Games for groundwater governance: field experiments in Andhra Pradesh, India

Groundwater is a common-pool resource that is subject to depletion in many places around the world as a result of increased use of irrigation and water-demanding cash crops. Where state capacity to control groundwater use is limited, collective action is important to increase recharge and restrict highly water-consumptive crops. We present results of field experiments in hard rock areas of Andhra Pradesh, India, to examine factors affecting groundwater use. Two nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) ran the games in communities where they were working to improve watershed and water management. Results indicate that, when the links between crop choice and groundwater depletion is made explicit, farmers can act cooperatively to address this problem. Longer NGO involvement in the villages was associated with more cooperative outcomes in the games. Individuals with more education and higher perceived community social capital played more cooperatively, but neither gender nor method of payment had a significantly effect on individual behavior. When participants could repeat the game with communication, similar crop choice patterns were observed. The games provided an entry point for discussion on the understanding of communities of the interconnectedness of groundwater use and crop choice.

The passage of authority: imagining the political transformation of Australia’s Christmas Island, from sovereignty to governance

In 2012, Australia’s Christmas Island is best known as an island of immigration detention, a key component of Australia’s growing offshore border security apparatus, where interdicted boat arrivals seeking asylum are detained and processed. This article offers one account of how the Island came to be what it is, by providing two snapshots of the operable set of power relations on Christmas Island, then and now: ‘Island in the Sun’, and ‘Tropics of Governance’. Side by side, their stark contrast reveals the passage of authority through time and place, from the embodied, unified voice of the sovereignty of the British Empire to the palliative communication and bureaucratic sincerity that characterise governance. By disclosing shifting patterns of emergence and decay and showing border security’s intimate relation to governance, this article seeks to offer a deepened understanding of the current detention situation in its immanence. What can now be seen as Christmas Island’s past follies also reveals the restless work of successive political imaginations, the shifting ways and means by which an island can be translated into a solution to a political problem, and how successive solutions tend toward wreck and ruin.

Private security companies and domestic violence: a welcome new development?

Due to the poor reputation of the private security industry and the multiple lines of concerns raised by scholars over the potentially corrosive costs of commercial security provision, it is important to consider whether for-profit companies are a welcome addition to the network of actors who respond to the needs of domestic violence victims. Using the case study of ‘Protective Services’ in Victoria, Australia, who appear to be one of the first known instances of a private security company offering services to victims of domestic violence, we argue that there may be advantages for victims engaging with commercial providers and reasons for optimism that commercial outfits can improve feelings of safety for a particularly vulnerable and underprotected population.

Nonprofit Boards in Australia: A Distinctive Governance Appoach

This article reports the findings into patterns of governance on nonprofit boards in Australia. The research surveys 118 boards, upon which serve a total of 1405 directors. The findings indicate that nonprofit boards can mimic some aspects of a shareholder approach to governance. But nonprofit boards, in the main, indicate priorities and activities of a stakeholder approach to governance. The features of `isomorphism' that arise largely stem from legislative requirements in corporate governance. Generally, nonprofit directors are influenced by agenda and motivations that can be differentiated from the influences upon director activity in the corporate sector. The study indicates that nonprofit boards prize knowledge and loyalty to the sector when considering board composition. The survey suggests nonprofits ``compensate'' for the demands placed upon them about fiduciary duty and due diligence responsibilities with the diverse intellectual expertise of non-executive directors. Nonprofit boards possess greater diversity than boards in the corporate sector; they include more women as directors than corporate boards and they include a greater proportion of directors from minority groups. While strategic issues feature significantly as a task of the nonprofit board, they distinguish themselves from their corporate counterparts by engaging in operational management. The findings indicate that, in the main, directors on nonprofit boards deliberate and operate in ways distinctive from their corporate counterparts. Such findings offer a contribution to the reform of Corporations Law in other countries and the likely consequence on boards outside the corporate sector.