Red Tape, Rule Legitimacy, and Public Service Motivation: Experimental Evidence From Korean Citizens

While legitimacy plays a key role in determining if a public sector rule or process objectively qualifies as red tape, it is unclear if legitimacy shapes subjective red tape judgments. We use a sample of South Korean citizens and a vignette-based survey experiment describing applying for a small business COVID-19 relief fund to test the relevance of rule legitimacy for perceived red tape. We find that obtaining a favorable outcome (receiving the fund) reduces perceived red tape, but that neither input nor output legitimacy plays a consistent role. Second, we find that public service motivation moderates the role of both input and output legitimacy on perceived red tape, though in different directions. For those with high levels of public service motivation, output legitimacy reduces perceived red tape. However, for the same group, input legitimacy increases it. We provide a detailed discussion of the contributions of our study.

DETERMINANTS OF PERSONAL BANKRUPTCY DISCHARGE IN MALAYSIA: A SOCIAL CAPITAL APPROACH OF AL-NAHD AND TA’AWUN

This study investigates the relationship between Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Consumer Price Index (CPI), Unemployment Rate (UE), Interest rate (IR), Household Debt (HD) on bankruptcy discharge and test the application of an Islamic concept of mutual cooperation, Social Relief Fund (SRF) to enhance the bankruptcy discharge. The study period is from 2000 to 2019. The autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) was used in the study. Two models were tested; Model 1 consists of the macroeconomic variables without SRF and Model 2, with SRF. Model 1 shows none of the variables has significant effect on bankruptcy discharge for long run relationship. However, Model 2 shows GDP, CPI and SRF have significant positive long run relationship with bankruptcy discharge. This provides statistical evidence that SRF has a beneficial long-run relationship to enhance bankruptcy discharge in Malaysia. For short run relationship, Model 1 reveals GDP, CPI, and UE as significant variables to discharge. Model 2 shows stronger short run relationships in which GDP, IR, HD, SRF are positive and CPI is negative to bankruptcy discharge. These variables are significant at 1 percent level. The findings contribute new knowledge on determinants of bankruptcy discharge in Malaysia. The study provides empirical evidence that SRF is a potential component as a social safety net in providing financial assistance among distressed debtors from bankruptcy. We recommend the use of SRF as the current bankruptcy reform is being viewed from the legislative lens and lacks the social capital component to assist debtors achieve financial restitution.

COVID-19 Strikes U.S. Higher Education

International students have contributed to the internationalization and diversification of U.S. higher education; yet, when COVID-19 (i.e., coronavirus) struck, it became evident that this subset of the U.S. higher education student population was left unaccounted for and unprotected. This manuscript underscores the unimaginable damage and disruption that can occur when a global crisis of the highest magnitude meets under preparedness, pre-existing discrimination, and impulsive policy-making. It also highlights, for context, past crises and their impacts on international students, thus establishing a trend which places international students at the epicenter of the blow’s concomitant with crises of different nature. Moreover, the manuscript provides considerations higher education stakeholders should reflect upon, as well as the following implications for higher education institutions: a) Establish support systems, b) create a sustainable emergency/crisis relief fund, c) seek and maintain non-local partnerships, d) get in good trouble, and e) develop intervention programs. In enacting these tangible solutions, institutions would be able to guide, serve, and support international students more effectively during and after crises.

From the Small Serbian Monastery to the London Cathedral: Father Nicholai Velimirovich on a Mission to Great Britain in the First World War

The life and work of father Nicholai Velimirovich (1880–1956) is a limitless historical source, which has been encouraging, for the past 100 years, various researches in the Serbian, English, and other languages around the world. Velimirovich, as a person, and his numerous writings can be viewed from different aspects. This article, that is dedicated to father Nicholai Velimirovich, is an attempt to highlight his mission and role in the Great Britain during the First World War. In order to better understand the importance of his mission, we have described the establishment and operation of the Serbian Relief Fund, the Committee of the Serbian Red Cross Society, and the Scottish Women’s Hospitals in their medical and humanitarian missions for the Serbian people in the Great War. Apart from the significant role of father Nicholai Velimirovich, we remember many other great humanists and humanitarians working with and within these various medical and humanitarian missions. With their unforgettable achievements they helped treat people. and to mitigate the terrible suffering of the Serbian people during the great epidemic of typhus in Serbia, and during the great Exodus through the rugged Albanian mountains, during the exile on Corfu, at the Salonica Front, North Africa, Corsica, and France, as well as on the Russian Front, and in Dobruja and even after the Great War. As a representative of the small Serbian nation, father Nicholai Velimirovich held arousing speeches, religious sermons, and wrote numerous literary religious writings, and thereby he confirmed that in the midst of wartime conflagration it is possible for great humane achievements to appear. That is why that impressive spiritual dimension of the mission, which included father Velimirovich and his contemporaries, did not cease to continue to inspire historians, writers and other authors — in the past, present, and the future.

John Calvin

This chapter investigates the extensive work of French refugee pastors for the Reformation of church and society in Geneva. John Calvin with other French Reformed pastors were able to help create a separate relief fund for religious refugees as a parallel organization to the general hospital through the financial support of wealthier refugees and transnational network of donors under the management of church leaders. The establishment of the French Fund provided a relief agency for refugees that did not rely on any state funding. As a model in Reformed religion, this institution in the church and the Consistory helped reinforce the Reformed religious identity among displaced French Protestants. As a spokesperson for the pastors, Calvin helped establish a safety net for poor foreigners by preaching on communal care and generosity, by reorganizing church leadership and discipline, and by supporting a special fund for refugees in response to the practical needs arising from migration.