Suchergebnisse

The main objectives of this report are to: (a) provide a synthesized analysis of financial reporting and auditing standards and practices across the countries in which the Institute of Chartered Accountants of the Caribbean (ICAC) is active and (b) provide a basis for recommendations to ICAC and respective national institutes for a regional strategy to enhance the accounting profession and the accounting and auditing practices in the public and private sectors. This report's focus on reforms and identification of areas and means to strengthen the accounting profession have at their root the conviction that systemic enhancements to the standards and practices of the profession can materially improve the lives of the region's populace, particularly its less prosperous citizens, through greater transparency, strengthened economic growth and its attendant employment and tax revenue prospects, and greater access to financing for and formalization of the region's dominant sector-micro, small, and medium-sized enterprises (MSMEs). The report finds that a constraint limiting both investment across the region, particularly to MSMEs that characterize the respective national economies, and the efficient use of public resources is the accounting and auditing practices and the financial reporting regimes that prevail in both the public and private sectors. This finding emerges from: (i) a review of Reports on the Observance of Standards and Codes for Accounting and Auditing (ROSC AA) conducted by the World Bank for Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago, Suriname, and the countries of the Organisation of Eastern Caribbean States, and (ii) Bank missions to those countries updating the ROSC findings as well as missions to countries that have not yet had ROSC AA reviews (during which the Bank team met the national accountancy body, regulators of entities that fall within the financial reporting chain, supreme audit institutions, central banks, and so forth so as to secure information that would typically be found in formal ROSC AA reports).

The antitrust laws are a minefield for the uninitiated. Indicative of this reality is the fact that there were no successful civil lawsuits alleging a violation of the antitrust laws brought in Virginia over the past year. A number of conspiracy, monopolization and price discrimination cases were attempted, but they all failed for a variety of reasons outlined in greater detail below. In contrast to the national trend, no antitrust cases with regard to health care were decided in Virginia during the past year. The absence of such cases represents a dramatic change from previous experience, which perhaps reflects the reality that-staff privilege and exclusive dealing cases involving hospitals or physicians are rarely successful under the antitrust laws.

In 'Nursing Civil Rights', Charissa J. Threat investigates the parallel battles against occupational segregation by African American women and white men in the U.S. Army. As Threat reveals, both groups viewed their circumstances with the Army Nurse Corps as a civil rights matter.

Environmental problems are becoming increasingly global. The links between human drivers and impacts in the environment cross geographical scales and country borders. Since the revision of the Swedish national environmental objectives in 2010, the overarching goal of Swedish environmental policy has recognised this fact. The "generational goal" now addresses the importance of limiting Sweden's impact abroad. At the same time, Sweden has limited means and legal competence (rådighet) to shape global developments that influence its own environmental objectives. How to evaluate the generational goal, and where and how to direct our limited capacity to influence global development are therefore important questions for Sweden's international environmental policy work.This report examines whether and how the planetary boundaries framework (Rockström et al. 2009a) offers tools and perspectives on how to work with the two-way interaction between Swedish and global environmental pressures and performance described above. The planetary boundaries concept was presented in 2009 and provides a novel synthesis of the most pertinent global environmental challenges by analysing the risk of crossing critical thresholds in the behaviour of the Earth system's processes. Nine challenges were identified, seven of which were possible to quantify at the time, by identifying control variables (e.g., for climate change, atmospheric CO2 concentration) and setting specific boundary values (e.g., 350 ppm CO2). The criteria for identifying planetary boundary processes was that they can be associated with some kind of threshold, or "tipping point", beyond which the planet and its ecosystems might enter new states, some of which are likely to be less hospitable to our current societies, and that this process is possibly irreversible. Boundaries were then set at what was considered to be a "safe distance" from the estimated threshold, using the best available science and the precautionary principle.The planetary boundaries framework quickly became popular among various stakeholders, arguably because of its scientific grounding combined with its intuitive rationale and easily accessible visual presentation. A common request since its publication has been to downscale the planetary boundaries to the level of individuals, companies and countries, that is, what is required for each to stay within the "safe operating space". This report presents a first attempt to translate the planetary boundaries into a corresponding set of national boundaries. The purpose is to investigate whether the planetary boundaries framework provides a scientifically grounded approach to addressing problems of international environmental policy and comparing performance. Although many different sets of environmental indicators already exist for global problems, these metrics are seldom coupled with a scientifically derived measure of what can be considered good or bad performance above or below an absolute boundary. Instead, such indicators are typically only used to compare relative performance. The overarching goal of this report is to fill this gap.Based on the planetary boundary framework we investigate: (i) whether the planetary boundaries can be downscaled to nationally relevant boundaries; and, (ii) whether indicators and data are available that allow comparison of country performance (including that of Sweden) using these downscaled boundaries. If such a methodology is feasible, this provides new perspectives on and methods for how to analyse the international dimension of environmental policy and how to set policy priorities. Finding that this is indeed feasible, the report analyses four related policy questions: How is Sweden performing on the generational goal to not increase environmental problems beyond its borders? Can the legal competence deficit of Sweden in relation to its national environmental objectives be quantified? Which countries should be prioritised for bilateral cooperation with Sweden? How do existing international environmental agreements match with planetary boundaries, and which agreements should be prioritised for Swedish engagement?Methodology and suggested downscaled planetary boundariesWe first analysed the relevance of downscaling the planetary boundaries in the context of Sweden's national environmental objectives (NEOs) and Swedish environmental policy and found that there was sufficient similarity between these two sets of environmental targets (see Figure S1). We then developed and proposed different options for down-scaled boundaries and presented indicators to measure national performance of the Earth system processes wherever this was feasible (see table S1). Data from international databases and peer-reviewed analyses of large sets on countries were used to enable comparisons between countries (see Figure S2). These results were then used as a basis for responding to the four policy questions.Methodological issues and limitations The methodological work of this research project takes as a strict starting point the control variables and boundary values proposed in the original planetary boundaries framework. This means that we did not look for a wider set of relevant indicators around a planetary boundary, but only those which best matched the original control variable. The methodology developed is therefore subject to the same criticisms of individual boundary definitions that have previously been voiced. One such constraint is the lack of spatial differentiation of the planetary boundaries. For example, the land use boundary states that, globally, no more than 15% of ice-free land must be converted to cropland, but does not specify which land would be more or less harmful to convert. This is critical in the context of mounting food security and agricultural challenges connected to providing food for a growing population. This universal approach becomes a limitation when examining the performance of individual countries, in