79 research outputs found

    Emerging trends in labour legislation and policy in the SADC region : the experiences of Botswana and Swaziland in the context of the ILO convention on freedom of association and protection of the right to organise (C.87)

    Get PDF
    The advent of the Southern African Development Community (SADC) brought with it a · euphoric expectation of instantaneous transformation of the sub-region into a vibrant, viable economic haven for its inhabitants. Time and reality have since reduced this euphoria to disillusionment. This state of affairs has resulted in a lot of introspection leading to vital questions about the readiness and capacity of the member states to let go of their national sovereignty as a price for more meaningful regional integration. Embedded in this is the major question of how the labour law regimes have lent themselves to change and whether they can be transformed into engines of growth that can facilitate employment within internationally acceptable environments. To attempt to answer this question, one needs to examine closely the individual domestic situations in order to determine how strong differences are in the context of international labour standards such as the very basic freedom of association and protection of the right to organise. The examination of ‱ Botswana and Swaziland was therefore undertaken for this purpose. It has led us to the conclusion that essentially, labour legislation in these countries is common in many significant respects, unwilling to approximate to expected international standards but flexible enough for potential harmonization and transformation. This dissertation is however fairly inconclusive given the size of the SADC itself. It is therefore only a pointer, a part of the critical foundation of enquiry. It is thus only part of the preliminary survey for the roadmap that needs to be drawn on which a workable integration in the SADC could be built in the future

    Labour Agency and Transnational Environmental Regulation - A Study of the Relevance of Global Framework Agreements

    Get PDF
    This thesis analyses how the growing role of labour actors in processes of environmental regulation is reflected in and influenced by the negotiation and implementation of global framework agreements that include environmental provisions (EGFAs). Departing from previous studies of GFAs, the thesis provides a thoroughly contextualised thematic analysis of GFAs focussed on environmental issues, using a trans-disciplinary approach, combining legal and sociological perspectives through the prism of labour environmentalism. It asks how the inclusion of environmental provisions is connected to other processes of environmental regulation, including through the agency of labour actors, mainly unions, at different scales. Data collection involves the creation of a database of EGFAs consisting of statistical information and an extensive account of their content, and an analysis of three case studies, chosen from the database and informed by semi-structured interviews and focus groups carried out with union and management representatives at various scales. Relying on a bourdieusian analytical framework articulated around the ‘thinking tools’ of field, habitus and capital, the thesis makes a methodological contribution by weaving together the analysis of the content of EGFAs and the cases. Ultimately, the thesis provides an empirical, analytical and theoretical understanding of practices of negotiation and implementation of EGFAs. Emphasising that context matters, it shows that these practices are connected to political, legal and organisational regulatory processes involving labour actors at multiple scales. The agency of labour actors in these processes relates to their capacity to connect to multi-scalar and multi-directional networks through the articulation of abstract rules, standards, notions, etc. with concrete situations. Focussing on processes of environmental regulation, prevalent approaches were found to be informed by different conceptions of the relationship between labour and nature and to translate into various understandings of the role of EGFAs, ranging from endorsement of companies’ CSR policies and practices to instruments of social and environmental justice

    United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland

    Get PDF
    This report appears in: Albert, Richard and Landau, David and Faraguna, Pietro and Drugda, Ć imon and De Carolis, RocĂ­o, The 2021 Global Review of Constitutional Law (November 23, 2022). The 2021 Global Review of Constitutional Law. ISBN: 978-0-692-15916-3. Sponsored by the Constitutional Studies Program at the University of Texas at Austin. Published by EUT Edizioni UniversitĂ  di Trieste. ISBN: 978-88-5511-361-8 (EUT), U of Texas Law, Legal Studies Research Paper , Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=428503

    Belgium

    Get PDF

    2021 Global Review of Constitutional Law

    Get PDF
    The series The Global Review of Constitutional Law assembles detailed but relatively brief reports on constitutional developments and cases during the past calendar year. The reports in this first-of-its-kind series of volumes offer readers systematic knowledge that, previously, has been limited mainly to local networks rather than a broader readership. Reports are usually authored by distinguished legal scholars and/or by judges of constitutional and supreme Courts

    Organizing for Societal Grand Challenges

    Get PDF
    "The ebook edition of this title is Open Access and freely available to read online. Societal grand challenges have moved from a marginal concern to a mainstream issue within the field of organization and management studies. Organizing for Societal Grand Challenges unpacks how diverse forms of organizing help tackle - or reinforce - grand challenges, while emphasizing the need for researchers to expand their methodological repertoire and reflect upon scholarly practices. This edited collection offers an organizational perspective on societal grand challenges in three sections: Diverse Forms of Organizing and Societal Grand Challenges; Scholarship and Societal Grand Challenges; Reflections and Outlook. The articles offer empirical and conceptual work that focus on a wide variety of regions including Africa, Asia, Europe, and South America, and engage with multiple grand challenges, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, decent work, hunger, inequality, and poverty. Drawing on varied theoretical lenses, the authors take stock of recent developments in the literature, present an overview of the current thinking, and set a foundation for future research on grand challenges in organization and management studies. The articles provide inspiration, insights, and instruments for developing timely and relevant knowledge to engage with the pressing societal grand challenges of our time.

