Concessionary nature of public-private partnerships in Russia and Kazakhstan: a critical review

This article provides a critical overview of Public-Private Partnerships (PPPs) in Russia and Kazakhstan and examines the rationale underpinning such partnerships. The analysis discusses the reasons why governments in Russia and Kazakhstan focus principally on concessions as a form of PPP and goes on to provide a critical assessment of the key approaches and situational factors relating to concessions in these two countries. The article finds that external globalization impulses pressed Russia and Kazakhstan to align their policies and institutions with western orthodoxy and perceived international best practice. An ever-increasing emphasis on use of PPPs has been a key feature of this alignment. However, the governments of Russia and Kazakhstan have increasingly resorted to concessions as progress with the development and implementation of Western style PPP models has stalled. This article concludes that the governments of Russia and Kazakhstan have demonstrated an overly optimistic approach to PPP and as a result may have substantially understated their overall concessional risks and costs. Features of Russian and Kazakhstani PPP arrangements such as ambiguity in output specification and extensive reliance on government subsidies, combined with lack of expertise of private partners, may significantly decrease concession benefits.

Cultural policy, literature and readership in revolutionary Cuba: the view from the 21st century

This article presents a fresh perspective on cultural policy in revolutionary Cuba, focusing specifically on the centrality of dialogue with the general readership to the production, reception and regulation of literature. It first summarises the positions regarding revolutionary literature that have been asserted and essayed at various points along the sometimes chaotic trajectory of revolution in Cuba. It then examines reading-related policies and recent attempts within Cuba to re-orient reading practices in the aftermath of the Período Especial [Special Period], and ends by presenting current Cuban debates on the need to mitigate dialogic breakdown between literary text and readership.

Basic concepts for convection parameterization in weather forecast and climate models: COST Action ES0905 final report

The research network “Basic Concepts for Convection Parameterization in Weather Forecast and Climate Models” was organized with European funding (COST Action ES0905) for the period of 2010–2014. Its extensive brainstorming suggests how the subgrid-scale parameterization problem in atmospheric modeling, especially for convection, can be examined and developed from the point of view of a robust theoretical basis. Our main cautions are current emphasis on massive observational data analyses and process studies. The closure and the entrainment–detrainment problems are identified as the two highest priorities for convection parameterization under the mass–flux formulation. The need for a drastic change of the current European research culture as concerns policies and funding in order not to further deplete the visions of the European researchers focusing on those basic issues is emphasized.

Real estate and social inequality in Latin America: approaches in Argentina, Brazil, Chile and Colombia

Latin America is known as the most unequal region in the world, where extreme displays of wealth and exposure to scarcity lay bare in the urban landscape. Inequality is not just a social issue; it has considerable impact on economic development. This is because social inequality generates instability and conflict, which can create unsettling conditions for investment. At the macro level, social inequality can also present barriers to economic development, as most government policies and resources tend to be directed in solving social conflict rather than to promote and generate growth. This is one of the reasons usually cited in explaining the development gap between Latin America and other emerging economies, take East Asia for example - they have similar policies to those applied recently in Latin America, but are achieving better growth. The other reason cited is institutional; this includes governance as well as property rights and enforcement of contracts. The latter is the focus of this chapter.

International transmission mechanisms and contagion in housing markets

This paper explores international transmission mechanism and its role in contagion effect in the housing markets across six major Asian cities. The analysis is based on the identification of house price diffusion effects through a global vector autoregressive (GVAR) model estimated using quarterly data for six major Asian cities (Hong Kong, Tokyo, Seoul, Singapore, Taipei and Bangkok) from 1991Q1 to 2011Q2. The empirical results indicate that the open economies heavily relying on international trade such as Singapore, Japan (Tokyo), Taiwan (Taipei) and Thailand (Bangkok) show positive correlations between the economy's openness and house prices, which is consistent with the Balassa–Samuelson hypothesis. Interestingly, some region-specific conditions also appear to play important roles as determinants of house price movements, which may be driven by restrictive housing policies and demand–supply imbalances such as Singapore and Bangkok. These results are reasonably robust across several model specifications. The findings bear significant implications for formulation of investment strategy and public policies.

Washington's growth and opportunity act or Beijing's 'Overarching Brilliance': will African governments choose neither?

Growing criticism of Chinese engagement in Africa centres on the risk to African development posed by China's aggressive export policies and the threat to the Washington Consensus and African governance posed by China's 'non-interference' approach to engagement. This article challenges both these assumptions. The growth of Chinese trade has a wide range of impacts, depending on the sector in question, and the current terms of trade Washington extends to Africa under the auspices of the AGOA do not result in uniformly beneficial effects. With regard to African governance, it is argued that the 'Washington Consensus' has been based on competing and often muddled perceptions of US national interest. This fact tempers the regret felt at Washington's loss of influence over the good governance agenda. Evidence is provided to show that China can work within properly regulated countries and industries, if the African governments in question can provide fair, efficient and transparent environments in which to operate.

