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While climate change is often understood as a collective action and a market problem, we look at it as a problem of planning and coordination. Long-term planning is necessary to promote structural change, which will be required to keep the Paris Agreement's temperature goals. By encouraging states to develop a long-term climate strategy, the Paris Agreement invites countries to turn anticipatory governance into an international governance instrument. In this paper we explore how these strategies describe countries' climate plans and what the perceptions of government officials are about the potential for realization of these strategies. Using mixed methods, we explore both 1) planning dimensions (actions, actors and policies described in the strategies) by applying a topic modeling analysis to 50 documents; and 2) perceptions of the content and challenges to their realization among domestic policy professionals of four major emitters. Our results show that the strategies lack a detailed discussion on how decarbonization pathways could be materialized and who has the responsibility for implementation of long-term targets. Moreover, rather than being a steering instrument, the strategies are dominated by scenario planning and there is also a lack of attention to political issues. Taken together, we contend that strategies are limited in the way they present the future possibilities of low emissions development. To make them more effective in steering long-term decarbonization, greater attention needs to be placed on potential conflicts, barriers and stumbling blocks that may arise along the way. • Long-term climate planning has potential to shift the way we address climate change. • The language used in the strategies are dominated by technical terms and GHG emissions scenarios. • The strategies tend to reduce the political and social complexities of climate change. • As governance instruments, the strategies lack capacity to guide implementation and guidance on how to solve goal conflicts. • The strategies' main value is to provide a platform for alternative discussions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The overview on 'geopolitical realities and US foreign policy' by Prof. S.B. Cohen is given. The inter-American relations and relations with other countries in relation to foreign policies are analyzed.

Poverty reduction strategy papers represent both a primary policy device of international development institutions, and an instance of a wider international convergence of public policy around global integration and social inclusion. Charting the emergence of these approaches, this paper argues that this convergence has a number of structural predilections which favor the technical and juridical over the political economic, and a disciplinary framework over a practical contest. Drawing extensively on decentralized governance and poverty reduction programs in Uganda, this paper shows how these predilections obscure power relations and restrict practical and political options, while exacting heavy establishment and compliance costs. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Abstract: For a connected graph G, the restricted edge-connectivity is defined as the minimum cardinality of an edge-cut over all edge-cuts S such that each component of contains at least p vertices. In the present paper we introduce the more general parameter defined as the minimum cardinality of an edge-cut over all edge-cuts S such that one component of contains at least p vertices and another component of contains at least q vertices where p and q are positive integers. Analogously, we define as the minimum cardinality of a vertex-cut over all vertex-cuts such that one component of contains at least p vertices and another component of contains at least q vertices. A connected graph G is -connected (-connected), if () is well-defined. First we give useful equivalences to -connectivity and -connectivity and characterize the classes of graphs which are -connected and -connected. Then we prove which generalizes Whitney''s well-known inequality . Finally, we characterize the class of graphs for which is minimum, i.e. and the class of graphs for which is maximum, i.e. or . [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

It is no secret that decision-making around mass transit infrastructure can be highly political. Transport policy research, however, has tended to view political dynamics mainly as barriers. There is a need to better understand how and under what conditions political interests and institutions can enable mass transit projects, especially in cities which are not yet locked into car-centric transport systems. This paper addresses this gap with new inductive evidence from 32 expert interviews on the politics of bus rapid transit (BRT) in low- and middle-income countries. It develops two novel analytical frameworks, one on the politics of system adoption and another on the politics of system durability. The first framework highlights how BRT proposals often pitch broad but shallow political support against narrow yet deep political opposition. This renders them inherently contentious. Proposals move forward when their implementation generates political benefits for powerful decisionmakers. The second framework challenges the conventional view that BRT systems prove durable when their operations perform well. Instead, it posits that systems endure when their operations mitigate or adapt to adverse political feedback. The paper offers a novel holistic perspective on how to understand the politics of BRT, and presents a critical intervention in the BRT literature which has tended to focus on isolated political dynamics, such as the need for a local champion or resistance from paratransit operators. • Political analysis can strengthen policymaking for mass transit development. • BRT proposals often pitch broad, shallow support against narrow, deep opposition. • Proposals move forwards when they generate political benefits for decisionmakers. • BRT operations, in turn, often suffer from adverse political feedback. • BRT systems prove durable when operations mitigate or adapt to political feedback. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies lessons learned from Covid-19 disaster management in Malaysia using machine learning techniques. First, we crawl Twitter data related to 'covid' with geo-location bounding-box. Then we contribute to propose LDA topics generated on citizen perception containing negative sentiment towards government response; hence, we represent the data using VOSviewer and D3.js to emphasize topic modeling with respect to timestamp due to pattern analysis. As results, LDA-based topic visualization may recognize the accounts' pattern that are assumed as the pillars of disaster management in Malaysia. This study gains insights from political science field. Implications of the results are also discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on negation has generally explored the cross-linguistic similarities and differences of a host of widely spoken languages with little attention to its nuances within academic genres and disciplines. Accordingly, and given the co-articulation of negation with various interpersonal and evaluative resources, this study examined appraisal subsystems in 360 research articles on astrophysics, chemistry, geology, psychology, linguistics, and political science (60 papers from each discipline) published between 2018 and 2020. Comparative analyses of appraisal resources revealed significantly greater employment of total engagement and graduation, acknowledge, concede, counter, denial, distance, entertain, pronounce, justifying, affect, judgment, positive polarity of attitude, force, and softening devices in soft disciplines. However, hard sciences allowed denser employment of appreciation, neutral polarity of attitude, and sharpening resources. The results of the text/pragmatic analysis of denial further indicated a stronger preference for disalignment, cautious detachment, and unfulfilled expectations functions in soft sciences and varying negation patterns across both subcorpora. The line-by-line annotations revealed either the independent use of denial markers or their co-articulation with other appraisal options. An important implication of this study is awareness-raising about the rhetorical conventions of maintaining an authorial stance and promoting a sense of disciplinary community. • Negation displays linguistic subtleties not otherwise