albertmartinez/OSDG huggingface dataset:
This article argues that there is a need to modernise the law governing accountability of the UK security and intelligence agencies following changes in their work in the last decade. Since 9/11 the agencies have come increasingly into the spotlight, especially because of the adoption of controversial counter-terrorism policies by the government (in particular forms of executive detention) and by its international partners, notably the US. The article discusses the options for reform in three specific areas: the use in legal proceedings of evidence obtained by interception of communications, with regard to the increased importance and scle of collaboration with overseas agencies, and to safeguard the political independence of the agencies in the light of their substantially higher public profile. In each it is argued that protection of human rights and the need for public accountability requires a new balance to be struck with the imperatives of national security.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg16)
Given the cross regional diversity in financing and health care provision, information on regional health system performance is highly desirable and can permit benchmarking of performance across regions. The decision of the federal authorities to identify and collect a set of 300 commonly defined indicators (72 relate to heath) is a welcome development. It can only be stressed that these data would be even more useful if they were defined and collected in line with international standards, which would permit international as well as inter-regional benchmarking.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg3)
Clientelism and Economic Policy is an application of public choice to explain the contemporary political economy of Greece, as well as a broader theoretical contribution to the study of clientelism as a political and economic phenomenon.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg16)
Being located in the International Trade Zone, it is unclear how much profit is actually retained in the Seychelles economy, especially given intra-firm transfers by its owner, MW Brands, using the Seychelles offshore finance centre itself (fis.com 2010). Most workers are from the Philippines. Somali pirate attacks within Seychelles’ maritime territory has impacted the local fishing industry since 2008. Fishing vessels are restricted to the inner islands to limit the risk of attack, but this has limited the size of their catch and increased the price of fish by 20 per cent.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg12)
Only about 100 000 ha of the planned 375 000 ha has been irrigated so far. Approximately 2 000 ha is added each year. The basin is governed by two major agreements, both signed in Nouakchott, Mauritania on 11 March 1972: the Convention Concerning the Status of the Senegal River (Convention Relative au Statut du Fleuve Senegal) (“Senegal River Convention”), and the Convention Establishing the Organization for the Development of the Senegal River (Convention Portant Creation de I 'Organisation pour la Mise en Valeur du Fleuve Senegal) (“OMVS Convention”).
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg6)
This paper empirically studies recent treaty signings between tax havens and OECD countries as the outcome of a bargaining process over treaty form. Havens can decide not to sign an agreement, sign a tax information exchange agreement or a double taxation convention. We use a highly stylized bargaining model to develop testable hypotheses with regards to the type of agreement signed. We show that the main determinants of treaty signing is a haven's bargaining power and good governance. We show that it is easier to renegotiate an already existent treaty to include information exchange than to pressure countries with no existent agreement.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg16)
Secondary drivers include urban expansion and construction of infrastructure for roads, telecommunications, ports, tourism, energy supply lines, and pipes and ducts (Challenger and Dirzo, 2008, FAO, 2010, SEMARNAT, 2011). Natural disasters, soil extraction and open cast mining exert further pressures. Key pressures on marine ecosystems include overexploitation of fisheries, pollution including nitrogen deposition and eutrophication from agricultural run-off and domestic and industrial sewage waters, habitat modification such as wetland loss, and climate change.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg15)
Demands for more social spending have been building up since the early 1990s and social protection is financed mostly through social security contributions (as opposed to general taxation). As a result, non-wage labour costs have risen substantially. Social security contribution rates for health and pensions have increased by 15 percentage points, from 14% to 29%, since the early 1990s (Table 1.1).