particular given their very different environmental resource endowments and geographical conditions. Despite these problems, we argue that the most relevant approach is to downscale the planetary boundaries to per capita shares of the global safe operating space. We choose this approach because it provides an answer to the hypothetical question: What if the whole world's population had the same level of resource use as, for example, Sweden? Would the global planetary boundaries then be transgressed? However, we do not consider the fairness of such a crude distribution of this safe space, and future work needs to explore such concerns in order to increase the relevance of the analysis. Hence, while the methods and boundaries presented in this report offer a first attempt to develop scientifically grounded approaches that attribute the contributions of individuals to global environmental problems, the results should be interpreted with care. According to the data presented below, less developed countries now perform well, and in per capita terms use sustainable amounts of resources with respect to the boundaries. In contrast, highly developed countries and some emerging economies transgress several of their national boundaries, although there is a less clear pattern for some others (e.g., biodiversity loss). In general, the performance of highly developed countries including Sweden is worse if consumption "footprints" rather than strictly territorial emissions/resource use are considered. The clear pattern associated with level of income for many of the boundaries cannot be ignored in the light of calls for the "right to develop" within the shared environmental space, and suggests that consumption patterns in highly developed countries need to be dealt with. Finally, the data used in this report are in several cases taken from publicly available sources such as the international databases. These are often based on self-reporting, which limits data quality. It is beyond the scope of this work to coherently address this, and results should therefore be treated with caution.Responding to the policy questionsThe first policy question was to explore whether the planetary boundaries framework can be used to identify and measure the extent to which Swedish efforts to achieve domestic environmental objectives cause increased environmental and health problems beyond Sweden's borders. Consumption-based indicators were compiled on performance for several boundaries, and we believe that these are relevant for addressing and assessing the generational goal, since they capture the environmental effects of the Swedish economy not just domestically but also abroad. We believe that the planetary boundaries framework can contribute to existing work in two important ways. First, it is a comprehensive framework that captures many major global environmental challenges, as opposed to a more data-driven and single-issue approach. Second, it establishes absolute per capita boundaries, thereby allowing measurement of the absolute performance of countries rather than simply their relative performance. The second policy question was whether the planetary boundaries framework and its indicators can help to characterise and quantify Sweden's legal competence deficit in relation to some of its NEOs. Reviewing all the bar charts and graphs presented in chapters 4 and 5 suggests that Sweden's contribution to the planetary boundaries is in most cases minor in absolute terms. This means that Sweden's competence to hand over to the next generation a situation where most environmental problems have been resolved is limited. The methodological approach piloted here allows a quantification of the deficit for only one national environmental objective: Reduced Climate Impact. The deficit was over 99% at the global level. We found that it was a worthwhile analytical exercise and that the planetary boundaries framework in general is amenable to visualising environmental challenges in terms of numbers and graphically. However, the planetary boundaries framework cannot add much when it comes to more regional challenges, such as the eutrophication of a regional sea or regional transboundary air pollution.In response to the third policy question, the analysis presented in this report can potentially be used to identify sets of countries with similar challenges and as a source of information to inform discussions on priorities in bilateral environmental cooperation. Interpretations based on this first analysis should, however, be made with care, and the results are more robust when comparing performance across several boundaries and for a group of countries, as opposed to focusing on individual boundaries and individual countries. Using the downscaled boundaries and indicators selected in this report, performance data for 61 countries were generated and some general performance patterns were identified, such as richer countries generally performing much worse. However, it was also recognised that the selection of priority countries for bilateral cooperation will necessarily involve many other considerations, such as political relations, the level of economic development, key Swedish leverage opportunities, and so on. Finally, with regard to our fourth policy question, the analysis of how well the planetary boundaries are matched with international environmental agreements suggested that agreements are in place for all but one boundary, but that their implementation has not been successful. There is no lack of global environmental goals, nor is their level of ambition found wanting, as the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP) found in a recent report. The problem is rather the limited progress on existing goals. Our detailed assessment of existing international environmental agreements led to an effort to distinguish between the policy gap and the implementation gap for each planetary boundary. Overall, our analysis suggests that there are four important paths for future engagement in international environmental agreements and international cooperation more broadly: (i) to reduce implementation deficits in relation to existing targets and commitments; (ii) to highlight the global scale and implications of problems currently being addressed regionally; (iii) to extend the rationale for acting from human health effects to effects on ecological and Earth system resilience, but also connect these two; and (iv) to pursue tools for international cooperation, other than merely relying on formal international environmental agreements such as voluntary initiatives (some of which involve non-state actors) and capacity building efforts targeted at developing countries to support their implementation of international agreements and targets.ConclusionsUsing planetary boundaries as a basis for comparing the performance of countries, the main conclusion is that, in general, it is most important to work with developed countries and countries with rapidly growing economies. These countries have higher absolute and per capita impacts on the environment globally, and thus a bigger responsibility for progressive action on, e.g., mitigating climate change. For future work and the application of the methodology presented below, we recommend analysis that tracks the development of performance over time, as this would enable the identification of countries with negative trends and fast rates of change in performance, as well as more in-depth exploration of equity issues.A further recommendation is that additional consumptive-based indicators, covering each of the planetary boundaries, can be used to complement the existing indicators to assess whether Sweden meets its generational goal. The tentative methods and results on, e.g., consumptive land use and the threats to biodiversity driven by consumption provided in this report are concrete examples.A third recommendation is that if the "competence deficit" is to be reduced, Sweden must act more proactively and assertively in negotiations around international environmental agreements. Many of the national environmental objectives depend on international action and the analysis of national performance presented below suggests that Sweden's performance is of minor importance in many cases. The review of international environmental agreements shows that much of the legal infrastructure is in place to address planetary boundaries, but that the level of ambition and implementation effectiveness need to be strengthened. However, it should also be emphasised that legally binding agreements are only one of many routes to take. Sweden could expand bilateral cooperation with key countries to improve their domestic performance on key issues. Voluntary initiatives involving nonstate actors could be pursued as an alternative to legally binding agreements. Finally, a strategy could be pursued to identify the "co-benefits" of environmental action at both the local and, ultimately, the global level. The new Climate and Clean Air Coalition, in which Sweden is a key player, embraces this kind of approach.

