Governments and nonstate actors around the world have signed mutual recognition arrangements (MRAs), but while most of them share the goals of streamlining the recognition of foreign workers' qualifications and boosting labor mobility, the MRAs vary considerably. Implementation challenges faced in the Americas, Asia and the Pacific, and Europe offer lessons for Asian policymakers seeking to operationalize the MRAs of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). This report is the la...

The question of whether political, fiscal, and administrative decentralization improves government effectiveness is hotly debated among researchers and policy makers. Decentralization, Democracy, and Development contributes to the empirical literature on decentralization and the debate on whether it is a viable and desirable state-building strategy for post-conflict countries.This book is a collection of eight papers written by nine authors who were intimately involved in the complex decentra...

The appearance of political marketing and campaigning on social media is a relatively new phenomenon, whose major advantages are seen in the rapid transportation of information through the Internet and the possibilities for large numbers of people to connect. This is especially significant for politics on the EU level, which embraces an electoral body of 375 million citizens. Despite the fact that not everyone uses the Internet in Europe, the percentage of those who do is considered to be ...

The recent, rapid rise in the use of digital technology among citizens and civil society organizations offers the possibility of strengthening citizens' voice in politics, carving out new political space for activism and promoting more government accountability. It is clear that these technologies are increasingly complementing citizens' political participation, changing relationships between citizens, organizations and public institutions, and expanding notions of political behavior and p...

The international community today is hardly in a position to avoid another genocide, as witnessed in Rwanda in 1994, despite the significant evolution of early warning systems in recent years. Based on a review of the literature on early warning and response, as well as inputs from surveyed agencies, Preventing Violence, War and State Collapse assesses the value and role of early warning for the prevention of violent conflict and identifies the most effective early warning and res...

The economics of news production and distribution is in a state of radical change. After very profitable years, newspaper publishers in most OECD countries face declining advertising revenues and significant reductions in titles and circulation. About 20 out of 30 OECD countries face declining newspaper readership, which is now at its lowest among younger people.At the same time, many promising forms of news creation and distribution are being tested. Some of these are empowered by...

This book is a cross-national analysis of the role of the internet in national electoral campaigns. It covers an array of electoral and party systems throughout the globe from parliamentary to presidential, party-based to candidate-oriented, multi-party to two-party, and stable party system to dynamic party system. It takes a look at three groups of nations with varying levels of Internet access-those where internet usage is common across demographic groups, those where usage has reached s...

Relief supply chains are the most agile and dynamic supply chains, yet research in this area of supply chain management (SCM) is limited. Relief Supply Chain Management for Disasters: Humanitarian, Aid and Emergency Logistics furthers the scholarly understanding of SCM in disaster relief. Recent natural and manmade disasters have brought relief SCM to the forefront of the global response to tragedy, establishing the central role of logistics in averting and limiting unnecessary hardships. ...

This book traces the development of e-government and its applications across Europe, exploring the effects of information and communication technology (ICTs) upon political action and processes.Explores a range of concepts and topics underpinning e-government in Europe:the degree to which e-government translates into genuine reform of government and public administrationthe dual role of the EU as both a provider of e-government through its own internal activ...

Developing Strategies for the Modern International Airport identifies and analyses the primary issues facing the modern international airport, and their role in a global economy. Based on the premise that the aviation industry has a primary and decisive role in the economic and social development of the modern international economy, this book examines the modern international airport and its process of integration into the larger global economy. As the integration of the aviation industry ...

This volume provides a comparative analysis of the use of the World Wide Web in countries around the world for political campaign purposes.Drawing upon a common conceptual framework - the ‘Web sphere,’ and a shared methodological approach called Web feature analysis - in order to examine how the Internet is used by a variety of political actors during periods of electoral activity. Research teams around the world conducted analyses in technologically advanced nations, as well as th...

This book provides a comprehensive overview of corporate social responsibility and its development in Africa. It provides in-depth studies on 11 sub-Saharan countries, demonstrating that corporate social responsibility is forming and going through different stages of metamorphosis in the continent. Though corporate and individual attitudes towards sustainability in Africa still leave a lot to be desired, this book showcases how things are rapidly changing for the better in this regard. It ...