From Academic Discourse to Political Decisions? The Case of the Xinjiang Ethnic Unity Education Textbook Reform

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-21
Author(s):  
Taotao Zhao ◽  
Sow Keat Tok
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Local Level ◽  
National Policy ◽  
Think Tank ◽  
Depth Analysis ◽  
Knowledge Regime ◽  
The Status ◽  
Policy Shift ◽  
Ethnic Policy ◽  
Academic Debate

Abstract Between 2009 and 2014, against the background of the Xinjiang ethnic unity education textbook reform (2009–2010), vigorous academic debate on China's ethnic policy reform took place. Two academic cliques – one championing reform and the other representing the status quo – gradually came to the fore in this debate and competed to influence policy. This research seeks to unpack the mechanisms in China's knowledge regime that allow one agent (such as a think tank or academic) to prevail over others. Agents have an impact on policymaking mainly through connections with the decision-making body. This research uses three variables (ideological connection, level and nature of the connection) to analyse the relative policy influence of different agents in the debate. This research is among the first to provide an in-depth analysis of the debate's policy impact at the local level. The reform clique prevailed in this case because of its ability to bond with and influence higher-level decision-making bodies. Beginning in 2014, the Chinese Communist Party officially adopted the reform clique's language because of its alignment with the Party's growing need to maintain security in ethnic minority areas. Furthermore, key reform clique players continue to have an impact on the national policy shift.

scholarly journals HPV vaccine introduction at the local level in a developing country: attitudes and criteria among key actors

2010 ◽  
Vol 26 (5) ◽  
pp. 900-908 ◽  
Author(s):  
Marion Piñeros ◽  
Carolina Wiesner ◽  
Claudia Cortés ◽  
Lina María Trujillo
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Latin American ◽  
Hpv Vaccine ◽  
Local Level ◽  
National Level ◽  
National Policy ◽  
Local Health ◽  
Political Actors ◽  
Vaccine Introduction

In most developing countries, HPV vaccines have been licensed but there are no national policy recommendations, nor is it clear how decisions on the introduction of this new vaccine are made. Decentralization processes in many Latin American countries favor decision-making at the local level. Through a qualitative study we explored knowledge regarding the HPV vaccine and the criteria that influence decision-making among local health actors in four regions of Colombia. We conducted a total of 14 in-depths interviews with different actors; for the analysis we performed content analysis. Results indicate that decision-making on the HPV vaccine at the local level has mainly been driven by pressure from local political actors, in a setting where there is low technical knowledge of the vaccine. This increases the risk of initiatives that may foster inequity. Local decisions and initiatives need to be strengthened technically and supported by national-level decisions, guidelines and follow-up.

scholarly journals Status of national policy on companion of choice at birth in Latin America and the Caribbean: Gaps and challenges

2020 ◽  
Vol 44 ◽  
pp. 1
Author(s):  
Bremen De Mucio ◽  
Lorena Binfa ◽  
Jovita Ortiz ◽  
Anayda Portela
Keyword(s):  
Latin America ◽  
Online Survey ◽  
Local Level ◽  
National Policy ◽  
Virtual Community ◽  
Perinatal Outcomes ◽  
World Health ◽  
Health Providers ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Caribbean

The World Health Organization (WHO) recommends a companion of choice during labor and birth, to improve maternal and perinatal outcomes and women’s satisfaction with health services. To better understand the status of companion of choice in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC), an online survey was conducted with members of a midwifery virtual community of practice and with key informants, aiming to identify: 1) existing regulatory instruments related to companion of choice in the countries where the members are practicing; and, 2) key characteristics of implementation of companion of choice, where regulation exists. Responses (n = 112) were received from representatives of 20 of the 43 countries of LAC. Respondents reported existence of a national policy or legislation in seven countries, ministerial norms or institutional protocols in five countries, and no existing policy/protocol in eight countries. Respondents from the same country often provided contradictory responses. Responses differed from information provided by ministries of health in a WHO-led global policy survey in 11 instances. These variations may reflect that midwives were not always aware of the national policy/guideline in their country. We propose that a more robust effort should be undertaken to understand the status of companion of choice for labor and birth in LAC countries, at national, regional, and local level, in public and private facilities. It is important to know if policies exist, at what level of the system, and if key stakeholders, maternity-care health providers, and women are aware of their existence. Efforts should also be made to understand barriers to implementing companion of choice.

