Issue 2023 no5 contents:

This paper responds to calls for more research into public entrepreneurship, for delivering public value as opposed to the narrower view of public goods, and for re-organising states for alternative post-capitalist governance by revisiting a long-term but unresolved academic debate: the role of the state (government). It presents conceptually relevant arguments from seminal and contemporary academic debates on the role of the state and state establishments. It demonstrates that an understanding of the role of the state is a starting point in the reorganisation of states and proposes a novel additional role that most states have not yet considered, as well as identifying the state establishments that are available to assist states in fulfilling the extended role. Propositions were developed to sustain the extended role and to indicate that  the approach to re-imagining the role of the state adds value for academic, practice, and policymaker observers. The report concludes by providing avenues for further research opportunities.

In the context of Vietnam, with fifty-four ethnic minority groups and sixty-three provinces/municipalities, this study aims to fill a gap in the literature by looking at ethnic representation and its influence on citizen participation at the local level based on Representative Bureaucracy and Inclusion theory. We use the combination of three datasets the Public Administration Performance Index (PAPI), the Committee for Ethnic Minorities Affair, and the General Statistics Office of 63 provinces in Vietnam from 2012 to 2017. We run a panel data analysis random-effects model (REM) with White-Huber standard errors to correct heteroskedasticity in current years to estimate the effects. Findings support the research hypothesis that ethnic minority groups in Vietnam are negatively associated with citizen participation in the local government, particularly in civic knowledge. Additionally, the level of citizen participation is also negatively related to the urbanization, unemployment, and poverty rates of each province. However, it is positively associated with the education level of each province's population. With these findings, this study also proposes some policy implications to ensure the development rights of ethnic minorities in Vietnam.

Civil society plays an important role in the management of national parks, but there needs to be more literature on the interactions of civil society with government. The participatory management strategy has been criticized for articulating the ideals of failed collaboration in the management of national parks. The implementation of a collaborative management strategy has provided significant opportunities and roles for civil society in the management of the national park, taking into account the social, economic, and cultural conditions and expectations of the local community. The aim of this study is to empirically examine the participation of civil society and challenges in the management of Tesso Nilo National Park in Riau Province. Using qualitative and quantitative approaches through snowball interviews and social network modeling, and conducting a case study analysis, our findings show that the community is still given a secondary role. The involvement of civil society in the collaborative management of Tesso Nilo National Park still needs to be strengthened. However, the institutional formation and the nature of their involvement in supporting and implementing activities still needs to be improved. In some cases, community empowerment has already begun. The main challenges are related to regulations or policies, community capacity, resources and governance relationships, therefore the objectives of collaborative national park management activities have not been achieved.

This study aims to introduce the concept of social capitalbased on public policy environment into the study of policy implementation  modalities. Using  recent empirical data, it describes the challenge of institutionalizing a new set of social capital and its relationship within  the framework of governance quality to address  the question of how social capitalis implemented . To answer  this question, the authors  used qualitative methods and case studies to discuss crucial aspects of regulating the institutionalization of social capital development and the interaction of social capital within the governance framework that government will adopt. The group of independent home-based workers at the village level was selected  based on national policy and program support, which provides a comprehensive empirical foundation for observing it inside  the village  governance framework.The findings show that social capital can improve policy implementation through 2 things:strengthening social capital through affirmative policy support and programs for special groups/forums. Development of a variety of decision-making innovations, such as women's network leadership meetings, village discussions, women's schools and an important role in formal planning at the village level. Both are correlated to the institutionalization of a new value system, relations between institutions, and the formation of new public values that are more genuine, and reinforce the diversity of previous implementation values. Social capital is the most elementary part for the successful implementation of public policies initiated by the state. The impact is that policy implementation has the ability to reduce the socio-economic costs of development, and functions to synergize the achievement of decent work and self-reliance for groups of women homeworkers.

The city’s strategy should take into account not only the priorities of increasing investment competitiveness and the improvement of citizens’ well-being, but also the issues of sustainable development. Sustainable development of cities has been the subject of active discussion in recent years. This article proposes four modernized directions for sustainable urban development, which correspond not only to the UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) (particularly SDG 11), but also to the original directives of local authorities. These directions include affordable housing, accessible and sustainable transportation systems, sustainable urbanization, and the environmental impact of cities. We developed a methodology for estimating synergies and trade-offs between and within these directions using correlation network analysis with the causality of the indicators and the lags of years. We tested this methodology by estimating the synergies and trade-offs in the sustainable development of the thirteen largest cities between 2015 and 2019. The results of the correlation network analysis are offered as a weighted directed network correlation graph. Our findings could be implemented by local authorities in the form of  a Gantt chart for the optimal order of sustainable urban developmentthat could be based on the network correlation graph.