434 research outputs found
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To pay or not to pay? Citizens' views on taxation in local authorities in Tanzania
Get PDFWidespread tax evasion reflected in persistent public resistance to pay is seen as part of the problem of raising local government revenues in Tanzania. Dealing with the policy problem of revenue enhancement and tax evasion requires some understanding of the factors underlying the individual’s decision whether to pay or evade taxes. However, the views of taxpayers are to a large extent ignored in this policy debate.
What are the experiences, priorities, and recommendations of Tanzanian citizens with respect to payment of taxes and fees?
What do people feel they get in return for taxes paid? And what do they consider to be the major challenges to improving the present system? Based on data from a recently conducted citizen survey, this paper presents the perceptions of ordinary people on local government taxation
Selskapers sosiale ansvarlighet. En teoretisk analyse og empirisk undersøkelse av bedrifter i Malaysia
Get PDFMyndigheter, internasjonale organisasjoner og frivillige organisasjoner ser på selskapers sosiale ansvarlighet (SSA) som et effektivt virkemiddel til å nå samfunnsmessige mål, som for eksempel vern av naturmiljø, fattigdomsbekjempelse og bedring av helsetjenester. Myndigheter ønsker næringslivets deltagelse i mer enn bare økonomisk utvikling. FNorganisasjoner inviterer selskaper til å delta i partnerskap for å
nå Millenniummålene. I denne rapporten defineres SSA som en praksis. Den går kun kort inn i den normative debatten.
Rapportens teoretiske del presenterer en modell for
hvordan selskaper velger SSA -nivå. Modellen tar hensyn til at en drivkraft er ønske om profitt, men at også andre mål kan være viktige drivkrefter. Modellen predikerer; a) at selskaper vil velge et SSA-nivå høyere enn null, selv under perfekt konkurranse; og b) at selskaper som verdsetter SSA i seg selv, velger et høyere nivå på SSA enn selskaper som kun verdsetter profitt.
Den empiriske delen utforsker SSA-situasjonen i vestlige og lokale selskaper i Malaysia, og undersøker motivasjonen for denne praksisen. Studien konkluderer med at vestlige selskaper har bedre arbeidsforhold og miljøstandarder, mens lokale bedrifter i større grad støtter sosiale institusjoner i de nærmiljøene de opererer. Vestlige selskaper mener at profitt er den viktigste drivkraften, mens lokale bedrifter for en stor del forklarer deres støtte til sosiale institusjoner med moralske regler. SSA oppfattes som en nødvendighet, eller snarere en plikt, for lokale bedrifter.
Til slutt diskuterer rapporten hva myndigheter kan gjøre for å få næringslivet til heve innsatsen i forhold til samfunnsmessige mål. Den spesifiserer en liste med politikkanbefalinger, som kan øke SSA-nivået både i lokale og vestlige selskaper
License to kill: Honour killings in Pakistan
Get PDFPakistan has one of the highest incidences of honour killings in the world. This is a major human rights issue that has received little attention outside of human rights groups and women activist networks. This paper provides a critical reassessment of honour killings in Pakistan and argues that the prevalence of honour killings is due to the fact that traditional justice prevails over jural law. Since the late 1970s, aspects of traditional justice have been incorporated in the Pakistan Penal Code, thereby sanctioning homicide of men and women charged with adultery and fornication. In order to analyse the tenuous relationship between jural law and traditional justice, this paper is based on first-hand accounts of honour killings in the North- West Frontier Province (NWFP). This actor-oriented approach shows why traditional justice sanctions honour killings and the inability of jural law and the judiciary to punish offenders. In order to deter honour killings, more strident punishment of offenders is advised to invalidate traditional justice and counteract the private use of violence
Coffee, Co-operatives and Competition: The Impact of Fair Trade
Get PDFCoffee is one of the most important Third World export commodities, and 70% of the producers are small-scale farmers. Coffee producers are often poor and marginalised, and their situation is aggravated by fluctuating market prices and collusive behaviour among intermediary coffee purchasers.
Coffee co-operatives may potentially increase the incomes of these farmers by distributing a larger share of the final price to the co-operative members. Co-operatives can also have a pro-competitive effect on imperfect market situations, and thereby increase income levels also for non members.
Moreover, they have the potential to educate and empower marginalised farmers.
However, lack of finance and problems with free riding, costs of control and a too short time horizon are problems faced by co-operatives. Because of that, benevolent governments or NGOs have tried to support co-operatives with finance and expertise, but often with an unsuccessful outcome.
