The geography of financial condition in the Mexico City metropolitan area

There has been academic and policy concern about the financial capacity of administratively fragmented metropolitan areas to implement inclusive development measures and provide public services. Metropolitan public financing is problematic because there is a geographical mismatch between extended functional urban regions and administrative units. While local governments are responsible for implementing policies, spending, and raising revenues, financial capacity tends to differ across jurisdictions in response to economic, social and political factors, resulting in manifold disparities. Such variations can be particularly acute depending on the complexity and size of the metropolitan area, and can lead to major spatial disparities in the life standards of residents. This paper focuses on the local financial condition in Mexico City Metropolitan Area, which is often used to exemplify a fragmented metropolitan area. Official statistics from 1989 to 2018 are used to identify major intra-metropolitan variations in the financial condition of local governments. A novel methodology is used to classify municipalities according to their financial health, and discriminant analysis is used to explore the factors shaping the geography of financial performance. The economic and demographic size of municipalities appear to play a significant role.

Poverty in South Asia: An Intellectual History

The Oxford English Dictionary defines poverty as “destitution” with respect to lack of wealth and material possessions. It denotes a condition where an individual has inadequate resources and earnings to afford those necessities they require in order to stay alive and well. This condition can stem from extraneous shocks, such as the death of the head of the household or a poor harvest, or can result from systematic factors like power relations or institutions that have, since ancient times, kept some groups in society in precarious conditions. Descriptions of poverty are plentiful in ancient and medieval texts, which tend to characterize poverty with regard to natural, cultural, and personal features. In sharp contrast, the emergence of poverty as a public policy concern did not become evident until the latter part of the 19th century. It is also noteworthy that the means of measuring poverty that began to emerge in 19th and early 20th centuries identified poverty as a cultural or individual trait, rather than as a consequence of legal or administrative policy making. These latter day quantitative methods of measurement also provide the earliest evidence base for the design of public policies for poverty alleviation and advancing human development.

Gender Equality Politics

This chapter examines the gender contract between women, society, and the state to identify continuities and changes in gender equality in Irish society since the 1970s. It examines attitudes to women in the home and the controversial public policy debates on abortion to illustrate shifts and stasis in this relationship. The chapter explores the slow evolution of gender equality as an institutional policy concern, supported by successive government commissions and given impetus by the feminist movement. These initiatives culminated in national gender equality plans linked to international commitments, along with targeted plans for specific areas such as violence against women, and women’s participation in political and public life. The chapter concludes that while strides towards gender equality have been made in social, economic, and political life over fifty years, there remain deep-seated attitudes resistant to women’s autonomy and equal citizenship. The gender contract continues to be a work in progress.

Societal targeting in researcher funding: An exploratory approach through dimensions and interactions

Shaping public research to enhance its societal contribution has become a key policy concern. Against this background, how research funding may stimulate the societal orientation of scientific research has been underexplored. This paper proposes a two-fold exploratory approach both to characterize and observe societal targeting in individual researcher funding. First, stemming from literature, policy and practices, we select four key societal targeting dimensions: interdisciplinarity, transdisciplinarity, prioritized research problems and user-oriented outputs. All these targeting dimensions of funding can potentially shape both research networks and practices towards societal goals. These dimensions may be identified in context through ex ante specifications of funding instruments, in rules and conditions for funding provision to researchers. Second, we also consider potential interactions of funding instruments, since researchers may engage with various instruments simultaneously when conducting their research. Therefore, each researcher funding configuration at a moment in time may generate bespoke shaping of research, depending on the societal targeting dimensions present and whether funding is co-used to support different research topics and activities within a researcher’s portfolio. The combination of the targeting dimensions and their potential interactions would allow for empirical exploration at different scales and in diverse settings. They expand our understanding of funding use dynamics that might shape research. This systematic perspective on funding instrument characteristics and their configurational possibilities will be relevant to assess the role of funding in research evaluation. We conclude with both policy implications of this exploratory societal targeting approach to funding and suggestions to expand it in further research.

Why some Muslims Engaged in Violence: A militarised Mentality

Since 9/11 countering different types of violence through CVE and PVE programs have become a central policy concern for many in the Western and non-Western countries such as the UK, France, the United States and Indonesia. These countries have launched various CVE and PVE programs to prevent what scholars call radicalisation and de-radicalise those dammed to have been radicalised. These programs' focus is often to build community resilience and persuade individuals to adopt a liberal or state-oriented understanding of Islam. However, how successful these programs are is not clear. In some cases, these programs have been counterproductive because they have fostered Islamophobia and mistrust, as is the case with the UK's Prevent strategy. This paper will take the UK as a case study and propose a non-religious conceptual framework by using strain and fusion theory and interview data to explain why some British Muslims decided to engage in terrorism. In doing so, the paper will argue that if the UK government is to prevent such decisions, it needs to focus on addressing the socio-political causes that engender motivations to engage in terrorism.

