The Financial and Social Cost of Public–Private Partnerships

Author(s):  
María José Romero ◽  
Bodo Ellmers

Most of the existing literature on public-private partnerships (PPPs) focuses exclusively on the nature and perceived benefits of PPPs, notably their professed efficiency gains in the provision of public goods and services. However, little attention has been devoted to analyzing one of the main drivers of PPPs, that is, their use by governments to hide public debt—through non-transparent accounting practices—and their consequences. In this chapter, we assess the financial and social costs of PPPs and illustrate their impact on public debt and human rights, drawing on several examples in order to offer some lessons from experience to date. The chapter is organized into four sections. The first examines the definition of PPPs and their main characteristics. The second presents the most recent figures available on PPPs. The third analyzes the rationale behind governments’ choice of PPPs over other forms of infrastructure and service provision, by focusing on off-balance sheet accounting. The fourth section presents a critical assessment of PPPs and their impact on sustainable development.

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ryan Harris Parker

The press is a constitutive part of our society. It helps create national identities and formulates society's understanding of itself and its place in the world. Moreover, a free press is indispensable for ensuring the vibrancy of a democracy. For these reasons, a close inspection of news, and an evaluation of its performance, is crucial. We must look to the development of the mass press at the turn of the twentieth century to locate the beginnings of journalistic objectivity and the type of news we are familiar with today. The first section of this paper offers a review of accounts of this transformational period, placing opposing theories within the larger framework of the frictions between cultural studies and political economy, and underscores the need for a holistic understanding of the period. The second section chronicles the press's articulation of its new professional tenets, offers a definition of journalistic objectivity, and reveals its intrinsic limitations. The third section details how the modern press's ideal democratic mandate has been compromised, with the influence of the press being used instead to ensconce powerful interests. And the fourth section outlines the calls for a redefinition of journalism in light of the failures covered in the preceding section. Finally, The Daily Show with Jon Stewart is offered as an alternative journalistic form that transcends the dangerous dogma of traditional news outlets, allowing it to fulfill the democratic responsibility of the press by encouraging a critical and astute citizenry.


2019 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Akramosadat Kia

Nature is one of the most important pillars of human life, which is why the environment has been considered in all historical periods. At first, contemporary international law seeks to protect the environment as part of international environmental law, but the inadequacy of this protection and the need to protect the environment for Nowadays's human beings and future generations, the link between the environment and human rights It was considered because legal protection of human rights could be a means to protect the environment. Hence, in the context of the third generation of human rights, a new right called "the right to the environment" was created in international human rights instruments, in which the environment was raised as a human right. This right is not only a reminder of the solidarity rights that are categorized in the third generation of human rights, but also necessary for the realization of many human rights, civil, political or economic, social and cultural rights. However, the exercise of this right requires a level of development which in turn provides for a greater degree of environmental degradation. Hence, the international community since the nineties has promoted the idea of sustainable development at all levels of national, regional and the international has put it on its agenda.


Author(s):  
Ulrike Mosel

This chapter analyzes the specific characteristics of corpora of endangered languages from a corpus linguistic perspective. Therefore it starts with a definition of the central notions of corpus and text and then investigates how the heterogeneous language documentation corpora may fit into a general typology of corpora. The third section looks at the genres and registers that for methodological and theoretical reasons are typical for language documentations, whereas the fourth section deals with the structure of corpora and how texts of a particular content, genre or register can be accessed in archives. The format of the texts, which are typically annotated audio and video recordings, is described in the fifth section and deals with metadata, transcription, orthography, translation, glossing, and syntactic annotation. How annotated corpora can be analyzed for grammatical and lexical research is shown in the sixth section. The last section summarizes the specific features of language documentation corpora.


Author(s):  
Yanqiu Wang ◽  
Xiaorong Huang ◽  
Linyun Gao ◽  
Biying Guo ◽  
Kai Ma

Abstract. Water resources are not only basic natural resources, but also strategic economic resources and ecological control factors. Water resources carrying capacity constrains the sustainable development of regional economy and society. Studies of water resources carrying capacity can provide helpful information about how the socioeconomic system is both supported and restrained by the water resources system. Based on the research of different scholars, major problems in the study of water resources carrying capacity were summarized as follows: the definition of water resources carrying capacity is not yet unified; the methods of carrying capacity quantification based on the definition of inconsistency are poor in operability; the current quantitative research methods of water resources carrying capacity did not fully reflect the principles of sustainable development; it is difficult to quantify the relationship among the water resources, economic society and ecological environment. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a better quantitative evaluation method to determine the regional water resources carrying capacity. This paper proposes a new approach to quantifying water resources carrying capacity (that is, through the compilation of the water resources balance sheet) to get a grasp of the regional water resources depletion and water environmental degradation (as well as regional water resources stock assets and liabilities), figure out the squeeze of socioeconomic activities on the environment, and discuss the quantitative calculation methods and technical route of water resources carrying capacity which are able to embody the substance of sustainable development.