Women in Power and Decision making Positions : Conditions and Restraints

1970 ◽  
pp. 53-57
Author(s):  
Azza Charara Baydoun
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Political Participation ◽  
Political Life ◽  
The Political ◽  
Decision Making Process ◽  
Power Structures ◽  
Policies And Procedures ◽  
The Social ◽  
The Status ◽  
Slow Progress

Women today are considered to be outside the political and administrative power structures and their participation in the decision-making process is non-existent. As far as their participation in the political life is concerned they are still on the margins. The existence of patriarchal society in Lebanon as well as the absence of governmental policies and procedures that aim at helping women and enhancing their political participation has made it very difficult for women to be accepted as leaders and to be granted votes in elections (UNIFEM, 2002).This above quote is taken from a report that was prepared to assess the progress made regarding the status of Lebanese women both on the social and governmental levels in light of the Beijing Platform for Action – the name given to the provisions of the Fourth Conference on Women held in Beijing in 1995. The above quote describes the slow progress achieved by Lebanese women in view of the ambitious goal that requires that the proportion of women occupying administrative or political positions in Lebanon should reach 30 percent of thetotal by the year 2005!

Orthodox arrangement of the Pochaiv Lavra in the second third of the XIX century.

2021 ◽  
pp. 13-41
Author(s):  
Ella Volodymyrivna Bystrytska
Keyword(s):  
Local Level ◽  
The Political ◽  
Special Role ◽  
Economic Activities ◽  
Government Officials ◽  
Political Motivation ◽  
Archival Documents ◽  
The Status ◽  
The Russian Empire ◽  
Xix Century

Abstract: A series of imperial decrees of the 1820s ordering the establishment of a Greco-Uniate Theological Collegium and appropriate consistories contributed to the spread of the autocratic synodal system of government and the establishment of control over Greek Uniate church institutions in the annexed territories of Right-Bank Ukraine. As a result, the Greco-Uniate Church was put on hold in favor of the government's favorable grounds for the rapid localization of its activities. Basilian accusations of supporting the Polish November Uprising of 1830-1831 made it possible to liquidate the OSBM and most monasteries. The transfer of the Pochaiv Monastery to the ownership of the Orthodox clergy in 1831 was a milestone in the liquidation of the Greco-Uniate Church and the establishment of a Russian-style Orthodox mono-confessionalism. On the basis of archival documents, the political motivation of the emperor's decree to confiscate the Pochayiv Monastery from the Basilians with all its property and capital was confirmed. The transfer to the category of monasteries of the 1st class and the granting of the status of a lavra indicated its special role in strengthening the position of the autocracy in the western region of the Russian Empire. The orders of the Holy Synod outline the key tasks of ensuring the viability of the Lavra as an Orthodox religious center: the introduction of continuous worship, strengthening the personal composition of the population, delimitation of spiritual responsibilities, clarifying the affiliation of the printing house. However, maintaining the rhythm of worship and financial and economic activities established by the Basilians proved to be a difficult task, the solution of which required ten years of hard work. In order to make quick changes in the monastery, decisions were made by the emperor and senior government officials, and government agencies were involved at the local level, which required the coordination of actions of all parties to the process.

DEVELOPMENT OF VALUATION METHOD OF THE STATUS OF BASE STATIONS FOR DETERMINING THE NEED OF THEIR UPGRADING

2017 ◽  
pp. 60-70
Author(s):  
Natalya Ivanovna Shaposhnikova ◽  
Alexander Aleksandrovich Sorokin
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Fuzzy Sets ◽  
Cellular Network ◽  
New Technologies ◽  
Base Station ◽  
Base Stations ◽  
Valuation Method ◽  
The Status ◽  
Telecommunications Services ◽  
Theory Of Fuzzy Sets