conveyed through affirmation. • Appraisal cues performed their rhetorical functions individually or jointly. • There was denser coverage of most appraisal options in soft than hard sciences. • Soft sciences better met the preconditions for expressing all negation subtypes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article explores how the ideas of Hannah Arendt can further public relations' understanding of organizational listening and its role in civil society. We draw on three major theoretical concepts from Arendt and scholars studying her work—plurality, interspaces, and lamp holders—and contextualize them within existing civil society research in public relations. Reading Arendt into organizational listening and civil society literature yields insights for how public relations contributes to the maintenance of structures and spaces for deliberation and civil society. Her theory points toward the concepts of bracketing and unbracketing as ways to enter civic spaces with an awareness of power and identity. As research on organizational listening has yet to fully identify how listening can contribute to supporting representative deliberation in polarized societies, this paper helps to theoretically position listening within civil society and provides initial suggestions as to how civic-minded listening can be incorporated into public relations practices aimed at building community. • The purpose of the paper is to explore how Arendt's political theory augments public relations' understanding of organizational listening in civil society. • Reading Arendt into organizational listening and civil society literature provides direction as to how public relations can strengthen civic bonds. • Arendt's political theory points toward new ways to implement organizational listening including bracketing and unbracketing. • This paper positions listening within civil society and provides initial suggestions as to how civic-minded practice has the potential to benefit communities as well as organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Can protests produce changes in electoral behavior? In this paper, we examine variations in voter turnout and electoral preferences at the local level after a protest cycle. Using data on protest occurrence during the 2019 social mobilizations in Chile and Bolivia and a difference-in-differences design, we assess the impact that street demonstrations had on voting behavior in the elections that took place the following year. We found that turnout was higher in municipalities that had protests, while the incumbent vote was lower. We argue that the effect on turnout is explained by the surge in political efficacy that emerged from the protests. Furthermore, we suggest that the protests enabled more effective blame attribution and heightened the salience of political issues, leading to changes in voter preferences. These results demonstrate the effect of protests on electoral dynamics, highlighting their role not only in mobilizing voters but also in shaping electoral preferences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Social entrepreneurship is recognized as a key tool for overcoming social problems in society and supporting sustainable development. While social entrepreneurship is not a new phenomenon, the field has experienced significant growth over the past 15 years, either when applied to social problem-solving in a traditional way, or focused on private-sector entrepreneurship and large-scale transformation. However, there is still a lack of scientific review papers examining various government regulatory mechanisms, implemented on different government levels for stimulating social entrepreneurship and social entrepreneurship ecosystems. This study aims to analyze the state-of-the-art of social entrepreneurship and its relation with government and key non-state actors. Following Pittaway et al. (2014) and Cerchione et al. (2018), a systematic literature review was carried out using the Scopus database, covering the period from 2001 up to 20th of March 2018, which resulted in a corpus of 478 scientific articles. The papers were ranked by the number of citations, according to the Web of Science® database, from which were selected the 102 most representative works. The abstracts of these selected studies were organized and submitted into an analysis of content via the 2015 edition of Alceste® software. Following the reading of all sources, the papers were classified and a matrix of data was produced, which allowed the descriptive analysis. The results show that there are at least six levels of government intervention to facilitate the development of social entrepreneurship. It also identified 4 directions taken by the government in support of social entrepreneurship, and 11 regulatory mechanisms, both of which could be deepened in future studies. The role of key non-state actors in the social entrepreneurship field has also been discussed. Based on the study, a future research agenda on the topic has been defined in the following directions: (i) a combination and coordination of regulatory mechanisms for better stimulation of social entrepreneurship, (ii) government policy oriented to the whole social entrepreneurship ecosystem, (iii) social capital, (iv) business models for social entrepreneurship ecosystems and government support. Image 1 • The social entrepreneurship (SE) and its relationship with government is analyzed. • 18 key players have been found with whom social entrepreneurs cooperate. • Four directions taken by the government in support of the SE were identified. • There are six levels of government intervention and 11 regulatory mechanisms. • Policymakers can use the regulatory mechanisms to encourage non-state actors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the extensive literature on the role of government in the economy scant attention has been paid to the influence of the relative size of government on an economy's rate of growth. This paper canvasses perspectives on why the size of government has grown, how this affects the wider economy, and why a trade-off exists between increased government size and economic growth beyond some optimal level, as conveyed by the so-called BARS curve. The paper next examines in-depth trends in government spending in Australia which has grown to a historically high level of 37 per cent of national income post GFC before econometrically estimating the optimal size of government on Australia's BARS curve using the ARMAX approach. The results suggest the share of government spending in Australia consistent with maximising economic growth is 31 per cent of national income, significantly below the current level. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Conspiracy theories find traction in political speech on the margins of society. • Apparently 'irrational' theories should be read in their context. • Behaviour change targets the inner lives of people in precarity. • The state role in influencing decisions undermines personal autonomy. • Conspiracy theories are a strategy for claiming knowledge of social structures. This paper discusses the role of conspiracy theory in political speech amongst service users at a soup kitchen in Brixton, south London. Rather than categorizing conspiracy theories as 'irrational' it argues that this speech must be read in the context of precarity and an oppositional relationship with the state. In particular the paper argues that 'behaviour change theory', which has become a key influence in British social policy, works on the basis that those at the margins of society are not fully capable of making the right decisions for themselves. Behaviour change theory, which has become influential around the world, excludes the most marginal aspects of society from political discourse by assuming they are 'irrational'. In this way the very ontological security (Giddens, 1991; Laing, 2010; Philo, 2014) of individuals on the margins of society is threatened by policies which aim to govern behaviour and territorialize precarious lives. This paper will argue that conspiracy theories, where deployed by marginalized people, are strategies which attempt to act across multiple political scales. From the socially marginal space of the soup kitchen, conspiracy theories claim knowledge of larger scale political geographies. This paper demonstrates that an ethnographic method is instrumental in exploring this multi-scalar complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract To date there have been very few studies that have sought to