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The changing geopolitical landscape is fraying the fabric of US hegemony and compromises the current structures of global order tied to US supremacy. Emerging powers from the 'developing' world, such as China, India and Brazil, are increasingly challenging the US-based order through their individual and collective actions on economic and development governance. They see themselves as lacking a significant stake in the system and have different values than traditional US allies which tend to be advanced liberal democracies. This article examines how the US is attempting to manage the challenge to its position of primacy in the global order. The main argument is that the US has been slow to recognize this threat and is still ambivalent about how to tackle it. It appears that at this stage the US wants to share the burdens of governance with emerging powers, encouraging them to play the role of 'responsible stakeholders'. At the same time, however, the US does not wish to relinquish its ability to act unilaterally or to be the main voice in established institutions, such as the UN Security Council or the International Monetary Fund. For this reason, the US has preferred to encourage the involvement of emerging countries in governance through informal settings like the G20, while resisting or being at best lukewarm about the reform of formal governance structures. The article concludes that if the US continues to pursue this strategy global order is likely to become more fragmented, with formal institutions increasingly losing their power and relevance; this, in turn, will diminish US power and influence. (International Affairs (Oxford) / SWP)

Introduction -- Chapter 1. School Health in Asia and Africa (Supa Pengpid, DrPH, Karl Peltzer, PhD, and Joav Merrick, MD, DMSc, ASEAN Institute for Health Development, Mahidol University, Salaya, Phutthamonthon, Nakhon Pathom, Thailand, and others) -- Section One: School Health in Asia and Africa -- Chapter 2. Alcohol Use and Misuse among School-Going Adolescents in Laos: Investigating Socio-Ecological Factors (Supa Pengpid, DrPH, and Karl Peltzer, PhD, ASEAN Institute for Health Development, Mahidol University, Salaya, Phutthamonthon, Nakhonpathom, Thailand, and others) -- Chapter 3. High Carbonated Soft Drink Consumption Is Associated with Externalizing and Internalizing Behaviour among In-School Adolescents in the Seychelles (Supa Pengpid, DrPH, and Karl Peltzer, PhD, ASEAN Institute for Health Development, Mahidol University, Salaya, Phutthamonthon, Nakhonpathom, Thailand, and others) -- Chapter 4. Physical Attacks and Physical Fighting among In-School Adolescents in Bangladesh: Prevalence and Associated Factors (Supa Pengpid, DrPH, and Karl Peltzer, PhD, ASEAN Institute for Health Development, Mahidol University, Salaya, Phutthamonthon, Nakhon Pathom, Thailand, and others) -- Chapter 5. Prevalence and Associated Factors of Oral and Hand Hygiene Behaviour among Adolescents in Afghanistan (Supa Pengpid, DrPH, and Karl Peltzer, PhD, ASEAN Institute for Health Development, Mahidol University, Salaya, Phutthamonthon, Nakhon Pathom, Thailand, and others) -- Chapter 6. Prevalence and Associated Factors of Physical Attacks and Physical Fighting among In-School Adolescents from Five ASEAN Countries (Supa Pengpid, DrPH, and Karl Peltzer, PhD, ASEAN Institute for Health Development, Mahidol University, Salaya, Phutthamonthon, Nakhon Pathom, Thailand, and others) -- Chapter 7. Prevalence and Correlates of Behavioural Risk Factors of Non-Communicable Diseases among Adolescents in Thailand: Results of a National School Survey in 2015 (Supa Pengpid, DrPH, and Karl Peltzer, PhD, ASEAN Institute for Health Development, Mahidol University, Salaya, Phutthamonthon, Nakhon Pathom, Thailand, and others) -- Chapter 8. Underweight and Overweight or Obesity and Associated Factors among School-Going Adolescents in Oman, 2015 (Supa Pengpid, DrPH, and Karl Peltzer, PhD, ASEAN Institute for Health Development, Mahidol University, Salaya, Phutthamonthon, Nakhon Pathom, Thailand, and others) -- Chapter 9. Prevalence and Associated Factors of Child Abuse and Child Labour among Children in Iraq: Results of the 2018 Multiple Indicator Cluster Survey (Supa Pengpid, DrPH, and Karl Peltzer, PhD, ASEAN Institute for High prevalence of unintentional injuries Health Development, Mahidol University, Salaya, Phutthamonthon, Nakhonpathom, Thailand, and others) -- Chapter 10. Past 12-Month Suicide Attempt and Associated Factors among In-School Adolescents in Afghanistan (Supa Pengpid, DrPH, and Karl Peltzer, PhD, ASEAN Institute for Health Development, Mahidol University, Salaya, Phutthamonthon, Nakhonpathom, Thailand, and others) -- Chapter 11. Unintentional Non-Fatal Injuries among In-School Adolescents in Bahrain: Prevalence and Socio-Psychological Correlates (Supa Pengpid, DrPH, and Karl Peltzer, PhD, Department of Research Administration and Development, University of Limpopo, Turfloop, South Africa, and