The resilience of democratic institutions in Britain, Australia and the United States under conditions of total war

To what extent are democratic institutions resilient when nation states mobilise for war? Normative and empirical political theorists have long argued that wars strengthen the executive and threaten constitutional politics. In modern democracies, national assemblies are supposed to hold the executive to account by demanding explanations for events and policies; and by scrutinising, reviewing and, if necessary, revising legislative proposals intended to be binding on the host society or policies that have been implemented already. This article examines the extent to which the British and Australian parliaments and the United States Congress held their wartime executives to account during World War II. The research finds that under conditions approaching those of total war, these democratic institutions not only continued to exist, but also proved to be resilient in representing public concerns and holding their executives to account, however imperfectly and notwithstanding delegating huge powers. In consequence, executives—more so British and Australian ministers than President Roosevelt—were required to be placatory as institutional and political tensions within national assemblies and between assemblies and executives continued, and assemblies often asserted themselves. In short, even under the most onerous wartime conditions, democratic politics mattered and democratic institutions were resilient.

The causal relationship between private and public investment in Zimbabwe

Aims: The study examines the relationship between private and public investment in Zimbabwe utilizing yearly time series data for the period 1967 to 2004. Study Design: Time Series Study. Place and Duration of Study: Zimbabwe, May 2011 to July 2011. Methodology: Emphasis is placed on the direction of causality and the long run and short run effect of the two types of investment on each other. The paper constructs empirical models for both private and public investment, based on the flexible accelerator theory. Private investment is found to be cointegrated with public investment. A cointergration and VEC models are employed to assess the long and short run relationship existing between public and private investment. Conclusion: The relationship between private and public investment is found to be insignificant and the direction of causality found to be unidirectional. The results support the notion that private investment precedes public investment.

Regional collaborations and indigenous innovation capabilities in China: A multivariate method for the analysis of regional innovation systems

In this study we analyse the emerging patterns of regional collaboration for innovation projects in China, using official government statistics of 30 Chinese regions. We propose the use of Ordinal Multidimensional Scaling and Cluster analysis as a robust method to study regional innovation systems. Our results show that regional collaborations amongst organisations can be categorised by means of eight dimensions: public versus private organisational mindset; public versus private resources; innovation capacity versus available infrastructures; innovation input (allocated resources) versus innovation output; knowledge production versus knowledge dissemination; and collaborative capacity versus collaboration output. Collaborations which are aimed to generate innovation fell into 4 categories, those related to highly specialised public research institutions, public universities, private firms and governmental intervention. By comparing the representative cases of regions in terms of these four innovation actors, we propose policy measures for improving regional innovation collaboration within China.

How Formal and Informal Institutions of Middle Eastern Countries Influence Managerial Discretion: An Empirical Investigation

Managerial discretion is the focal theme bridging the clash between two schools of thoughts; whether executives have greater influence on their firms’ outcomes or other factors restrain their actions (Hambrick & Finkelstein, 1987). It is argued that constraints come from inertial, normative and environmental forces (e.g. DiMaggio & Powell, 1983). Of these restraints is the institutional environment in which a firm is headquartered. Our paper falls within this research stream and provides an extension for Crossland and Hambrick (2007, 2011) work. We investigate the national level of discretion in new cross-cultural contexts, provide deeper understanding of its concept, and shed the light on undiscovered discretion’s antecedents and consequences. We adopt a quantitative approach in which questionnaires represent our data collection instrument. We anticipate that in high discretion countries firms tend to follow what Miles & Snow (1978) labeled ‘Prospector’ strategy as opposed to low discretion countries in which firms incline to implement a ‘Defender’ strategy.

Private school quality in Italy

Private school enrolment may lead to worse subsequent performance in further education or in the labour market. If students differ in their ability not only to pay but to take advantage of educational opportunities (“talent” for short), private schools attract a worse pool of students when publicly funded schools are better suited to foster progress by more talented students. In the data we analyze, the impact of observable talent proxies on educational and labour market outcomes is indeed more positive for students who (endogenously) choose to attend public schools than for those who choose to pay for private education.

Public Interests, Private Disputes: Investment Arbitration and the Public Good

This paper seeks to investigate the bases for resistance to arbitration in general -and investor arbitration in particular- focusing on the way in which arbitral tribunals deal with notions of public interest and the public good. The paper hypothesises that while courts have within their terms of reference the capacity to consider notions of public interest, arbitral tribunals do not. It is this core difference in the scope of decision making between the two bodies that could render privately organised dispute resolution unsuitable for disputes that have public aspects, like investor-state disputes. The paper discusses the meaning of public interest and the public good as found in the literature. It then proceeds to consider how tribunals in the investment field have dealt with these concepts. This leads to a conclusion urging not abandonment of arbitration as a component of dispute resolution, but caution. It is argued that unchecked growth in private dispute resolution can threaten perceptions of legitimacy and democratic accountability. The paper adopts a socio-legal methodology in considering the effect of legal mechanisms on social and political phenomena. It is also informed by a law and economics methodology in addressing impacts of dispute resolution mechanisms on economic efficiency. The contribution of the paper rests on theorising motivations for resistance to private dispute resolution, a topical issue in light of the TTIP debate.