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Daniele Benzi, Ximena Zapata Mafla "Petrolio e petrodollari nella politica internazionale del Venezuela. Una breve rassegna storica (1958-2012)", in: Visioni LatinoAmericane, 11 (2014), pp. 63-80 ; Gli autori disegnano una breve rassegna storica delle politiche d'integrazione regionale e di cooperazione internazionale attuate dal Venezuela nel periodo che va dalla restaurazione della democrazia rappresentativa, nel 1958, fino ad oggi. Sebbene venga individuato un chiaro spartiacque tra le varie tappe del regime del Pacto de Punto Fijo (1958-1998) e l'inizio del processo bolivariano, viene sostenuta la tesi che l'agire venezuelano nello spazio della politica internazionale, come nei progetti d'integrazione regionale e di cooperazione internazionale, sia fortemente condizionato dal fatto che il Paese è strutturalmente dipendente dal petrolio e dalla rendita petrolifera. Ciò comporta la persistenza di modelli, vincoli e peculiarità che sembrano incidere in modo ambiguo nel perseguire le mete emancipatorie del progetto bolivariano. Los autores ofrecen una breve resena histórica de las politicas de integración regional y cooperación internacional puestas en practica por Venezuela desde la restauración de la democracia representativa, en 1958, hasta la fecha. Si bien se identifica un nitido parte aguas entre las varias etapas del régimen del Pacto de Punto Fijo (1958-1998) y el inicio del proceso bolivariano, en este anàlisis se insiste en que el desenvolvimiento de la politica internacional venezolana y de sus proyectos de integración regional y cooperación internacional lleva marcadamente el sello que define estructuralmente a Venezuela como un Pais rentista petrolero, implicando la continuidad de ciertos patrones, condicionamientos y peculiaridades que parecerian incidir de manera ambigua en la consecución de los objetivos emancipadores del proyecto bolivariano. The authors provide a brief historical review of the regional integration and international cooperation policies implemented by Venezuela since the restoration of representative democracy in 1958 to date. Even though a clear breakup between the various stages of Punto Fijo Regime (1958-1998) and the beginning of the Bolivarian process is identified, this analysis emphasizes that the Venezuelan foreign policy and the regional integration and international cooperation projects it promotes, markedly bear the imprint that structurally defines the country as an oil-rentier state. This implies the continuity of certain patterns, constraints and peculiarities which seem to ambiguously affect the emancipatory purposes of the Bolivarian project when characterizing its actual function¬ing and assessing its impact.

Globalization and quests for global presence have led multinational corporations (MNCs) to expand into newer markets with high returns. This expansion has increased competition for talented workers and driven the employment of an increasing number of expatriates to manage business operations overseas. Review of the literature shows that poor job performance can be related to poor cultural adjustment in new foreign locations. It is therefore critical to ensure that corporations are sending capable candidates for these roles overseas so that employing expatriates remain a good investment for MNCs. Due to improvements in political and economic situations in Africa, more international corporations are viewing the continent as a new market and are sending expatriates to manage business operations. A great deal of research on expatriate adjustment has been conducted in the last two decades. However, these studies have been predominately conducted in the west, with very little of this research having been conducted in Africa in general, or in Nigeria in particular, despite knowledge of the overwhelming adjustment challenges the continent poses to expatriates. The purpose of this study is to examine factors influencing expatriates' adjustment in Nigeria. A survey method was used to gather data from expatriates who work in different organizations in Nigeria. The results of this study show that age, gender, previous experience, cross-cultural training (CCT), socialization, and job satisfaction were predictors of expatriates' adjustment in Nigeria. This research is important because it may assist human resource professionals in planning and implementing an appropriate CCT program for employees relocating to Nigeria. It may help to bridge the gap in the literature on this topic with regards to Nigeria, Africa, and other emerging nations. It could also contribute to a better understanding.