    Monitoring and resource management taxonomy in interconnected cloud infrastructures: a survey

    Get PDF
    Cloud users have recently expanded dramatically. The cloud service providers (CSPs) have also increased and have therefore made their infrastructure more complex. The complex infrastructure needs to be distributed appropriately to various users. Also, the advances in cloud computing have led to the development of interconnected cloud computing environments (ICCEs). For instance, ICCEs include the cloud hybrid, intercloud, multi-cloud, and federated clouds. However, the sharing of resources is not facilitated by specific proprietary technologies and access interfaces used by CSPs. Several CSPs provide similar services but have different access patterns. Data from various CSPs must be obtained and processed by cloud users. To ensure that all ICCE tenants (users and CSPs) benefit from the best CSPs, efficient resource management was suggested. Besides, it is pertinent that cloud resources be monitored regularly. Cloud monitoring is a service that works as a third-party entity between customers and CSPs. This paper discusses a complete cloud monitoring survey in ICCE, focusing on cloud monitoring and its significance. Several current open-source monitoring solutions are discussed. A taxonomy is presented and analyzed for cloud resource management. This taxonomy includes resource pricing, assignment of resources, exploration of resources, collection of resources, and disaster management

    Sequences of coalition structures in multi-agent systems applied to disaster response

    Get PDF
    Die Koalitionsbildung ist ein interessantes Thema im Bereich der Multiagentensysteme aufgrund von Herausforderungen bei der praktischen Anwendung, sowie der KomplexitĂ€t der Berechnung von Lösungen des Problems. Eine Koalition ist ein kurzlebiger Zusammenschluss von Agenten, die ein gemeinsames Ziel verfolgen. Gleichzeitig bietet die kooperative Spieltheorie mit Koalitionen einen formalen Mechanismus zur Analyse von Gruppen aus verschiedenen Akteuren. Daher wird das Problem als Characteristic-Function Game (CFG) modelliert. Dessen Ergebnis sind Aufteilungen einer Menge von Agenten in Koalitionen, sogenannte Koalitionsstrukturen. Allerdings lassen sich nicht alle praktisch auftretenden Probleme effizient mit einer einzigen Koalitionsstruktur lösen. Beispielsweise kann es erforderlich sein, eine Hierarchie von Gruppen zu bilden, in der dann eine Koalitionsstruktur pro Ebene benötigt wird. In der vorliegenden Arbeit werden voneinander abhĂ€ngige Probleme der Koalitionsbildung untersucht. Insbesondere wird der Schwerpunkt auf die gegenseitige AbhĂ€ngigkeit von Lösungen (also Koalitionsstrukturen), die aus individuellen Spielen resultieren, gelegt. Angesichts des Mangels an wissenschaftlichen Arbeiten zu diesem Thema wird das Sequential Characteristic-Function Game (SCFG) vorgeschlagen, um die Beziehung zwischen aufeinanderfolgenden Koalitionsstrukturen als Folge von CFGs zu modellieren. Dieses neue Spiel wird erweitert, um spezifische BeschrĂ€nkungen fĂŒr jedes CFG in der Spielsequenz zu ermöglichen. DarĂŒber hinaus wird gezeigt, dass das zugrunde liegende SCFG-Problem PSPACE-vollstĂ€ndig ist. Es werden ein exakter Algorithmus zur Berechnung von Lösungen von SCFG-Instanzen, sowie zwei heuristische Algorithmen vorgeschlagen. Die letzte Herausforderung der vorliegenden Arbeit ist die Modellierung eines Katastrophenhilfseinsatzes, bei dem das Einsatzleitsystem (engl. Incident Command System) verwendet wird, mithilfe der vorgeschlagenen Techniken und Algorithmen.Coalition formation has long been an interesting topic of research in Multi-Agent Systems, either for its practical applications or complexity issues. A coalition is commonly understood as a short-lived and goal-directed structure, in which the agents join forces to achieve a goal. Cooperative game theory has been used as a formal mechanism to analyse the problem of grouping agents into coalitions. The problem is then modelled by a Characteristic-Function Game (CFG) in which the outcome is a coalition structure: a partition of agents into coalitions. However, not all problems can be efficiently solved using a single coalition structure. For instance, one might be interested in a group hierarchy in which a coalition structure per level is required. In this thesis, we investigate coalition formation problems that are interdependent. In particular, we focus on the interdependence among solutions (i.e., coalition structures) produced by each game individually. Given the lack of work on this topic, we propose a novel game named Sequential Characteristic-Function Game (SCFG), which aims to model the relationships between subsequent coalition structures in a sequence of CFGs. We approach the resulting problem under both theoretical and practical perspectives. We extend the proposed game to allow fine-grained constraints being induced over each CFG in the sequence. Also, we show that the underlying SCFG problem is PSPACE-complete. From an algorithmic viewpoint, we propose an exact algorithm based on dynamic programming, as well as two heuristic algorithms to compute solutions for SCFG instances. We show that there exists a trade-off in choosing one algorithm over the others. Moreover, we model a disaster response operation that employs the incident command system framework, and we show how one can apply our proposed framework and algorithms to solve such an interesting problem