Transformation through translation: translation policies at Amnesty International

International non-governmental organisations (NGOs) are powerful political players who aim to influence global society. In order to be effective on a global scale, they must communicate their goals and achievements in different languages. Translation and translation policy play an essential role here. Despite NGOs’ important position in politics and society, not much is known about how these organisations, who often have limited funds available, organise their translation work. This study aims to contribute to Translation Studies, and more specifically to investigating institutional translation, by exploring translation policies at Amnesty International, one of the most successful and powerful human rights NGOs around the world. Translation policy is understood as comprising three components: translation management, translation practices, and translation beliefs, based on Spolsky’s study of language policy (2004). The thesis investigates how translation is organised and what kind of policies different Amnesty offices have in place, and how this is reflected in their translation products. The thesis thus also pursues how translation and translation policy impact on the organisation’s message and voice as it is spread around the world. An ethnographic approach is used for the analysis of various data sets that were collected during fieldwork. These include policy documents, guidelines on writing and translation, recorded interviews, e-mail correspondence, and fieldnotes. The thesis at first explores Amnesty’s global translation policy, and then presents the results of a comparative analysis of local translation policies at two concrete institutions: Amnesty International Language Resource Centre in Paris (AILRC-FR) and Amnesty International Vlaanderen (AIVL). A corpus of English source texts and Dutch (AIVL) and French (AILRC-FR) target texts are analysed. The findings of the analysis of translation policies and of the translation products are then combined to illustrate how translation impacts on Amnesty’s message and voice. The research results show that there are large differences in how translation is organised depending on the local office and the language(s), and that this also influences the way in which Amnesty’s message and voice are represented. For Dutch and French specifically, translation policies and translation products differ considerably. The thesis describes how these differences are often the result of different beliefs and assumptions relating to translation, and that staff members within Amnesty are not aware of the different conceptions of translation that exist within Amnesty International as a formal institution. Organising opportunities where translation can be discussed (meetings, workshops, online platforms) can help in reducing such differences. The thesis concludes by suggesting that an increased awareness of these issues will enable Amnesty to make more effective use of translation in its fight against human rights violations.

The Cold War and its aftermath in the Americas: the search for a synthetic interpretation of U.S. policy

More than two decades have passed since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the transfer of the Cold War file from a daily preoccupation of policy makers to a more detached assessment by historians. Scholars of U.S.-Latin American relations are beginning to take advantage both of the distance in time and of newly opened archives to reflect on the four decades that, from the 1940s to the 1980s, divided the Americas, as they did much of the world. Others are seeking to understand U.S. policy and inter-American relations in the post-Cold War era, a period that not only lacks a clear definition but also still has no name. Still others have turned their gaze forward to offer policies in regard to the region for the new Obama administration. Numerous books and review essays have addressed these three subjects—the Cold War, the post-Cold War era, and current and future issues on the inter-American agenda. Few of these studies attempt, however, to connect the three subjects or to offer new and comprehensive theories to explain the course of U.S. policies from the beginning of the twentieth century until the present. Indeed, some works and policy makers continue to use the mind-sets of the Cold War as though that conflict were still being fought. With the benefit of newly opened archives, some scholars have nevertheless drawn insights from the depths of the Cold War that improve our understanding of U.S. policies and inter-American relations, but they do not address the question as to whether the United States has escaped the longer cycle of intervention followed by neglect that has characterized its relations with Latin America. Another question is whether U.S. policies differ markedly before, during, and after the Cold War. In what follows, we ask whether the books reviewed here provide any insights in this regard and whether they offer a compass for the future of inter-American relations. We also offer our own thoughts as to how their various perspectives could be synthesized to address these questions more comprehensively.

A multi level analysis on pollination-related policies

The paper explores pollination from a multi level policy perspective and analyses the institutional fit and inter play of multi-faceted pollination-related policies. First, it asks what the major policies are that frame pollination at the EU level. Second, it explores the relationship between the EU policies and localised ways of understanding pollination. Addressed third is how the concept of ecosystem services can aid in under- standing the various ways of framing and governing the situation. The results show that the policy systems affecting pollination are abundant and that these systems create different kinds of pressure on stakeholders, at several levels of society. The local-level concerns are more about the loss of pollination services than about loss of pollinators. This points to the problem of fit between local activity driven by economic reasoning and biodiversity-driven EU policies. Here we see the concept of ecosystem services having some potential, since its operationalisation can combine economic and environmental considerations. Further- more, the analysis shows how, instead of formal institutions, it seems that social norms, habits, and motivation are the key to understanding and developing effective and attractive governance measures.

The role of big data in governance: a regulatory and legal perspective of analytics in global financial services

This paper discusses how global financial institutions are using big data analytics within their compliance operations. A lot of previous research has focused on the strategic implications of big data, but not much research has considered how such tools are entwined with regulatory breaches and investigations in financial services. Our work covers two in-depth qualitative case studies, each addressing a distinct type of analytics. The first case focuses on analytics which manage everyday compliance breaches and so are expected by managers. The second case focuses on analytics which facilitate investigation and litigation where serious unexpected breaches may have occurred. In doing so, the study focuses on the micro/data to understand how these tools are influencing operational risks and practices. The paper draws from two bodies of literature, the social studies of information systems and finance to guide our analysis and practitioner recommendations. The cases illustrate how technologies are implicated in multijurisdictional challenges and regulatory conflicts at each end of the operational risk spectrum. We find that compliance analytics are both shaping and reporting regulatory matters yet often firms may have difficulties in recruiting individuals with relevant but diverse skill sets. The cases also underscore the increasing need for financial organizations to adopt robust information governance policies and processes to ease future remediation efforts.