This issue of the Review begins with an article by the Mexican economist Arturo Guillén Romo on the main tensions in the world economy and trade since the 2007-08 crisis and the recession of the following years. It highlights the loss of land of the United States in production, international trade and foreign direct investment, although preserving a clear military advantage. One conclusion that it is possible to extract the text is the configuration of a scenario in which it is plausible to expect a consolidation of control by the United States over its areas of influence, including Latin America, as part of its strategy against the European Union, Russia and especially China. In this context, the condition of EE. USA As a majority shareholder of the IMF, he raises an element of particular complexity regarding the strategy of re-profiling the external debt and vis-à-vis the multilateral organization, which represents one of the ingredients of the US-Argentina bilateral relationship. Guillén Romo's text allows us to discern the scenario in which Argentina will move, trying to take advantage of the reconfigurations of power relations at the global level. The following three articles approach the territorial dimension of social processes and the ways in which they are determined from different angles, but complementary. The text by Lucas Ferrero and Alejandro San José analyzes the formation of the Argentine socioeconomic and demographic structure and the dynamics of population agglomeration and expulsion from the periphery in the peripheral regions, stories from the Northeast and Northwest regions. In counterpoint from the territorial point of view but as a complement to the synergy between protocols and regulations, structural trends and performance of private actors, the article by Verónica Pérez and Jorge Sánchez sets its sights on the organization and performance of the motor transport sector public transport in the Metropolitan Region of Buenos Aires and its variations in the last ninety years, and the importance of this service in the design of the area throughout almost a century. For its part, the work of Letizia Vazquez, Sergio Andrés Kaminker and Renata Hiller reconstructs how a national public policy differentially impacts different territories according to local socioeconomic contexts and different actors. The differential results of the program in two localities allow us to affirm the importance of local networks when formulating a national policy. The popular economy, or social economy, has proven to be, in its multiple expressions and spheres of development, much more than a survival resource for those excluded from the labor market by the regressive dynamics of neoliberalism. The articles by Claudia Cabrera and María Victoria Deux Marzi focus from various angles on the rich problems offered by the articulation between popular organization, insertion in commercial relations and modalities of state intervention. Cabrera's research in the Buenos Aires suburbs aims to analyze the strategies of social reproduction of the homes of the popular economy that live in neighborhoods that were accessed outside the formal real estate market. According to the author, the popular economy finds its conditions of possibility in the territory; therefore there is a rationality of adaptation to the environment by those who join it; This means that it is not possible to explain the particularities of the reproduction strategies of households outside the territories they inhabit. Frequently the specificity of the modes of labor insertion in these contexts collides with the taxonomic systems of framing of the occupations of the workers; hence the inadequacy of conventional statistical categories to account for the variety of concrete situations that arise, thus posing a theoretical and methodological challenge to conventional forms of social research. Deux Marzi's article reconstructs the policies of the national state promoting the popular economy between 2015 and 2019, a period of government in sharp contrast, in this as in many other aspects of public policy, with which it preceded it. His vision encompasses both the public organizations that during that period managed the policies related to the sector, as well as the programs carried out, the actors involved and the various types of intervention. The author highlights the predominant orientation of interventions lacking a broader and more inclusive approach to the various modalities of the popular economy, which could have promoted productive and labor strategies. Obviously, the predominant paradigm in the theoretical and philosophical conceptions of neoliberal administration - centered on individualism, interindividual competition, entrepreneurship - went against the community and solidarity dimension, which is one of the central characteristics of the schemes of the economy. popular. The following two articles, although dedicated to different topics, raise the necessary adaptation of the large intellectual categories that guide the design of institutions and public policies, with the need to narrow the gap between these designs and their effective implementation, the product of a variety of factors derived from the scenarios or the actors involved in different ways in this dimension of politics. Matías Mattalini presents a case study of the system for the promotion and protection of the rights of children and adolescents in the province of Buenos Aires. In it, he distinguishes various paradigms or models of approach: social representations derived from practices, devices and structures that address the problem according to the dominant vision of an era. The author adopts the position of the coexistence of paradigms assuming that, when exploring the institutional daily life of organizations dedicated to this problem, a plurality of practices emerge that tend to establish from below an institutionality based on institutional co-responsibility. Appealing to the categories of analysis of the political philosophy of Raymond Williams, María Alejandra Bowman and Mariana Tosolini focus their gaze on the implementation of two public policies in recent Argentine history, in individual moments of profound sociopolitical and ideological differentiation, present in the policies under examination: the Adult Educational Reactivation for Reconstruction Campaign developed between 1973 and 1975, and the Youth with More and Better Work Program created in 2008. According to the authors, Williams' analytical categories contribute to clearing the dynamics of resignification of the policies, between the definitions formulated from the state instances, the administrative interventions of the policy managers, and the meanings that the subjects assign to the normative prescriptions from their links with the institutions, to their conceptions of the world and the way these are lived. A proposition whose scope goes far beyond the policies examined, insofar as it points to the conceptual and operational gap that usually exists between the design of policies and their effective implementation. ; Este número de la Revista se inicia con un artículo del economista mexicano Arturo Guillén Romo sobre las principales tensiones en la economía y el comercio mundial a partir de la crisis de 2007-08 y la