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Abstract
This introduction provides an overview of this special issue on 'Regional Platforms', presenting its background, significance, purpose, and overall structure. To characterize the regional implications in platforms, we first define the concept of 'platform' by outlining its basic typology. We define three different types of platforms: product-technology type, content-platforms, and transaction-type. Each of the three designates a different meaning of the term platform and describes a different configuration of platforms in relation to media studies. Challenging the dominant mode of platform studies that presume a global geography for us-based examples, this special issue purposely situates our typology of platforms in regional terms. We argue that digital platforms have given rise to a sense of media regionalism and a renewed regional media geography through both transnational and transmedial processes. The five essays composing this issue are then summarized to demonstrate how the authors approach the question of the regionality of platforms.

The diversity and increasing number of development actors is a factor of complexity for recipient countries that puts at risk the efficiency of assistance delivery and undermines country ownership. The G20 Leaders have called on the international community to promote country platforms, owned by governments, to foster coordination among development partners and mobilize private investments. The objective of this study is to analyse the coordination exercise of the G20 Compact with Africa, a regional platform initiated under the Germany G20 Presidency in 2017, in line with its mandate to leverage private financing. In particular, we will investigate how the international community pursues common goals in the sectors of operations under the Compact with Africa and how Compact's countries structure their national development and sectoral strategies in synergy with development partners. The analysis will be triangulated through a documentary analysis and semi-structured interviews to assess how country platforms can contribute to promoting a coordinated approach among development partners in the definition of government priorities and attract private sector investments. Points for practitioners The implications of this work emphasize that country platforms can act as a vehicle to harmonize, monitor, and narrow the number of development priorities in a country. For this mechanism to be effective, country leadership and ownership should be inclusive of all development partners and in line with governments' needs and targets.

The difficulties that arose after the entry into force of the Federal Law "On conducting an experiment to estab-lish a special tax regime "Tax on professional income"" dated November 27, 2018 No. 422-FZ require a com-prehensive study and modification of the legislative framework. Many citizens who pay tax on professional in-come do not make contributions to the pension insurance system, which is one of the reasons for the high sub-sidy dependence of the Social Fund of Russia on the federal budget. According to the authors, it is necessary to develop a way to attract citizens to participate in the pension insurance program. The article considers an ex-ample of a possible solution to this issue: the introduction of tax deduction for taxpayers of tax on professional income in part of the tax paid, and assesses its impact on the regional budgets of the constituent entities of the Russian Federation.

The Programme for Climate-Smart Livestock Systems (PCSL) is an initiative designed to enable key actors in the livestock sector to increasingly include climate change adaptation and mitigation in their farming practices, sector strategies and investment projects. PCSL is financed by GIZ and commissioned by the Government of the Federal Republic of Germany. GIZ has commissioned the International Livestock Research Institute (ILRI) and the World Bank to implement the programme activities. ILRI's programme activities are based in Kenya, Ethiopia and Uganda. One of the activities included the creation of national Learning Platforms for the purposes of information exchange and dissemination of research findings. Due to the Covid-19 pandemic and the resulting restrictions on travel and in-person gatherings, ILRI adjusted its plans for the national Learning Platforms. ILRI organized a series of three online meetings held with stakeholders from all three countries over a three-week period starting on 30th July 2020.

AbstractThis paper concerns the brief history of the Regional Innovation Systems (RIS) concept. It shows that the success of the concept in academic and policy circles is because, unlike most regional economic policy instruments, it is flexible and eschews 'one‐size‐fits‐all' type thinking by analysing and advocating different instruments according to the characteristics of the region. There are three sources of influence upon the concept. The first one is general systems theory, especially as it evolved in the late 1960s as the systems planning perspective. Second the innovation systems approach was influenced by an emergent regional innovation policy and practice literature in the 1980s. Finally, it drew on ideas of 'network regions' which themselves have origins in industrial district theory, milieu research and innovation systems studies. Most recently the use of 'related variety' analysis, particularly applied regarding 'green innovation' has yielded an exciting explanation of regional growth by (Jacobian) cluster mutation. At the policy level, RIS strategies have in recent years been adopted by multilateral agencies and many countries and regions.

Introduction The Ugandan Oilseed Sub-sector Platform (OSSUP) is a commodity-based multi-stakeholder platform that has a priority of innovation and technological upgrading. The Ugandan Oilseed Sub-sector Platform as a national platform adopted a strong focus on policy and sector-wide co-ordination. It is linked to two regional platforms that were supported and facilitated by the Uganda Oilseed Producers and Processors Association (UOSPA).The platform has an active membership of large- and medium-scale processors, farmers' organisations, financial institutes, government agencies, researchers, development and nongovernmental organisations, knowledge institutes and agricultural input providers. Members participate on a voluntary basis, and their contribution depends on the issues addressed during meetings or in a specific period.

Real-world evidence can provide answers on healthcare utilization and appropriateness, post-marketing drugs safety and comparative effectiveness, and cost-effectiveness profiles of healthcare pathways. Healthcare utilization databases, possibly integrated with drug and disease registries, electronic medical records, survey and cohort data (i.e. real-world data), allow to trace healthcare 'footprints' left from beneficiaries of National Health Service. Beaver is a research platform available on demand to Italian regions which we developed for computing indicators of healthcare utilization and clinical outcomes, as well as for generating evidence on effectiveness and cost-effectiveness profile. Two distinct solutions may be adopted. One, the so-called Beaver Light front-end allows to automatically compute health indicators of adherence to official guidelines. Two, the so-called Beaver Full front-end involves an eight-step procedure entirely driven by the study protocol. In order to fulfil the directives recently issued by the European Parliament and Council and the Italian Authority for the protection of individual data, the platform resides in each region's infrastructure, so limiting the free movement of electronic health data. Indeed, regional authorities should be responsible for data safety and for allowing data accessibility. The use of standardized and validated algorithms enables to obtain regional estimates that, being obtained by employing regional platforms containing data extracted with standardized procedure, may be compared and possibly summarized by using common meta-analytic techniques. In conclusion, the Beaver regional platform is a promising tool which may contribute to stimulate healthcare research in Italy.

This intervention reflects on critical perspectives on algorithms and geographical work on the urban-digital interface to highlight a set of approaches for studying the politics of platform urbanism. In several ways, platforms may be understood as black boxes due to the proprietary nature of algorithms, the secrecy of corporate ownership structures, and the emphasis on confidentiality and privacy in the venture capital industry. While thus raising concerns about scrutiny and accountability, inclinations to "open the black box" of platforms reflect a limited and limiting horizon of political possibility. In a different vein, geographers concerned with the digital-urban interface are working to think about the potential for a counter-politics that is not rooted exclusively in resistance or antagonism. Drawing on these insights, this intervention complements recent work on digital methods by emphasizing tracing, counter-mapping, and proxying as approaches that do not privilege the revelation of visibility so much as potentiality, slipperiness, and movement.

The "3+3" format for regional cooperation is an initiative voiced by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, which intends to strengthen trade and economic ties between Turkey, Russia, Iran, Azerbaijan, Armenia and Georgia. Only Georgia from the listed countries is not interested in participation due to Russia's role in the format. However, the other five countries might continue with the initiative despite a large number of competing interests and frictions among them. Nonetheless, after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, the prospect of deepening cooperation with Moscow became even more restrained for all participants, so the future of "3+3" became even more contentious. It should be noted that the proposed format is considered as the project that could undermine the West's role by excluding its presence and influence over the region. Thus, this project poses significant political challenges to the region.