The Impacts of COVID-19 on Oman’s National Health Security

The COVID-19 has had a massive impact on the Oman national health security system, putting the officials and medical crews under sustained pressure and challenges to cope with this crisis. We need to improve the national health security system to achieve health equity and to protect us all from the threat of COVID-19 and future pandemics. This study addresses the impact of COVID-19 on Oman national health security system. The study focuses on three objectives to determine the relationship between COVID-19 and national health security in Oman, to investigate the impact of COVID-19 on national health security, and to identify the role of government in mitigating the impacts of COVID-19 on national health security. The study applies a qualitative method approach and was conducted in two parts using questionnaire surveys and interviews. The study has found that, having a strong relationship between COVID-19 and national health security, the COVID-19 has had impacts on Oman national health security system and the role of the government in mitigating the impacts is very important. The purpose of the study is to generate recommendation to Oman national health security system to pave the way to a robust and resilient national health security system.

Urbanising Delta: What Lessons Dhaka Offers to Face Challenges

Cities built on deltaic regions are always prone to environmental risks like aggravated flooding, wetland reduction, compromised water quality, continuing water scarcity, and tainted air and these have been remarkable as the challenges while urbanizing deltas. On top of that, rapid urbanization adds more to the deterioration of ecosystem functions. Drawing insights from Bangladesh's capital Dhaka lying in the Ganges, Brahmaputra, and Meghna basin, this study basically appraises the common concerns of deltaic megapolises through a systematic literature review. The current literature has been brought up by analysing the status, factors, and impacts of the challenges and management by authorities. In addition, it is further updated with some urban experts' views, secondary records on groundwater levels, and remote sensing imageries. This paper also concludes with recommended guidelines from the reviews for more practical deltaic urbanization, especially when there is no turning back for urban transferability to a new region of the delta. Particularly, success demands (1) specifying current situation in quantifiable terms (e.g., numeric values, percentages, scores, indices), (2) practical but adaptive multi-objective plans/policies with a set of assessable targets, and (3) timely robust evaluation for tracking data for specific, measurable, and meaningful outcomes.

West Bengal Assembly Election 2021: An Analysis

West Bengal Assembly election was one of the most keenly watched assembly elections in India in 2021. One of the reasons for this interest was the unexpected rise of the Bhartiya Janata Party in a state mostly known for its contests between the Left parties, the Indian National Congress, and the All-India Trinamool Congress. The Bhartiya Janata Party (BJP) had only 3 seats in the last assembly election of 2016, whereas the ruling All India Trinamool Congress (AITC or TMC) party had 212 seats. The BJP was never a major player in the state except during the last parliamentary election (2019) when BJP bagged 18 out of the 42 parliamentary seats. The analysis presented in this paper analyzes the constituency-wise figures for each of the 294 constituencies spread over 19 districts of the state of West Bengal in India. The TMC emerged victorious with 48% of the total popular votes, while the opposition BJP got 39% of the popular votes. Also, TMC won 213 (73%) of total seats, whereas the BJP came to a distant second with 77 (26%) seats, even though it raised its stock significantly in the West Bengal Assembly from its 2016 tally of a meager 3 seats. After the West Bengal 2021 election results, Mamata Banerjee emerged as one of the main challengers of BJP at the national arena of Indian politics. This paper will benefit and help anyone interested in Indian political analysis and would also provide key insights for the political analysts and the political parties interested in a seat-by-seat deep dive. The analysis was done with the help of Microsoft Excel and R Software.

Comparative Analysis of Ukrainian and Canadian Legislation Regulating the Land Management

Land management activities in Ukraine are at the stage of gradual legislative reform, which takes place through deregulation and simplification of land management procedures. The analysis of Canada's practical experience in regulating land management activities allows Ukraine to create a single organization consisting of committees on certain land management issues, which will contribute to the development and effective work in this area.

International Legal Regulation and Supranational Interaction in Counteracting the COVID-19 Pandemic: Challenges and Proposals

The purpose of the article is to study problems of international legal regulation and supranational cooperation in combating the COVID-19 pandemic. The institutional and international legal mechanism of counteraction to the spread of the pandemic is analyzed. The problem moments of realization of provisions of the main international acts in the area of counteraction to the Coronavirus disease by the national governments are marked out. The methodological basis for the article is general and special methods and techniques of scientific knowledge, in particular: formal-logical, Aristotelian method, method of documentary, system-structured method, formal and legal method, forecasting method, method of generalization. The key problems of international legal counteraction to the pandemic spread are as follows: advisory (not obligatory) character of the majority of international legal acts related to the fight against COVID-19; disinterest of the states in timely informing WHO about the outbreaks of infectious diseases; arbitrary interpretation of the international acts by national governments; human rights restrictions on the movement imposed by the states; lack of a clear funding mechanism to build the necessary global and national infrastructure to ensure commitment in accordance with the International Health Regulations.

Foundation of the Digital Global Economy

A medium to facilitate the exchange of value has been the sole necessity for the mere existence of currency. As the civilization moved from using metals, paper, and plastic to facilitate exchange, our requirements from a currency became refined. Some of those requirements were the prevention of counterfeiting and accountability. As the human civilization moves forward, the solution to some of the problems faced by us are discovered by humans. Cryptocurrency is a decentralized form of currency mined by computers by solving complex equations in exchange for a reward of the very same commodity. This article aims to study the major cryptocurrencies and the concept of blockchain, how they operate, how it will be affecting India, and what are the consequences of banning this form of currency. This research is carried out by evaluating white papers of Bitcoin and Ethereum (the two main cryptocurrencies of present time) along with research papers and news articles found with the help of search engines and online discussion threads.