recesión de los años siguientes. Se destaca en él la pérdida de terreno de Estados Unidos en la producción, el comercio internacional y la inversión extranjera directa, aunque preservando una clara ventaja militar. Una conclusión que es posible extraer del texto es la configuración de un escenario en el que es plausible esperar una consolidación del control de Estados Unidos sobre sus zonas de influencia, entre ellas América Latina, como parte de su estrategia frente a la Unión Europea, Rusia y, especialmente, China. En este contexto, la condición de EEUU de accionista mayoritario del FMI plantea un elemento de particular complejidad respecto de la estrategia de reperfilamiento de la deuda externa y frente al organismo multilateral y que deviene uno de los ingredientes de la relación bilateral EEUU-Argentina. El texto de Guillén Romo, permite discernir el escenario en el que necesariamente habrá de moverse Argentina, intentando sacar ventaja de las reconfiguraciones de las relaciones de fuerza en el plano global. Los tres artículos siguientes abordan desde ángulos diversos pero complementarios la dimensión territorial de los procesos sociales y los modos en que éstos contribuyen a la producción de aquél. El texto de Lucas Ferrero y Alejandro San José analiza la formación de la estructura socioeconómica y demográfica argentina y las dinámicas de aglomeración y expulsión poblacional de la periferia en las regiones periféricas, considerando tales las regiones Noreste y Noroeste. En contrapunto desde el punto de vista territorial pero como complemento en cuanto a la sinergia entre intervenciones y regulaciones estatales, tendencias estructurales y desempeño de los actores privados, el artículo de Verónica Pérez y Jorge Sánchez pone la mira en la organización y desempeño del sector del autotransporte público de pasajeros en la Región Metropolitana de Buenos Aires y sus variaciones en los últimos noventa años, y la gravitación de este servicio en el diseño del área a lo largo de casi un siglo. Por su parte, el trabajo de Letizia Vazquez, Sergio Andrés Kaminker y Renata Hiller reconstruye el modo en que una política pública nacional impacta de manera diferencial en distintos territorios de acuerdo con los contextos socioeconómicos locales y los diferentes actores. Los resultadosdiferenciales del programa en dos localidades permiten afirmar la importancia de los entramados locales a la hora de formular una política de alcance nacional. La economía popular, o economía social, ha probado ser en sus múltiples expresiones y ámbitos de desarrollo, mucho más que un recurso de sobrevivencia para los excluidos del mercado de trabajo por la dinámica regresiva del neoliberalismo. Los artículos de Claudia Cabrera y de María Victoria Deux Marzi enfocan desde ángulos variados la rica problemática que ofrece la articulación entre organización popular, inserción en relaciones mercantiles y modalidades de intervención estatal. La investigación de Cabrera en el conurbano bonaerense tiene por objeto el análisis de las estrategias de reproducción social de los hogares de la economía popular que habitan en barrios a los que accedieron por fuera del mercado inmobiliario formal. De acuerdo a la autora la economía popular encuentra en el territorio sus condiciones de posibilidad; hay por lo tanto una racionalidad de adaptación al medio por parte de quienes se incorporan a ella; esto significa que no es posible explicar las particularidades de las estrategias de reproducción de los hogares por fuera de los territorios que ellos habitan. Frecuentemente la especificidad de los modos de inserción laboral en estos contextos entra en colisión con los sistemas taxonómicos de encuadre de las ocupaciones de los trabajadores; de ahí la inadecuación de las categorías estadísticas convencionales para dar cuenta de la variedad de situaciones concretas que se presentan, planteando de esta manera un desafío teórico y metodológico a las formas convencionales de investigación social. El artículo de Deux Marzi reconstruye las políticas del Estado nacional de promoción de la economía popular entre 2015 y 2019, un periodo de gobierno de fuerte contraste, en este como en otros muchos aspectos de las políticas públicas, con el que le precedió. Su mirada abarca tanto a los organismos públicos que durante ese periodo gestionaron las políticas referidas al sector, como los programas ejecutados, los actores involucrados y las variadas modalidades de intervención. Destaca la autora la orientación predominante de las intervenciones carentes de un abordaje más amplio e integrador de las varias modalidades de la economía popular, que podrían haber potenciado las estrategias productivas y laborales. Obviamente, el paradigma predominante en las concepciones teóricas y filosóficas de la administración neoliberal -centradas en el individualismo, la competencia interindividual, el emprendedorismo- iban en contra de la dimensión comunitaria y solidaria que es una de las características centrales de los esquemas de la economía popular. Los dos artículos siguientes, aunque dedicados a diferentes temas, plantean la necesaria adecuación de las grandes categorías intelectuales que orientan el diseño de las instituciones y las políticas públicas, con la necesidad de achicar el desfase de esos diseños y su efectiva implementación, producto de una variedad de factores derivados de los escenarios o los actores involucrados de diversa manera en esta dimensión de la política. Matías Mattalini presenta un estudio de caso del sistema de promoción y protección de los derechos de la niñez y la adolescencia en la provincia de Buenos Aires. En él distingue diversos paradigmas o modelos de abordaje: representaciones sociales devenidas en prácticas, dispositivos y estructuras que abordan la problemática según la visión dominante de una época. El autor adopta la postura de la convivencia de paradigmas asumiendo que, al explorar la cotidianeidad institucional de las organizaciones dedicadas a esta problemática, emerge una pluralidad de prácticas que tienden a instaurar desde abajo una institucionalidad basada en la corresponsabilidad institucional. Apelando a las categorías de análisis de la filosofía política de Raymond Williams, María Alejandra Bowman y Mariana Tosolini centran su mirada en la implementación de dos políticas públicas de la historia reciente argentina, en sendos momentos de profunda diferenciación sociopolítica e ideológica, presentes en las políticas bajo examen: la Campaña de Reactivación Educativa de Adultos para la Reconstrucción desarrollada entre los años 1973 y 1975, y el Programa Jóvenes con Más y Mejor Trabajo creado en 2008. De acuerdo a las autoras, las categorías analíticas de Williams contribuyen a despejar la dinámica de resignificación de las políticas, entre las definiciones formuladas desde las instancias estatales, las intervenciones administrativas de los gestores de las políticas, y los sentidos que los sujetos asignan a las prescripciones normativas a partir de sus vínculos con las instituciones, a sus concepciones de mundo y al modo en que estas son vividas. Una proposición cuyo alcance va mucho más allá de las políticas examinadas, en cuanto apunta al desfase conceptual y operativo que suele existir entre el diseño de las políticas y su efectiva implementación.