2020 ◽  
pp. 251-290
Author(s):  
Donald Bloxham

part 4 History, Identity, and the Present Part 4 considers the role of historical consciousness in shaping present-day identity. It is critical of prejudicial ‘Identity History’ while enjoining historians to embrace their roles in historical arguments pertaining to identity. The first section clarifies what falls outside the definition of ‘Identity History’, noting that much excellent scholarship pertains to identity and even serves identity goals without being prejudicial. The second section highlights where historians working on identity matters are likely to fall into conceptual difficulty. Is the relationship between past ‘them’ and present ‘us’ a matter of identity or difference or a bit of both? Identity History is inconsistent here, with different attitudes taken depending on whether that past behaviour was good or bad by present lights. There are consequences for the historian’s engagement with past rights and wrongs, harms and benefits, because claims on these matters constitute stakes in the identity game whose winner gets to decide what is desirable in the here and now. The third section develops such themes and distinguishes between more and less appropriate idioms for characterizing the relationship between contemporary polities and groups on one hand and the deeds of relevant ‘forebears’ on the other hand. It is a mistake to talk of contemporary guilt, or for that matter virtue, in light of what one’s predecessors did, but the language of shame or pride may be appropriate. The fourth section addresses the material legacies of past action, considering matters of compensation and redistribution. The concluding section returns to broader principles.


2017 ◽  
Vol 19 (2(64)) ◽  
pp. 41-46
Author(s):  
D.V. Bulysheva

The study examined the organizational and economic opportunities for recreational land-use in Odessa region towards ecologization of economic relations. Organizational and economic bases in the process of ecologization of recreational land use are intended to provide a mechanism for use of the respective territories, regulation of the system of forms and methods of social organization in the respective lands. Public relations on the territory of urban agglomerations represent a complex system, because they relate to organization of both material and non-material production, exchange, distribution and consumption of material goods and services, etc. In order to ensure sustainable development of the respective territories, organizational system of recreational land use should ensure existence, functioning and development of appropriate regulations, standards and guidelines for use of recreational lands of the regions. It is proved that in today's environmental and economic situation of land recreational use, there are obstacles to the sustainable development of the territory. In the situation of absence of a single organizational and economic basis and policy of system regulation in development of the entire agglomeration�s territory, functional and spatial integrity of the city and the suburban area is destroyed. The structure and definition of the organizational and economic mechanism of ecologization of recreational land use as an interconnected set of relations, principles, methods and forms of ensuring the interaction of organizational, production, financial and economic processes in the system of recreational land use, which promotes increase of competitive advantages and efficiency of development of the corresponding territories is given. The study determined that organizational and economic mechanism consists of the following components: financing, stimulation, planning, regulation, institutional and managerial support.


Author(s):  
Naomi Zack

This article attempts to develop an accessible approach to race and racism in the United States at the beginning of the twenty-first century. The second section is about the concept of racism, and, by derivation, racists and racist behavior. Any acceptable definition of racism would seem to presuppose the existence of races and racial difference. Therefore, the third section, ‘Race’, is an examination of those concepts. The fourth section ‘Remedies’, is a discussion of practical correctives to racism in the light of the progress made in second and third sections.


Author(s):  
Laura Flamand

This chapter explores the increasing and rather prominent role of public advisory boards in the Mexican federal government with emphasis on policy analysis instruments and methods, conditions for sound analysis, and existing organizational capabilities. The chapter is organized into four sections. The first provides a definition of the term “advisory boards”, given its different and at times contradictory uses. The second section describes the construction and criteria used to build the first universe of advisory boards in the Mexican federal government, circa 2015. The third part presents a comparative analysis of two of the most influential advisory boards in Mexico: CONEVAL, devoted to the evaluation of social policy, and INECC, in charge of providing technical and scientific advice to environmental decision makers. The fourth section discusses the main findings and presents conclusions.


Author(s):  
Philippe Cullet

This chapter investigates the interaction between individuals and states in the face of climate change. It looks into the points of intersection between climate change and human rights regimes by examining the extent to which the climate change regime has recognized and addressed the human rights dimensions of climate change. Indeed, climate change is but one of many global environmental issues and where the climate change regime is part of the corpus of international environmental law, it looks into the extent to which the debate on a right to environment can be used in the context of climate change. International environmental law includes instruments that embrace the human dimensions of environmental issues as reflected, for instance, in the definition of sustainable development adopted in the Johannesburg Declaration on Sustainable Development at the Johannesburg World Conference on Environment and Development.


2019 ◽  
Vol 30 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Vitaly Ogleznev

In this article, I focus solely on the study of the classical definition of the speech act of promising given in the works of John Searle. In the first section, I consider the conditions and rules for the successful performance of the act of promising. The second section includes an analysis of some contradictions in Searle’s approach to the insincere promise. I discuss his basic argument that insincere promises are speech acts. The third section deals with the case of a polite promise. The fourth section presents a refutation of Searle’s claim to recognize an insincere promise as a promise and a speech act. In the last section, I conclude that for the ‘normal’ speech act of promising, the requirement of the sincerity condition ‘S intends to do A’ is necessary; otherwise it is not a promise at all, and thus the Searlean insincere promise is not a speech act.


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