In 1909, Arnold van Gennep wrote a book on the rites of passage where he discussed what he called the liminal phase (from Lat. limes, border, pl. limites) through which boys in a number of cultures had to pass in order to become men. With his Dutch name, his German birth, his move to France with his divorced mother at the ripe age of six, and his interest in the Arab world, he was nothing if not a man in transition between different life worlds. His scholarly life, too, was a life of transit; from haute école to haute école, from France to Switzerland. To top it all, when the institutionalisation of the social sciences in France was finally hitting its stride with the emergence of Durkheim's année-school, van Gennep was marginalised. There was no closure to his scholarly travels. Van Gennep remained liminal, remained in becoming. In his own terms, his rite de passage never ended. He went from pre-liminality to liminality – a condition that his greatest follower, the symbolic interactionalist anthropologist Victor Turner characterised as existing betwixt and between socially recognised positions – without entering the post-liminal phase of having been fully incorporated into one of those already existing positions. Van Gennep made it his life to deal with the uncertainties and the danger that any social order ascribes to those who are between categories. With this Forum, liminality arrives within the discipline of International Relations (IR) in earnest. The rest of this Introduction will give some historical background that situates the Forum's three post-structural protagonists, note how their undertaking is part of a wider thrust towards process-oriented and relation-oriented work within the social sciences and introduce the pieces.

This article concerns the politics of environmental policy as it has been evolving in the South African city of Durban. How has the end of apartheid impacted on environmental issues and concerns? Since 1994 (actually 1996 from the standpoint of local government), the transition to democracy has brought about a shift from purely green policy to the growing salience of what we may call brown issues. The article first considers the elements of what we would now denote as environmental policy under the old regime and then outlines the policy shifts in recent years. The second half of the article looks at what have emerged as the most significant policy issues with regard to the environment, the future of the South Coast Industrial Basin, the environmental concerns that arise from the construction of new housing settlements and (more briefly) debates about the future of the Bay of Natal and some of the issues at play in the development of an integrated social health policy. With South Africa's emergence from isolation, international mandates for environmental controls and planning have been formally adopted; this article argues that the actual application of policy from word to deed is another matter. Democratization has opened up debates and created a far healthier climate for the discussion of urban issues, but formal institutional and procedural changes are far from sufficient to ensure new approaches on the ground. The presence or absence of effective environmental lobbying from community organizations and of environmental champions within the bureaucracy are critical factors. The planning process in Durban, inevitably subject to immediate political pressures, is still far from achieving the more holistic ambition of integrating environmental and developmental concerns.

'Regardless of how you define or measure it, globalization is real and its impact on state power is significant', says the globalist. 'But how do you know?' replies the sceptic. In this opening interchange one sees the origin of a controversy that after almost a decade shows few signs of abating. Globalists continue to maintain that there are big, fin-de-siècle transformations under way in the world at large, which can be laid at the door of something called globalization. This new era—popularized as a 'world without borders' and symbolized by the dismantling of the Berlin Wall—ostensibly came into its own where the Cold War left off. Globalists of all shades see a new world order in the making, marked by the de-territorialization of economic and political affairs, the ascendance of highly mobile, transnational forms of capital, and the growth of global forms of governance. By the same token, globalization sceptics, scrutinizing very similar empirical terrain, continue to pose the same insistent question. The dispute between globalists and sceptics is not about the reality of change; it is about the nature and significance of the changes under way as well as the driving forces behind them. 'There is something out there', agree the sceptics, but it is not necessarily, or even primarily, responsible for what is going on 'in here'. The changes that fundamentally interest globalists are usually less economic than political. That is to say that their efforts to analyse or demonstrate economic change—the extent to which national economies have become more interconnected through trade, production, finance, and the growing web of international rules and institutions—are often a prelude to the political project.