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg1)
This paper starts by exploring the development of Science, Technology and Society (STS) in the UK in the late 1960s, emphasising its interdiciplinary roots, and comparing and contrasting it with the concerns of Sociology. It then turns to more recent developments in STS, outlining the importance of material semiotics to important traditions within the discipline including those influenced by actor network theory, feminism, and postcolonialism. It notes, in consistency with the Foucauldian approach, that material semiotics implies that knowledge traditions are performative, helping to create the realities that they describe. The paper concludes by exploring the implications of this performatibity for the politics of research methods and for the future character of social science research.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg16)
To the extent that more women are involved in politics, women’s rights, priorities, needs and interests are less likely to be ignored or silenced. Historically, women’s involvement has been minimized even though they account for at least half of the populations in most countries. For this very reason, their level of involvement and engagement in public and political life is key. More women's organizations sprung up in response to the greater participation of women in public life, and despite the political polarization that emerged, these groups managed to stay united to press for the preservation and advancement of women's rights.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg5)
Urgent action must be taken to reduce the loss of natural habitats and biodiversity, which are part of our common heritage." Establishment and management of these national parks are in accordance with IUCN Category II (table 11.1). This publication provides an overview of information on habitats and species from Annex I and II of the Habitats Directive that are located in Bosnia and Herzegovina. The data overview was based on field research and, to a greater extent, on existing reference data.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg15)
Even the most dynamic OECD countries (Chile, Israel, Korea and Hirkey), which grew by more than 2.5% in 2013, are expanding more slowly than before the crisis. In 2013, some major emerging economies showed the first signs of an economic slowdown and revealed their sensitivity to fluctuations in US financial markets. The rise of China, driven by its economic dynamism and its long-term commitment to STI, should continue.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg9)
Theodor Adorno's concept of ‘natural history’ [Naturgeschichte] was central for a number of Adorno's theoretical projects, but remains elusive. In this essay, analyse different dimensions of the concept of natural history, distinguishing amongst (a) a reflection on the normative and methodological bases of philosophical anthropology and critical social science, (b) a conception of critical memory oriented toward the preservation of the memory of historical suffering, and (c) the notion of ‘mindfulness of nature in the subject’ provocatively asserted in Max Horkheimer and Adorno's Dialectic of Enlightenment. These strands are united by the notion of transience and goal of developing a critical theory sensitive to the transient in history. The essay concludes by suggesting some implications of an expanded concept of natural history for issues in the discourse theory of Jurgen Habermas.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg16)
AbstractIn this essay, we define the meaning and content of public value, show how government and business create public value, and briefly explain why their governance arrangements work the way they do. We deal first with business and then government. We conclude that government manages risks and that governmental value creation is distinctively concerned with stability. Hence, to make government work better, risk management ought to be central to the practice of public finance, public policy, and public administration. Understanding the importance of stability is potentially of even greater importance to those who research and teach public policy and administration. Indeed, we propose that the elaboration of a general risk assessment model explaining, among other things, government’s systemic inclination to stability, would take our field a long towards integration with mainstream positive social science and, therefore, holds out the prospect of considerable interdisciplinary consilience, although at th...
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg16)
The KES-R consists of 7 subscales (43 items) which refer to process and structural aspects of quality: space and material resources, personal care routines, cognitive and language stimulation, activities, staff-child and child-child interaction, planning and structuring of pedagogical practice, situation of staff and cooperation with parents. Data in this table do not reflect the situation for every inspection in every setting. Hence, there is no data on what areas are monitored through inspections at national level.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg4)
The MINEPAT (2009) forecast does not foresee that the crisis will have negative impacts on capital flows to the public sector, but exhibits a significant decrease (10%) of foreign capital going into the non-bank private sector in 2009 and also shows that portfolio flows in the banking sector went from 95 billion CFA francs in 2008 to -79 billion in 2009, reflecting a significant repatriation of funds with unfavourable effects on the national economy. The World Bank database dedicated to these flows shows that, as of 2007, more than three quarters of international remittances are destined for developing countries (table 4). In 2007, remittances accounted for an average of 2.02% of developing countries’ GDP, as opposed to 0.24% in high income countries and 0.71% for the entire world (Figure 5).
