REGIONAL BIAS IN LATE ANTIQUE AND EARLY MEDIEVAL COIN FINDS AND ITS EFFECTS ON DATA: THREE CASE STUDIES

This paper discusses the role of bias and uncertainty in the FLAME project (Framing the Late Antique and Early Medieval Economy) at Princeton University. FLAME is a large Digital Humanities project focused on collecting and storing data on coin minting and circulation in west Afro-Eurasia from 325 to 750 CE, roughly coinciding with the period of transition between the late antique and early medieval periods. The overarching goal is historical – that is, we wish to be able to say something new about how the world of late antiquity and the medieval period really was. However, in the process of building this database, and its accompanying online tools, we have also observed that the data is difficult and problematic. This paper, then, is an account of some of these historiographical and methodological issues in the form of three case studies (Britain, France, and Ukraine) and a short discussion of strategies that FLAME employs to communicate these biases to users, who benefit from a transparent discussion of messiness and difficulty in the data. The paper proceeds in seven sections, of which the first is an introduction. Section Two presents basic technical details of the project, such as its database implementation (MySQL) and its online visualization systems (ArcGIS), access to which can be found at https://flame.princeton.edu. Section Three discusses the historiographic questions at stake, distinguishing between Primary Bias (inherent in materials themselves) and Secondary Bias (particular to national and political contexts). Section Four, Five, and Six are each devoted to a separate case study: Britain, France, and Ukraine. Each discusses FLAME's data on that region and briefly touches upon contextual factors that may bias regional data. Thus, Section Four discusses Britain, with much analysis focused on the role of the Portable Antiquities Scheme in incentivizing reporting of found antiquities, and its effects on coin data. Section Five discusses France, where FLAME records many coin finds, but from a limited time period (primarily from Merovingian states). Section Six discusses the situation in Ukraine, where we were helped by existing scholarly resources (such as the coin inventories of Kropotkin), but where cultural heritage preservation suffers from weak state enforcement and where much scholarship suffers from spotty recording practices, and often outright theft of national treasures, going back to the imperial Russian period. Section Seven concludes the paper, noting that such methodological and second-order discussion of bias is a critical desideratum for the Digital Humanities as it matures into its second decade.

KERJASAMA KEAMANAN AMERIKA SERIKAT-MEKSIKO (Kasus Weak State dan Merida Initiative)

Bahan diskusi perkuliahan pada Program Studi Ilmu Politik Pascasarjana Universitas Riau (2013-2014).

Côte d’Ivoire

Côte d’Ivoire first experienced a civil war in 2002, but the country’s rapid socio-political disintegration after the demise of Félix Houphouët-Boigny in 1993 produced several risk factors that would eventually culminate in atrocity crimes between 2010 and 2011. This article identifies a weak state that only exercised jurisdiction over the south of the country, years of instability driven by horizontal inequalities and an identity crisis, past abuses that had gone unpunished, and election disputes that served as triggers for atrocity crimes. The deeply polarized nature of Ivorian society meant that local mechanisms for resolving disputes and building peace were not wholly effective, even though they helped to resolve disputes and prevent violence in some local communities. Findings from the Ivorian case demonstrate the need to pay closer attention to the structural and proximate factors that underpin conflicts. Côte d’Ivoire also presents lessons on the need for decisive action in the face of unfolding atrocity crimes. There was a need for timely and decisive response in accordance with the principles of R2P. Nonetheless military intervention was delayed for months, resulting in avoidable fatalities.