Municipal Bonds as a Financial Component of the Development of Territorial Communities in Ukraine

The world economic thought has a number of tools, the use of which helps attract financial investment and helps accumulate additional funds for infrastructure and social projects of municipalities. The issue of municipal bonds as a financial component of the development of territorial communities is considered vital for this research in which the factors that determine the ability to borrow are highlighted. The advantages and disadvantages of using municipal bonds by local governments are also identified. It is realized that the world experience in the application of municipal bonds is contradictory and ambiguous. It is established that the best results from the use of bonds have been the municipalities of countries with a high level of development and municipal management, which determines the demand for this type of securities from investors. The use of municipal bond in countries with economies in transition has led to a number of municipal defaults, resulting in severe restrictions on their issuance by central authorities. The united communities of Ukraine require additional financial resources. Smaller municipalities are characterized by a high rate of budget subsidies and low average income per community. Ukrainian territorial communities’ municipal bonds are used insufficiently in comparison to developed industrial countries. Factors that shape the risks of implementing a system of local borrowing in Ukraine are identified and include lack of recognition and registration of local governments as legal entities under public law, imperfection of legislation, lack of experience in local borrowing, lack of clear information about the available resources of local communities and their valuation.

Systematic Literature Review of Walkability and the Built Environment

Walking is the most sustainable form of transportation. It is the socially equitable, economically viable and environmentally friendly mode of transportation. However, transportation technology has caused the desertion of the pedestrian space due to excessively motorized transport. Consequently, the pedestrian environment has degraded. In many cities, the abandonment of the pedestrian space has created a socially unfriendly environment. Walkability is a measure of how friendly an area is to walk. In measuring walkability, several criteria are considered, which include inter alia, the quality of pedestrian facilities, roadway conditions, land use patterns, community support, security and comfort for walking. Findings from studies are mixed; some stated that improving the built environment does not encourage people to walk more; however, there are other studies that indicated otherwise. The aim of this paper is to review the built environment characteristics that promote walking. A literature review of studies that focused on walking, walkability, the built environment, pedestrian and urban design was conducted. This study has searched the electronic databases that intertwined with the Web of Science database. The choice was made due to the comprehensiveness of quality academic studies indexed in the database, thus providing reliable sources of body of work. The database integrates numerous sub-databases such as Web of Science Core Collection, Derwent Innovations Index, KCI Korean Journal Database, Russian Science Citation Index and SciELO Citation Index. The data are then thematically coded. The fields of urban planning, urban design, geography, transportation, sociology, and other related areas were included in the research. The result of this review offers evidence to the criteria that promote walking. The review found that three criteria are somewhat constant in promoting walking, namely, population and building density, land use and land use mixes, and safety. In short, by making an area perceived as safe with the presence of land use mixes and density are the best combination to create a walkable environment.

Policy and Governance

Welcome to the “Journal of Policy & Governance”! In my opinion, an editorial may reflect the general direction of the journal, values, strategy, priorities, goals and objectives, and so on. This is the first edition of the Journal of Policy & Governance where I act as the Editor-in-Chief. The title of the journal includes two key concepts, the "Policy" and the "Governance", and they are crucial for the target audience of the journal. That is, the field of "Policy Science": policy cycle, problem identification for analysis, policy environment, resources, stakeholders’ analysis, communications (strategic, multilevel, etc.), policy tools and evaluation, etc. Also, these are values, objectives and methodology of the research and policy analysis, policy as the process and reasons for state intervention, evidence-based policy, quantitative and qualitative methods of data processing and the formation of evidence in the policy process and so on. The field of governance is also valuable for research: democratic, good, sensitive, multilevel, digital, and so on: Service State, public consultation, and interaction between government, business and civil society in the policy-making process. Common decisions, power and out of power policy makers, leadership, analysts and policy actors also require semantic and empirical content in the articles of the journal. Promising areas of research would be multilevel governance and balanced social development, cohesion policy, vertical-horizontal interaction and networks in the multilevel governance, digital multilevel governance, etc. An interesting example would be benchmarking of global and multilevel governance: supranational, national, regional and local levels in their interaction. Also, the "Spiral of Success" as a follow-alternative to linear model of policy making is worth mentioning. As an applied aspect it would be desirable to show different types of policy documents in the articles. Public administration, gender aspects, microeconomics for policy analysis, finance and budgeting, local self-government, administrative behavior, policy paradoxes, urban planning, etc. are important areas of research in the articles of this journal. Special emphasis should be placed on policy and governance monitoring and evaluation, performance audit, governance forecasting and diagnosis, and policy measurement indicators. Multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity are the basic and main components for promising cross-researches of "Policy" and "Governance" areas. Ethics and morality as well as effectiveness, efficiency, economy, balance and publicity of policy are necessary components of research in the published articles. These are promising and urgent directions for studying in the articles of our journal. I believe that strategic public management in the context of governance would be an innovative area for research in future articles. Moreover, such threads would be important, such as strategic public management, planning, forecasting, target programming and public policy, governance and operational management, research of information and technical support for policy-making, change management and public policy and governance. Of course, the above thoughts only clarify the formulated purpose of the journal. Innovation, interdisciplinary benchmarking and a cross-cultural approach to public policy and governance will contribute to the quality of the journal. I hope that this first edition of “Journal of Policy & Governance" and subsequent editions will meet the high standards of quality articles and content of promising research. I would like to wish the authors bring a sustainable and evidence-based content to the future articles. The Editorial Board, following the principles of the academic integrity, will support and encourage authors for innovative and promising articles. I wish all the success and inspiration to the authors and journal staff.