Crowded and isolated Black and Latino neighborhoods are marked by economic deprivation and social depression. Many residents of these neighborhoods are disconnected from the larger society, no longer able to share in the values or social norms of majority America. The study of this concentrated poverty has become a new mini-industry. There has been a spate of books, reports, and articles on the phenomenon, which is variously known as "persistent poverty," the "underclass," or the "new poor." The authors of this book reject the label "underclass" because it is demeaning and "new poor" because it is inaccurate. We find it more profitable to focus on the problems of separation. Poverty has always afflicted America, and even long-term poverty has been an issue during other periods of the nation's development. Today, American society faces a period of growing social and economic separation, caused by worsened opportunities for the poor and resulting in more destructive long-term consequences for them and the society as a whole. We begin with the idea that global economic restructuring has since about 1975 altered the way political and social institutions work at every level in America. Until politics and economics are again reshaped, the problems of urban poverty will remain severe. Reshaping may begin as the pressures from urban separation force community-level institutions and politics to respond; in their response we believe these institutions should be strengthened, restructured, and redirected. Multi-local coalitions should be formed to press for re-allocation of federal resources in favor of domestic needs and for re-regulation of the national economy in favor of workers and common citizens. Only then can a successful attack begin on the problems of persistent poverty. To set the stage for directing the reader's attention to the conditions under which neighborhood organizations and municipal governments can mount a successful attack that will modify the structure and management of the national political economy, we have collected props from a wide-ranging survey. We begin by looking at such broad concerns as the behavior of the global economy, and we conclude with a focus on such narrow questions as the viability of particular municipal programs to alleviate poverty. In the middle sections, our survey shows in detail how persistent poverty in American cities is connected to various influential structures and processes: the global economy, the U.S. industrial structure, federal social policy, metropolitan labor markets, and finally, local politics and policy. We imagine a network of connections. At each of five nodes some of these processes are going through changes, being "restructured" or reorganized. Until quite recently it was assumed that basic needs--such as housing, education, health care, neighborhood safety, and jobs--could be made available to nearly all Americans. Programs to provide these necessities had been expanding for over 50 years, the guarantee becoming over time more accepted as a social responsibility; but suddenly this basic commitment to a social contract has been changed. American society now promises little and delivers less to people or communities who cannot provide for themselves. In the process of transformation, the world's richest nation is creating a third-world sub-society within its own borders. Policymakers have adopted three ways of thinking about these emerging problems. Some hold to the notion that poverty is increasing because a lax welfare state has generated a large group of "nonparticipants," "marginal people," bums. Probably a larger group of policymakers think the rising problems of the poor are caused simply by cutbacks in resources devoted to social equity. A third group sees poverty as an almost inevitable consequence of the vagaries of the market, made worse in recent years by globalization of the economy and lack of a national economic plan. Our argument is that the recent upsurge in persistent urban poverty has been generated by a particular set of American political responses to transformations in structure of the global and domestic economies, exacerbated considerably by a long process of highly subsidized suburbanization and by racism. The purpose of this book is to support this argument by reviewing and interpreting research on the global economy, industrial change, and public policy. In doing this we are able to estimate their combined effects on cities, neighborhoods, and residents. Since the late 1970s the global economy has become increasingly integrated, and American corporations have moved world-wide in search of cheaper ways to produce to meet stiff competition. As a result, American workers have felt a steady erosion of their power and a persistent reduction in their standard of living. There is a trickledown effect in reverse, a backwash that swamps American labor. Unskilled workers have been marginalized by widespread plant shut-downs and blue-collar lay-offs, and they have found a paucity of good career ladders, stuck instead in low-wage, dead-end, service jobs. At the same time, many poorly prepared immigrants have arrived; many women have come to head families, finding themselves unable to support households on their own;) and discrimination against minorities has continued. While some Americans have benefitted financially from the post 1970 changes, the poorest have been pushed down or cut adrift. The federal government, preoccupied with global-economy issues, and careful to be responsive to the growing demands of its new, upper-middle-class, suburban constituencies, has sacrificed the urban poor. State and local governments have also retrenched, adding to the crisis, by responding to demands for austerity from business, tax-paying voters and public officials alike. When the squeeze came from the global economy, public institutions were unprepared to relieve the inevitable difficulties the poor would encounter. Corporate redeployment and government economizing insured that city labor markets would turn sour, especially for basic jobs. Federal funds for cities and poor people were cut and guarantees for benefits and services were reduced. The tax revolt was managed by new politics that coalesced after 35 years of white, middle-class suburbanization the budget reductions hit hardest of all on public jobs and services in central cities. In the scramble to survive from shutdowns, contractions, layoffs, and budget cuts, everyone with any power tried to get out and get ahead, and those with less power got left farther and farther behind, increasingly separated from the main society. The majority of Black Americans and Latinos already were subjected to relatively low wages, bad housing, and poor schools. Most women supporting children by themselves already had great difficulties. New immigrants from Latin America and South