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Background: Global tobacco control is a major public health issue, as smoking-related disease burden remains high worldwide. The World Bank and the World Health Organization (WHO) are the driving forces in global tobacco control. However, little research has focused on their development, financing, decision-making, and accountability structures. Methods: We used two strategies to identify the development and structure of global tobacco control initiatives. First, we reviewed the published literature through electronic databases. Second, we conducted grey literature searching. Results: We identified four periods in the Bank's involvement in global tobacco control, from creation of the evidence base in the 1990s to the implementation of tax reforms. We identified three phases in the WHO's efforts, from its early recognition of the link between tobacco and health risks in the 1970s to its implementation of the Framework Convention on Tobacco Control. Both organisations are financed by a handful of private philanthropies, and face similar risks for effective tobacco control: reduced accountability and resource mobilisation, poor decision-making authority due to specific donor influence, and difficulty in monitoring and evaluation. Conclusions: Continued attention should be paid not only to the primary health-related outcomes of tobacco use, but also to the decision-making and financing structures to promote tobacco control activities.

This study maps how the UN as an organization is perceived by students of political science at universities in Norway. Through examination of students at different universities, we can achieve an understanding of students' knowledge and perspectives about the UN and aspects of the organization's work. The data was collected through in-depth interviews with nine students from three different universities in Norway who offer studies within political science. The interviews focused on getting data on the subjects' individual understanding and evaluation of the UN and how their perceptions have been influenced by their universities. The result can help create an understanding of the future of political science as a field in Norway. It will outline how students have come to possess their views, whether discussions as a teaching method affect their perspectives, and to which degree universities produce specific knowledge in their students that differ from other universities. ; submittedVersion ; M-IR

"This book goes beyond traditional minimum wage research to investigate the interplay between different country and sectoral institutional settings and actors' strategies in the field of minimum wage policies. It asks which strategies and motives, namely free collective bargaining, fair pay and/or minimum income protection, are emphasised by social actors with respect to the regulation and adaptation of (statutory) minimum wages. Taking an actor-centred institutionalist approach, and employing cross-country comparative studies, sector studies and single country accounts of change, the book relates institutional and labour market settings, actors' strategies and power resources with policy and practice outcomes. Looking at the key pay equity indicators of low wage development and women's over-representation among the low paid, it illuminates our understandings about the importance of historical junctures, specific constellations of social actors, and sector- and country-specific actor strategies. Finally, it underlines the important role of social dialogue in shaping an effective minimum wage policy. This book will be of key interest to scholars, students and policy-makers and practitioners in industrial relations, international human resource management, labour studies, labour market policy, inequality studies, trade union studies, European politics and political economy"--

Exceptional times call for exceptional measures—this formula is all too familiar in the domestic setting. Governments have often played loose with their state's constitution in the name of warding off an urgent threat. But after decades of increasing interconnectedness and emerging transnational governance, today one sees new forms of emergency politics that are cross-border in range. From the European Union to the World Health Organization, from supranational institutions to state governments acting in concert, the logic of emergency is embraced in international contexts, with Covid-19 the latest occasion. This Forum offers an entry-point into this emerging phenomenon. Taking as its point of departure two recent books, it examines the origins, forms, effects and normative stakes of emergency politics beyond the state. Among the matters discussed are the concept of emergency politics, the historical context of its contemporary forms, the patterns of decision-making associated with it, the implications for the legitimacy of transnational institutions, and the constitutional and political ways in which it might be contained. Transnational emergency politics seems likely to remain a central feature of the coming years, and our aim is to further its study in international relations.