Suchergebnisse

The United Nation's Sustainable Development Goal (SDG) 16 calls for the establishment of peaceful, just and inclusive societies. The security sector has the potential to contribute to SDG16 through the fulfilment of its traditional and non-traditional security tasks. However, the security sector can also detract from SDG16 when it acts outside the confines of the law. Good governance of the sector is therefore a prerequisite to achieving SDG16, and parliaments can make an important contribution to accountability and good governance. Parliaments contribute to both transparency and accountability of the sector through their various functions and act as a counterweight to executive dominance, including in the executive's use of security forces. Yet, in times of crisis, states run a risk of executive dominance and executives are often quick to resort to the use of the security sector to address an array of challenges. This risk also emerged during the global Covid-19 pandemic where states used the security sector, notably the military and police, in various ways to respond to the pandemic. This study reviewed the utilisation of the security sector in South Africa, the Philippines and the UK during the first year of the Covid-19 outbreak, resulting in varied outcomes ranging from positive humanitarian contributions to misconduct and brutality that led to the death of citizens. The initial lockdowns in these countries constrained parliamentary activity, resulting in a lack of adequate parliamentary oversight of security sector utilisation when it was most needed. Parliaments did recover oversight of the sector to varied degrees, but often with limited depth of inquiry into the Covid-19 deployments. To prevent the security sector from detracting from SDG16, the study identified a need for a rapid parliamentary reaction capability to security sector utilisation, especially in cases of extraordinary deployments coupled with an elevated risk of executive dominance.

AbstractThis study examines the nexus between environmental, social, and governance (ESG) disclosure and dividend policy by considering the major role of corporate governance. The sample consists of companies traded in the UAE financial markets during the period 2010–2020. Using data collected from Bloomberg and applying panel data regressions, the results indicated a positive relationship between ESG and dividend payouts. In addition, the results reveal that board of directors' independence is a mediator in the relationship between ESG disclosure and dividend payout, whereas institutional ownership and foreign ownership play a negative and positive moderating role between ESG and dividend payout, respectively. The findings could help UAE financial regulators integrate ESG information into the reporting process, implement effective corporate governance mechanisms to provide accurate information to shareholders, and manage their portfolios more efficiently. This study is the first to examine the relationship between ESG disclosure and dividend policies by considering corporate governance, and contributes to a better understanding of the financial impact of ESG disclosure on dividend policy.

In the literature on relational governance, it is often assumed that relational governance emerges primarily after formal contracting and acts as a functional supplement to a formal contract. In this article, we show that especially facing deep uncertainties, relational governance can emerge before the start of formal partnerships, in the form of trust-building, exchanging resources, and fostering flexibility. Based on a case study of a smart city outsourcing project, this article introduces a forward-extended framework of relational governance that captures the pre-contractual dimensions of relationship cultivation and their role in facilitating formal contracting. The study finds that pre-contractual relational governance facilitates formal contracting by reducing substantive, evaluative, technological, and procedural uncertainties in the project and helps the partners to design an elaborative contract, undergo an easy negotiation, adopt short-term contracts, and use simple monitoring and evaluation methods. The article thus argues that only understanding post-contractual relational governance is insufficient for exploring the relation between formal contracting and relational governance; facing deep uncertainties, it is necessary to understand how public and private parties develop their pre-contractual relationship and reduce the uncertainties before a formal contract can be signed. Points for practitioners Practitioners should realize that there is much room for relational governance in the pre-contractual phase of PPP projects when the projects are rife with various uncertainties. Public and private parties can take measures to build trust, foster flexibility, and create interdependence before a formal contract is signed. These ex-ante relational governance measures can facilitate formal contracting by reducing the various uncertainties, making a formal contract designable, making negotiation smooth and easy, and reducing the need for contract supervision.

AbstractTechnology is of crucial importance for understanding the recent crisis of global governance and concomitant practices of re-territorializing sovereignty. It is far more than an instrument for putting ideas and interests into practice; it is embedded in relationships of power, gives expression to normative decisions and shapes the conditions under which politics is conducted. Technology empowers some actors and disempowers others. It makes new forms of political action possible and others more costly. This crucial role of technology has been emphasized in many dispersed parts of the IR discourse since long. What has often been overlooked, however, is that technological innovation can have a disruptive effect on international institutions. This paper traces this disruptive effect in the administration of the internet by underlining the close nexus between technology, sovereignty and global governance. It finally discusses promising avenues for future research.

The global pandemic crisis has highlighted the inherent weaknesses of governance in countries of the Maghreb. It has underscored Morocco's lagging human development and infrastructure amid growing authoritarianism. In Algeria, where the government is struggling with an ongoing legitimacy crisis, the pandemic has exposed the state's weak public services. In Tunisia, the pandemic has emphasised the disarray of the country's political elites and the effects of the protracted transition on state output. Yet, the pandemic crisis has pushed some of these governments to seize opportunities, in­cluding speeding up digitalisation, allowing for citizen engagement, and even seeking some self-sufficiency in terms of medical production. As these countries pursue economic relief and support to overcome the growing economic impacts from the crisis, European partners have the opportunity to use their leverage to promote policies that reduce inequality, prioritise investment in critical infrastructure, and encourage transparent and responsive citizen-government relations.

The global pandemic crisis has highlighted the inherent weaknesses of governance in countries of the Maghreb. It has underscored Morocco's lagging human development and infrastructure amid growing authoritarianism. In Algeria, where the government is struggling with an ongoing legitimacy crisis, the pandemic has exposed the state's weak public services. In Tunisia, the pandemic has emphasised the disarray of the coun­try's political elites and the effects of the protracted transition on state output. Yet, the pandemic crisis has pushed some of these governments to seize opportunities, in­cluding speeding up digitalisation, allowing for citizen engagement, and even seeking some self-sufficiency in terms of medical production. As these countries pursue eco­nomic relief and support to overcome the growing economic impacts from the crisis, European partners have the opportunity to use their leverage to promote policies that reduce inequality, prioritise investment in critical infrastructure, and encourage transparent and responsive citizen-government relations. (author's abstract)

AbstractThis research paper is aimed at formulation of a composite Governance and Democracy Index (GDI) based on the six indicators of good governance by Kaufmannet al. (2003, 2007) to assess and evaluate therelativeperformances of 10 major democracies of the world for the time period of 20 years (1998 – 2017) (Base Year = 1996). In order to do so, three distinct methodologies are adopted based on the absolute values and relative changes in the observations of independent variables. The extended part of this research involves formulation of Governance, Democracy, and Emancipation Index (GDEI) which incorporates the Emancipative values.