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Background The International Classification of Diseases (ICD) is widely used by clinical coders worldwide for clinical coding morbidity data into administrative health databases. Accordingly, hospital data quality largely depends on the coders' skills acquired during ICD training, which varies greatly across countries. Objective To characterise the current landscape of international ICD clinical coding training. Method An online questionnaire was created to survey the 194 World Health Organization (WHO) member countries. Questions focused on the training provided to clinical coding professionals. The survey was distributed to potential participants who met specific criteria, and to organisations specialised in the topic, such as WHO Collaborating Centres, to be forwarded to their representatives. Responses were analysed using descriptive statistics. Results Data from 47 respondents from 26 countries revealed disparities in all inquired topics. However, most participants reported clinical coders as the primary person assigning ICD codes. Although training was available in all countries, some did not mandate training qualifications, and those that did differed in type and duration of training, with college or university degree being most common. Clinical coding certificates most frequently entailed passing a certification exam. Most countries offered continuing training opportunities, and provided a range of support resources for clinical coders. Conclusion Variability in clinical coder training could affect data collection worldwide, thus potentially hindering international comparability of health data. Implications These findings could encourage countries to improve their resources and training programs available for clinical coders and will ultimately be valuable to the WHO for the standardisation of ICD training.

This paper puts forth a theory explaining domestic backlash against international investment law by connecting media coverage—specifically the bias in the news media's selection of international disputes—to public opinion formation towards international agreements. To test our theory, we examine both the content and effects of the media's reporting on international disputes, focusing on the increasingly controversial form known as investor-state dispute settlement (ISDS). We find that newspaper outlets in both the United States and Canada have a bias in favor of covering disputes filed against their home country as opposed to those filed by home country firms. Using two national survey experiments fielded in the United States and Canada, we further find that the bias in news story selection has a strong negative effect on attitudes towards ISDS and related agreements, especially among highly nationalistic individuals.

The paper proposes the classification of health security as one of the non-military security dimensions of the second generation, determined more by globalization processes than by the end of the Cold War (first generation). The cognitive goal of the article is to identify and analyse the elements of the structure of international health security such as 1) the essence and specificity of securitization of threats to health security; 2) health security threats; 3) the referent object or whom it concerns; and 4) measures to ensure it. Specific to this dimension is the political motivation for its securitization. In the world of interrelated and global mobilities, what is significant for health security is the diversity of the development level, preferred values, and, consequently, the diversity of sensitivity and susceptibility of national healthcare systems to cross-border threats.

A key topic in the implementation of international relations is the application of international law. Of essential importance are the rights or functions of the subjects of international law, as well as the dependence between them. Relations between subjects of international relations depend on international law to a large extent. The main functions, rights and obligations of subjects in international relations must be carried out according to the provisions of international law.

International functionalism as proposed by David Mitrany envisions non-territorial functional agencies to supplant the states system. Mitrany makes no provision for democracy in functional agencies. Instead, he assumes that the policies of international technocrats would be 'technically self-determined' and uncontested – a stance several critics deem antidemocratic and naive. A second, related criticism holds that even if functional agencies were formally democratic, democracy could not operate effectively since functional polities would be too 'thin' and fragmented to sustain democratic commitments among their members. The article qualifies the first charge and rejects the second. First, defined as an institutional decision-making principle, 'technical self-determination' is Mitrany's add-on to the underlying functionalist logic, not an inseparable part of it. That logic instead holds that institutions work best if their form and scope of authority follow their function and that function-specific agencies therefore could meet some needs better than the state. Contra Mitrany, this does not privilege technocratic over democratic decision-making and it does not imply that functional agencies would be free from political conflict. Nor, second, would functional agencies necessarily be unsuitable for democracy in practice. Several strands of democratic theory suggest that even people who do not share a 'thick' communal identity can develop a commitment to meet shared needs democratically. If one accepts this, it loosens functionalism's technocratic stigma, highlights its potential as a democratically viable alternative to both state-centric and supranational models of international order and broadens our conception of possible democratic futures.

This article is devoted to the study of world order in modern political theory. The author shows that modern Anglo-American and Russian political science share common problems related to its study. First, modern internationalists often unjustifiably take the modern world order out of the context of historical development, contrasting it with the entire world history. Second, modern theories of world order are characterized by a high degree of normativity: political processes are assessed from moral and ethical or openly ideological (usually liberal) positions. Third, researchers today often exaggerate the originality, or uniqueness, of the modern world order, although many of its problems existed in the past. Also, in modern political literature the concepts of "order" and "system" are often confused. Moreover, the mechanism of change of world orders, their qualitative difference from each other, even their number and names have not been revealed. In this regard, the author focuses on two interrelated tasks: 1) to define the relationship between the terms "system" and "order of international relations"; 2) to designate the systemic characteristics of world orders, which will make it possible to identify their number, the mechanism of their change and their qualitative difference. The article aims at clarifying the terminology on the subject of world orders and suggests considering them as completed political systems, which have covered their development cycle – from inception to disintegration. The basic concept of the order is that of balance of power between the great powers and the values and rules of interaction established on its basis. The world order emerges as the result of a total war and is terminated by a total war. Some limited wars regulate relations within the world order. The two types of world orders, namely, the hegemonic order and the balance of power order, acted as two equal types of order. Their disintegration is due to objective reasons, namely, the change in the balance of power and degradation of legal norms, which leads to the emergence of extra-systemic revisionists. The author believes that today's Yalta-Potsdam order is likely to follow the entire cycle of the development of its predecessors.