to effectively learn from the global financial crisis.

The paper draws on government documents, public comments and interviews with key individuals in the reform process to document the different institutional responses to the crisis.

The case highlights concerns raised in the policy subsystems literature that the capacity for “learning”, even from events as significant as the financial crisis, can be undermined by poor institutional arrangements which create incentives for policymakers to support self interested and limited analysis.

The case suggests that effective learning in a complex sector requires that there be a national regulator charged with broad independent analytical responsibilities to ensure that the industry is effectively regulated. Existing fragmentation of responsibilities, combined with the interests of the industry and the current government in deflecting new regulatory rules, has meant that existing government expertise has not been effectively deployed.

The paper offers an important corrective to the existing view of Canadian financial regulation and is a compelling illustration of how poor institutional arrangements and ambiguous jurisdictional responsibilities can impede effective policy capacity in relation to learning.

This chapter summarizes public perceptions and expert evaluations concerning elected officials' levels of corruption, focusing on comparisons between the United States and 29 European Union “plus” (EU+) countries (28 EU Member States in 2018 plus Switzerland). While surveys of corruption have become more widely available in recent years, there is still a lack of comparable data focusing on specific government institutions, rather than general perceptions of corruption by elected or public officials. Thus, this study takes advantage of four major sources of citizens' perceptions of corruption to develop an average score and ranking for a total of 30 countries: the 2017 Global Corruption Barometer, the 2017 Eurobarometer subtitled “Integration of Immigrants in the European Union and Corruption,” the 2016 International Social Survey Program's (ISSP) Module on the “Role of Government V,” and the Pew Research Center's 2018 “Global Attitudes & Trends Survey.” Three expert assessments of levels of corruption supplement these surveys: the Varieties of Democracy (V-Dem) Project's measure of legislative corruption, Transparency International's Corruption Perceptions Index (CPI) 2016, and the World Bank's 2016 Worldwide Governance Indicators (WGI) assessment of the “Control of Corruption.” Finally, the chapter tests several hypotheses derived from the literature using the various corruption measures as the dependent variable and finds that choosing a measure of corruption based on citizens' perceptions or expert evaluations is substantively important. Thus, one must exercise caution when selecting one type of measure over the other.

The purpose of this paper is to describe an economic region straddling the Canada‐USA border between Ontario and Michigan from historical and contemporary perspectives. It aims to highlight policy challenges for federal, state, provincial and municipal governments.

This paper provides a general review based on academic literature, government and consultant reports and data from a variety of sources. It begins with a historical review of the study regions. This is followed by a more detailed contemporary review of conditions arising since the attacks of September 11, 2001. A number of possible and ongoing policy options for various orders of government are then described.

The paper finds that Ontario and Michigan comprise a highly integrated economic region with a particular focus on automotive production. Within that region the Canada‐USA border is a key transportation bottleneck whose impedance effect has gotten worse in the aftermath of September 11, 2001. A variety of policies have been implemented to try to reduce the cost of the border with mixed success and there is little cross‐border interaction among lower orders of government.

To the best of the author's knowledge there has been no other paper published in an academic journal that describes the history, current situation and policy issues of the study region. The value of this paper lies in providing a multidisciplinary overview and a starting point for further research on the region.