The article consideres the problems of determining the need to modernize the base stations of the cellular network based on the mathematical apparatus of the theory of fuzzy sets. To improve the quality of telecommunications services the operators should send significant funding for upgrading the equipment of base stations. Modernization can improve and extend the functions of base stations to provide cellular communication, increase the reliability of the base station in operation and the functionality of its individual elements, and reduce the cost of maintenance and repair when working on a cellular network. The complexity in collecting information about the equipment condition is determined by a large number of factors that affect its operation, as well as the imperfection of obtaining and processing the information received. For a comprehensive assessment of the need for modernization, it is necessary to take into account a number of indicators. In the structure of indicators of the need for modernization, there were introduced the parameters reflecting both the degree of aging and obsolescence(the technical gap and the backlog in connection with the emergence of new technologies and standards). In the process of a problem solving, the basic stages of decision-making on modernization have been allocated. Decision-making on the need for modernization is based not only on measuring information that takes into account the decision-makers, but also on linguistic and verbal information. Therefore, to determine the need for upgrading the base stations, the theory of fuzzy sets is used, with the help of which experts can be attracted to this issue. They will be able to formulate additional fuzzy judgments that help to take into account not only measuring characteristics, but also poorly formalized fuzzy information. To do this, the main indicators of the modernization need have been defined, and fuzzy estimates of the need for modernization for all indicators and a set of indicators reflecting the need for upgrading the base stations have been formulated.

scholarly journals Accessibility in Inclusive Tourism? Hotels Distributed Through Online Channels

Societies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 11 (2) ◽  
pp. 34
Author(s):  
Eva Martin-Fuentes ◽  
Sara Mostafa-Shaalan ◽  
Juan Pedro Mellinas
Keyword(s):  
United Arab Emirates ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Descriptive Analysis ◽  
Distribution Channel ◽  
People With Disabilities ◽  
The United States ◽  
Travel Agency ◽  
International Studies ◽  
The Status ◽  
Accommodation Sector

There is a lack of comprehensive international studies on accommodations for people with disabilities; only small, local-level studies exist. This study aims to show the status of the tourist accommodation sector through the online distribution channel in terms of accessibility to offer more inclusive tourism. A descriptive analysis has been carried out with more than 31,000 hotels from the online travel agency Booking.com, in the 100 most touristic cities in the world. For the first time, an accurate picture of adaptation in the hotel sector for people with disabilities is presented. Results show that the adapted hotel infrastructures by countries are uneven. The main adaptations are those that help to avoid mobility barriers, and in contrast, hotels offer very few adaptations for sensory disabilities such as visual disabilities. Moreover, this study shows that, worldwide, countries with the highest income per capita, such as the United States of America, Canada, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, Qatar or the United Arab Emirates, have the highest degree of hotel adaptation.

Politics of Nature: The board game

2021 ◽  
Vol 51 (1) ◽  
pp. 139-164
Author(s):  
Jakob Raffn ◽  
Frederik Lassen
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Status Quo ◽  
Board Game ◽  
Bruno Latour ◽  
Political Ontology ◽  
The Status ◽  
Group Ideation ◽  
Politics Of Nature

Here we introduce the board game Politics of Nature, or PoN as it is now known. Inspired by the work of Bruno Latour, PoN offers an alternative take on co-existence by implementing a flat political ontology in a gamified meeting protocol. PoN does not suggest that humans have no special abilities, only that humans at the outset, are bestowed with no more rights than other kinds of beings. Designed to enable people of all walks of life to playfully unpack and resolve controversies, PoN provides a space where beings can have their existence renegotiated. The aim of PoN is to play as a team to explore and decide on potential good common worlds in which more indispensable beings can exist than if the status quo is continued. By playing PoN iteratively through rounds, each having four stages, the players gradually construct PoN - a planet mirroring ‘real worlds’. The four stages provide a novel combination of identification, representation, meditation, prioritization, mapping, individual and group ideation, proposal formulation, and decision-making; only to ask the players to challenge and change PoN to fit their requirements after each round. What follows is taken directly from the manual.

scholarly journals Uptake of Childcare Arrangements—Grandparental Availability and Availability of Formal Childcare

2021 ◽  
Vol 10 (2) ◽  
pp. 50
Author(s):  
Naomi Biegel ◽  
Karel Neels ◽  
Layla Van den Berg
Keyword(s):  
Decision Making ◽  
Informal Care ◽  
Regression Models ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Formal Care ◽  
Multinomial Regression ◽  
Contextual Data ◽  
Care Arrangement ◽  
Combined Use ◽  
Formal Childcare

