Chapter 6 investigates the erosion of electoral integrity in Venezuela, focusing on the transformation of the Supreme Electoral Council (CSE) from a partially autonomous institution into a politically captured body under Hugo Chávez and his successors. The chapter shows how reforms that insulated the National Electoral Council (CNE) from partisan influence, which intended to protect independence, paradoxically weakened transparency and accountability. Without mechanisms for party consultation, internal checks declined, administrative discretion expanded, and opportunities for manipulation increased. Drawing on extensive fieldwork and archival research, the chapter analyzes controversial decisions related to districting, voter registration, technology adoption, and election timing. It argues that Venezuela illustrates the risks of insulation without meaningful stakeholder engagement and provides a powerful contrast to cases where partisan inclusion stabilizes electoral governance.

This chapter explores coordination, control, and information systems as the backbone of organizational infrastructure. Coordination systems link organizational elements, while control systems ensure quality and efficiency. Two key dimensions – formalization and centralization – shape how work is governed. Models include family (informal, centralized), machine (formal, centralized), market (informal, decentralized), clan (formal, decentralized), and mosaic (heterogeneous systems). Information systems support these models and vary by information volume and tacit knowledge: event-driven (low info, low tacit), data-driven (high info, low tacit), agent-driven (low info, high tacit), and relationship-driven (high info, high tacit). Aligning these systems with strategy, structure, and goals is essential. Misfits can hinder performance, while thoughtful design enhances adaptability and efficiency.

Fetal growth restriction (FGR) is defined as the inability of a fetus to achieve its genetic growth potential, and the aetiology is multifactorial. However, the most frequent aetiology is placental insufficiency, which results in fetal chronic hypoxia leading to FGR. FGR is associated with several short- and long-term adverse outcomes, especially stillbirth and cerebral palsy. Fetuses affected by chronic hypoxia undergo several adaptive mechanisms in order to secure enough oxygen and nutrient supply to the vital organs. These changes are responsible for some of the features observed in the antepartum cardiotocography (CTG) traces of FGR fetuses. Labour represents a stressful event for the fetoplacental unit, as uterine contractions are associated with an intermittent reduction of up to 60% of the uteroplacental perfusion, and therefore FGR fetuses with an antenatal placental insufficiency have an increased risk of intrapartum hypoxic–ischaemic injury. This is because the superimposed hypoxic stress of labour has the potential to exacerbate ongoing chronic hypoxia. Caution is warranted when using uterotonics as FGR fetuses may not tolerate additonal hypoixc stress.

Fetuses, unlike adults, are not exposed to atmospheric oxygen. When confronted with hypoxia, adults can increase their rate and depth of respiration to enhance the intake of oxygen so as to maintain positive energy balance and protect their myocardium. In contrast, a fetus when exposed to hypoxia cannot increase its oxygen supply, and therefore, it will decrease the heart rate in order to reduce the myocardial workload to maintain a positive energy balance by reducing the myocardial oxygen demand. This reflex response to decrease the heart rate to protect the myocardium against hypoxic or mechanical stress is heard as a deceleration during fetal heart rate (FHR) monitoring, and should be considered a normal cardioprotective reflex response, similar to increasing rate and depths of respiration seen in adults as they undertake hypoxic excercises. They should not be classifed as ‘typical, atypical, uncomplicated, complicated, non-reassuring or reassuring’ purely based on their observed morphology. The intervening baseline FHR should be scrutinized to determine the oxygenation of fetal central organs.

Placental insufficiency is the most common pathophysiological mechanism of reduced fetal growth, called fetal growth restriction (FGR), and dependong on the time of diagnosis, it is classified as early-onset (<32 weeks) and late-onset (>32 weeks). Two tools are used to determine time of birth to avoid intrauterine death and to minimize the risk of iatrogenic prematurity. Those tools assess the fetal high-priority central organs: the brain and the heart. The brain is assessed using the computerized CTG, which attempts to determine the short-term variation (STV), and the heart is assessed by ultrasound with Doppler examination to fetal blood flow indices to analyse several waveforms, and ‘Ductus Venosus A wave’ being a marker of fetal cardiac function. A fetus presenting in the antenatal period or during early labour with an increased baseline FHR, reduced variability with or without shallow decelerations, has already been exposed to a chronic intrauterine hypoxic environment and has exhausted the compensatory responses to withstand any further hypoxic stress. Therefore, such a fetus is not fit for labour.

