China’s Sanctions Dilemma

Author(s):  
Angela Poh

Chapter 8 summarises the main findings of this book. Due to China’s longstanding sanctions rhetoric, Chinese decision-makers had until the end of Xi Jinping’s first term avoided making open use of unilateral sanctions during periods of political dispute. This was particularly the case when their target states used rhetorical action to draw international attention to China’s attempted use of economic coercion. This chapter then reviews the theoretical and policy implications and discusses the future of China’s sanctions rhetoric and behaviour. It also suggests areas for further study, in particular the balance between economic inducement and coercion in China’s grand strategy as well as the links between economics and security.

2020 ◽  
Vol 26 (1) ◽  
pp. 205-210
Author(s):  
Dumitru Iancu ◽  
Dorel Badea

AbstractWe communicate and decide every day, but the complexity of the context in which we do these things is increasing. Today, the cultural structure of the organization’s members, due to the need to have competent employees in correlation with the established objectives, is somewhat puzzled and dynamical. Thus, the decision-makers must take into account (mandatory) the cultural basis of the subordinates when choosing the best alternative for solving an organizational problem. From this perspective, Hofstede’s model can be one of the explanatory modalities of the organization’s cultural characteristics as a basis to identify the action’s solutions in that organization for the future.


2019 ◽  
Vol 130 (629) ◽  
pp. 1384-1415 ◽  
Author(s):  
Ralph Hertwig ◽  
Michael D Ryall

ABSTRACT Thaler and Sunstein (2008) advance the concept of ‘nudge’ policies—non-regulatory and non-fiscal mechanisms designed to enlist people's cognitive biases or motivational deficits so as to guide their behaviour in a desired direction. A core assumption of this approach is that policymakers make artful use of people's cognitive biases and motivational deficits in ways that serve the ultimate interests of the nudged individual. We analyse a model of dynamic policymaking in which the policymaker's preferences are not always aligned with those of the individual. One novelty of our set-up is that the policymaker has the option to implement a ‘boost’ policy, equipping the individual with the competence to overcome the nudge-enabling bias once and for all. Our main result identifies conditions under which the policymaker chooses not to boost in order to preserve the option of using the nudge (and its associated bias) in the future—even though boosting is in the immediate best interests of both the policymaker and the individual. We extend our analysis to situations in which the policymaker can be removed (e.g., through an election) and in which the policymaker is similarly prone to bias. We conclude with a discussion of some policy implications of these findings.


Politics ◽  
2021 ◽  
pp. 026339572199148
Author(s):  
Anthony Costello

On the 25 March 2017, leaders of the EU27 and European Union (EU) institutions ratified the Rome Declaration. They committed to invite citizens to discuss Europe’s future and to provide recommendations that would facilitate their decision-makers in shaping their national positions on Europe. In response, citizens’ dialogues on the future of Europe were instituted across the Union to facilitate public participation in shaping Europe. This paper explores Ireland’s set of dialogues which took place during 2018. Although event organisers in Ireland applied a relatively atypical and more systematic and participatory approach to their dialogues, evidence suggests that Irelands’ dialogues were reminiscent of a public relations exercise which showcased the country’s commitment to incorporating citizens into the debate on Europe while avoiding a deliberative design which could have strengthened the quality of public discourse and the quality of public recommendations. Due to an absence of elite political will for a deliberative process, as well as structural weaknesses in design, participants’ recommendations lacked any clear and prescriptive direction which could shape Ireland’s national position on the future of Europe in any constructive or meaningful way.


2019 ◽  
Vol 11 (6) ◽  
pp. 1716 ◽  
Author(s):  
Luciano Raso ◽  
Jan Kwakkel ◽  
Jos Timmermans

Climate change raises serious concerns for policymakers that want to ensure the success of long-term policies. To guarantee satisfactory decisions in the face of deep uncertainties, adaptive policy pathways might be used. Adaptive policy pathways are designed to take actions according to how the future will actually unfold. In adaptive pathways, a monitoring system collects the evidence required for activating the next adaptive action. This monitoring system is made of signposts and triggers. Signposts are indicators that track the performance of the pathway. When signposts reach pre-specified trigger values, the next action on the pathway is implemented. The effectiveness of the monitoring system is pivotal to the success of adaptive policy pathways, therefore the decision-makers would like to have sufficient confidence about the future capacity to adapt on time. “On time” means activating the next action on a pathway neither so early that it incurs unnecessary costs, nor so late that it incurs avoidable damages. In this paper, we show how mapping the relations between triggers and the probability of misclassification errors inform the level of confidence that a monitoring system for adaptive policy pathways can provide. Specifically, we present the “trigger-probability” mapping and the “trigger-consequences” mappings. The former mapping displays the interplay between trigger values for a given signpost and the level of confidence regarding whether change occurs and adaptation is needed. The latter mapping displays the interplay between trigger values for a given signpost and the consequences of misclassification errors for both adapting the policy or not. In a case study, we illustrate how these mappings can be used to test the effectiveness of a monitoring system, and how they can be integrated into the process of designing an adaptive policy.