Book reviewed in this article:Beauregard, R., editor, 1989: Economic restructuring and political response.Blanke, B., Heinelt, H., and Macke, C.‐W. 1987: Großstadt und Arbeitslosigkeitein Problemsyndrom im Netz lokaler Sozialpolitik.Block, F.R. 1988: Revising state theory: essays in politics and postindustrialism.Breckner, I. and Krummacher, M. 1985: Regionalentwicklung zwischen Technologieboom und Resteverwertung.Krummacher, M., Schrooten, F. and Wupper, H. 1986: Umbruch der Stadt — z. B. Bochum.Forrest, R. and Murie, A. 1988: Selling the welfare state: the privatisation of public housing.Gottdiener, M. 1987: The decline of urban politics: political theory and the crisis of the local state.Harris, A., Lloyd, G. and Newlands, D. 1988: The impact of oil on the Aberdeen economy.Huttman, E. and van Vliet, W. editors, 1988: Handbook of housing and the built environment in the United States.Keim, D., editor, 1989: Arbeit an der Stadt: Plädoyers für eine selbstproduktive Politik der Stadtentwicklung.Lefèvre, Ch., Body‐Gendrot, S. et al. 1988: Les villes des Etats‐Unis.Peet, R., editor, 1987: International capitalism and industrial restructuring: a critical analysis.Porteous, J.M. 1989: Planned to death: the annihilation of a place called Howdendyke.Prigge, W., editor, 1987: Die Materialität des Städtischen: Stadtentwicklung im gesellschaftlichen Umbruch.Scott, A.J. 1988: New industrial spaces.Smith, M. P. 1988: City, state and market: the political economy of urban society.Solomos, J. 1988: Black youth, racism and the state: the politics of ideology and policy.Stoker, G., 1988: The politics of local government.Tomlinson, R. and Addleson, M., editors, 1988: Regional restructuring under apartheid: urban and regional policies in contemporary South Africa.Weiss, M. A. 1987: The rise of the community builders: the American real estate industry and American land planning.White, M. 1987. American neighbourhoods and residential differentiation.Wolch, J. and Dear, M., editors, 1989: The power of geography, how territory shapes social life.

Abstract
Two controversial rulings of the Grand Chamber of the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR) deserve global attention, since they declined to scrutinize on human rights grounds the prevalent move towards enhanced border controls and externalization practices that define European asylum law and policy at this juncture. In ND and NT, judges deemed the Spanish policy of 'hot returns', without access to basic procedural guarantees, of those climbing border fences to be compatible with human rights. A few weeks later, the Grand Chamber thwarted enduring hopes for judicial innovation in MN when it reasserted a 'primarily territorial' understanding of State jurisdiction and declared inadmissible the claim of a Syrian family from the war-torn town of Aleppo to a humanitarian visa. While the decision on humanitarian visas means that 'non-arrival' policies cannot usually be challenged, critical inspection of the ND and NT judgment displays a confounding combination of restrictive arguments and dynamic elements beneath the surface of a seemingly clear-cut outcome. This lack of judicial precision, which was bound to cause heated debate about the practical implications of the judgment, reflects the basic tension between the prohibition of refoulement and the absence of a right to asylum in classic accounts of international refugee law. It will be argued that the judicial vindication of the Spanish 'hot returns' policy does not call into question non-refoulement obligations; it aims at identifying graded procedural standards for different categories of refugees and migrants. By contrast, the novel insistence on the abstract availability of legal channels of entry presents itself as a humanitarian fig leaf for the acceptance of strict control practices. At an intermediate level of abstraction, the two rulings mark a watershed moment, indicating the provisional endpoint of an impressive period of interpretative dynamism on the part of the ECtHR, which has played a critical role in the progressive evolution of international refugee and human rights law over the past three decades. Experts in asylum law who have become accustomed to supranational courts advancing the position of individuals will benefit from the insights of constitutional theory and the social sciences to rationalize why the former vigour has given way to a period of hesitation and potential standstill, at least in Europe. This analysis employs the perspective of strategic litigation to discuss contextual factors hindering the continued dynamism of human rights jurisprudence in Europe at this juncture.