Taxes, corruption, and entry

Tax policies and corruption are important institutional considerations which can shape entrepreneurship. We investigate how tax rates, and the interaction between corruption and tax rates, influence variations in entry across a panel of 72 countries in the period 2005–2011. We use a series of panel estimations as well as several robustness checks to test these effects, using relevant controls for economic development, the size of the state, and other regulatory and tax policy measures. We find that higher tax rates consistently discourage entry. Further, we find that although the direct influence of corruption on entry is also consistently negative, the interaction influence of corruption and tax rate is positive. This indicates that corruption can offset the negative influence of high taxes on entry. We discuss the implications of our findings for policymakers and future research.

Detection and attribution of human influence on regional precipitation

Understanding how human influence on climate is affecting precipitation around the world is immensely important for defining mitigation policies, and for adaptation planning. Yet despite increasing evidence for the influence of climate change on global patterns of precipitation, and expectations that significant changes in regional precipitation should have already occurred as a result of human influence on climate, compelling evidence of anthropogenic fingerprints on regional precipitation is obscured by observational and modelling uncertainties and is likely to remain so using current methods for years to come. This is in spite of substantial ongoing improvements in models, new reanalyses and a satellite record that spans over thirty years. If we are to quantify how human-induced climate change is affecting the regional water cycle, we need to consider novel ways of identifying the effects of natural and anthropogenic influences on precipitation that take full advantage of our physical expectations.

Climate justice and the international regime: before, during and after Paris

With a focus on key themes and debates, this article aims to illustrate and assess how the interaction between justice and politics has shaped the international regime and defined the nature of the international agreement that was signed in COP21 Paris. The work demonstrates that despite the rise of neo-conservatism and self-interested power politics, questions of global distributive justice remain a central aspect of the international politics of climate change. However, while it is relatively easy to demonstrate that international climate politics is not beyond the reach of moral contestations, the assessment of exactly how much impact justice has on climate policies and the broader normative structures of the climate governance regime remains a very difficult task. As the world digests the Paris Agreement, it is vital that the current state of justice issues within the international climate change regime is comprehensively understood by scholars of climate justice and by academics and practitioners, not least because how these intractable issues of justice are dealt with (or not) will be a crucial factor in determining the effectiveness of the emerging climate regime.

Dietary Quality Index and Associated Factors among Adolescents of the State of Sao Paulo, Brazil

Objective To assess dietary quality and associated factors in adolescents. Study design We conducted a population-based cross-sectional study in a sample of 1584 adolescents living in areas of the state of Sao Paulo, Brazil. Dietary intake was measured with the 24-hour recall method, and dietary quality was assessed by means of the Health Eating Index (HEI), adapted to fit to the local requirements. Linear regression analyses were performed to assess the association between the HEI and demographic, socioeconomic, and lifestyle variables. Results A total of 97.1% of the adolescents studied had an inadequate diet or a diet that needed improvement. The mean overall HEI score was 59.7. Lower mean HEI scores were found for fruits, dairy products, and vegetables. Male adolescents who were physically active and lived in a house or apartment had higher HEI scores. The multiple regression analyses showed that the quality of the diet improved as age decreased. Adolescents who lived in houses or apartments had higher HEI scores than adolescents living in shacks or slums, regardless of age and energy intake. Conclusions Dietary quality is associated with income and age. A better understanding of the factors associated can provide input to the formulation of policies and development of nutritional actions. (J Pediatr 2010; 156:456-60).

The bubbles or the boiling pot? An ecosystemic approach to culture, environment and quality of life

For the diagnosis and prognosis of the problems of quality of life, a multidisciplinary ecosystemic approach encompasses four dimensions of being-in-the-world, as donors and recipients: intimate, interactive, social and biophysical. Social, cultural and environmental vulnerabilities are understood and dealt with, in different circumstances of space and time, as the conjugated effect of all dimensions of being-in-the-world, as they induce the events (deficits and assets), cope with consequences (desired or undesired) and contribute for change. Instead of fragmented and reduced representations of reality, diagnosis and prognosis of cultural, educational, environmental and health problems considers the connections (assets) and ruptures (deficits) between the different dimensions, providing a planning model to develop and evaluate research, teaching programmes, public policies and field projects. The methodology is participatory, experiential and reflexive; heuristic-hermeneutic processes unveil cultural and epistemic paradigms that orient subject-object relationships; giving people the opportunity to reflect on their own realities, engage in new experiences and find new ways to live better in a better world. The proposal is a creative model for thought and practice, providing many opportunities for discussion, debate and development of holistic projects integrating different scientific domains (social sciences, psychology, education, philosophy, etc.).