2021 ◽  
Vol 54 (1) ◽  
pp. 233-244
Author(s):  
Taha Radwan

Abstract The spread of the COVID-19 started in Wuhan on December 31, 2019, and a powerful outbreak of the disease occurred there. According to the latest data, more than 165 million cases of COVID-19 infection have been detected in the world (last update May 19, 2021). In this paper, we propose a statistical study of COVID-19 pandemic in Egypt. This study will help us to understand and study the evolution of this pandemic. Moreover, documenting of accurate data and taken policies in Egypt can help other countries to deal with this epidemic, and it will also be useful in the event that other similar viruses emerge in the future. We will apply a widely used model in order to predict the number of COVID-19 cases in the coming period, which is the autoregressive integrated moving average (ARIMA) model. This model depicts the present behaviour of variables through linear relationship with their past values. The expected results will enable us to provide appropriate advice to decision-makers in Egypt on how to deal with this epidemic.


2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Gideon Kruseman ◽  
Ahmad Dermawan ◽  
Mandiaye Diagne ◽  
Dolapo Enahoro ◽  
Aymen Frija ◽  
...  

Challenges related to poverty, hunger, nutrition, health, and the environment are widespread and urgent. One way to stress the urgency of making the right decisions about the future of the global food systems now is to better understand and more clearly articulate the alternative scenarios that food systems face. Developing, synthesizing, and presenting such alternatives to decision makers in a clear way is the ultimate goal of e CGIAR Foresight team.No single source of information focuses regularly and systematically on the future of food and agriculture, and challenges facing developing countries. Our work aims to fill that gap with a focus on agricultural income and employment.group systematically collects information about past, on-going and planned foresight activities across CGIAR centers and their partners, spanning the global agricultural research for development arenaWe present a comprehensive overview and synthesis of the results of relevant foresight research, which through the tagging with metadata allows for customized investigations in greater detail. The cross-cutting nature of this work allows for a more comprehensive picture and assessments of possible complementarities/trade-offs.Potential users of this report and associated activities include CGIAR science leaders and scientists as well as the broader research community, national and international development partners, national governments and research organizations, funders, and the private sector.The approach developed by the CGIAR foresight group is used to make foresight study results accessible across organizations and domains in order to aid policy and decision makers for strategic planning. The approach allows visualization of both the available information across multiple entry points as well as the identification of critical knowledge gaps.


2018 ◽  
Vol 45 (2) ◽  
pp. 286-299
Author(s):  
Francisco Silva ◽  
José Vieira ◽  
António Pimenta ◽  
João Teixeira

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to investigate low-wage retention using a survival analysis approach. Design/methodology/approach Variables explaining low-wage retention take into account the characteristics of the employee, such as education, age, tenure with the company, gender and nationality, and the characteristics of the job and the company such as industry affiliation, number of employees, age of the company and location. Findings Female workers and workers with low level of education, older ones, those with more seniority in the company and those of Asian origin remain longer in a low-wage situation. Also, workers in smaller and older companies located outside the Lisbon region are more likely to stay in a low-wage situation. Practical implications The policy implications are clear. Education plays a prominent role: the higher the level of education of the individual, the higher the probability of him/her leaving low pay. Training programs may help employees in Portugal to leave the low-wage situation. Furthermore, policies must address the different mobility rates of different nationalities and different activities. Training programs are more urgent for hotels and restaurants and transports and communication. The findings also indicate that those initially working in younger firms and larger firms have a higher probability of leaving the low-wage situation. This is a stimulus for decision makers to stimulate employment in the younger firms or in the larger firms. Originality/value Despite low-wage retention being a well-known field of research, to our knowledge this is the first research paper using survival analysis to explain the duration of a low-wage situation.


2018 ◽  
Vol 34 (2) ◽  
pp. 135-163
Author(s):  
Ramzi Mabsout ◽  
Jana G. Mourad

Abstract:The effectiveness of heuristics has received contradicting interpretations in the behavioural sciences. We study the policy implications of two programmes that dispute the effectiveness of heuristics – the biases and heuristics and the fast and frugal heuristics programmes. While the first blames heuristics for most errors in judgement, the second posits heuristics as simple mental algorithms that work well in a range of environments. We argue that the fast and frugal programme is less paternalistic insofar as it models humans as effective decision-makers in a range of environments. However, in the rapidly changing environments of the 21st century, both are needed to inform evidence-based policies.


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