investigate the crimes, harms and human rights violations associated with the process of 'extreme energy', whereby energy extraction methods grow more 'unconventional' and intense over time as easier to extract resources are depleted. The fields of rural sociology and political science have produced important perception studies but few social impact studies. The field of 'green criminology', while well suited to examining the impacts of extreme energy given its focus on social and environmental 'harms', has produced just one citizen 'complaint' study to date. It is vital that more social and environmental impact studies become part of the local, national and international public policy debate. To this end, in the following paper we seek to move beyond perception studies to highlight the harms that can occur at the planning and approval stage. Indeed, while the UK is yet to see unconventional gas and oil extraction reach the production stage, as this article shows, local communities can suffer significant harms even at the exploration stage when national governments with neoliberal economic agendas are set on developing unconventional resources in the face of considerable opposition and a wealth of evidence of environmental and social harms. This paper takes a broad interdisciplinary approach, inspired by green criminological insights, that shows how a form of 'collective trauma' has been experienced at the exploration stage by communities in the North of England. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper adopts a narrative approach to explore the role of tourism in mobilising political identity, focusing on international visitors to memorials associated with the Spanish Civil War. Analysis of narrative interview data found that political allegiance was an important component of personal and group identity, and it was influential in determining tourist behaviour and consumption choices. Visiting memorials stirred strong emotions. It reaffirmed political identity and was capable of reenergising political commitment. This paper marks an important contribution to knowledge on how identity shapes and is shaped by tourist activity. It also points to a disconnect between the desire of tourists to express political identity and a country's choice of how to (or not to) memorialise past events. A model is put forward to indicate how battlefield tourism can be developed in a country with a contested history. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence of Platform Businesses (PBs) has caused a conflict between the traditional and new economic actors. Furthermore, it has escalated to government bodies with different beliefs and formed diverse coalitions, including among government bodies. Therefore, governments, given their regulatory and supportive roles, should be able to intervene at the right time with practical tools and trade off their internal conflicts. This paper uses an exploratory-abductive approach to identify the challenges of the regulation during the lifecycle of PBs, explores the conflicts of interest among economic actors, examines the government intervention in the economy, and explains the regulatory and supportive roles of the government. Data was collected through semi-structured interviews with PB experts, who have active roles in the regulatory process, and with well-known academics on the subject. Reviewing the pathways of PBs in Iran between 2014 and 2018, the paper suggests five propositions using regulation economics and advocacy coalition framework to develop the regulatory roles of government. The results demonstrate that PBs' lifecycle, shifting from one-sided to two-sided market, moving from ownership to accessibility, and timing of intervention significantly support the development of Cognitive Tools, Regulation Frameworks, and Regulation Tools. • Regulatory Timing for platform businesses is a challenge for governments. • This is the first study to explore the interaction between the regulator and supportive government roles. • The government must shift roles from supportive to regulator during the lifecycle stages of PBs. • The government must use proper Cognitive Tools, Regulatory Frameworks, and Regulation Tools during the PBs' lifecycle stages. • The regulator must innovate incrementally and radically in hard and soft institutions to meet PBs' conflicts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Criticizing the discourse of politicians via social media platforms is currently a major way in which people engage with civic and political issues, and foster social alignments around shared values through ambient affiliation. This paper explores the pragmatic and social functions of particular forms of ironic quotation that social media users employ to ridicule political voices. It develops the concept of 'parodic resonance' to not only account for the evaluative function of ironic echoic mentions, but also to account for the way in which such quotation proliferates as a kind of semiotic 'weapon' within and across social media platforms. A corpus of approximately 150, 000 posts quoting Trump's controversial use of the phrase ' it is what it is' during an interview about the US death toll in the coronavirus pandemic is explored. The analysis considers the kinds of linguistic functions construed in ironic quotation and how these operate in the service of ambient affiliation, where social media users align through ridiculing a quoted voice. Attention is given to the function of meta-vocalisation resources such as hashtags, and to the role of visual projection in memes and gifs, in order to account for the kinds of multimodal quotation practices that are possible in social media texts. • Ironic quotation can be used for ridicule on social media. • Reversal of evaluative meaning is central to how this ridicule functions. • Quotation on social media is multimodal and can involve images and social metadata. • A corpus of approximately 150,000 tweets were analysed. • The concept of parodic resonance was used to interpret the ridicule in the corpus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

On April 1, 2017, China announced to initiate the Xiong’an New Area (XNA) plan, which is a national-level strategy aimed at alleviating the pressures felt by Beijing and promoting the integration of the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei (BTH) city-region. In China, a city-region can be viewed as an outcome of state spatial selectivity that aims to manage crises and maintain governance through strong state involvement. This paper attempts to provide a broad view of the XNA plan by examining it in the context of China’s long-term efforts to coordinate the BTH region, explaining the incentives associated with choosing Xiong’an, and analyzing the challenges the plan has faced. Considering that theoretical insights based on Western experience may not be applicable to China, this paper can contribute to the debate revealing the logics of city-region building in different contexts. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Care ethics provides us with not only the framework for understanding people's relationality but attention to the very fact that relations matter in structuring society. However, not all caring relations result in care, despite their power in structuring society. This paper follows Raghuram's (2016) argument to “trouble care” in order to bring more attention to the diversity of caring practices, actors, and politics in our worlds to better explore contentious caring relations. Through analyzing a high profile campus sexual assault case, this paper extends research on care beyond traditional caregiving relationships and demonstrates how these nontraditional caring actors exhibit a diversity of caring practices in a variety of spaces. The concept of “caring agencies” is introduced to bring deliberate attention to the ways that diverse caring practices have political ramifications that stretch beyond the immediate situation of care and expose systematic power differentials among care-givers, care-receivers and those beyond these categories. The case study in this paper, People v. Turner , offers insights into the pervasive culture of sexism that enables and results in harmful and unjust caring agencies which perpetuates conflict in society. Further research is called for to expose provocative and uncomfortable case studies of care to expand our analyses of care and relations of power. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Advanced capitalist societies are characterized by three forms of power and powerlessness: a hegemony of political monoculture; the ‘undoing’ of democratic forms of political agency and subjects; and the ‘political construction of hopelessness’ in challenging these structural foreclosures and ideological consensus. In this context, how can learning enable collective survival in the present and enlarge possibilities for yet-unimaginable alternative futures to emerge? This paper explores this question by juxtaposing three models of educational futurity in different neoliberal contexts. The first, dominating state education policy and practice in Anglospheric and specifically British institutions, promotes performative and disciplinary regimes of anticipation. The second, circulating in discourse and in experimental spaces within this hegemonic context, advocates an emergentist, critical and creative relationship to the future. The third, which thrives in the margins and relative exteriorities of the capitalist world system, promotes an ecological, epistemically disobedient and utopian mode of anticipatory consciousness which ‘projects emancipation beyond the constraints of the existing discourse’ of colonial modernity. We do not attempt to compare these different contexts and models in this paper, but to read each for its difference to illustrate that modes of anticipation in education influence the construction of hopelessness and hope by shaping what is learned about the nature of political possibility and the relationship between learning and the future. We argue that pedagogies which embrace critical modes of anticipation offer alternatives to contemporary regimes of anticipation in education in Britain today. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Philosophers now commonly reject the value free ideal for science by arguing that non-epistemic values, including personal or social values, are permissible within the core of scientific research. However, little attention has been paid to the normative political consequences of this position. This paper explores these consequences and shows how political theory is fruitful for proceeding in a world without value-neutral science. I draw attention to an oft-overlooked argument employed by proponents of the value free ideal I dub the "political legitimacy argument." This argument claims that the value-free ideal follows directly from the foundational principles of liberal democracy. If so, then the use of value-laden scientific information within democratic decision making would be illegitimate on purely political grounds. Despite highlighting this unaddressed and important argument, I show how it can be rejected. By appealing to deliberative democratic theory, I demonstrate scientific information can be value-laden and politically legitimate. The deliberative democratic account I develop is well suited for capturing the intuitions of many opponents of the value free ideal and points to a new set of questions for those interested in values in science. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Tourism has been heralded as a contributor to peace, however, the inconclusive findings of empirical studies render the need for a consolidation of theory that has in so far relied on case studies and the adoption of the contact hypothesis. Informed by political science theory, this paper proposes a methodological framework that can guide future research and aims to serve as a benchmark for researchers interested in temporal issues pertaining to conflict, peace and tourism. Signalling a departure from the simplistic notion that contact through travel contributes to social integration, the paper adopts a holistic conceptualisation of the multi-faceted and complex system of actors, sectors and dimensions of tourism spanning at the social, economic, political and environmental levels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Electoral manifestos play a crucial role in visions of party democracy and political science analyses of party competition. While research has focused on the contents of manifestos, we know much less about how parties produce manifestos and the roles they take in campaigns. This paper identifies three campaign-related functions of manifestos: they provide a compendium of valid party positions, streamline the campaign, and are used as campaign material. Based on the characteristics of the candidates, the parties and the campaign, the paper then derives expectations of how party candidates may differ in attributing importance to their party's manifesto. Based on a candidate survey after the 2013 Austrian general election, the paper shows that the key user-group of parliamentary candidates considers manifestos generally important and useful documents. Candidates' policy-centred campaigning and left–right distance from their own party are important in explaining individual differences. While the manifesto's service functions of providing a summary of valid party positions for the candidates and as a campaign means to be handed out to voters are widely appreciated, campaign streamlining is more divisive when it results in constraining candidates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent wave of occupations highlighted how closely space and social movements are related. While this revived scholarly interest in the role of space during protests, little attention so far has been paid to the role of space in protests' long-term internal effects. Bringing together the literatures on transformative effects and space in social movements, the paper examines the role of protests' spatiality in their transformative effects, drawing on a narrow approach to space. The analysis focuses in particular on effects on collective identity building in social movements. Based on interviews and focus groups with activists in 2011, the paper examines the long-term effects of an incisive protest event of the Global Justice Movement (GJM) in Europe, the protests against the G8 summit in Genoa in 2001. The paper shows that this event's spatiality plays a crucial role in building movement identity several years later: it provides activists with interpretational devices to delineate the GJM's internal and external boundaries. The paper thus underlines that research on transformative effects can considerably profit from considering spatiality. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

System Dynamics can be a powerful tool for understanding dynamics, especially feedback behaviours, in many social-ecological systems where sustainable pathways are sought. Along with quantitative simulations and optimization packages, System Dynamics offers qualitative tools (e.g. system archetypes, Causal Loop Diagrams, and Stock and Flow Diagrams) for further enhancing understanding. Like all methods, System Dynamics can be applied effectively and successfully for specific objectives in specific contexts by some analysts and modellers, but can also be used poorly and potentially unethically by others. This paper investigates the potential of System Dynamics to support Sustainability and the role played by modellers, including their practices and assumptions, in developing this potential. This is achieved by reviewing the application of System Dynamics within the context of the sustainability literature and how there are multiple levels of boundary judgements to be made by System Dynamics modellers, their commissioners and stakeholders: specifically around the sustainability principles that provide the criteria by which policy options from the modelling are evaluated; definitions of problem scope; and around the extent of dynamic processes explicitly considered in both the qualitative and quantitative System Dynamics thinking and modelling practice. To illustrate how boundary judgements matter for sustainability modelling, we draw on three examples, and discuss the potential risks and challenges these raise. The paper also discusses how and why System Dynamics needs to be used by analysts in a more complete manner (i.e. engaging qualitative, quantitative, and participatory approaches) to ensure that in any given applied case, the models, and the judgements underpinning their development, are effectively embedded in societal and political contexts that allow their use for supporting sustainability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Urban mobility plays a key role in any modern society. The advent of digital platforms and dedicated mobile apps, as well as new business models based on the concept of access over ownership and sharing economy (sharing mobility