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg1)
Fighting poverty, hunger and malnutrition with neglected and underutilized species (NUS): needs, challenges and the way forward. Yield Trends Are Insufficient to Double Global Crop Production by 2050. Genetic Vulnerability and Crop Loss: The Case for Research on Underutilized and Alternative Crops. Mathematical Sciences with Multidisciplinary Applications, pp.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg2)
However, connecting these factors with overall earnings inequality and household income inequality is not straightforward, as regulatory and policy reforms may have counteracting effects on employment and wage inequality among workers. When assessing the possible causes of increased inequality, three main issues require particularly precise definition. They are: i) inequality itself, ii) globalisation, and iii) reference populations.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg10)
Overall responsibility for the health care sector rests at the national level, with the Ministry of Health and Care Services which determines national health policy, prepares legislation and allocates funds. The Ministry of Health and Care Services owns four Regional Health Authorities which are responsible for the provision of specialised somatic and mental health care. The 19 Norwegian counties are responsible for the provision of statutory dental health services while the 428 municipalities have responsibility for primary somatic and mental health care as well as nursing care.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg3)
The main objectives of the NBSAP were not reached, mainly due to limited human and financial capacities. The structure of the NBSAP has been criticized, as the multitude of goals and quite ambitious objectives, as well as the long list of planned measures, were not translated into detailed annual operational plans for implementation. The NBSAP was unclear on the most urgent priorities, while the successful implementation of all proposed measures was simply not feasible. As of 1 December 2016, the updated NBSAP was approved by the Chair of the Committee on Environmental Protection and was awaiting for approval at the level of the Government. The updated NBSAP builds on data and information dated not later than 2012-2013. It includes unclear information about the rate of implementation of the measures included in the 2003 NBSAP.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg15)
Diversity makes redundancy more likely, i.e. the system containing components that can compensate for the loss or failure of others. While well-connected systems can recover from disturbances more quickly, overly connected systems facilitate rapid spread of disturbances. Intermediate connectivity with semi-autonomous but internally well-connected subsystems may be a workable compromise. Although the variables themselves change slowly, the system response to change can be sudden and difficult to reverse.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg15)
In India improving infrastructure has many win-win benefits not just for female labour force participation but for removing overall growth bottlenecks. Regressions were also run on availability of tap water and electricity within a district. In the OLS estimation both variables are significant and positive. The magnitude of the effect is relatively small for availability of water as the increase of 1 pp in households having access to tap water increases participation by less than 0.1 pp, while the same increase in access to electricity pushes participation up by 0.3 pp. This is also the case for rural households, for which the results are in general more difficult to understand and there are fewer similarities within each of the pairs of regions.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg5)
An annual meeting takes place to ensure cooperation and coordination between regional centres under the Basel and Stockholm Conventions". One of the main drivers for doing so was the realisation in the 1970s and 1980s of the extent of the traffic in toxic wastes to Africa and other developing regions12. The Basel Convention is of relevance, as much of the waste trade involves plastics, and some of these contain relatively high levels of additive chemicals which are in Annex I or II of the Convention. These have known toxicological effects, with serious human health implications.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg14)
This definition would include, for example, a tax reform programme specifically linked to reducing reliance on border taxes, but would exclude an infrastructure project by a country that has not undertaken recent reforms, or where the investment in question is not linked to a particular trade policy. The definition could be further augmented by specific reference to the adjustment costs that might arise (e.g. labour force retraining, capital retooling) or the impact of TRA (e.g. deteriorating balance of payments), or to sources of adjustment (e.g. preference erosion). Developing countries might, however, wish to avoid excessive specificity, allowing the recipients and donors who are more familiar with project design and motivations to mark budget lines as TRA. This increase in flows classified under the TRA marker could provide a higher profile for adjustment concerns within the AfT debate, which could in turn be particularly beneficial for SVEs and LDCs, which have often struggled to give adjustment concerns their commensurate political profile within multilateral/intragovemmental organisations such as the WTO, World Bank, IMF and OECD.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg10)
The core aim of this Article is to analyse whether it was an appropriate decision from a criminal policy perspective to adopt the Environmental Crime Directive. The Article asks the basic question whether the Union should enforce Union environmental law by means of criminal sanctions. In this regard it is claimed that, according to the principle of ultima ratio, the Union legislator may only require that an act is criminalised if it is necessary to protect a fundamental European interest, and only on the condition that all other measures have proved insufficient to safeguard that interest. The Article therefore examines whether criminal law measures is suitable for the enforcement of Union environmental rules and secondly if there are other measures which are equally effective in enforcing Union environmental law as criminal sanctions.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg16)
Early general equilibrium models tend to show by contrast that environmental taxes interact with existing taxes to exacerbate rather than improve tax inefficiencies, implying that environmental regulation would lead to an overall increase in business costs, discouraging employment and investment (Bovenberg and de Mooij, 1994, Parry, 1995). However, extensions of these earlier models show that recycling environmental taxes can in fact have a beneficial effect on employment, but that this depends on the characteristics of the pre-existing tax regime (Bento, 2007). Applications of such models on a regional basis have indicated for example: that using carbon taxes to finance reductions in distortionary capital tax can lead to an overall growth effect (Takeda, 2007), that the recycling of energy taxes in Taiwan to offset income taxes would stimulate domestic consumption and investment (Bor and Huang, 2010), that that environmental taxation can bring economic benefits in Turkey when fuels are the primary source of pollutant emissions (Kumbaroglu, 2003).
