Dental Policy Lab 1 - towards a cavity-free future

Although many dental professionals argue that prevention of oral diseases, including dental caries, will benefit both the patient and public finances, a paradigm shift has yet to happen in most countries. The literature has demonstrated that caries prevention and control is possible, but authorities have yet to implement health systems that allow patients to stay in a good health state. 'Policy Labs' are an innovative policy-making initiative that allow a positive collaboration between the many stakeholders around a given policy issue. In July 2017, 24 international experts, including representatives of both international and European Chief Dental Officers associations, were gathered for the first Alliance for a Cavity-Free Future/King's College London Dental Policy Lab to identify the main barriers for a change, and concrete actions to facilitate a policy shift towards increased resource allocation in prevention. A comprehensive report and well-received infographic summarising the key recommendations (explored in this paper) were produced to explain the situation and highlight the value of a cavity-free world to policymakers, demonstrating where change is needed. The first Dental Policy Lab proved to be an efficient way to generate new ideas and concrete ways to implement them, and has led to several subsequent initiatives worldwide.

Turkey's economic policy shift is not worth the risks

Significance The lira’s collapse has only fortified President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s adherence to unorthodox low-interest-rate policies. Rather than changing course, Erdogan has publicly declared a “new economic policy”, stating more than once, “We know what we’re doing”. Impacts Not everyone will be compensated for inflation, and discontent will persist, along with the need for other ploys to win elections in 2023. High inflation and unpredictable government policy will add to the challenges of doing business. Ankara may continue to develop relations with countries able to provide funds and investment, such as Qatar and the United Arab Emirates.

How Algeria-Turkey Ambitious Strategic Rapprochement Will Affect France’s Sahel Policy?

President Macron did decide to withdraw French troops from the Sahel last summer, leaving only special forces based in north Mali, he stated that Operation Barkhane will end early in 2022. Nonetheless, Algiers’ decision to not allow French military planes to use Algeria’s airspace will create a direct impact on the military mission and France’s entire ‘war on terror in the Sahel. In Algeria, however, bold decisions toward a strategic rapprochement with Turkey were in the making. Even though the new authorities in Algiers were hesitant for such a foreign policy shift, because of the COVID-19 pandemic and the internal political struggle, constitutional and institutional amendments in the aftermath of the peaceful Algerian 2019 Hirak needed to be put in place. However, the tenacious resistance of the Francophile and Arabophone-nationalists anti-Ottoman legacy, the well-off social class, and elite pro-France lobbies in Algiers and Paris held back President Abdelmadjid Tebboune’s Administration from improving the relations between Algiers and Ankara. Meanwhile, the ambassadors from both countries have been pushing tirelessly for the success of the strategic rapprochement between these two states.

German deal brings shifts in policy orientation

Headline GERMANY: New coalition will bring about a policy shift

'The trees do not belong to Chief Maranke but to the Native Reserves Trust': The politics of timber resource exploitation in African reserves, colonial Zimbabwe, 1924-1948

Contextualised within a settler state characterised by racial discrimination and unequal access to natural resources, this article examines the ideological, environmental and economic considerations surrounding the formation of the Native Reserves Trust (NRT) and the role it played in the exploitation of timber resources in the African reserves of Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe). Cognisant of the fact that the colonial state set aside marginal and less productive reserves for the Africans, the paper uses the NRT as a lens to view the process by which the settler society penetrated African reserves and exploited timber resources that were needed for the white-owned enterprises, while at the same time, Africans were barred from exploiting the same resources in European domains. The study further discusses the significance of timber in the African reserves, analyses the role of the NRT in regulating timber exploitation processes and the relations between the state, timber concessionaire companies and the African communities. Lastly, it assesses the extent to which timber exploitation contributed to environmental destruction, and how this prompted a policy shift, leading to the implementation of state-initiated afforestation programmes in these reserves and how these re-shaped state-African relations. On the whole, we note that the exploitation of timber resources in African areas replicated the larger colonial policy that favoured whites at the expense of Africans.