The Fair Trade system distributes money to smallscale coffee producers via carefully selected co-operatives. The study of Fair Trade co-operatives in Chiapas shows that they are successfully functioning organisations, and that they do seem to have a pro-competitive effect on an imperfect market situation. But the co-operatives also have many disadvantages compared to their private competitors. This means that they could probably not have reached their level of success without the premium received from the alternative markets (Fair Trade and organic). Thus, the support from the Fair Trade system seems to strengthen agricultural co-operatives
Corruption in international business transactions: The perspective of Norwegian firms
Get PDFThis report presents a study of corruption in international markets by exploring the perspectives of Norwegian firms, their challenges, their experiences and their preferred strategies. The study consists of three parts, (i) interviews at executive level in seven large firms, (ii) a business-survey, where 82 firms with a headquarter in Norway responded to a questionnaire, and (iii) a survey of Norwegian embassies outsde the OECD-region.
Six issues have motivated the study: (1) The choices firms make when experiencing a business climate that is worse than expected prior to entry; (2) the reluctance to speak out on corruption; (3) the link between corruption and market power; (4) the impact of improved procurement procedures; (5) the grey zones of facilitation payments, marketing strategies and political pressure; and (6) business strategies versus their expressed attitudes and codes of conduct.
The study is conducted in collaboration with NHO, The Confederation of Norwegian Business and Industry
Rural-urban linkages in sub-Saharan Africa: Contemporary debates and implications for Kenyan urban workers in the 21st century
Get PDFDespite the rapid rate of urbanisation in Africa, most migrants retain links to their rural origins. Many households pursue a circular migration strategy or are semi-permanently split in a rural and an urban part by means of ‘straddling’ – i.e. not relinquishing their roots on either side of the rural-urban divide. It may be argued that African households are translocational rather than based on territorial co-habitation.
The debates in this paper revolve around the following issues: How permanent are these linkages? Will the oscillating migrants inevitably end up as members of a fully-fledged, stabilised, urban proletariat who have severed their links with their rural origins? Do the urban migrants need their rural linkages in order to survive in town? Are the rural-urban linkages at the level of the household detrimental to agricultural productivity?
Generally, national governments and international agencies alike tend to make policy and act as if urban and rural economies and societies are unconnected and as if agriculture only affects rural populations and non-agricultural production only takes place in urban areas.
Greater appreciation of the complexity and diversity of local context is needed when policies are formulated and interventions made.
In conclusion, this paper asserts that rural-urban linkages reflect the survival strategies of poor households. The only prospect for the emergence of a stabilised urban proletariat lies in high economic growth rates and attendant employment creation
Conflictual Peacebuilding: Afghanistan Two Years after Bonn
Get PDFThis report charts the aid policies pursued in Afghanistan since late 2001 aimed at building peace in a country devastated by two decades of conflict.
The report presents the four pillars of the peacebuilding design and examines the national and international context for what is termed as a ‘conflictual peacebuilding.’ The statebuilding process as well as the relief and reconstruction policies are discussed in more detail, followed by an examination of the political transition process and how the rule of law has been established. The national security situation and the international and regional context s are reviewed as is Norway’s role in the peacebuilding process.
The report proposes policy guidelines for the policy agenda ahead:
•Refocus and limit the war against the militants so as to reduce the negative impact on the peacebuilding agenda.
•Emphasize institutional reforms and local capacity building as prerequisites for a large influx of new funds.
•Address issues that have been relatively neglected in the reconstruction process so far, including human rights, anti-poverty programs, and regulatory policies that promote greater equality and equity in sharing the benefits of reconstruction
•Anchor the peacebuilding process more firmly in the regional context, inter alia by creating an institutional forum for cooperation between Afghanistan and its neighbors.
Norway should consider consolidating its present aid portfolioand concentrating on an identifiable niche where the Norwegian contribution can make a difference
What constitutes a convention? Implications for the coexistence of conventions
Get PDFA model of repeated play of a coordination game, where stage games have a location in social space, and players receive noisy signals of the true location of their games, is reviewed. Sugden (1995) suggests that in such a model, there can be a stationary state of convention coexistence only if interaction is nonuniform across social space. This paper shows that an alternative definition of conventions, which links conventions to actions rather than expectations, permits convention coexistence when interaction is uniform. To assess robustness, the concept of a global mutant is introduced, to which certain states of coexistence are robust
The Role of the Judiciary in the 2004 General Elections in Malawi
Get PDFThe courts in Malawi have played a prominent role in political life since the democratic transition in 1993, which came about after three decades of repressive authoritatian rule. Whilst the quality of electoral politics have deteriorated, the courts have become increasingly central. In the 2004 elections they were involved at every stage of the election process. In this paper we argue that the Malawian judiciary has assumed four politically significant functions in the electoral process: it performs an accountability function, acts as a safety-valve, plays the role of an internal arbiter for the political parties; and functions as a source of political leverage. Furthermore, we argue that in order to understand this increasing politicisation of Malawian politics, it is important both to look at what has prevented the government from reigning in the judiciary, what has motivated judges to take up such a role, and what has motivated the parties to lodge political cases in the courts