others) -- Chapter 12. Unintentional Non-Fatal Injuries among In-School Adolescents in Benin: Prevalence and Correlates from a National Cross-Sectional Survey (Karl Peltzer, PhD, and Supa Pengpid, DrPH, Department of Research Administration and Development, University of Limpopo, Turfloop, South Africa, and others) -- Chapter 13. Physical Violence (Attacks and Physical Fighting) among In-School Adolescents in Nepal: Prevalence and Associated Factors (Karl Peltzer, PhD, and Supa Pengpid, DrPH, Department of Research Administration and Development, University of Limpopo, Turfloop, South Africa, and others) -- Chapter 14. Overweight and Obesity and Associated Factors among Adolescents in Wallis and Futuna and Cook Islands (Karl Peltzer, PhD, and Supa Pengpid, DrPH, Department of Research Administration and Development, University of Limpopo, Turfloop, South Africa, and others) -- Chapter 15. High Prevalence of Unintentional Injuries and SocioPsychological Correlates among In-School Adolescents in Nepal (Supa Pengpid, DrPH, and Karl Peltzer, PhD, Department of Research Administration and Development, University of Limpopo, Turfloop, South Africa, and others) -- Chapter 16. Interpersonal Violence among In-School Adolescents in Bahrain: Prevalence and Associated Factors (Karl Peltzer, PhD, and Supa Pengpid, DrPH, Department of Research Administration and Development, University of Limpopo, Turfloop, South Africa) -- Section Two: Acknowledgements -- Chapter 17. About the Editors -- Chapter 18. About the ASEAN Institute for Health Development, Mahidol University, Salaya, Phutthamonthon, Nakhon Pathom, Thailand -- Chapter 19. About the Department of Research Administration and Development, University of Limpopo, Turfloop, South Africa -- Chapter 20. About the National Institute of Child Health and Human -- Development in Israel -- Section Three: Index.

US officials will have to get used to operating in a world in which they can take less for granted. The 2016 presidential campaign, and its ultimate outcome, raised sharper questions about the fundamental nature and purpose of the United States' grand strategy than at any time in a generation. In doing so, the campaign also served as a reminder of the critical role of assumptions in shaping US statecraft. In the grand-strategic context, assumptions are the ingrained, overarching ideas that US officials have about how the world works, and about America's role within the global arena. Simply put, such assumptions represent the intellectual foundation upon which American statecraft rests. If the foundation is solid, then American strategy has a decent chance of success. If the foundation is shaky, American strategy is likely in for a world of trouble. Yet because assumptions are, by their very nature, often implicit rather than explicit, and because the most fundamental assumptions underlying American grand strategy do not frequently surface in the course of day-today policy debates, these assumptions are rarely scrutinised or even made explicit to the degree they ought to be. This is dangerous. If assumptions are not identified and stress-tested, how will policymakers know, other than by pure intuition, when those assumptions are no longer valid and the conceptual foundation of strategy has begun to crack? Today, the need to critically examine the core assumptions of American grand strategy is becoming ever more pressing. Since the Cold War's end, the United States has pursued a grand strategy centred on maintaining America's global primacy, deepening and extending the liberal international order, and heading off major threats to the generally happy state of the post-Cold War world. That grand strategy has rested upon a set of bedrock assumptions that have also stayed largely constant over time - assumptions about the nature and sustainability of American dominance, the direction in which the world is moving geopolitically and ideologically, the ways in which Washington can best prevent or address emerging threats, and so on. Assumptions about specific policy issues have evolved over time, of course, but the core intellectual premises of American strategy have not been extensively revised for nearly a quarter-century. Collectively, those assumptions have added up to a broadly optimistic view of global affairs - a view that the United States enjoys essentially uncontested supremacy in most key aspects of international relations; that the dominant ideological, geopolitical and economic currents are running Washington's way; and that, with properly vigilant and enlightened American policy, this comparatively benign situation need not be fundamentally disrupted by resurgent great-power conflict or other throwbacks to an earlier and less hopeful age. Yet today, roughly 25 years into the post-Cold War period, some of the essential assumptions of American grand strategy are either coming under real strain, or are increasingly likely to do so in the next 10-20 years. This is not to say that all of these core assumptions have been fully