FEATURES OF THE CONTRACT FOR ENGINEERING SERVICES IN CIVIL LAW OF UKRAINE: WAYS TO IMPROVE THE PROCESS IN THE CONTEXT OF IMPROVING BUSINESS

The current state of regulation of the engineering services market in the world is at the level of constant development and improvement. The formation of a system for concluding contractual relations in the field of engineering services is no exception. The imperfection of the system for concluding the contract for engineering services indicates the weak state of the current management system in the field of innovation and intellectual property in the field of doing business both in a single country and throughout the world, which necessitates revising and improving the principles of concluding contracts in the field of engineering services. The contract for engineering services appeared in the world legislation relatively recently, in science there is still no unity in understanding the nature of this contract, as well as in the terminology used to designate legal relations arising on its basis. There are different, sometimes polar, approaches to the essence, features and elements of the contract for engineering services. In addition, there is still no single mechanism for forming a contract. Given this, an important step towards improving the contract for engineering servicess in civil law will be the formation of a systematic sequence of steps using the IDEF0 functional model. In this regard, the main goal of the article is to form the basic principles of consistency and algorithmization of the process of concluding the contract for engineering servicess on the basis of a functional model IDEF0.

Africa faces the challenge of ‘choiceless democracy’

Significance Behind both phenomena lies popular frustration with the perceived inability of democracy to deliver peace and development, and an absence of manifest differences in socio-economic fortunes despite changes in governments, in what has become known as ‘choiceless democracy’. Impacts Political instability will undermine national and foreign direct investment, and therefore economic recovery. Instability and economic difficulties may fuel irregular migration to Europe and the Middle East. Weak state capacity creates possibilities for the emergence of insurgencies, terrorist groups and organised crime.

Constraints to Economic Growth in South Africa

This chapter analyses the drivers and constraints on the rate of economic growth in South Africa from the 1950’s apartheid-era through to the democratic period post-1994. Key structural factors identified as impacting on the rate and composition of economic growth include the country’s history of racial injustice and exclusion, its industrial structure and linkages to the global commodity price cycle, the evolution of macroeconomic imbalances and related infrastructure investment failures, and the impact of weak state capacity and corruption. Thereafter, the chapter outlines a number of strategic policy interventions for overcoming constraints to inclusive economic growth in South Africa.

New-style Banks and The Agent Governance Strategies of the Beiyang Government: A Study on the History of the Development of China's Documentary Railway Billing Business in Modern Times

Under the "weak state" regime of modern China, it was difficult for the country’s modernization process to develop without the effective intervention of a centralized state. In the process of government governance, absorbing social organizations and civil forces as agents had proved to be an effective method. Beiyang government’s governance strategy of ‘using agents to regulate agents’ in the documentary railway billing business could be regarded as typical of the diversity of government management. Qing Dynasty, government departments were not directly responsible for railway freight for various reasons, instead, they allowed railway transshipment companies to act as agents for freight management. Then transshipment companies gradually became an obstacle to Beiyang government’s reform on freight transport. However, under the Republic of China, the new-style bank discovered a benign opportunity to develop documentary railway billing service and created a bottom-up institutional reform model. Through the service, the bank became the new agent for the supervision of the transshipment company, which not only regulated the operation, but also forced railroad bureaus in the Yangzi Delta to be primarily responsible for railway freight. The Central Ministry of Transportation of Beiyang Government decided to promote this agency governance model and billing service nationwide. Received 11th January 2021; Revised 2nd June 2021; Accepted 20th July 2021

Policy Advisory Capability in Papua New Guinea's Central Government: Evaluation, Implications and Lessons