World trade organization’s export-oriented compulsory licensing mechanism: Foreseen policy concern for Africa to mitigate the COVID-19 pandemic

Africa has a history of grappling with outbreaks and high prevalence of disease. It currently confronts COVID-19 which is escalating because of local community transmission of the disease. Poorly resourced health systems in Africa are ill-prepared for the surging number of COVID-19 cases. This paper emphasizes that in the current battle against COVID-19, policymakers should not lose sight of future policy challenges. COVID-19 vaccine has become available, but patent exclusivities might play a major role in hindering access to it. With little or no indigenous pharmaceutical manufacturing capacity of its own, Africa will almost entirely rely on importing COVID-19 vaccines or treatment from third parties. The World Trade Organization’s (WTO’s) Paragraph 6 System, which relates to export-oriented compulsory licensing, is excessively formal and does not suit a pandemic situation which requires swift action. This paper draws policymakers’ attention of to a high priority policy concern for Africa.

Decreased Administration of Life-Sustaining Treatment just before Death among Older Inpatients in Japan: A Time-Trend Analysis from 2012 through 2014 Based on a Nationally Representative Sample

The administration of intensive end-of-life care just before death in older patients has become a major policy concern, as it increases medical costs; however, care intensity does not necessarily indicate quality. This study aimed to describe the temporal trends in the administration of life-sustaining treatments (LSTs) and intensive care unit (ICU) admissions just before death in older inpatients in Japan. We utilized the National Database of Health Insurance Claims and Specific Health Checkups of Japan (NDB). Inpatients who were aged ≥65 years and died in October of 2012, 2013, or 2014 were analyzed. The numbers of decedents in 2012, 2013, and 2014 were 3362, 3473, and 3516, respectively. The frequencies of receiving cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) (11.0% to 8.3%), mechanical ventilation (MV) (13.1% to 9.8%), central venous catheter (CVC) insertion (10.6% to 7.8%), and ICU admission (9.1% to 7.8%), declined between 2012 and 2014. After adjusting for age, sex, and type of ward, the declining trends persisted for CPR, MV, and CVC insertion relative to the frequencies in 2012. Our results indicate that the administration of LST just before death in older inpatients in Japan decreased from 2012 to 2014.

Inequality in the Developing World

Inequality has emerged as a key development challenge. It holds implications for economic growth and redistribution and translates into power asymmetries that can endanger human rights, create conflict, and embed social exclusion and chronic poverty. For these reasons, it underpins intense public and academic debates and has become a dominant policy concern within many countries and in all multilateral agencies. It is at the core of the seventeen goals of the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development. This book contributes to this important discussion by presenting assessments of the measurement and analysis of global inequality by leading inequality scholars, aligning these to comprehensive reviews of inequality trends in five of the world’s largest developing countries—Brazil, China, India, Mexico, and South Africa. Each is a persistently high or newly high inequality context and, with the changing global inequality situation as context, country chapters investigate the main factors shaping their different inequality dynamics. Particular attention is on how broader societal inequalities arising outside of the labour market have intersected with the rapidly changing labour market milieus of the last few decades. Collectively these chapters provide a nuanced discussion of key distributive phenomena like the high concentration of income among the most affluent people, gender inequalities, and social mobility. Substantive tax and social benefit policies that each country implemented to mitigate these inequality dynamics are assessed in detail. The book takes lessons from these contexts back into the global analysis of inequality and social mobility and the policies needed to address inequality.

Aadhaar in a Box? Legitimizing Digital Identity in Times of Crisis

The political drive to develop digital identity systems, in particular in the Global South with financial and technical support provided by international development actors, is accelerating during the COVID-19 pandemic. There are different reasons for this redoubling of attention to digitizing identities. These include an increased emphasis on digital social protection during the pandemic and the emergence of proposals for digital vaccination/immunity certificates to facilitate the reopening of societies and restoration of economies, which it is argued would need to be supported by robust digital identity infrastructures. Without evaluating the merits of claims about the capacity of digital identity systems to address the various challenges posed by COVID-19, in this paper I instead make a theoretical observation before raising a policy concern. First, I draw attention to the rise of India’s Aadhaar as an exemplar of developmental digital identity, which has intensified during the pandemic, and what this might mean for concepts of surveillance. I then conclude with a call to the development community to take more seriously investments in data protection regulatory capacity in countries where they are supporting digital identity projects.

School Belonging Predicts whether an Emerging Adult will be Not in Education, Employment, or Training (NEET) after School

Low school belonging and Not (being) in Employment, Education, or Training (NEET) are both signs of social exclusion. Yet little research has considered whether school belonging is a risk factor for NEET. Using two longitudinal cohorts from Australia (*N* = 17,692; 51% Boys), we explore this relationship. Controlling for a range of individual and school level covariates, we find that school belonging at age 15 is a consistent and practically significant predictor of NEET status at ages 16-20. We found that this relationship is not the product of school belonging lowering the chances of students graduating high-school. Rather, school belonging had a unique impact beyond graduation. Given the costs of NEET, school belonging is of significant policy concern.