Exploiting social media for fake reviews

We provide an overview of our recent work that studies the market for fake product reviews on Amazon.com where reviews are purchased in large private internet groups on Facebook and other sites. We find that a wide array of products purchase fake reviews, including products with many reviews and high average ratings. Buying fake reviews on Facebook is associated with a significant but short-term increase in average rating and number of reviews. We exploit a sharp but temporary policy shift by Amazon to show that rating manipulation has a large causal effect on sales. Finally, we examine whether rating manipulation harms consumers or whether it is mostly used by high-quality or young products in a manner akin to advertising. We find that after firms stop buying fake reviews, their average ratings fall and the share of one-star reviews increases significantly, particularly for young products, indicating rating manipulation is mostly used by low-quality products and is deceiving and harming consumers.

Pupils as subjects or objects: Policy changes in the area of pupils influence

The aim of this article is to describe and analyse how policy changes in the three latest Swedish compulsory school, preschool class, and school-age educare curricula affect the political goal of pupil influence. This is done with an interest in implications for utterances of power relations and for didactical considerations for living and learning democracy in school. This article analyses pupil influence by using theories of democracy, power, and didactics. The method used is content analysis. The empirical results show that pupil influence in the curricula is linked to seven concepts: democracy, value, norm, rights, responsibility, influence, participation. Our conclusion is that only small differences exist in terms of the central concepts mentioned in the curricula linked to pupil influence. Secondly, we found a policy shift with respect to the pupils, i.e., viewing pupils as subjects or objects. Thirdly, we found a shift in how learning is viewed in the curricula and the type of didactical questions that are in focus, which illuminates a change in utterances of power relations that challenges possibilities for living and learning democracy in Swedish school education.

Indonesia’s African Foreign Policy Shift under President Jokowi

Under President Jokowi’s leadership, Indonesia seems to have made Africa a foreign policy priority. Previously bounded by Bandung romanticism and lacking understanding on the contemporary strategic importance of Africa, Indonesia finally launched its own Africa+1 forum in April 2018 in Bali, the Indonesia Africa Forum (IAF), following an economic diplomacy framework and will to do business with Africa. For Jokowi, Bandung should be leveraged to mean business. Indonesia had previously struggled to institutionalize Asia-Africa intercontinental multilateralism through the New Africa-Asia Strategic Partnership (NAASP) launched during the 2005 Asia Africa Summit in Jakarta organized to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Bandung Conference; while other major Asian powers such as Japan, China, Malaysia, India or South Korea developed their own political, economic and cultural platforms with African countries. Closing a clear research gap, this original study allows a better comprehension of this foreign policy shift and of Indonesia's contemporary foreign policy towards Africa within Global Africa Studies. For more pragmatism and flexibility, this qualitative research, notably based on in-depth interviews with Indonesian and African diplomats, uses an eclectic analysis allowing a holistic approach combining levels of analysis and types of factors; thus increasing explanatory power.

The Role of Universal Basic Income in Preventing and Ending Homelessness

There are growing calls for Universal Basic Income (UBI) as a means of reducing poverty and addressing the changing nature of work. UBI involves the provision of a cash payment to all adult citizens, which is sufficient to live on and either does not phase out as earnings increase or does so slowly for higher incomes. Despite many theorized benefits and beneficiaries of UBI, its implications for preventing and ending homelessness have not been explored. Accordingly, this article provides an overview on UBI and its evidence base, and then discusses how UBI could help to structurally prevent and end homelessness by reducing values-based exclusion in the provision of income supports, promoting choice in housing, facilitating workforce returns and buffering against automation job losses, and improving health and well-being. Like any transformative policy shift, there are also risks associated with UBI, which largely lie in the details of how it is designed and the political context in which it is implemented. Nevertheless, given its potential, now is the time to properly trial UBI as a structural intervention for preventing and ending homelessness.

COVID Face Masks: Policy Shift Results in Increased Littering

The introduction of the mandatory use of fitted face masks in indoor spaces to limit the transmission of COVID-19 resulted in increased municipal waste of discarded single-use surgical face masks and other personal protective equipment (PPE) such as latex gloves. In parallel, the occurrence of intentionally or accidentally discarded masks has created a major environmental problem. This paper presents the data of a longitudinal study of the occurrence of discarded face masks in an urban environment of a community in regional Australia. It demonstrates that the shift from voluntary to mandatory use of fitted face masks resulted in an immediate increase of publicly discarded masks and other items of PPE. The overserved spatial and temporal patterns allow us to draw inferences on human behavior.