and Mobility as a Service), promises to reshape this sector. It will facilitate and speed up the diffusion of more sustainable and efficient means of transportation based on an intermodal mobility management perspective. The main goal of this paper is to examine the current state of smart mobility together with those factors that may influence the extent of modern sharing mobility proliferation and penetration through ICT applications and social media. The authors applied the content analysis using a sample of more than 1000 citizens' and visitors' reviews published on the official digital platforms of the smart city of Milan. The paper includes a comparison with data drawn from the public urban mobility services users. Based on the nodes resulting from the content analysis, the STEEP method was adopted in order to apply a more complex perspective concerning social, technological, environmental, economic and political issues. This strategic analytical tool was combined with the SWOT analysis dimensions to provide a comprehensive practical contribution to modern municipal smart mobility management systems. The results highlight the need for both smart mobility solutions suppliers and institutions to properly understand and communicate how digital services can be implemented across different users' touchpoints and communication channels to increase the value-added provided to citizens and visitors alike. • Urban mobility services assessment in a smart city context • Analyses of digital platforms and mobile apps for sharing mobility services • Content analysis and Network analysis of the reviews of mobility services' users • Multilevel approach based on the integration of STEEP and SWOT analyses • Theoretical contribution and strategic insights for policy-makers [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Encouraging change towards more sustainable ways of living and more sustainable places to live is a complex process. Part of this complexity is to do with understanding the motives and values that drive behavioural change towards sustainable consumption. As an important sub-set of values research, moral foundations have been found to underlie and motivate individuals' attitudes to a broad range of issues and to be strongly reflected in individuals' political orientation. However, there is no literature to date investigating the link between moral foundations and sustainable consumption. Increasingly, marketplace choice has emerged as a form of political participation, through which consumers can exercise their moral and ideological beliefs about sustainability and other issues. This paper addresses the identified gap in the literature and presents an argument that moral foundations underpin individual's political orientation and desire for change and that this is enacted through their individual consumption choices and collective political action in sustainability issues. The paper presents data from a New Zealand study using structural equation modelling to demonstrate the relationship between moral foundations, political orientation, individual sustainable consumption behaviours and wider political involvement in sustainability issues. Our results show that people with individualising moral foundations, who tend to the political left, are more likely to engage in sustainable consumption behaviour and to demonstrate their commitment to change through political action on sustainability issues than people who hold binding moral foundations. This paper extends our understanding of value–behaviour linkages and gaps with regards to sustainable consumption by focussing on the importance of moral values. These insights provide the basis on which more effective communication strategies could be developed that more closely align with and appeal to those with the different moral foundations and political orientations investigated in this study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Economic Evaluations, Prime Ministerial Approval and Governing Party Support: Rival Models Reconsidered by Harold D. Clarke and Marianne Stewart (1995) makes major contributions both substantive and methodological. Substantively, the article contributes to literatures on economic voting and the presidentialization of British politics. Methodologically, the paper is a model of how to conduct cointegration and error correction analyses between closely related political time series. In all, the authors established a long-run equilibrium between prime ministerial approval and vote intentions for the governing party. The two variables may diverge for short periods, but vote intentions will always revert back to a level that is in line with the popularity of the PM. We extend Clarke and Stewart's data to the present day and examine how the PM-vote intention link has endured while the effects of the economy on vote intentions have varied. We also show that, while time series analysis in political science has undergone several revolutions, Clarke and Stewart's process of conducting two-step cointegration analysis (Engle and Granger, 1987) stands up 30 years later as a blueprint for how to investigate long-run relationships with political data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Transfer preferences of middle-level bureaucrats shape spatial disparities in local state presence. • Bureaucrats regularly lobby against transfer orders that do not align with their preferences. • Bureaucrats prefer jurisdictions close to their home locations and avoid relocating over long distances. • Jurisdictions less preferred by bureaucrats are more likely to experience state absence. • Regional disparities in the representation of bureaucrats impact the distribution of local state absence. Most states lack the ability to maintain a uniform presence at the local level. While in some places, citizens experience an attentive and present state that is quick to address their demands, in other parts, the same state can be unresponsive and absent. The unevenness in state presence shapes its capacity to delivery services and its legitimacy in the eyes of the citizens. What explains the spatial unevenness in local state presence? This paper argues that the transfer preferences of mid-level bureaucrats are an important determinant of local state presence. Using a mixed-methods approach that combines insights from qualitative fieldwork and a unique dataset on the transfers history of mid-level bureaucrats in Indian land bureaucracy, I show that bureaucrats have strong transfer preferences and regularly lobby to avoid being placed in jurisdictions further away from their homes or being relocated over long distances. Jurisdictions less preferred by bureaucrats are more likely to experience state absence at the local level. Further, spatial disparities in local state absence are concentrated according to historical patterns of development across different regions of the state; historically less developed regions with lower bureaucratic representation within the state and experience a more prolonged duration of bureaucratic absence on account of bureaucratic lobbying against transfer directives. This paper highlights the importance of transfer preferences of individual bureaucrats and their collective representation in shaping the quality of local governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, studies on the real estate markets mainly focused on the relationship between abrupt change points and corresponding political issues and economic collapse. Within the past statistical framework, change-point detection technique was widely considered based on large and long data sets. Few studies considered the situation where a limited size of time-series data sets is available in the real estate markets. To fill in this gap, the wavelet analysis with minimax threshold is introduced in this paper. By comparing Daubechies LA(8), wavelet analysis with minimax threshold is a versatile and powerful approach to the analysis of residential data as they are flexible in their function form and provide a robust computational method even with a small sample size. The detected change points reflect some significant political issues and economic collapses. It can be shown from the empirical result that a “diffusion relationship” happened from one location to another. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