At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the Ottoman Empire was composed of a patchwork of different polities. In the aftermath of the early nineteenth-century Napoleonic wars (1803–1815), the Ottoman state began to expand its control over its hinterlands. The violent centralization by three succeeding sultans between 1839 and 1876 might be compared to the centralization efforts of Germany, France, and Italy. In each of these cases, independent or semi-independent principalities were seized by the expanding power centers of Berlin, Paris, and the Piedmont. The processes that unfolded across Eurasia bore striking similarities due to three technologies. These technologies – firearms, steamboats, and the telegraph – were used to centralize Ottoman authority in the mountains. Through these technologies, the Ottoman state was able to first conquer and then, over the course of decades, entrench state rule in areas that had hitherto been autonomous. From the point of view of the inhabitants of highlands, this period of centralization or reordering (Tanzimat) represented nothing short of a violent conquest by the state. The Ottoman conquest of the mountains laid the groundwork for subsequent violence by dividing mountain people against each other.

This chapter introduces a novel measure of state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in China using an equity network perspective. Leveraging a comprehensive firm registration dataset from SAIC, the authors construct dynamic ownership trees that trace direct and indirect government control from central, provincial, and city levels. By setting various ownership thresholds (100 percent, 50 percent, 30 percent, 10 percent, and >0 percent), the new measure reveals a substantially larger pool of SOEs than traditional self-reported indicators from the Annual Industrial Survey. The analysis uncovers systematic misreporting issues in existing definitions and demonstrates trends in state ownership, including a shift toward decentralization and increased indirect control over time. The findings offer fresh insights into the structure of China’s state capitalism and the evolving role of government in the economy, laying a robust foundation for future research on the economic impact of state ownership in China.

Chapter 6 investigates a setting with a narrow policy scope and low expectations. Unlike their Brazilian counterparts, Chilean mayors are not expected to implement important policies; the national government controls most public goods provision. Consistent with the book’s theory regarding settings with low expectations, mayors in Chile enjoy an incumbency advantage. The chapter also establishes that the ayors’ ability to obtain a return from holding office hinges on fiscal transfers and public goods spending. Chile also offers a natural experiment for examining theoretical expectations about the sources of personal versus partisan incumbency bias. During the most recent electoral cycle, some mayors were subject to term limits, while others were allowed to seek reelection. The chapter analyzes the impact of this institutional change using a differences-in-differences design. The results suggest that Chilean mayors’ incumbency advantage is strictly personal, as the theory predicts for settings with personalistic parties.

This chapter develops a framework for algorithmic governance, including considerations of the nature and consequences of the decision through processes of impact assessment. It analyzes ex ante AI design issues, such as mechanisms for sourcing technology through departmental or agency development or procurement processes, the calibration of error rates, level of human oversight, and participatory processes. Following this, the chapter considers the implementation of models of internal and external algorithmic auditing. The chapter then canvasses the trend towards centralized coordination of AI policies and principles across government, both through horizontal mechanisms of central agencies and regulators and vertical arrangements at the supranational and international organizational level imposed upon nation states. It also discusses transparency measures, including central publication of algorithmic tools, and individual notification and explanation of automated decisions.

