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Honduras has experienced moderate economic growth in the past decade, in line with the rest of the region. Despite this growth track record, limited opportunities for decent jobs for the majority of workers have resulted in stagnant poverty and inequality rates that are still the highest in Central America (CA). In parallel, progress in human development indicators has also been mixed in the last decade. In education, while primary enrollment has significantly increased, low coverage at all other levels of education, inequalities in access and low quality persist. In health, Honduras is close to achieving the 2015 child mortality Millennium Development Goals (MDGs), but maternal mortality, non-communicable diseases (NCDs), and violence pose additional challenges. And despite advances in setting up a social protection system, fiscal sustainability and lack of coordination among interventions prevail, undermining poverty reduction efforts. The ability of the Honduras government to expand safety nets, to increase the access and quality of public education and health services, to engage in active labor market policies, and to improve human development indicators in general, remains limited for a number of reasons. First, overall real social public spending has been on the decline in the last few years. Second, low revenues and fiscal deterioration pose challenges to adequately financing needed social sector improvements. Third, challenges in budget formulation and execution (mainly due to institutional factors) also diminish the impact of social spending. But more importantly, Honduras needs to significantly improve the effectiveness and efficiency of its social spending. This note argues that moving forward Honduras should prioritize three main aspects: a) to rationalize and increase the effectiveness of social public spending by enhancing the pro-poor features of targeting mechanisms; b) to significantly redress the imbalance between recurrent spending, especially the wage bill, and capital expenditure; and c) to continue strengthening information systems tools, legislation, and institutions in an effort to consolidate programs into fewer and higher impact interventions.

PurposeIndia has recently entered mandatory corporate social responsibility (CSR) spend era. It is important to unravel the pressures of CSR implementation in the Indian context to understand how a better fit between business strategy and CSR spend can be achieved. This study aims to validate a model that integrates pressures, CSR implementation and financial performance through reputation within the institutional theory framework.Design/methodology/approachIt is based on a questionnaire survey of 162 top-level and middle-level CSR managers in India and semi-structured interviews with eight top-level executives.FindingsThe study concludes that local community, government, peers and media are important institutional pressures of CSR implementation in India. Reputation partially mediates the relationship between CSR implementation and financial performance.Practical implicationsThe study findings can help managers to know which stakeholders (government, media, peers and local community) are exerting statistically significant institutional pressures and how CSR initiatives be designed to cater to their requirements. Though CSR spend is mandatory in India, a strategic orientation towards it would enable the firms to derive value for the stakeholders associated with the business.Originality/valueRelationship between pressures of CSR and CSR implementation has not yet been explored in the Indian context. Such a relationship tells us why is CSR taken up and influence of which of the pressure groups is considered important while implementing CSR. The study will help to understand the relationship between CSR–reputation–financial performance as perceived by Indian managers and to assess whether they perceive corporate reputation building as one of the most important outcomes of CSR.

The paper analyzes SMSGupShup, a mobile-centric social networking platform in India. It focuses on a set of dominant users (young, male) who are re-defining the nature of micro-blogging and the creation of mobile networking communities. Like many social networking sites, assembling, maintaining and growing social networks are primary behaviors on GupShup. Unlike many others, where maintaining a personalized profile and conversing with a networked community take prominence, users of GupShup show markedly different messaging or broadcasting practices. While captivated by the idea of connecting with people all over India for the first time through the GupShup platform, the primary motivation of users is not conversation, forging a "second life" or building interest groups but optimizing the networking service to expand one's own group membership. From a qualitative study of user profiles, the paper demonstrates how GupShup can inform thinking about facets of mobile communities in developing countries: specifically, changing ideas about the networking platform as "second social life" to one of pecuniary "resource." (Pac Aff/GIGA)

A recent trend in policy scholarship is to explain policy changes and paradigm shifts by focusing on the features and interactions of policy networks. This paper aims to contribute to the current literature by exploring how policy networks affect policy paradigmatic change in China with reference to urban housing policy development. It is argued that both exogenous and indigenous factors can be attributed to the difficulties of paradigm replacement. The closed policy network in the housing field delimits the choices of policy instruments and hinders paradigmatic shifts. Contrary to mainstream studies, exogenous shocks are identified as serious handicaps to significant policy changes. (J Contemp China/GIGA)

When rebels make alliances, what informs their choice of allies? Civil wars are rarely simple contests between rebels and incumbent regimes. Rather, rival militant networks provide the context in which these fragmented conflicts unfold. Alliances that emerge within this competitive landscape have the power to alter conflict trajectories and shape their outcomes. Yet patterns of interrebel cooperation are understudied. The existing scholarship on rebel alliances focuses on why rebels cooperate, but little attention is given to the composition of those alliances: with whom rebels cooperate. We explore how power, ideology, and state sponsorship can shape alliance choices in multiparty civil wars. Employing network analysis and an original data set of tactical cooperation among Syrian rebels, we find compelling evidence that ideological homophily is a primary driver of rebel collaboration. Our findings contribute to an emerging literature that reasserts the role of ideology in conflict processes.

Purpose– The purpose of this study is to explore the extent of relational and institutional pressures' influence on both the motivation for and diffusion of corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices of multinational corporation (MNC) subsidiaries in the food industries in Indonesia.Design/methodology/approach– This study uses qualitative approach, and the data were collected by interviewing CSR managers and investigating the CSR practices and the annual reports of six subsidiaries of food-manufacturing MNCs in Indonesia.Findings– This study found that internal pressures within MNC organisations are the main drivers of their CSR practices. These finding were, then, refined to account for local cognitive and normative institutional pressures. It was also found that while regulation in a host country was critical to its subsidiary compliance, it did not contribute appreciably to the precise types of CSR practices. The (isomorphic) similarity of CSR patterns had less to do with the institutional pressures but more with sector- or field-level pressures in food manufacturing. Most MNC subsidiaries focused on issues such as agricultural or rural development (related to their supply chain) or health and nutrition (related to their core business).Research limitations/implications– This study focuses on a specific industrial sector (food and beverage manufacture); therefore, the isomorphic patterns could not be concluded as an influential effect of the institutional context of Indonesia; rather, they are due to sectoral- or field-level pressure in food and beverage manufacturing. To confirm this study results, a multi-sectoral involvement in future studies is suggested.Originality/value– This study uses organisational dynamics and institutional theory to explore CSR adoption in multinational subsidiaries in Indonesia.