<p>There has been mounting criticism (generally associated with the "weak state thesis") of the inability of the Papua New Guinea (PNG) public service to discharge its various policy formulation and implementation tasks. Such criticisms tend to be generalised in nature. Information about performance and the operational deficiencies of specific departments and policy domains derived from scholarly research has been sparse. Against this background, and using as a measure key elements of capability from the development administration literature, this study examines the state of policy advisory capability in three key central agencies within the PNG central government; identifies key constraints on the agencies' ability to provide comprehensive and reliable advice; and then proposes policy intervention measures aimed at strengthening capability. The agencies play a very influential and significant role in the government advisory machine and comprise the Department of Finance and Treasury (DF&T), the Department of Prime Minister and National Executive Council (DPM&NEC) and the Department of Personnel Management (DPM). Analysis is primarily based on the responses from the policy staff of the lead policy units in each department. Such responses have been gauged using a questionnaire survey and indepth interviews in early and late 2002 in Port Moresby. This study shows that the problems affecting policy advisory capability are, in most cases, pervasive and systemic. Such a loss in capability tends to arise from a variety of interlocking (and often interwoven) problems from both the political and the administrative and organisational dimensions within which policy advice is developed and delivered. On a broader level, the weakening of policy advisory capability raises important implications for the organisation and delivery of quality and timely advice. In particular, there is a risk that policy issues will not be comprehensively assessed taking into account the available evidence, views of parties concerned and, most important, the implications arising from various policy options provided to ministers and the National Executive Council (NEC) (cabinet). There is, therefore, a risk of ministers and NEC being ill advised on policy issues. This, in turn, may affect the executive branch's effectiveness in policymaking. The deterioration in the policy advisory capability of the three key agencies also gives rise to doubts about whether the three agencies can effectively maintain their key functions of control, monitoring and oversight and policy coordination across the PNG public service. There is a risk of the centre of the PNG government losing its ability to control and steer the government machine. This conclusion is consistent with the existing anecdotal evidence of a deteriorating capability of the PNG public service and, to some extent supports the weak state thesis advanced in the literature. This study on the ground of three key agencies demonstrates, however, that the political environment is not the only cause of weak performance by the PNG public service. That is a function of a variety of interlocking political and administrative and organisational capability factors. An improvement in policy advice capability in PNG will require attention to the several systemic factors identified in the study. Using insights from the policy transfer literature this study shows that policy lessons from other jurisdictions could be drawn on to improve capability in policy advice in PNG.</p>

Policy Advisory Capability in Papua New Guinea's Central Government: Evaluation, Implications and Lessons

<p>There has been mounting criticism (generally associated with the "weak state thesis") of the inability of the Papua New Guinea (PNG) public service to discharge its various policy formulation and implementation tasks. Such criticisms tend to be generalised in nature. Information about performance and the operational deficiencies of specific departments and policy domains derived from scholarly research has been sparse. Against this background, and using as a measure key elements of capability from the development administration literature, this study examines the state of policy advisory capability in three key central agencies within the PNG central government; identifies key constraints on the agencies' ability to provide comprehensive and reliable advice; and then proposes policy intervention measures aimed at strengthening capability. The agencies play a very influential and significant role in the government advisory machine and comprise the Department of Finance and Treasury (DF&T), the Department of Prime Minister and National Executive Council (DPM&NEC) and the Department of Personnel Management (DPM). Analysis is primarily based on the responses from the policy staff of the lead policy units in each department. Such responses have been gauged using a questionnaire survey and indepth interviews in early and late 2002 in Port Moresby. This study shows that the problems affecting policy advisory capability are, in most cases, pervasive and systemic. Such a loss in capability tends to arise from a variety of interlocking (and often interwoven) problems from both the political and the administrative and organisational dimensions within which policy advice is developed and delivered. On a broader level, the weakening of policy advisory capability raises important implications for the organisation and delivery of quality and timely advice. In particular, there is a risk that policy issues will not be comprehensively assessed taking into account the available evidence, views of parties concerned and, most important, the implications arising from various policy options provided to ministers and the National Executive Council (NEC) (cabinet). There is, therefore, a risk of ministers and NEC being ill advised on policy issues. This, in turn, may affect the executive branch's effectiveness in policymaking. The deterioration in the policy advisory capability of the three key agencies also gives rise to doubts about whether the three agencies can effectively maintain their key functions of control, monitoring and oversight and policy coordination across the PNG public service. There is a risk of the centre of the PNG government losing its ability to control and steer the government machine. This conclusion is consistent with the existing anecdotal evidence of a deteriorating capability of the PNG public service and, to some extent supports the weak state thesis advanced in the literature. This study on the ground of three key agencies demonstrates, however, that the political environment is not the only cause of weak performance by the PNG public service. That is a function of a variety of interlocking political and administrative and organisational capability factors. An improvement in policy advice capability in PNG will require attention to the several systemic factors identified in the study. Using insights from the policy transfer literature this study shows that policy lessons from other jurisdictions could be drawn on to improve capability in policy advice in PNG.</p>