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AbstractThere is widespread recognition among scholars, international aid providers and evaluators of the need to take into account the unintended outcomes of international development efforts. Practitioners have also signed on to charters that promise they will do their utmost best to 'do no harm'. This article focusses on the often overlooked unintended gender effects. A rigorous literature review was conducted to reveal some of the most prominent unintended consequences as documented in primary research in development studies. Five prevalent unintended gender effects were identified: (1) household dynamics, (2) anti‐foreign backfire, (3) overburdening of women, (4) human trafficking and sexual exploitation and (5) hype. While not all of the unintended gender effects are negative, most of the reported unintended effects jeopardise the intended outcomes of the interventions. This research provides both a call and a tool to analyse more systematically the unintended gender effects of international development efforts.

AbstractThe evolution of public‐private partnerships (PPPs) within oil‐exporting states has not attracted sufficient attention from PPP scholars. Particularly, the Gulf‐Cooperation Council (GCC) states such as Saudi Arabia which has had a prolonged history of state‐led economic development and public funding of infrastructure projects is an interesting empirical context to explore how PPPs can become an instrument for infrastructure delivery. Plummeting oil prices since 2014 have urged Saudi Arabia to identify new forms of project organizing such as PPPs. The underlying argument of this paper is that delivering projects through the PPP route necessitates major reforms to the existing legal and regulatory frameworks, establishing relevant institutional support in the form of a PPP unit and developing a friendly business environment that could attract foreign investors to the country. This field report outlines the key reforms enacted by the Saudi government, and highlights pressing challenges that need to be addressed to drastically enhance Saudi Arabia's investment climate and enable the private sector's financing of mega‐infrastructure projects.

AbstractTax agents' role in ensuring or deterring compliance with tax obligations has received relatively little attention in the literature. Some evidence has emerged indicating when agents improve (or decrease) compliance, and why taxpayers employ their services. However, most existing studies have focused on high‐ or upper‐middle‐income countries. As the tax systems of low‐income countries present a unique set of compliance issues, a closer look at the role that tax agents play in these contexts is warranted. In this paper, we present evidence from two surveys on their use in Uganda. Our results show that tax agents contribute to an increased quality of filed returns thereby leading to lower audit adjustments The type of services more frequently requested by taxpayers seem to match those in high‐income countries, as do their reasons for engaging tax agents in the first place.

AbstractThis study analyzes how adverse working conditions shape frontline workers' behavioral and cognitive coping mechanisms. It builds on the idea of frontline work as a precarious profession and explores how workers deal with associated challenges. Specifically, evidence is provided for factors associated with alienative commitment among frontline workers. We do so against the background of the 2020–2021 Mexican and Brazilian pandemic response by health workers, social workers, and police officers. Findings from our qualitative analysis show that they feel abandoned, vulnerable, and left to deal with the risks of the pandemic by themselves. In response, they tend to cognitively disconnect from their work and prioritize their own job survival. We contribute to the literature by showing how institutional factors over which street‐level bureaucrats have little control, such as resource scarcity, lack of job security and managerial support, and low trust by citizen‐clients, are fertile conditions for these coping patterns.

No abstract is available for this article.

AbstractEffective local participatory governance depends on government responsiveness. Drawing insights from empirical research in a large South African city, we show how inadequate integration of institutional platforms for community participation into the wider participatory system undermines this capacity. While much of the participatory governance literature considers tools, norms and the experiences of citizens, we explore how officials, structures and platforms within the city interact. We apply a systems lens to understand the municipal capacity to engage and respond to citizens and communities. Our analysis demonstrates that officials navigate an institutional system experiencing disconnected municipal structures, engagement practices and platforms. We theorise the government capacity to engage in terms of the personalisation, co‐creation and institutionalisation of responsiveness. This capacity to engage thus requires a systemic capability that acknowledges complexity and nurtures collective learning alongside institutional design strategies that seek to address potential disconnects.

Although human rights have been officially recognized in Indonesia, human rights violations have persisted since Suharto's authoritarian regime. The purpose of this article is to examine why human rights violations that have occurred in Indonesia since the New Order era, when the Suharto regime was in power, but have yet to be resolved. With a human rights perspective, the author employs qualitative research methods in conjunction with secondary data from credible sources. Human rights violations committed during the New Order regime went unpunished, and impunity reigned. To this day, there are challenges to impunity for human rights violations in Indonesia, where the government does not have good faith to fulfil the rights of victims of human rights violations, and civil society organizations both on the national and international levels are powerless to support the resolution of these human rights violations. This situation will have an impact on Indonesia's international standing as one of the largest democratic countries that recognizes, protects, and fulfils human rights.

The effects of COVID-19 have significantly interrupted countries and the social order across the globe. However, the developing countries which could not manufacture or even buy the most wanted commodity: COVID-19 Vaccine, looked on as the situation got worse even in the wealthy nations. Diplomacy seems a ray of hope among developing countries as wealthy nations have used almost all the vaccines themselves. The goal of this study was to critically analyze the challenges and opportunities around the COVID19 pandemic, especially vaccine distribution and access, and the role of diplomacy in this process in selected countries in Africa. We used the narrative literature review approach. We examined the cases of Uganda, Ghana, and South Africa on the COVID-19 vaccine distribution. We found minimal accessibility and affordability of vaccines in developing nations. African and other developing countries have since depended on vaccine donations. Affordability makes it challenging for wealthy countries to lend a hand while ensuring their population and market needs are catered for. We propose that nationals in the Global South must strengthen their diplomatic systems and negotiation skills with wealthy countries while reinforcing public health systems. Developing countries must build alliances to engage with high-income countries as equal partners.

At first, people obeyed the rules out of fear of the gods. By the time when Nietzsche declared that "God is dead," faith had been replaced by the rule of law. But now the reality has been changed. Modern technologies are playing an increasingly important role in the digital era. The world is changing rapidly and the achievements of technical development are so fast, that they are only followed by legal regulations. The rule of law is rivaled by the rule of code. Artificial intelligence is a modern trend. Nobody knows how it can change the world. It is used in different fields but its usage in justice is the most controversial. The purpose of this article is to discuss how reasonable is the use of AI in the decision making process on civil cases where the creativity and human feelings play the most important roles - especially in the most untouchable sphere from globalisation such as family law.