Within global health and development, dissatisfaction with nongovernmental organisations\' effectiveness (NGOs) is an increasingly pervasive aspect of programming. Today, the international community no longer accepts that NGOs are doing what they claim. This change in expectations has emphasised the importance of measuring organisational effectiveness for improved health and development impact. Using New Institutionalism as a theoretical framework, we investigated how institutional norms and expectations influence the adoption of structures and processes by NGOs, and Early Childhood Development (ECD) programming effectiveness in Rwanda - since little research connects these concepts. We employed qualitative methods: 45 in-depth interviews and 6 focus group discussions. Findings revealed a misalignment of \'organizational effectiveness\' across scales, from global to local. Findings stress that, effectiveness, though an expectation of the institutional environment, may not be a valid construct for NGOs, generating implications for ECD programming. Findings also indicate measurement of global health interventions generally and the notion of effectiveness specifically can yield adverse implications for ECD programming. These findings are relevant for researchers and practitioners trying to better understand organisational effectiveness for ECD programmes because they suggest that effectiveness is socially constructed and measured differently across the different scales.

Although researchers have examined organizational sustainability practices, a specific interpretation of local government green development practices remains for supplemental analysis. This study conducted an empirical survey of 53 local officials from departments related to green development to understand the key processes and practices of green development behavior of local governments in China. The key findings indicate that the main stakeholders involved in the green development practices of Chinese local governments consist of enterprises and residents. In part, local government green development practices emphasize the greening of enterprises, especially in the step of process environmental regulation. The new institutionalism theory and the organizational process research provide dependable insights into green development behaviors. Our findings further shed light on the process of cross-sectoral cooperation across local government departments in green development, contributing to local multi-sectoral interactions for regional green development.

By relating conversation analysis (CA), in particular CA research on institutional interaction to such research traditions as sociological institutionalism, new materialism, and ritual theory, the article illustrates how CA scholarship can contribute to macrosociological theorizing. This argument is illustrated by how national parliaments are organized as institutions. The main point made in the article is that occasions of what CA calls institutional interaction should be considered as rituals. Although those occasions are scripted ceremonial performances wherein social pressure, material conditions, or avoidance of punishment make actors conform, they still play a role in constituting social order by making participants honor the rules and principles codified in an organization\'s frontstage events. The article also underlines that organizational arrangements do not determine what actors can say or do, but they impose limits and conditions on people\'s conduct. Finally, the paper suggests that it is through such arrangements of institutional interaction that social structure is created, maintained, and naturalized.

The Sino-U.S. relations tumbled during the Trump Administration. The talk of decoupling permeated the decision-making circle in Washington D.C. Many factors have contributed to the free fall. The roles Congress has played are undoubtedly one of them. Based on the new institutionalist approach, this study provides three analyses of recent China-related legislative activities. First, the historical analysis of legislative data illustrates a surge in congressional activism on China-related legislative activities. Second, the content analysis reveals some of the triggers in the deterioration of bilateral relations in recent years. Third, the political analysis of the critical congressional players and the structures and procedures Congress created provides some insight into the domestic and political logic of the congressional crusade against China. Finally, the paper ends with assessing the impact of the surge in Congressional activism on the new Biden Administration.

Bourdieusian Field Theory (BFT) provided decisive inspiration for the early conceptual formulation of New Institutionalism (NI). This paper attempts to reinvigorate the stalled intellectual dialogue between NI and BFT by comparing NI\'s concept of isomorphism with BFT\'s notion of homology. I argue that Bourdieu\'s understanding of domination-oriented social action, transposable habitus, and a non-linear causality, embodied in his neglected concept of homology, provides an alternative theorization of field-level convergence to New Institutionalism\'s central idea of institutional isomorphism. To showcase how BFT can be useful for organizational research, I postulate a habitus-informed and field-conditioned theory of transference to enrich NI\'s spin-off thesis of \'diffusion\'. I propose that while NI can benefit from BFT\'s potential of bringing social structure back into organizational research, BFT can enrich its social analysis by borrowing from NI\'s elaboration of the symbolic system of organizations.

Diseases are rapidly urbanizing. Ageing infrastructures, high levels of inequality, poor urban governance, rapidly growing economies and highly dense and mobile populations all create environments rife for water-borne diseases. This article analyzes the role of institutions as crosscutting entities among a myriad of factors that breed water-borne diseases in the city of Ahmedabad, India. It applies \'path dependency\' and a \'rational choice\' perspective to understand the factors facilitating the breeding of diseases. This study is based on household surveys of approximately 327 households in two case study wards and intermittent interviews with key informants over a period of 2 years. Principle component analysis is applied to reduce the data and convert a set of observations, which potentially correlate with each other, into components. Institutional analyses behind these components reveal the role of social actors in exploiting the deeply rooted inefficiencies affecting urban health. This has led to a vicious cycle; breaking this cycle requires understanding the political dynamics that underlie the exposure and prevalence of diseases to improve urban health.

BACKGROUND: Following the tenets of world polity and innovation diffusion theories, I focus on the coercive and mimetic forces that influence the diffusion of mental health policy across nations. International organizations\' mandates influence government behavior. Dependency on external resources, namely foreign aid, also affects governments\' formulation of national policy. And finally, mounting adoption in a region alters the risk, benefits, and information associated with a given policy.
METHODS: I use post-war, discrete time data spanning 1950 to 2011 and describing 193 nations\' mental health systems to test these diffusion mechanisms.
RESULTS: I find that the adoption of mental health policy is highly clustered temporally and spatially. RESULTS provide support that membership in the World Health Organization (WHO), interdependence with neighbors and peers in regional blocs, national income status, and migrant sub-population are responsible for isomorphism. Aid, however, is an insufficient determinant of mental health policy adoption.
CONCLUSIONS: This study examines the extent to which mental, neurological, and substance use disorder are addressed in national and international contexts through the lens of policy diffusion theory. It also adds to policy dialogues about non-communicable diseases as nascent items on the global health agenda.