or even largely invalidated, because their residual strength does vary, and because their erosion has not yet, for the most part, reached a critical stage. Moreover, we should remember that critics have prematurely proclaimed the inevitable demise of America's post-Cold War 'unipolar moment' before. Yet these disclaimers aside, there is little question that the validity of these core assumptions is more contested now than at any other time during the postCold War era, and that this validity will only become more contested over the next decade or two if current trends hold. As this happens, look out: American officials will have to get used to operating in a world in which they can take less for granted, in which the international environment is significantly more contested and challenging, and in which it will become steadily harder to sustain the grand strategy - and international order - that the country has pursued since the end of the Cold War. (Survival / SWP)

The election of Kennedy serves to mark nothing less than the end of a neo-conservative decade & the beginning of a neo-liberal one, not only in the US but throughout the Western World. Wars often undermine existing soc structures which create a situation favorable to radical & liberal parties. Immediately after WWII, liberal gov's were formed in Sweden, Norway, Denmark, France, Italy, Finland, Australia, New Zealand, & GB. In the US, to the surprise of many, the Democrats, with the victory of Truman in 1948, held on to the presidency. During the 40's & 50's the pol'al tide began to flow to the right. Soc Democrats & Labor Parties started losing & in 1952 the US had its first Republican President in 20 yrs. While the Soc Democrats in Sweden, Norway & Israel managed to retain power during this period, the right-wing groups in all of these countries gained support at each election during the decade from the late 40's to the late 50's. A number of forces reversed the postwar upsurge of liberalism: (1) the econ forces - the economy of the West helped by a universal growth in pop, the Marshall Plan, & finally the Korean War produced prosperity. Under the impact of Khrushchev's revelations about the Stalinist Regime, & of the Hungarian Revolution, an endless number of intellectuals abandoned the Communist & left-Socialist Parties all over the Western World. Factor (2) undermining the left was the 'liberalization' of traditionally conservative Parties - in England the Tories preserved most of the soc security & nationalization measures introduced by the Labor Party; in the US, Eisenhower, rather than Taft was chosen to represent the Republicans. It was only in the late 50's that the new liberal wave first began to reveal itself. Perhaps the earliest sign was the Labor Party's return to office in New Zealand in 1957. In the US, the Democrats increased their control of the House & the Senate & also elected a large number of governors, senators & congressmen in traditionally Republican States such as Maine, Vermont, & Connecticut. The liberal trend continued to manifest itself in the `New Nixon,' & finally in the victory of Kennedy. Why is this shift to the left taking place? A series of small recessions have helped to undermine the post-WWII feeling of prosperity. In Europe, with the end of econ reconstruction, unions in Germany, the Netherlands & Austria are resuming their traditional role of pressing for a larger share of industrial income for their members. In the intellectual sphere, the ideological warfare against Communism has subsided. In the US, the declining pressure for conformity has led many ex-radicals & liberals to become vocal once more & pol'ly active. A new set of soc problems is working to make the 60's a decade of neo-liberalism. (a) The prime econ issue is no longer the redistribution of national income among the various SC's; the question now is the proportion in which national income will be parcelled out between public & private expenditure. It seems that leftwing Parties are more likely to come to grips with this issue than those of the right, since the former have traditionally recognized & articulated the need for public control of the economy. The Democrats in the US have gained votes because of their stress on federal aid to educ, res, & public health. (b) Another issue in 1960 was international relations. The left is more likely than the right to respond to the widespread desire for an international settlement of the cold war. Problem (c) concerns the complex issue of upward SM. As soon as newer members of the Mc realize that their econ gains have not been matched by a commensurate gain in SS, they seem to rebel against the parties that speak for the higher echelons of power & prestige. In the US, the Democrats won in part because they were led by a man who could be identified with the more covert desires for increased SM & opportunities felt by labor & the new Mc; in the ambitions & handicaps of a Catholic candidate these groups saw something of their own situation. V. D. Sanua.