It is widely known that governance is central to the successful implementation of sustainable development policies and measures. Yet, there is a paucity of research which explore the links between governance and sustainability. This paper attempts to address this research need by providing an analysis of the role of governance in enabling – and to some extent – fostering a transition towards sustainable societies. A set of indicators for assessing the capacity for and willingness and commitment to transition to a more sustainable society is presented, enabling identification of direction of change. This paper presents the results of a study, in the context of which sustainability governance has been comparatively investigated in a sample of European countries with, by methodological purpose, very different economic, environmental, political and social conditions (Denmark, Finland, Germany, Latvia, Lithuania and Poland). Lessons learnt and examples of good practice – which may be replicable elsewhere-are outlined. For instance, it is discussed that limited knowledge about sustainable development amongst municipal development planners and decision-makers, deficiencies in policy integration, intersectoral cooperation, municipality and stakeholder cooperation and urban management practices are major reasons for weak governance practices in sustainable development. Furthermore, some recommendations on the role of sustainability governance are made, so as to allow the integration of the principles of governance into sustainability practice and hence provide a more general basis upon which a transition towards sustainable societies may become a reality in different types of European countries and societies. The scientific value of this paper lies in identifying opportunities for integrating principles of governance into sustainability practice, as well as outlining the basis for sustainability transitions, providing a general picture of required policy measures. The paper offers a unique comparative analysis of sustainability governance in the Baltic Sea countries, outlining some of the challenges in sustainability governance in the Baltic Sea region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the increased use of information networks and the barrage of media such as Video of Things (VoT), various new ideas and concepts affect college students' behavior and value exposure. It necessitates analyzing the current problems in the VoT-enabled teaching processes in colleges and universities, continuously reforming teaching methods, and seeking to improve the relevance and effectiveness of teaching ideological and political theory courses in colleges and universities. To end this, we propose an ideological VoT model using digital twin technology in this paper. Furthermore, we design three progressive models such as physical simulation scenes, character experience scenes, and simulation experiment scene design. We discuss experiments to validate the model developed in this paper. The simulation results revealed the efficiency of the proposed model compared to similar techniques. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses the concept of ‘ordinary citizenship’ (Staeheli et al., 2012) to explore the relationship between mobility, citizenship and political space in the European Union. Drawing on in-depth interviews with Britons living in South West France, the paper examines the ways in which citizenship is meaningful to migrants as a complexity of legal frameworks, normative structures and everyday activities. While EU citizenship has been advanced to underpin the formation of a closer Union, we demonstrate that contemporary forms of citizenship among these lifestyle migrants are shaped to a large extent by performances of national belonging, and individual interactions with other people at the local or community level. We argue that a bi-national structure of citizenship, or one based on domicile better accounts for the experiences of these migrants than supranational EU citizenship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Scholars of environmental governance are increasingly intrigued by issues of scale. Efforts to institutionalise river basin management represent a pertinent exemplar, as they aspire to strengthen hydrological vis-à-vis political–administrative scales of governance. The EU Water Framework Directive (WFD) is one of the most ambitious policy initiatives worldwide to reconfigure water management planning around the hydrological scale of river basins. Whilst it is widely assumed that the WFD is rescaling water governance in Europe, few empirical studies have been conducted to ascertain how far this is the case, what scalar strategies and practices are emerging and to what effect. The paper addresses these open issues with a study analysing the multi-scalar actions of water authorities, water management organisations, local authorities and interest groups involved in implementing the WFD. It investigates how stakeholders are acting scalar from the local to the European scale and back to further their interests in the course of WFD implementation, focussing on the Wupper sub-basin in Germany. Drawing for conceptual insight on the human geography debate on the politics of scale and processes of rescaling, we demonstrate how all relevant stakeholders are increasingly working across scales to advance their interests but in very different ways, with different degrees of deliberation and to different effect. A typology of multi-scalar action is developed to interpret this diversity. The paper draws conclusions on how multi-scalar action is altering not only power relations between the actors but also the scalar configurations themselves. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the emerging land-centered urban politics in China, can western Growth Machine Theory (GMT) explain local dynamics in Chinese cities? This paper argues that three major interest groups exist in a local land market: the central government, the local government, and local developers. Economic coalitions are expected to form between a local government and developers, and political coalitions are expected to exist between the central and local governments. To test this hypothesis and to examine the existence of local economic coalitions, this paper uses Suzhou and Shenzhen as case studies. It shows that individual land-related local interest groups are emerging and economic coalitions exist in both cities, but with varying degrees. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary The implementation of Catchment Management Agencies (CMAs) was supposed to be the cornerstone of the rescaling process of the South African water reform policy. Yet, less than 10 years after the adoption of the National Water Act, the process was suspended for 4 years and by 2012 only two CMAs had been established. Combining approaches in geography and political science, this paper investigates the reasons for the delays in CMAs’ implementation in South Africa. It shows that the construction of interbasin transfers (IBTs) since the 1950s by the apartheid regime and nowadays the power struggles between CMAs and the Department of Water Affairs (DWA) are two of the main obstacles to the creation of CMAs planned by the 1998 National Water Act (NWA). Finally, the paper advocates taking the “hydrosocial cycle” as an analytical framework for designing new institutional arrangements that will include both rectifying the legacy of the past (the specific role of DWA) and acknowledging legitimate local interests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary This paper documents changes in the field of water management in France, through the analyses of the activities of water professionals. Hydro-territory professionals work for local authorities in charge of water management at the watershed scale. Their functions appear to be fuzzy. Yet, this paper assumes that this fuzziness is a crucial feature as it manifests an ability to deal with “wicked” problems. Based on quantitative and qualitative inquiries, this paper discusses to what extent these new kind of professionals present themselves as, or differentiate themselves from, experts, facilitators or policy entrepreneurs. It contributes to the studies that highlight the new water professional as a transdisciplinary engineer capable of dealing with negotiation, cooperation or communication issues. Yet, the main result of our study is to show the embedded dimension of hydro-territory professionals, considering water governance as a long term issue of adjustment, assembling, fitting, in a territory and across scales. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