East Asia were already near the bottom. In earlier years, economic growth and the development of a more liberal society had allowed some in such situations to escape the poverty of the ghetto and the bad barrios, and because many believed in this promise, some communities had an aura of hopefulness. But with the job losses and the program cuts replacing sound economic growth, and the new self-interest replacing community and collective interests, the situation worsened for those left behind; their expectations plummeted, and their communities became isolated. We find that cities and even neighborhoods have had to turn more and more to their own energies and resources. It is true that they are strapped tightly to small budgets, have made little dent so far on the most serious problems, and will ultimately have to depend on private sector job growth and re-established, well-funded, federal transfer programs. But local governments and community-based organizations are close to problems, and they have both the opportunity to become involved and the need to revitalize these poor communities. Their role in solving community problems has escalated over the last two decades, along with rising expectations for them to intervene. City halls and community organizations are therefore forced to innovate, press demands, and represent neighborhoods. From this pessimistic dilemma arises the main line of our optimism, our principle recommendation for policy. At the national level, action to reduce poverty is at a standstill, or worse. At the local level, resources are not available. But because problems are deep, apparent, and threatening to local authorities, local political movements have grown more successful; both community organizations and city halls have turned seriously to the task of dealing with poverty. As they well know, on their own they cannot succeed; but through cooperation, through state and national coalitions, and by means of other influences on national politics, these progressive local political movements can move toward success. New policies should be directed toward strengthening such possibilities. In Chapter One, after a cursory review of theories of poverty, we lay out our major thesis and preview the various arguments and findings of the book. In Chapter Two we document the appalling conditions of poor and minority people in central cities, explaining why persistent, concentrated, urban poverty ought to be seen in relation to the separations that result from inequalities in the entire distribution of income and wealth. In Chapter Three we analyze the connections between the structure and movement of the new global economy and the dilemmas of the poorest Americans. There we examine widely dispersed, globalized markets and production arrangements that are managed by the tightly centralized control systems of major corporations. In Chapter Four we extend the arguments and see how changing industrial patterns have worsened the structure of opportunities facing most American cities and workers. Simultaneous dispersal of jobs and centralization of management have removed good jobs from cities and left behind minorities and women, and their children. With limited social contact outside their embattled neighborhoods and with weakened social contracts tying them to the larger community, these people have settled into a persistent poverty that leaves few routes for escape. In Chapter Five we first see how economic changes have led to a new, conservative politics. We then examine policies of the federal government, local government, and community-based organizations, finding what is innovative about them and what constrains them. There we argue that only through local reconstruction and a new organization of politics, involving grass-roots and neighborhood groups in new ways, will pressure build up for the required transformation in national politics that will rechannel funds toward domestic needs. In the end, democratic participation and politics will have to take control of the economy, or else poverty will indeed persist. The sources for new change are to be found in coalitions formed from below. Finally, in Chapter Six we propose specific ways that new energy and attention can be refocused in improved policies at all levels of government. There is a tension throughout this study. We are faced with a conflict between two findings. On the one hand, powerful global economic forces play a major role in determining the life chances of American citizens. On the other hand, the situation of the poor can be radically improved through a staged process of local empowerment, the formation of new political coalitions, and the consequent reformulation of a national agenda. The reader may find, concerning the first view, that the arguments in Chapters Three and Four appear to be top-down and accepting of the force of structural arrangements like competitive markets, and too despairing of the potential good influence of human agency, through social movements, political action, and the like. The arguments in these chapters display our deep concern that global economic forces be better understood by the nation's policymakers, so that global contributions to severe poverty in American cities can be traced through to corporate behavior in a newly expanded, more competitive, and highly integrated world market. At the other extreme, the reader may find that the tasks we set in Chapters Five and Six for changed local governments and coalitions of local forces are too demanding; chances for challenging and improving federal policy may seem remote. We acknowledge this risk of asking the reader to examine both sides of the question, but do so because the problems of urban poverty in the United States today are immense, and their resolution will require complex solutions and far-reaching changes. This study began in 1989 for a report to the Rockefeller Foundation on the current state of research on persistent and severe urban poverty. The idea grew our of the authors' discussion with James Gibson and Erol Ricketts, who were concerned with the relationships among economic structure, local institutions, and persistent poverty. The Foundation's Equal Opportunity Division provided generous financial support. Our survey of research and analysis was done together with a team of graduate students at Cornell University and the University of California at Berkeley; Lisa Bornstein, David Campt, and Elizabeth Mueller researched and drafted chapters; Robert Letcher, Sharon Lord, Susan Sullivan, and George Washington assisted. The work was done mainly under the auspices of the University of California's Institute of Urban and Regional Development. We thank Marie Floyd, David Van Arnam, and Demetra Dentes (at Cornell) for editing and typing; and Cathy Girardeau and Arleda Martinez, who efficiently helped with typing.