The effectiveness of development cooperation (DC) is a topic of extensive debate in this policy field. Yet despite numerous review and evaluation formats designed to promote learning processes and hence enhance effectiveness, it is often impossible to document these improvements. Against this backdrop, the present paper aims to analyse the usefulness of ex-post evaluations (EPEs) by KfW Development Bank – both within KfW Development Bank and at the German Federal Ministry for Economic Cooperation and Development (BMZ), from which it receives its commissions. Research indicates that EPEs are conducted with great care. Moreover, EPEs can contribute to the legitimacy of (financial) DC, as project results are considered and presented in a structured manner. Nevertheless, the people interviewed for this study regard EPEs as (highly) subjective assessments and believe that these evaluations may under certain circumstances not be comparable with one another. Yet EPEs need to be comparable, because their overall ratings are used to calculate the success rate, which is currently around 81%. This in turn affects KfW's reporting on its performance to BMZ and to the public. The data from the interviews shows that trade-offs during the production and use of EPEs appear to limit the usefulness of this format. EPEs are designed to deliver accountability to the public and to BMZ and to promote learning within KfW. These are conflicting objectives, however, as they would each require a different approach. According to those interviewed at KfW and BMZ, EPEs are seldom read or used. Interviewees explain that EPEs are rarely relevant to people working in operational areas, as the evaluations are not published until several years after the project concerned has been completed and only occasionally contain information that is relevant to current projects. The evaluations cannot be conducted sooner, however, as otherwise they would not be able to assess the sustainability and development impact of a project. Moreover, interviews and evidence from other studies indicate that EPEs are of limited relevance to political steering at BMZ, even in aggregated form. Nonetheless, the author believes that it would not be an option to no longer conduct EPEs, as they are the only way to review the development impact and sustainability of a representative number of projects in an affordable way, thus forming the basis for delivering accountability. Reconciling the conflicting goals of learning and accountability is challenging. For the learning component, it would appear to be a good idea to make greater use of cross-sectional analyses and to establish a central support structure for all implementing organisations and BMZ with a view to compiling all the key information from the evaluations and forwarding it to both BMZ and KfW and to the partner countries in a form tailored to meet their needs. For the accountability component, transparency also needs to be enhanced by making completed evaluation reports available to the public promptly and in full. In addition to an evaluation of international research literature, this paper particularly draws on empirical interview data. A total of 13 specifically selected experts from the German DC system were interviewed. This interview data thus forms an illustrative but not representative sample.

