1,720,961 research outputs found
A New Institutional Economic Analysis and Implications for Foreign Direct Investment in Saudi Arabia: The Framework and Effects of Contemporary International Law and Migrant Workers
No full textLabour migration to the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries has been occurring forseveral decades. Most of the GCC countries regulate this process through the Kafala System, alegal regime through which individuals and companies can sponsor foreigners with whom theyhave concluded an employment contract. But why do these countries bring millions of foreignersto their lands and what rights does the Kafala System guarantee them? Are there any negativeeconomic and political consequences that result from the way that the Kafala System has beenconceived in the GCC countries? If so, how can this system be reformed so that it produces moredesirable economic and political outcomes? This thesis explores these questions in the contextof the Kafala System in Saudi Arabia. It uses a New Institutional Economics (NIE) approach tounderstand the political, economic, and historical context within which the Kafala System arose,positing that the design of the system reflects a desire to promote economic growth and improvepolitical stability while remaining rooted in the Islamic identity of Saudi Arabia. It further showsthat for a long time, the Kafala System was successful in furthering these objectives. However, ithas lately become prone to producing suboptimal outcomes. Foreign direct investment in SaudiArabia has gone down, remittance outflows as a percentage of GDP have increased, skilled andhighly skilled workers are leaving the kingdom, and even Saudi Arabia’s political stability has beenreduced. Given all of these problems, the thesis uses Path Dependence (PD) theory to argue thatthe only reason that the Kafala System continues to be in place is that it has become a path-‐dependent institution that is resistant to change. This took place in three steps: (1) the initial setof choices that created the Kafala System were informed by important economic and politicalconsiderations as well as an affirmation of the Kingdom’s commitment to tie all legal institutionsto an Islamic source, (2) the Kafala System successfully helped Saudi Arabia achieve rapideconomic growth and increased political stability, outcomes which served as a positive feedbackeffect, and (3) the continued use of the Kafala System has increased switching costs because oflearning effects, coordination effects, and adaptive expectations. The thesis then argues that inorder to successfully reform this system, it is important in the first instance to justify proposedchanges in light of Islamic teachings, since this will improve how receptive Saudi society is tothem. At the same time, it is also necessary to show that changes in the international investmentclimate and the transition to a global information economy constitute a ‘critical juncture’ duringwhich the problem of switching costs can be overcome and far-‐reaching reforms can besuccessful. Of course, it goes without saying that reforms that increase protections for the rightsof workers would also align Saudi Arabia’s domestic law with its international treaty obligations
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Get PDFThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Investing in Development: The Role of Democracy and Accountability in International Investment Law
Get PDFThis article explores whether international investment agreements (IIAs) have the potential to impede democratic expression and, as a result, hinder sustainable development. The author first demonstrates that democracy plays an essential role in the promotion of sustainable development and provides a normative (rather than procedural) definition of democracy. The three ways in which IIAs can limit democracy are then addressed. First, they can limit the policy space of developing countries. This is demonstrated through an analysis of how types of provisions commonly found in IIAs can negatively affect policy flexibility. Second, democracy can be indirectly limited through the decisions of international investment tribunals which give little deference to the decisions of domestic democratic forums. Third, democracy can be undermined if foreign investors are not accountable to any democratic government. In this regard, it is necessary for IIAs to impose obligations on home states and investors to ensure that investors behave in socially responsible ways. The article concludes with suggestions for ways in which developing countries can structure IIAs to support democracy rather than detract from it
Variations on the Author
Get PDF“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Privacy in the Age of the Internet: Lawful Access Provisions and Access to ISP and OSP Subscriber Information
Get PDFBill C-30 (the Protecting Children from Internet Predators Act) and the Protecting Canadians from Online Crime Act are two recent attempts by the Canadian government to create incentives for Internet Service Providers (ISPs) and Online Service Providers (OSPs) to disclose the subscriber information of Internet users to government agencies. In this article, the author argues that while such provisions may not violate section 8 of the Charter based on current judicial interpretation, they ought to be found unconstitutional. To date, the Supreme Court of Canada’s search and seizure jurisprudence uses a normative framework that does not distinguish between defining the right to privacy and justifying limitations to it. This approach is not consistent with that taken for other Charter rights. The recent decisions of the Supreme Court in R v. Spencer and R v. Fearon may signal a slight shift, but they do not go far enough. If courts defined privacy interests more broadly than under current law and required the government to justify restrictions on these interests under section 1, this would create a legal regime that achieves a better balance between competing privacy and security interests
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Get PDFWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Revisiting the Economic Community of West African States: A Socio-Legal Analysis
No full textRecent years have seen a growing scholarly interest in the conditions of emergence of regional trade agreements in Africa. These analyses have advanced our knowledge on a range of technical issues, from specific institutional transformation of regional economic communities such as the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) to broad legal issues relating to the provisions of the regional trade agreements. Most literature on ECOWAS is, however, informed by legal formalism that interprets the text of the treaties strictly and without context, leading to a dominant interpretation of failure. By contrast, this thesis adopts a socio-legal approach and argues that the dominant narrative’s conceptualization of ECOWAS is narrow and under-representative of the broader contexts of the social relations in which ECOWAS Treaties and their implementation are embedded. The failure narratives do not adequately account for the complex social, historical, and political factors that shape the implementation of the ECOWAS Treaties. By combining socio-legal approach with insights from International Relations on new regionalism, the thesis reconceptualizes regionalism in ECOWAS as a social phenomenon. It approaches the ECOWAS Treaties as embedded in the socio-political relations, power struggles, and social structures of the Community. To differentiate the thesis from existing research on ECOWAS, it incorporates national, regional, and international factors in illuminating the complex and multifaceted confluence of circumstances that shape the implementation of the ECOWAS Treaties. Simultaneously, the thesis enriches our understanding of the theories of new regionalism by deepening the analysis in relation to ECOWAS. Seen from this perspective, the thesis concludes that ECOWAS cannot be regarded as a straightforward failure and that its achievements are not to be found primarily in economic integration but in other socio-political factors that it enabled. Finally, the analysis opens new opportunities for future normative analyses that interrogate the effectiveness of ECOWAS by taking into account the socio-political contexts in which it is embedded
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Get PDFWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
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