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg7)
This article describes a semester-long classroom simulation of the Syrian conflict designed for an introductory international relations (IR) course. The simulation culminates with two weeks of multi-stakeholder negotiations addressing four issues: humanitarian aid, economic sanctions, ceasefire, and political transition. Students randomly play one of 15 roles involving three actor types: states, non-state actors, and international organizations. This article outlines the costs and benefits of simulation design options toward encouraging students’ understanding of IR concepts, and it proposes a course plan for tightly integrating lectures, readings, assessment, and simulation—regardless of class size or length. We highlight this integration through a discussion of two weeks’ worth of material—domestic politics and war, and non-state actors—and the incorporation of bargaining concepts and frameworks into the two weeks of simulated multi-stakeholder negotiations.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg16)
Using a wide array of official and unofficial data spanning two decades in the neighborhoods of Chicago, we explore connections between legal cynicism, the electoral regime of Mayor Richard M. Daley, and citizen calls for police assistance and police reports of drug crime. We find that the disproportionate concentration of legal cynicism about law enforcement in African American neighborhoods played a prominent and insufficiently understood role in building opposition to Mayor Daley’s political machine. This race linked legal cynicism was grounded in neighborhood concerns about effective prevention of and protection from drug crime. The more punitive than preventative and protective approach to drug law enforcement that characterized the politics of the Daley crime machine contributed to a legacy that foreshadowed the growing and ultimately explosive demands for new mechanisms of police accountability in Chicago.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg16)
Entitlements are based on citizenship and are conferred as rights, with a minimum of discretionary authority on the part of the agencies concerned, but the entitlements are also linked to corresponding obligations (Filgueira et al., This principle has shaped a number of new initiatives, such as a universal child allowance in Argentina, a universal old-age pension in Bolivia, and an old-age pension, and disability, sickness and maternity benefits in Brazil (ILO, 2010 and 2012). There is also evidence that democratization and the abandonment of clientelism have improved the incidence of social expenditure (Lopez-Calva and Lustig, 2010). Such tax-financed programmes can have a stronger inequality reducing effect than social insurance schemes, even if unit transfers are relatively small (Skoufias, Lindert and Shapiro, 2010, Goni, Lopez and Serven, 2011).
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg10)
Supranational regional policy and institutions, despite their current limitations, can potentially strengthen the role of social policy in development and act as a conduit for ensuring that progressive global standards resonate at the national level. Section 3 then identifies and assesses nine important areas of social policy reform—including health, pensions, cash transfers and labour market policies2—and the institutions and processes involved. Section 4 summarizes what is new or distinctive about contemporary social policy reform, distils key messages related to the transformative potential of these innovations, and reflects on certain political economy drivers that need to be in place if that potential is to be realized.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg10)
The increase in impermeable surfaces of concrete and tarmac puts too great a strain on the drainage systems, which are governed by many separate entities, including water and sewerage companies, the London boroughs, Transport for London, the Highways Agency and private landowners. This fragmentation of responsibility and recognition of the short-term risk of surface water flooding encouraged the Mayor to bring together key stakeholders to mitigate the risk.
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg11)
Deaths refer to the dissolution of enterprises or to transitions to no employees. Death rates for Italy, the Netherlands, Sweden and the Slovak Republic refer to 2008. Part of the explanation might be women’s lower propensity to enter sectors like manufacturing that have been more heavily affected by the crisis (Chapter 19).
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg5)
The powerful combination of Al and loT technology is helping companies to avoid unplanned downtime, increase operating efficiency, enable new products and services, and enhance risk management (Deloitte, 2017). Industry analysts predict that by 2022, more than 80 per cent of enterprise loT projects will include an Al component, compared to only 10 per cent in 2017 (Gartner, 2017). For instance, the application of predictive and "real-time" machine learning solutions can help businesses to fine-tune product quality, automate heavy processes, reduce energy costs, uncover price elasticity, reduce churn, improve the impact of marketing campaigns, and deliver a personalized shopping experience. Industry analysts estimate that machine learning can reduce supply chain forecasting errors by between 20 per cent and 50 per cent and reduce lost sales by up to 65 per cent, with better product availability (McKinsey, 2017a).
(Sustainable Development Goal: sdg9)