Grandparents constitute an important source of childcare to many parents. Focusing on the Belgian context, this paper improves our understanding of childcare decision-making by investigating how formal childcare availability and availability of grandparents affect childcare arrangements. By means of multinomial regression models we simultaneously model uptake of formal and informal childcare by parents. Combining linked microdata from the Belgian censuses with contextual data on childcare at the level of municipalities, we consider formal childcare availability at a local level, while including a wide array of characteristics which may affect grandparental availability. Results indicate that increasing formal care crowds-out informal care as the sole care arrangement, whereas combined use of formal and informal care becomes more prevalent. Characteristics indicating a lack of grandmaternal availability increase uptake of formal care and inhibit to a lesser extent the uptake of combined formal and informal care. While increasing formal care substitutes informal care use, the lack of availability of informal care by grandparents may be problematic, particularly for those families most prone to use informal care.

scholarly journals Wetlands in Ethiopia: Lessons From 20 years of Research, Policy and Practice

Wetlands ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 41 (2) ◽  
Author(s):  
Alan Dixon ◽  
Adrian Wood ◽  
Afework Hailu
Keyword(s):  
Research Policy ◽  
Wetland Management ◽  
Local Level ◽  
National Policy ◽  
Research Programme ◽  
Sub Saharan Africa ◽  
Policy And Practice ◽  
Policy Goals ◽  
Sub Saharan ◽  
Wetland Use

AbstractThroughout sub-Saharan Africa wetlands provide ecosystem services that are critical to the development needs of many people. Local wetland use, however, is often at odds with broader national policy goals in which narratives of conservation and protection dominate, hence a recurring challenge is how to reconcile these tensions through the development of policies and field practice that deliver sustainable development. In this paper we examine the extent to which this challenge has been achieved in Ethiopia, charting the changes in wetlands policy and discourse over the last twenty years while reviewing the contribution of the multidisciplinary Ethiopian Wetlands Research Programme (EWRP) (1997–2000). Our analysis suggests that despite EWRP having a significant legacy in developing national interest in wetlands among research, government and non-governmental organisations, its more holistic social-ecological interpretation of wetland management remains neglected within a policy arena dominated by specific sectoral interests and little recognition of the needs of local people. In exploring the impacts at the local level, recent investigations with communities in Ilu Aba Bora Zone highlight adjustments in wetland use that famers attribute to environmental, economic and social change, but which also evidence the adaptive nature of wetland-based livelihoods.

scholarly journals Spatial Conditions Supporting Sustainable Development of Enterprises on Local Level

2021 ◽  
Vol 13 (4) ◽  
pp. 2292
Author(s):  
Aneta Ptak-Chmielewska ◽  
Agnieszka Chłoń-Domińczak
Keyword(s):  
Social Insurance ◽  
Small And Medium Enterprises ◽  
Local Level ◽  
Principal Component ◽  
Sources Of Information ◽  
Clustering Methods ◽  
Significant Information ◽  
The Status ◽  
Medium Enterprises ◽  
High Share

Micro, small and medium enterprises (MSMEs) represent more than 99% of enterprises in Europe. Therefore, knowledge about this sector, also in the spatial context is important to understand the patterns of economic and social development. The main goal of this article is an analysis of spatial conditions and the situation of MSMEs on a local level using combined sources of information. This includes data collected in the Social Insurance Institution and Tax registers in Poland, which provides information on the employment, wages, revenues and taxes paid by the MSMEs on a local level as well as contextual statistical information. The data is used for a diagnosis of spatial circumstances and discussion of conditions influencing the status of the MSMEs sector in a selected region (voivodeship) in Poland. Taxonomy methods including factor analysis and clustering methods based on k-means and SOM Kohonen were used for selecting significant information and grouping of the local units according to the situation of the MSMEs. There are eight factors revealed in principal component analysis and five clusters of local units distinguished using these factors. These include two clusters with a high share of rural local units and two clusters with a high share of rural-urban and urban local units. Additionally, there was an outstanding cluster with only two dominant urban local units. Factors show differences between clusters in the situation of MSMEs sector and infrastructure. Different spatial conditions in different regions influence the situation of MSMEs.

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