From refugees fleeing wars or natural disasters to economic migrants pursuing better paid jobs abroad, international migration is an inescapable part of the modern world. Migration Between Nations: A Global Introduction provides a succinct and accessible overview of the varied types of migrants who cross national boundaries. Drawing upon a wide-ranging selection of case studies and the latest research findings, migration patterns and recent trends throughout the world are surveyed and summarized, with particular attention to movement from the global south to the global north. In a highly inter-disciplinary analysis, the social, cultural and economic integration of migrants and of their offspring in their new homelands are also explored. Employing approaches from a number of disciplines, the methods and techniques that researchers use to study various aspects of migration and integration are also explained. Migration Between Nations: A Global Introduction will be essential reading for students in a wide range of disciplines in the humanities and social sciences, including sociology, anthropology, ethnic studies, geography, global studies, history, and political science

This open access book gives a concise introduction to the practical implementation of monetary policy by modern central banks. It describes the conventional instruments used in advanced economies and the unconventional instruments that have been widely adopted since the financial crisis of 2007–2008. Illuminating the role of central banks in ensuring financial stability and as last resort lenders, it also offers an overview of the international monetary framework. A flow-of-funds framework is used throughout to capture this essential dimension in a consistent and unifying manner, providing a unique and accessible resource on central banking and monetary policy, and its integration with financial stability. Addressed to professionals as well as bachelors and masters students of economics, this book is suitable for a course on economic policy. Useful prerequisites include at least a general idea of the economic institutions of an economy, and knowledge of macroeconomics and monetary economics, but readers need not be familiar with any specific macroeconomic models.

Introduction: embedded activism and political change in a semi-authoritarian context / Peter Ho -- Self-imposed censorship and de-politicized politics in China: green activism, or a color revolution? / Peter Ho -- Corporatist control of environmental non-governmental organizations: a state perspective / Jiang Ru and Leonard Ortolano -- "Of seven mouths and eight tongues": media, civil society, and the rise of a green public sphere / Craig Calhoun and Guobin Yang -- Grassland campaigns during the collective era: socialist politics and local strategies in Uxin Ju / Hong Jiang -- Channeling dissent: the institutionalization of environmental complaint resolution / Anna Brettell -- Not against the state, just protecting residents' interests: an urban movement in a Shanghai neighborhood / Jiangang Zhu and Peter Ho -- Caged by boundaries: NGO cooperation at the Sino-Russian border / Yanfei Sun and Maria Tysiachniouk -- Transnational advocacy at the grassroots: benefits and risks of international cooperation / Katherine Morton -- Perspectives of time and change: rethinking embedded green activism in China / Peter Ho and Richard Louis Edmonds

In the increasingly global economy, domestic tax policies have taken on a new importance for international economics. This unique volume compares the tax reform experiences of Canada and the United States, two countries with the world's largest bilateral flow of trade and investment. With the signing of the U.S.-Canada Free Trade Agreement and the tax reforms of the 1980s, there has been some harmonization of tax systems. But geographic, cultural, and political characteristics shape distinct national social policies that may impede harmonization. As the U.S. and Canadian economies become even more integrated, differences in tax systems will have important effects, in particular on the relative rates of economic growth. In this timely study, scholars from both countries show that, while the United States and Canada exhibit similar corporate tax structures and income tax systems, they have very different approaches to sales tax and social security taxes. Despite these differences, the two countries generate roughly the same amounts of revenue, produce similar costs of capital, and produce comparable distributions of income