The evolution of urbanism under dictatorship forms the core of the current research. This thesis is part of a research network at Bauhaus-Universität Weimar, which studies the 20th century's urbanism under different dictatorships. The network has provided a cross-cultural and cross-border environment and has enabled the author to communicate with other like-minded researchers. The 2015 published book of this group 'Urbanism and Dictatorship: A European Perspective' strengthens the foundation of this research's theoretical and methodological framework. This thesis investigates urban policies and plans leading to the advancement of urbanization and the transformation of urban space in Iran during the second Pahlavi (1941-1979) when the country faced a milestone in its history: Nationalization of the Iranian oil industry. By reflecting the influence of economic and socio‐political determinants of the time on urbanism and the urbanization process, this work intends to critically trace the effect of dictatorship on evolved urbanism before and after the oil nationalization in 1951. The research on the second Pahlavi's urbanism has been limitedly addressed and has only recently expanded. Most of the conducted studies date back to less than a decade ago and could not incorporate all the episodes of the second Pahlavi urbanism. These works have often investigated urbanism and architecture by focusing merely on the physical features and urban products in different years regardless of the importance of urbanism as a tool in the service of hegemony. In other words, the majority of the available literature does not intend to address the socio-economic and political roots of urban transformations and by questioning 'what has been built?' investigates the individual urban projects and plans designed by individual designers without interlinking these projects to the state's urban planning program and tracing the beneficiaries of those projects or questioning 'built for whom?' Moreover, some chapters of this modern urbanism have rarely been investigated. For instance, scant research has looked into the works of foreign designers and consultants involved in the projects such as Peter Georg Ahrens or Constantinos A. Doxiadis. Similarly, the urbanism of the first decade of the second Pahlavi, including the government of Mossadegh, has mainly been overlooked. Therefore, by critically analyzing the state's urban planning program and the process of urbanization in Iran during the second Pahlavi, this research aims to bridge the literature gap and to unravel the effect of the power structure on urban planning and products while seeking to find a pattern behind the regime's policies. The main body of this work is concentrated on studying the history of urbanism in Iran, of which collecting data and descriptions played a crucial role. To prevent the limitations associated with singular methods, this research's methodology is based on methodological triangulation (Denzin, 2017). With the triangulation scheme, the data is gathered by combining different qualitative and quantitative methods such as the library, archival and media research, online resources, non-participatory observation, and photography. For the empirical part, the city of Tehran is selected as the case study. Moreover, individual non-structured interviews with the locals were conducted to gain more insights regarding urban projects.

History, however, is not Phillips's strong suit. Moreover, his peculiar take on the country's cyclical experience with wealth and democracy is a telling commentary on his own oddly inflected populism. His is the populism of the 'silent majority,' which first made his reputation back in the days of Richard Nixon's 'southern strategy.' Phillips's lingering Republican past leads him to fantasize about some underground tradition of progressive middle-class Republicanism, which in Phillips's quirky narrative confection embraces the governments of William McKinley, Richard Nixon, and Abraham Lincoln. Phillips imagines these regimes as all suspicious of unsupervised wealth and mildly friendly to labor, while nonetheless operating under the dominating influence of the economic elites of their day. The characterization might loosely apply to Lincoln's new party, although the great merchant bankers of the antebellum North were the Great Emancipator's loyal opposition, not his natural constituency. When applied to McKinley and Nixon the notion verges on the preposterous--industrial workers in 1896 were terrorized into voting for the Ohio governor or staying away from the polls, while the whole tenor of the Republican campaign and the McKinley presidency that followed entailed an explicit repudiation of any suggestion of wealth redistribution or government regulation of big business. The evidence for Nixon's labor sympathies seems to consist of presidential invitations extended to the ossified leadership of the AFL-CIO to visit the White House. Phillips himself acknowledges that in every case--even in the one that most robustly supports his argument, namely Teddy Roosevelt's reign--the Republicans soon gave themselves over to the most self-interested, money-mad, socially irresponsible fat cats who always peopled the party's inner sanctums. As the author demonstrates, only during the Progressive Era, which was half Democratic, and during the New Deal order did the apportionment of national income and wealth swing the other way and were the commanding institutions of the private sector subject to some serious public surveillance and discipline. The Clinton interregnum, conversely, was the outcome of what Phillips calls the first white-collar recession of the early nineties-itself a fitting epitaph to the extreme 'financialization' of the Gordon Gekko years--conjoined to the rapidly inflating Internet bubble. The atmosphere of sixties' cultural liberation that hovered over the Clinton administration had more to do with the borrowed anti-hierarchical argot and upscale designer egalitarianism of the new dot-com billionaires than it did with any sixties-era political engagement with the lower orders. While the New Deal welfare state was wrapping up its affairs, the new information-age elites were busy putting in place a global corporate welfare system of 'financial mercantilism.' Wall Street quickly acclimated itself to the new environment. It became heavily invested not only financially and not only because the microprocessor transformed the way it conducted its own high-velocity speculations. Psychologically and culturally as well, the Street became vested in new-era hype. Phillips talks about 'grinds and globalists' supplanting the old skull-and-bones elites, committed to a relentless, de-regulated 'securitization' of the universe, transforming customary signs of distress into market-cheering acts of 'downsizing,' deepening the chasm between the haves and the have-nots at home and abroad.