States have been widely criticized for failing to advance the international climate regime. Many observers now believe that a “new” climate governance is emerging through transnational and/or local forms of action that will eventually plug the resulting governance gaps. Yet states, which remain oddly absent from most discussions of the “new” governance, will remain key players as governance becomes more polycentric. This paper introduces a special issue that explores the ability of states to rise to these interconnected challenges through the analytical prism of policy innovation. It reveals that policy innovation is much more multi-dimensional than is often thought; it encompasses three vital activities: invention (centering on the ‘source’ of new policy elements), diffusion (that produces different ‘patterns’ of policy adoption), and the evaluation of the ‘effects’ that such innovations create in reality. The papers, which range from qualitative case studies to large ‘ n ’ quantitative studies, offer new insights into the varied roles that states play in relation to all three. They show, for instance that: the policy activity of states has risen dramatically in the past decade; that state innovation is affected to similar degrees by internal and external factors; and that policies that offer flexibility to target groups on how to meet policy goals are most effective but that voluntary reporting requirements are ineffective. This paper draws upon these and many other insights to offer a much more nuanced reflection on the future of climate governance; one that deservedly puts states at the front and center of analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While international agencies continue to promote ‘good governance’ as a precondition for development in the rapidly urbanizing world, the state and local institutions work within ‘real’ governance frameworks which include different, un-official forms of connection with community institutions, particularly in the so-called informal city. Local public actors build underlying networks, seeking territorial control and establishment of favourable power relations, following rationalities which diverge from those embedded in formal policies, including ‘strategies and tactics’ where ‘informal’ settlements (legal and illegal) are ‘used’ as sources of political and economic support in exchange for some form of security. Taking a ‘new institutionalist’ approach, and based on in-depth fieldwork in three ‘informal’ settlements, the paper explores governance structures and practices in the case of Mumbai's un-recognized settlements, established after 1995 and considered ‘illegal’ by public authorities. The three case study settlements include different sizes, people's places of origin, religions, processes of formation and political structures. These lead to a plurality of institutional arrangements which shape the web of relations between actors inside and outside the community and the governance of socio-spatial and planning issues. Despite the legal status of these settlements, which entails residents' exclusion from services and evictions, economic and political powers within (and in relation with) the Municipality are interested in governing the ‘illegal city’. In the face of formal un-recognition (and exclusion practices), community institutions develop negotiations/agreements with intermediate institutions to consolidate informal relations with the Municipality, as a coping strategy. The paper provides an understanding of actors' rationalities and the interplay of powers in the context of ‘real’ urban politics. It concludes that the interests the actors have in the existing governance processes raise questions about the appropriateness and scope for implementation of theoretical ‘good governance’ approaches, and suggests that improvement of living conditions in these areas requires not only official acknowledgement of the settlements as physical entities, but cognizance of the real governance mechanisms in operation and approaches that address these. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

‘Climate geoengineering’ is becoming an increasingly prominent focus for global discussion and action. Yet, in academic, policy and wider political discourse, the frequent shorthand term ‘geoengineering’ is routinely used in very broad, ambiguous and multivalent ways. This study aims to contribute to understandings of these divergent current framings of ‘geoengineering’ and their implications. It asks not only about disparate understandings of geoengineering itself, but also what these reveal about deeper political dynamics around climate change, science and technology. To this end, the paper applies Q methodology to analyse geoengineering as a subjective discursive construct, the bounds of which are continually negotiated and contested. Thirty-five participants from a variety of political and institutional backgrounds in the UK, US, Canada and Japan undertook a ‘Q sort’ of 48 statements about geoengineering between December 2012 and February 2013. Four distinctive framings emerged from this analysis, labelled: ‘At the very least we need more research’; ‘We are the planetary maintenance engineers’; ‘Geoengineering is a political project’; and ‘Let's focus on Carbon.’ Results indicate a strong polarity around divergently construed pros and cons of geoengineering as a whole – underscoring the political salience of this term. But additional axes of difference suggest a more nuanced picture than straightforward pro/anti-positioning. The ambiguity of the term is argued to offer interpretive flexibility for articulating diverse interests within and across contending framings. The paper questions whether increasing terminological precision will necessarily facilitate greater clarity in resulting multivalent governance discussions and public engagement. It argues that the merits of any given form of precision and their policy implications will depend on particular framings. Much ambiguity in this area may thus be irreducible, with the challenges lying perhaps less in the ordering of discourse and more in reconciling the wider material political pluralities that this suggests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The general belief in the insurance industry is that underwriting is a loss-making segment but is essential as it generates cash flow. The underwriting losses are cross-subsidized by investment income resulting in overall profits. In this paper, we investigate if the same is true in the Indian context. For this Simplex representation, (also known as trilinear plot or Saari Triangle) a tool in the field of political science, is adapted. Simplex representation can give an instant understanding of the relative performance of a company in any segment/domain. The study reveals that, contrary to expectation, it is reinsurance that has contributed more to overall aggregate performance as against investment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Social scientists have paid increasing attention to health technology assessment (HTA). This paper provides an overview of existing social scientific literature on HTA, with a focus on sociology and political science and their subfields.Methods: Narrative review of key pieces in English.Results: Three broad themes recur in the emerging social science literature on HTA: the drivers of the establishment and concrete institutional designs of HTA bodies; the effects of institutionalized HTA on pricing and reimbursement systems and the broader society; and the social and political influences on HTA decisions.Conclusion: Social scientists bring a focus on institutions and social actors involved in HTA, using primarily small-N research designs and qualitative methods. They provide valuable critical perspectives on HTA, at times challenging its otherwise unquestioned assumptions. However, they often leave aside questions important to the HTA practitioner community, including the role of culture and values. Closer collaboration could be beneficial to tackle new relevant questions pertaining to HTA. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates the impact of government incentive measures on the energy-saving behavior of residents and the impact path. Previous literature has discussed the influencing factors of residents' energy-saving behavior but rarely considered the intrinsic relationship and interaction among those factors. Thus, this paper studies the effect of government incentive measures and the moderating effect of psychological factors on the energy-saving behavior of residents. Random questionnaires are used to obtain responses, followed by test analysis. Results show that the energy-saving attitude and environmental responsibility (ER) of residents have a significant positive impact on energy-saving behavior, whereas consumer values (CV) have none. This result differs from the findings of previous studies. The government subsidy policy has a vital role in promoting energy-saving behavior and a significant positive moderating effect on attitude and energy-saving behavior. However, it has a significant negative moderating effect on ER and energy-saving behavior. These interesting findings fill in some gaps in the literature and can provide good recommendations for governments to formulate and implement energy conservation and environmental protection policies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The contemporary urban transport debate is increasingly versed in terms of "sustainable" development, placing social and environmental issues on the agenda. However, despite their heterogeneity, sustainable perspectives seldom engage with the explicitly political issues that shape the relationship between transport and urban development. In this paper, we propose to re-connect urban transport with political economic considerations, and thus to mobilise and strengthen "critical" perspectives on urban transport. We develop a framework for studying transport policies inspired by Henri Lefebvre's conceptualisation of "the right to the city". The framework is illustrated with the empirical example of a "pedestrianisation" project in Brussels, a salient case of a "sustainable" transport policy. We demonstrate how ostensibly progressive intentions in terms of challenging local mobility paradigms do not necessarily translate into participative and transformative practices. Instead, they often embrace the established policy-makers, leave local power relations largely unaltered, support elite entrepreneurial agendas, and obfuscate the socio-spatially uneven landscapes of contemporary cities. We thus highlight the urgency of re-politicising urban transport theory and practice by seeking and revealing political economic choices, contradictions and conflicts that underpin transport policies interwoven with urban development dynamics. • Dominant "sustainable" perspectives on transport seldom engage with political issues. • We propose to re-connect urban transport with "critical" political economic considerations. • We offer a framework for studying transport through Lefebvre's "right to the city". • We illustrate the framework with the example of a "pedestrianisation" project in Brussels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study investigates all sustainability reports published between 2012 and 2016 by China's Higher Education Institutions (HEIs). The aim of this paper is to investigate the characteristics of SR by China's HEIs and what causes these traits. After theoretical frameworks are described, the general situation of Sustainability Reporting (SR) in China's HEIs is outlined. Then, an assessment framework is constructed which is a modification of the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) Sustainability Guidelines for use in HEIs, and the content analysis method is applied to analyze and assess the extent of reporting of various items of SR in China's HEIs. Finally, this study outlined the characteristics of SR by China's HEIs and addressed their causes. The findings show that SR by China's HEIs is still in the initial stage in terms of not only the relative share of China's HEIs releasing sustainability reports but also the establishment of SR standards and the reporting level; has an obvious regional characteristic; and is under the control of Chinese government. The results of the theoretical analysis show that these characteristics may be due to the lack of internal dynamics and insufficient external binding force. Furthermore, we conclude that SR by China's HEIs is a government-led activity, and essentially it is determined by the administration-based education system. Also, the practice of the Shanghai government demonstrates an important leading and stimulating role played by the government in promoting SR by HEIs. We argue that the Chinese mode has a certain value and practical implications for many countries. The study provides necessary supplements to existing researches through identifying and exploring a different development mode of SR by HEIs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As systematic reviews become more common in the social sciences journal literature, it is important for social science librarians to be familiar with this methodology. Knowledge of characteristics of systematic reviews that have been published in the journal literature can help to inform librarians as they guide researchers to adopt good practices. This paper analyzes a collection of 164 systematic reviews gleaned from the International Bibliography of Social Sciences database for the period 2017 to 2019 from journals in the fields of anthropology, business and economics, communications, education, political science, psychology, social sciences (comprehensive), and sociology. The methodology of each review was checked to answer questions about reporting of keywords and search terms, reporting of inclusion/exclusion criteria, time period searched, external guidelines referenced, initial number of studies retrieved and number of studies included in the review, and number and names of databases searched. Details are provided for the individual subject categories, and the implications of these findings for social science librarians are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to rapid technological changes, governments in developing countries have paid special attention to sustainability. However, understanding insights into the sustainability of telecentres remains an open question. This paper aims to fill this gap. We conducted a case study in Vietnam by using both qualitative and quantitative data. We used the Kumar and Best's (2006) model as our theoretical lens to analyse the sustainability of telecentres in Vietnam. The paper finds that telecentres have shifted their concept to provide a wide range of services, both online and offline. The paper indicates that technological, political, and social sustainability are important for the sustainability of telecentres. The paper recommends that we should take the role of state-owned enterprises and the digital transformation into consideration to sustain telecentres. Furthermore, the paper indicates the mutual relation between political and technical sustainability with social sustainability that has not been yet unveiled in the prior literature. • Technological, political, and social sustainability are crucial for telecentres in Vietnam. • State-owned enterprises play an important role in sustaining telecentres. • To meet users' needs and the change of technology operators should trigger the digital transformation process at telecentres. • Social sustainability is the outcome of political, technical sustainability and operators' capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There have been many attempts for ICT standardization in China. Among them, this paper deals with information security standards. Although information security is often mentioned regarding China's ICT standardization, it has been rarely examined per se. While most studies on China's ICT standardization focus on economic aspects (e.g. increased bargaining power) or the government's role, this paper draws on legal aspects. We select WAPI and ZUC for case studies, and examine their legal aspects, particularly from the perspective of WTO's TBT (technical barriers to trade) principles. We have found that China's standardization strategy becomes international-bound and, in fact, the manner in which the Chinese government handles standardization projects has become refined, flexible, and communicative with foreign stakeholders. We see that the changes are responses to the trade concerns raised by foreign stakeholders in various TBT Committee meetings and bilateral meetings. In addition, the Chinese government appears to become market-oriented even in the field of information security where it previously maintained a rigid stance on the ground of national security. This paper points out that the changes are attributed to growing external pressure from foreign governments and firms as well as to internal efforts toward innovation based on indigenous technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]