Chapter 12 details the economic exploits of Nigeria’s colonial government and private foreign firms and explores the responses from local economic and political forces. The extraction and exploitation of Nigeria’s natural and labor resources were the primary driving factors behind British efforts, aiming to create a lucrative territorial possession that would fit snugly into a global imperial patchwork. To do so, the colonial government and some Indigenous polities promoted the construction of expansive, colony-wide infrastructure projects and extensive investments into its extraction economy, such as the development of commercial cocoa plantations. Such efforts yielded significant economic growth, but, as this chapter details, British actors would receive the most economic gains due to the attempted monopolization of these growing industries. The integration of indirect and legal forms of discrimination would harm local economic actors and non-British foreign firms, resulting in widespread poverty and social disturbance. With the onset of World War I and the economic depressions which followed, even this imbalanced economic growth would slow. Because Britain could no longer focus as much on its colonies, Nigeria’s growing class of educated elites would slowly gain more political representation.

Leadership in crisis response has traditionally been strongly centralized and hierarchical. Top-down command and control is popular, because a strict hierarchy and clear lines of command enable rapid decision-making and coordinated actions. Critics, however, have argued that centralization is both impossible and undesirable during crises, because leaders lack situational awareness and cannot control frontline responders from a distance. They argue that operational personnel should take charge to ensure an adaptive frontline response, potentially at the cost of efficiency and speed. The operational dilemma of crisis leadership revolves therefore around the tension between centralization and decentralization. To deal with this dilemma, it is useful to study how influence is exercised and power circulates during crises. Rather than a static authority structure, different types and phases of crises require different forms of leadership. Authority structures have to be tested and adjusted throughout the response, so they can be continuously co-constructed by frontline responders and operational leaders, as the complex and dynamic crisis situation evolves.

Some people take orders all day. Others give them. And most people are somewhere in the middle. While relations of “who orders whom” are generally established through formalized hierarchies of authority, informal relations such as business partnerships and even friendships are also frequently hierarchical in some way: some business partners have more control over important resources, some friends have more clout. Indeed, status and reputation structure almost all areas of social life. To understand social structure, we must attend to both horizontal relations in which individuals are connected through frequently mutual feelings of belonging, as well as vertical relations of power, authority, deference, and status that are asymmetric. Ultimately, how community and hierarchy combine is one of the most vexing concerns in the social sciences. Building on the previous chapter’s focus on groups and cohesion, this chapter focuses on aspects of social structures that are more asymmetric, centralized, or hierarchical.

Has decentralization contributed to democratic accountability, civic engagement, transparency, and efforts to combat corruption in the contemporary Arab region? This chapter presents key findings from a two-year study assessing decentralization policies and initiatives in five countries – Jordan, Lebanon, Morocco, Tunisia, and Yemen. The chapter discusses several findings of our fieldwork. One is the legacy of colonial experiences which made deconcentration rather than decentralization prevail. Another is the simultaneous promotion and subversion of decentralization, which was not only practiced by governments across the region, but was often subsidized by international assistance. Still another finding discusses how effectiveness of local governments in the region is constrained by opaque regulatory environments and limited human and financial resources at their disposal. Finally, our study also points to instances of success and innovation, against many odds, where capable leadership, engaged civil society, and other factors have paved the way toward palpable improvements in service delivery and urban management. Accordingly, we find that, despite many constraints, decentralization policies in the Arab region may occasionally present significant policy windows that could form opportunities for social, political, and economic changes, if mobilized adequately.

Chapter 5 investigates the fifteenth-century ballad A Gest of  Robyn Hode as protest literature set against the encroachment of government centralization on the political autonomy of the North of England. Robin Hood’s theft and murder of government officials ironically informs the outlaw’s own expressed love for the king, calling to mind the relationships between the crown and the northern magnates, such as the Percy earls of Northumberland, in the later Middle Ages. In one striking scene from the Gest, King Edward and Robin Hood ride out of the forest together, dressed in Robin’s livery of Lincoln green. This juxtaposition of the king of England with the king of outlaws implies the complexities with which the poem contemplates law and sovereignty, complexities attendant to the remarkable development of sovereign theory from the early-thirteenth century in western Europe. Foregrounding the exceptional powers of the sovereign that would inform the political theory resonate in the later work of Bodin and Hobbes, the Gest laments the dwindling regional autonomy of the North, with its once-great barons, and the increasing pull of law and authority to London and Westminster.