    Sovereign debt and economic policy: a relational sociology of debt in the United Kingdom, 1960s–1980s

    Get PDF
    This thesis studies how what I call relational fiscal practices shape government elites' (and non-government actors') understandings of economic policy options. It examines how symbolic fiscal practices, classification struggles, and interwoven relations contour policymakers' communication of these options to relevant stakeholders—Parliament, voters, financial investors, international organisations, etc.—and structure political debates over the size of the state and the allocation of resources to different purposes. Building on the relational frameworks proposed by economic and political sociologists (Block, 2012; Bourdieu, 2010; Tilly, 2005; Zelizer, 2005, 2012), I develop a relational approach to sovereign debt. With this aim, I define relational as comprising (1) inter-organisational relations, (2) intra-organisational relations, and (3) semantic relations—relations between concepts and categories at the core of symbolic fiscal practices. My central argument is that to grasp the political, economic, and sociological significance of public borrowing we must study how historical agents within and outside government distinguish borrowing according to who the creditor is and what the government borrows for. This entails looking beneath the overall quantity of debt and/or the problem of debt repayment per se, which have traditionally been at the centre of social science research on sovereign debt. Drawing on original archival evidence, parts II and III develop the empirical argument. Part II studies the role of numbers and budgetary reporting in framing economic policy through an analysis of how symbolic fiscal practices—the accounting and conceptual decisions, technologies, and devices that compose budgetary reporting—are crucial sites from which sovereign debt and deficits acquire their historical and sociological meaning. By studying the social processes behind the production, uses, and understandings of public finance statistics, chapters 3-5 inquire why certain macroeconomic indicators become more salient and consequential for policy than others. They theorise symbolic fiscal practices and public knowledge infrastructures as key devices for structuring the relationship between economic policy and the climate of general and expert opinion. As non-neutral classification systems that result from classification struggles over what and how to report, symbolic fiscal practices influenced how people thought of the economy, government, and economic policy in the 1960s-1980s. The politics of official knowledge conditioned the terms and standards of economic policy debate. The three chapters analyse the interaction between (i) efforts at managing public opinion; (ii) attempts at managing financial market expectations; (iii) attempts at managing international creditors' assessments; (iv) intra-state bureaucratic conflicts; (v) the mobilisation of epistemic authority; (vi) the legacies of past classification struggles; and (vii) conflicts between evolving fiscal schemata. Part III zooms in to specific fateful relational processes between government and key counterparties in the 1970s. It traces how (i) strategic interactions between relevant actors and (ii) specific policy and cognitive devices combined to constrain government elites' perceived menu of available policy options. Chapter 6 studies the strategic interactions between policymakers intending to legitimise an active fiscal policy and uncooperative financial markets in the 1970s. It argues that the institutional and cognitive underpinnings of the relational setting of sovereign debt shaped government elites' (and financial investors') understandings of economic policy options, and proposes the notion of an economic policy trilemma to explain and theorise the way in which financial confidence became a binding constraint to government policy. Chapter 7 offers a novel interpretation of mid-1970s economic policy as cumulative polyvalent performances. It situates the 1976 IMF crisis within a larger relational process and presents the story of how relational pondering, polyvalent performances, and opposite matching games influenced the negotiations between the government and relevant counterparties during 1975 and 1976. Overall, the thesis joins recent work in economic sociology by proposing a relational approach to public finances in general and public debt in particular. Beyond that theoretical contribution, the vast amount of original archival work conducted allows the empirical chapters to engage actively in scholarly debates relevant to the specific processes, topics, and periods considered
    • 

    corecore