Crowded and isolated Black and Latino neighborhoods are marked by economic deprivation and social depression. Many residents of these neighborhoods are disconnected from the larger society, no longer able to share in the values or social norms of majority America. The study of this concentrated poverty has become a new mini-industry. There has been a spate of books, reports, and articls on the phenomenon, which is variously known as "persistent poverty,", the underclass," or the "new poor." The authors of this book reject the label "underclass" because it is demeaning and "new poor" because it is inaccurate. We find it more profitable to focus on the problem of separation. Poverty has always afflicted America, and even long-term poverty has been an issue during other periods of the nation's development. Today, American society faces a period of growing social and economic separation, caused by worsened opportunities for the poor and resulting in more destructive long-term consequences for them and the society as a whole. We begin with the idea that global economic restructuring has since about 1975 altered the way political and social institutions work at every level in America. Until politics and economics are again reshaped, the problems of urban poverty will remain severe. Reshaping may begin as the pressures from urban separation force community-level institutions should be strengthened, restructured, and redirected. Multi-local coalitions should be formed to press for re-allocation of federal resources in favor of domestic needs and for re-regulation of the national economy in favor of workers and common citizens. Only then can a successful attack begin on the problems of persistent poverty. To set the stage for directing the reader's attention to the conditions under which neighborhood organizations and municipal governments can mount a successful attack that will modify the structure and management of the national political economy, we have collected props from a wide-ranging survey. We begin by looking at such broad concerns as the behavior of the global economy, and we conclude with a focus on such narrow questions as the viability of particular municipal programs to alleviate poverty. In the middle sections, our survey shows in detail how persistent poverty in American cities is connected to various influential structures and processes: the global economy, the U.S. industrial structure, federal social policy metropolitan labor markets, and finally, local politics and policy. We imagine a network of connections. At each of five nodes some of these processes are going through changes, being "restructured" or reorganized. Until quite recently it was assumed that basic needs -- such as housing, education, health care, neighborhood safety, and jobs -- could be made available to nearly all Americans. Programs to provide these necessities had been expanding for over 50 years, the guarantee becoming over time more accepted as a social responsibility; but suddenly this basic commitment to a social contract has been changed. American society now promises little and delivers less to people or communities who cannot provide for themselves. In the process of transformation, the world's richest nation is creating a third-world sub-society within its own borders. Policymakers have adopted three ways of thinking about these emerging problems. Some hold to the notion that poverty is increasing because a lax welfare state has generated a large group of "non-participants," "marginal people," bums. Probably a larger group of policymakers think the rising problems of the poor are caused simply by cutbacks in resources devoted to social equity. A third group sees poverty as an almost inevitable consequence of the vagaries of the market, made worse in recent years by globalization of the economy and lack of a national economic plan. Our argument is that the recent upsurge in persistent urban poverty has been generated by a particular set of American political responses to transformations in structure of the global and domestic economies, exacerbated considerably by a long process of highly subsidized suburbanization and by racism. The purpose of this book is to support this argument by reviewing and interpreting research on the global economy, industrial change, and public policy. In doing this we are able to estimate their combined effects on cities, neighborhoods, and residents. Since the late 1970s the global economy has become increasingly integrated, and American corporations have moved world-wide in search of cheaper ways to produce to meet stiff competition. As a result, American workers have felt a steady erosion of their power and a persistent reduction in their standard of living. There is a trickle-down effect in reverse, a backwash that swamps American labor. Unskilled workers have been marginalized by widespread plant shut-downs and blue-collar lay-offs, and they have found a paucity of good career ladders, stuck instead in low-wage, dead-end, service jobs. At the same time, many poorly prepared immigrants have arrived; many women have come to head families, finding themselves unable to support households on their own;) and discrimination against minorities has continued. While some Americans have benefited financially from the post 1970 changes, the poorest have been pushed down or cut adrift. The federal government, preoccupied with global-economy issues, and careful to be responsive to the growing demands of its new, upper-middle-class, suburban constituencies, has sacrificed the urban poor. State and local governments have also retrenched, adding to the crisis, by responding to demands for austerity from business, tax-paying voters and public officials alike. When the squeeze came from the global economy, public institutions were unprepared to relieve the inevitable difficulties the poor would encounter. Corporate redeployment and government economizing insured that city labor markets would turn sour, especially for basic jobs. Federal funds for cities and poor people were cut and guarantees for benefits and services were reduced. The tax revolt was managed by new politics that coalesced after 35 years of white, middle-class suburbanization; the budget reductions hit hardest of all on public jobs and services in central cities. In the scramble to survive from shutdowns, contractions, layoffs, and budget cuts, everyone with any power tried to get out and get ahead, and those with less power got left farther and farther behind, increasingly separated from the main society. The majority of Black Americans and Latinos already were subjected to relatively low wages, bad housing, and poor schools. Most women supporting children by themselves already had great difficulties. New immigrants from Latin America and South East Asia were already near the bottom. In earlier years, economic growth and the development of a more liberal society had allowed some in such situations to escape the poverty of the ghetto and the bad barrios, and because many believed in this promise, some communities had an aura of hopefulness. But with the job losses and the program cuts replacing around economic growth, and the new self-interest replacing community and collective interests, the situation worsened for those left behind; their expectations plummeted, and their communities became isolated. We find that cities and even neighborhoods have had to turn more and more to their own energies and resources. It is true that they are strapped tightly to small budgets, have made little dent so far on the most serious problems, and will ultimately have to depend on private-sector job growth and re-established, well-funded, federal transfer programs. But local governments and community-based organizations are close to problems, and they have both the opportunity to become involved and the need to revitalize these poor communities. Their role in solving community problems has escalated over the last two decades, along with rising expectations for them to intervene. City halls