Статья посвящена актуальным проблемам взаимоотношений Азербайджана и России в период с 1991 года по 2008 год. В работе рассматриваются формы, методы, специфика указанных отношений. Авторы на основе богатого фактического материала описывают взаимоотношения двух суверенных стран, рассматривают результаты визитов как глав государств, так и иных лиц в виде принятия нормативных актов, договоров и соглашений и выявляют тенденции дальнейшего развития данных отношений. ; article is devoted to one of the actual problems of international relations between the Azerbaijan Republic and the Russian Federation. Here it is seen the main directions, character, forms, methods, contents, specificity and scales of political relations between two sovereign states in 1991 2008. Authors on the basis of rich, concrete and factual materials generalizes valuable experience which is gathered in a given sphere between the Azerbaijan Republic and the Russian Federation, gives political assessment of this experience and shows its significance in development of all sided connections between these republics in different spheres of social life in the future.

The present paper will not venture into a thorough analysis of the historical data After all, what is the use of venturing to analyse statements of statesmen and government officials made "at times under special circumstances", when a short run consideration is apt to upset any rough conclusion. It is simply important that one should try and defect the overall outline and trends, the projection of events and consequences on the future - in other words the effect on the world of changes made, and what the new political and economic constellation of the world system actually is. Such a concept of the new status can lead to the confirmation of certain new parameters in the world system or of certain variables determining the margins within which countries and economies will function in the years to come. This system of new parameters and variables may restrict freedom of function, create a more monolithic international system with m

U.K. Department for International Development (DfID) ; Public opinion research of the Russian population attitudes towards Official Development Assistance(ODA) was undertaken in 2010 as part of the DFID supported WB Russia as a Donor Initiative (RDI) program assisting Russian Government in its development aid efforts. The research was conducted by Levada-Center, an independent polling and sociological company, using qualitative (in-depth interviews with opinion leaders) and quantitative (nationally representative survey) methodology. Volumes 1 and 2 report respectively on the findings of the qualitative and quantitative surveys. The qualitative survey included 25 opinion leaders interviews (public officials, NGOs, academia, business community, and the media), conducted in the cities of Moscow, St. Petersburg, Krasnoyarsk, and Rostov. The interviews covered economic situation in Russia; Russia's global role; potential recipient countries of Russian ODA and types of assistance; and overall awareness of Russian ODA activities. The opinion leaders share a common feeling that Russia is a "rich country with poor people" that still should take increasingly active role in development aid, being an influential "world power". Opinion leaders believe that Russian ODA should focus on: (i) countries affected by natural disasters; (ii) neighboring former Soviet bloc countries that have traditionally been "a zone of Russia's historic responsibility"; and (iii) countries posing global security threats. "Giving a fishing rod, not fish" was indicated as a preferred approach to development aid. Joint ODA programs with the World Bank and other multilateral organizations were supported as a tool to strengthen Russia's donor role, learn international practices, and reduce corruption risks. Most of the interviewees had little knowledge of the Russian ODA, but they thought it was matching the national interests, and were interested to learn more on ODA. A need to inform the general public about Russia's donor role was highlighted. The nationwide survey included 1503 respondents from 96 cities and 35 rural settlements located in 44 regions of Russia. The sample was nationally representative of the Russian adult population (aged 18 years and older). The survey showed that 3/4 of the population approve Russia's development aid to the poorest countries with preferred areas of Russia support being countries affected by natural disasters (64 percent support) and poor CIS countries (22 percent). Potential assistance could be provided in a form of sending Russian specialists to work in developing countries (58 percent); educating their students in Russia (51 percent); and supplying food and equipment at subsidized prices (30 percent). Medical care, access to basic education, and developing industrial facilities and infrastructure are seen as the areas of most effective assistance. Russia ODA collaboration with multilateral organizations is also seen favourably. Motivation of Russia ODA in the views of the respondents included: (i) shared moral responsibility for reduction of extreme poverty in developing countries; (ii) expansion of the circle of countries friendly to Russia; (iii) reduction the threat of terrorism and drug traffic between Russia and neighboring countries; and (iv) increase of Russia's influence and prestige in the world.