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This paper examines whether R&D, exports, and competition affect the adoption of international standard certification in ASEAN. Although prior studies recognized the importance of R&D, exports, and competition in determining a firm's decision to adopt international standards, they often focused on a single determinant of this activity. Hence, this study tries to incorporate three important internal and external factors in a comprehensive study. The current study investigates these questions by analyzing the data from a valid sample of appropriately 4,000 firms in the manufacturing industries in eight countries in ASEAN in 2015-2016. The study utilizes a multilevel mixed-effects logit model for estimation to take into account the hierarchical nature of our data set. The results show that firms with R&D activities tend to adopt more international standard certificates. We also find that exports are highly important, while competition from the informal sector does not show association with firms' innovativeness. These findings remain valid after endogenous and robustness testing using the propensity score matching method.

UNLABELLED: BACKGROUND: Given that many low income countries are heavily reliant on external assistance to fund their health sectors the acceptance of obligations of international assistance and cooperation with regard to the right to health (global health obligations) is insufficiently understood and studied by international health and human rights scholars. Over the past decade Global Health Initiatives, like the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (Global Fund) have adopted novel approaches to engaging with stakeholders in high and low income countries. This article explores how this experience impacted on acceptance of the international obligation to (help) fulfil the right to health beyond borders. METHODS: The authors conducted an extensive review of international human rights law literature, transnational legal process literature, global public health literature and grey literature pertaining to Global Health Initiatives. To complement this desk work and deepen their understanding of how and why different legal norms evolve the authors conducted 19 in-depth key informant interviews with actors engaged with three stakeholders; the European Union, the United States and Belgium. The authors then analysed the interviews through a transnational legal process lens. RESULTS: Through according value to the process of examining how and why different legal norms evolve transnational legal process offers us a tool for engaging with the dynamism of developments in global health suggesting that operationalising global health obligations could advance the right to health for all. CONCLUSIONS: In many low-income countries the health sector is heavily dependent on external assistance to fulfil the right to health of people thus it is vital that policies and tools for delivering reliable, long-term assistance are developed so that the right to health for all becomes more than a dream. Our research suggests that the Global Fund experience offers lessons to build on.

Abstract Background Given that many low income countries are heavily reliant on external assistance to fund their health sectors the acceptance of obligations of international assistance and cooperation with regard to the right to health (global health obligations) is insufficiently understood and studied by international health and human rights scholars. Over the past decade Global Health Initiatives, like the Global Fund to fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria (Global Fund) have adopted novel approaches to engaging with stakeholders in high and low income countries. This article explores how this experience impacted on acceptance of the international obligation to (help) fulfil the right to health beyond borders. Methods The authors conducted an extensive review of international human rights law literature, transnational legal process literature, global public health literature and grey literature pertaining to Global Health Initiatives. To complement this desk work and deepen their understanding of how and why different legal norms evolve the authors conducted 19 in-depth key informant interviews with actors engaged with three stakeholders; the European Union, the United States and Belgium. The authors then analysed the interviews through a transnational legal process lens. Results Through according value to the process of examining how and why different legal norms evolve transnational legal process offers us a tool for engaging with the dynamism of developments in global health suggesting that operationalising global health obligations could advance the right to health for all. Conclusions In many low-income countries the health sector is heavily dependent on external assistance to fulfil the right to health of people thus it is vital that policies and tools for delivering reliable, long-term assistance are developed so that the right to health for all becomes more than a dream. Our research suggests that the Global Fund experience offers lessons to build on.

This study examines the nature behind member states in deciding whether to cooperate with one another in regional bloc or with other regional blocs through international economic patherships via free trade agreements. The theoretical frame of both political and economic regionalism was reviewed. Regionalism was explained as a concept, as a theory and with emphasis on the EU and the GCC as regional blocs

ABSTRACTThe Healthy Athletes Special Smiles Program provides oral health screening and data collection for athletes with mental retardation who are participating in Special Olympic events. Recently, data regarding international athletes have become available for the first time, allowing a comparison against data collected in the United States. The international athletes from the countries of China, Lebanon, Poland, South Africa, and Turkey were generally younger than those of the United States (mean age 17.4 versus 24.0 years) and were more likely to be males (64.3 versus 54.6%). The international athletes were more likely to have untreated caries (50.1 versus 28.2%), and less likely to have restorations (19.6 versus 62.9%), sealants (1.8 versus 13.5%), fluorosis (3.5 versus 8.8%), signs of gingival disease (27.8 versus 40.1%), or to be edentulous (0.1 versus 3.7%). These relationships persisted after adjustment for sex and age differences between the populations.

The purpose and objectives. The main goals are to identify gaps in international law on the regulation of new groups of relations, classified by technological criterion, justify and put forward methods and scenarios for filling the existing legal gaps, and to analyze Russian and US's approaches to the international legal regulation of cyberspace. Methodological approach. The legal prognostic approach plays a key role in the work is the, general scientific methods and the comparative legal method, the method of interpreting legal norms and partially legal modeling are also applied. Results and conclusions. The article describes new groups of international legal relations, classified according to the criterion of technological and arising in the development of high technologies, as well as the phenomenon of international legal personality and the challenges that this group of relations poses to international legal regulation. Originality and value. The study is valuable in view of its relevance and originality. It focuses on gaining new knowledge about gaps in existing international legal acts and the fragmented state of the rules governing new groups of relations arising from the development of modern technologies. The article also identifies the features of the Russian and US's approaches to the development of international legal regulation of cyberspace.

The affective turn in International Relations (IR) has been engaged in the critical project of returning the emotional to the international for a while now. Following these efforts to reinvest humanity in politics, this article seeks to investigate if an engagement with emotional humans can provide refuge from, grapple with and ultimately transform a disenchanted world of IR and spell new worlds into existence that place the emotional-relational at the centre of its practice. Drawing on feminist, aesthetic and decolonial scholarship on emotional-relational humans, I argue that such imaginations can open routes to recovery for emotional worlds in the discipline. I introduce magical realist fiction as a genre of literary writing which embraces the magical ability of humans who resist and transform unbearably rational worlds through their emotional relations with each other. Gleaning moments of emotional incantations by humans–in Isabel Allende's A Long Petal of the Sea, Salman Rushdie's Midnight's Children, and Gabriel Garcia Marquez's Love in the Time of Cholera–which work to transform a world that becomes too difficult to bear for its inhabitants, I contend that IR stands to gain invaluable lessons by immersing itself in the kind of emotional magic that such literature and its resident humans spell into being.

Assesses Jurgen Habermas's & John Rawls's utopian but realistic conceptions of international justice. They agree that national sovereignty must be limited by respect for universal rights & peoples must be permitted to interpret those rights in accordance with their own political traditions. Important differences between Rawls's political liberalism & Habermas's cosmopolitan liberalism are pointed out. There is agreement with Habermas that peace & justice require the development of an international democratic federation of liberal democracies & political groups. However, it is argued that neither Habermas nor Rawls presents an adequate account of the equal importance of economic, social, & cultural rights. The rights of minorities & immigrants are examined to contend that a liberal democracy must recognize the rights of groups as well as the rights of individuals. Other suggestions for ways to achieve the proper balance between civil/political rights & cultural, economic, & social rights are offered, including restructuring the UN; "opening up" global banking/trading institutions; & gaining multilateral cooperation between the most powerful nations.