and community organizations are therefore forced to innovate, press demands, and represent neighborhoods. From this pessimistic dilemma arises the main line of our optimism, our principle recommendation for policy. At the national level, action to reduce poverty is at a standstill, or worse. At the local level, resources are not available. But because problems are deep, apparent, and threatening to local authorities, local political movements have grown more successful; both community organizations and city halls have turned seriously to the task of dealing with poverty. As they well know, on their own they cannot succeed; but through cooperation, through state and national coalitions, and by means of other influences on national politics, these progressive local political movements can move toward success. New policies should be directed toward strengthening such possibilities. In Chapter One, after a cursory review of theories of poverty, we lay out our major thesis and preview the various arguments and findings of the book. In Chapter Two we document the appalling conditions of poor and minority people in central cities, explaining why persistent, concentrated, urban poverty ought to be seen in relation to the separations that result from inequalities in the entire distribution of income and wealth. In Chapter Three we analyze the connections between the structure and movement of the new global economy and the dilemma of the poorest Americans. There we examine widely dispersed, globalized markets and production arrangements that are managed by the tightly centralized control systems of major corporations. In Chapter Four we extend the arguments and see how changing industrial patterns have worsened the structure of opportunities facing most American cities and workers. Simultaneous dispersal of jobs and centralization of management have removed good jobs from cities and left behind minorities and women, and their children. With limited social contact outside their embattled neighborhoods and with weakened social contracts tying them to the larger community, these people have settled into a persistent poverty that leaves few routes for escape. In Chapter Five we first see how economic changes have led to a new, conservative politics. We then examine policies of the federal government, local government, and community-based organizations, finding what is innovative about them and what constrains them. There we argue that only through local reconstruction and a new organization of politics, involving grass-roots and neighborhood groups in new ways, will pressure build up for the required transformation in national politics that will rechannel funds toward domestic needs. In the end, democratic participation and politics will have to take control of the economy, or else poverty will indeed persist. The sources for new change are to be found in coalitions formed from below. Finally, in Chapter Six we propose specific ways that new energy and attention can be refocused in improved policies at all levels of government. There is a tension throughout this study. We are faced with a conflict between two findings. On the one hand, powerful global economic forces play a major role in determining the life chances of American citizens. On the other hand, the situation of the poor can be radically improved through a staged process of local empowerment, the formation of new political coalitions, and the consequent reformation of a national agenda. The reader may find, concerning the first view, that the arguments in Chapters Three and Four appear to be top-down and accepting of the force of structural arrangements like competitive markets, and too despairing of the potential good influence of human agency, through social movements, political action, and the like. The arguments in these chapters display our deep concern that global economic forces be better understood by the nation's policymakers, so that global contributions to severe poverty in American cities can be traced through to corporate behavior in a newly expanded, more competitive, and highly integrated world market. At the other extreme, the reader may find that the tasks we set in Chapters Five and Six for changed local governments and coalitions of local forces are too demanding; chances for challenging and improving federal policy may seem remote. We acknowledge this risk of asking the reader to examine both sides of the question, but do so because the problems of urban poverty in the United States today are immense, and their resolution will require complex solutions and far-reaching changes. This study began in 1989 for a report to the Rockefeller Foundation on the current state of research on persistent and severe urban poverty. The idea grew out of the authors' discussion with James Gibson and Erol Ricketta, who were concerned with the relationships among economic structure, local institutions, and persistent poverty. The Foundation's Equal Opportunity Division provided generous financial support. Our survey of research and analysis was done together with a team of graduate students at Cornell University and the University of California at Berkeley; Lisa Bornstein, David Campt, and Elizabeth Mueller researched and drafted chapters; Robert Letcher, Sharon Lord, Susan Sullivan, and George Washington assisted. The work was done mainly under the auspices of the University of California's Institute of Urban and Regional Development. We thank Marie Floyd, David Van Arnam, and Demetra Dentes (et Cornell) for editing and typing; and Cathy Girardeau and Arieda Martinez, who efficiently helped with typing.

In terms of the size of its population and its economic potential the Republic of Bashkortostan is one of the most important regions in the Russian Federation. Oil reserves and a large oil processing industry make it one of the net contributors to the federal tax system. Within the federation Bashkortostan has carved out a position for itself that allows the republic's leadership to operate more or less free of interference from the federal executive. At the same time, the republic's president, Murtaza Rakhimov, has ascended into the ranks of Russia's most influential politicians. Under his leadership Bashkortostan has become one of the most authoritarian regional regimes in Russia; it is also, however, remarkably stable. This two-part report examines the origins of the political regime in Bashkortostan. Part I examines the conditions that have allowed this regime to emerge since the beginning of the 1990s and portrays the new institutional order. Part II of the report analyses the structural features of the republic's political system under its current president and highlights the form that relations with the federal centre have taken as an important underlying condition for the stability of Murtaza Rakhimov's rule. The report is based on analyses of Russian press reports and original documents, the work of Russian social scientists and interviews conducted by the author. (BIOst-Dok)

In our Feature Article, Lina Gong writes about the need to adapt humanitarian practices to new environments and constraints. The sector needs to reform, adapt and innovate to prepare for much more complex and uncertain futures. This issue's On the Ground features some of the relief and fundraising efforts that Singaporean humanitarian organisations - Mercy Relief, Singapore Red Cross, World Vision Singapore - have undertaken. Our members in academia have also continued to publish articles and reports, covering a diverse range of topics including humanitarian financing, future-ready humanitarian action, and perceptions of COVID-19 risks. One highlight is the ASEAN Disaster Resilience Outlook: Preparing for a Future Beyond 2025, which assesses the prospects for realising the ASEAN Vision 2025 on disaster management and anticipates the action needed to prepare ASEAN for disaster risks in the decade after 2025. As always, In the Spotlight features a whole host of upcoming events and opportunities for collaboration.