Suchergebnisse

Twenty-five years have passed since the collapse of the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), which led to the disruption of the regional check-and-balance system aimed at resolving national issues and political and socioeconomic contradictions. It also resulted in a number of armed conflicts, including those in the Chechen Republic, Nagorno-Karabakh, Transnistria, Tajikistan, Abkhazia, South Ossetia and later in the South-East of Ukraine. Immediately following the collapse of the USSR, key international actors paid special attention to the Commonwealth of Independent States (CIS) region while trying to secure own interests. This led to the further stratification of the CIS region. A "geopolitical pluralism" started to form there, marked by the fragmentation of nation-state sovereignty over the territory. The concept and policy of "geopolitical pluralism" as developed by Zbigniew Brzezinski meets the interests of the United States by making the CIS region more manageable, while at the same time making it more difficult for Russia to implement its own strategic tasks there. The key goal of Russia is the creation of an integrated economic and political union able to take a rightful place in the world. Only the development of deep and comprehensive integration with the CIS states can ensure the competitiveness of Russia's position in the world as well as the positions of its partners in the former Soviet space. The purpose of this article is to assess the level of geopolitical pluralism in the CIS space taking account of the membership of the CIS countries in international organizations and their voting on UN General Assembly resolutions. The study is based on the interconnection of quantitative and qualitative methods of analysis of international relations and world politics. During the past quarter century following the collapse of the Soviet Union, a regional system of international relations has formed in its place. Despite the fact that the CIS is a kind of linking element which unites most of the former Soviet republics, a certain competition between the new states has become the characteristic feature of the political relations in the region. The policy of the west (primarily the United States) became a kind of a branched, diversified strategy aimed at the phased development, transformation and fragmentation of the region. The diversity of foreign policy priorities among the CIS states and the presence of many actors in the region makes mutual understanding and good-neighbourliness between these countries difficult to achieve. To the contrary, this diversity seriously complicates and slows down the development of deep and comprehensive integration, making it more unstable and ineffective. © HSE, 1993-2018.

Traditionally, governments have been viewed as complex, large bureaucratic establishments with a set of information silos that erect barriers to the access of information and make the provision of services cumbersome and frustrating. However with the emergence of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), there is evidence of improvement in efficiency and effectiveness of internal administration within governments and the relocation of government services from government offices to locations closer to the citizens. This paper is motivated by the need to investigate an e-government phenomenon in a developing country context which is characterised by complex dynamics rooted in politics, economy and social setting. The paper has been scoped to explore the evolution of egovernment in Zimbabwe as articulated in ICT policy documents. The policy documents are analysed through the lens of thematic analysis which leads to critical narrative analysis. The use of thematic analysis as a theoretical foundation and a methodological approach for analysing text contributes to a better understanding of government publications. This study has identified that all documents are silent on the political and economic reality in Zimbabwe which directly influences the implementation of capital projects. The policy documents also make no reference to other considerations as funding models and execution plans under a complex political, social and economic environment. As a result, government policy documents remained only as blueprints without any impact towards the implementation of e-government in Zimbabwe.

This paper is an quantitative analysis of the relationship between foreign aid and economic growth in seven Asian developing countries. The aims of the study are: (1) to elucidate economic effects of foreign aid in the reciving countries; (2) to estimate the total amount of aid which will bw required by these countries up to 1970l and (3) to clarify the degree of dependency on foreign aid of the each country in the past and future.

We introduce a continuous time overlapping generations demographic model, in which a social planner seeks to generate an optimal policy for influencing the demographic change of the underlying population in a neoclassical growth model. The model has the notable feature that the underlying state space is a continuum, leading to a Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman PDE system which is defined over a Hilbert space generated by the ages of the population cohorts. In this technical report the dynamic programming problem is presented and the numerical approximation using a finite difference approximation is derived. This analysis is part of a larger research program on welfare analysis and policy development for the HIV/AIDS global pandemic. -- optimal control ; continuous time overlapping generations ; Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman PDE ; finite difference approximation ; HIV/AIDS ; demographic modeling

End of life care in England has recently been framed by two very different discourses. One (connected to advance care planning) promotes personal choice, the other promotes compassionate care; both are prominent in professional, policy and media settings. The article outlines the history of who promoted each discourse from 2008 to 2014, when, why and how and this was done. Each discourse is then critically analysed from a standpoint that takes account of bodily decline, structural constraints, and human relationality. We focus on the biggest group of those nearing the end of their life, namely frail very old people suffering multiple conditions. In their care within contemporary healthcare organisations, choice becomes a tick box and compassion a commodity. Informed choice, whether at the end of life or in advance of it, does not guarantee the death the person wants, especially for those dying of conditions other than cancer and in the absence of universally available skilled and compassionate care. Enabling healthcare staff to provide compassionate, relational care, however, implies reversing the philosophical, political and financial direction of healthcare in the UK and most other Anglophone countries.

In light of the intertwining logics of military competition and economic interdependence at play in Sino–American relations, this paper examines how the United States has balanced conflicting national security and economic interests in the making of US export control policy on defense-related technology toward China. Relying upon a large body of primary sources (including 170 interviews), it seeks to contribute to the understanding of this strategically sensitive yet neglected area of Sino–American relations. It is shown that, as a consequence of the erosion of the US capacity to control the diffusion of defense-related technology to China in the post-Cold War era, a growing set of actors within the United States has reassessed the security/economic calculus in Washington's relationship with Beijing. Specifically, this coalition advocates the streamlining of export controls to sustain the defense and technological industrial base and thereby maintain American military/technological preeminence vis-à-vis a rising China.

In light of the intertwining logics of military competition and economic interdependence at play in Sino–American relations, this paper examines how the United States has balanced conflicting national security and economic interests in the making of US export control policy on defense-related technology toward China. Relying upon a large body of primary sources (including 170 interviews), it seeks to contribute to the understanding of this strategically sensitive yet neglected area of Sino–American relations. It is shown that, as a consequence of the erosion of the US capacity to control the diffusion of defense-related technology to China in the post-Cold War era, a growing set of actors within the United States has reassessed the security/economic calculus in Washington's relationship with Beijing. Specifically, this coalition advocates the streamlining of export controls to sustain the defense and technological industrial base and thereby maintain American military/technological preeminence vis-à-vis a rising China.

Neglected tropical diseases (NTDs) affect vulnerable populations living mostly in tropical and subtropical settings, and disproportionately affect women and children. Historically, the priority given to NTDs in global health policies has been lower than that of HIV, malaria and TB, but in recent years it has increased. To understand the processes that helped raise the positioning of NTDs in global policies, this study used a framework by Shiffman and Smith that assembles determinants of political priority under four categories: actor power, ideas, political contexts, and issue characteristics. A total of 37 global policy documents, 15 WHA resolutions, 38 academic publications, and findings from 12 semi-structured interviews with individuals representing different sectors within the NTD community, were analyzed using a policy framework proposed by Shiffman and Smith. This study found that elements that helped increase the priority of NTDs in global policies included the presence of leaders, institutions and guiding documents to mobilize the community, the creation of the NTD label, and the way the burden and solutions were presented. To continue raising the profile of NTDs at the global level, the study presents suggestions that are in line with UHC and SDG targets.