How Do Damascenes Spend Their Leisure Time during the War?

Beginning in December 2010, the Arab world was hit by huge anti-government revolutionary waves, popularly known as the Arab Spring. In Syria, the uprising did not take long to morph into a bloody war with international and regional powers wrestling for geopolitical influence and economic gain. The war has significantly changed Syria in terms of politics, economy, and culture. While the first two have had an immediate effect on the ground and therefore constitute rich and sometimes easily-accessed materials for academic studies, the cultural aspect and particularly the daily life activities of Syrian citizens living in Syria during the Arab Spring have been understudied. This article investigates the cultural changes in the lives of Syrian citizens living in the city of Damascus. It seeks to understand how Damascus residents spend their leisure time during the war and in which ways the war has affected their daily life activities

The concept of freedom of contract in French administrative law

Conclure sur le sujet de la liberté contractuelle en droit administratif français n’est pas chose aisée. Cela dépend, essentiellement, de la façon de poser la problématique. Ainsi, si la question est de savoir si les personnes publiques disposent, à l’instar des particuliers, d’une liberté contractuelle, la réponse, dans le meilleur des cas, est qu’il s’agit d’une liberté à caractère particulier. En effet, en pratique, cette liberté est très restreinte, ses manifestations sont marginales, ce qui empêche véritablement de parler de « liberté heureuse ». Mais si la question est de savoir si le droit administratif français, à partir de ses particularités, de son originalité ainsi que de ses règles normatives, permet de reconnaître une telle liberté en faveur des personnes publiques, alors la réponse est négative. L’intérêt général, les prérogatives de la puissance publique, la compétence, la souveraineté, l’efficacité de la commande publique, la bonne utilisation des deniers publics et les principes fondamentaux de la commande publique,etc., constituent des obstacles fondamentaux non seulement à la reconnaissance de la liberté contractuelle aux personnes publiques mais également à son exercice effectif par ces dernières. Ainsi, certains auteurs ont pu conclure au sujet de la liberté contractuelle des personnes publiques qu’« en théorie elle existe mais, dans la pratique, personne ne l'a jamais vraiment rencontrée".Concluding on the subject of freedom of contract in French administrative law is not easy. It depends essentially on how to raise the issue. So if the question is whether public persons have, as individuals, contractual freedom, the answer, in the best case is that this is a special character to freedom. Indeed, in practice, this freedom is very limited, its manifestations are marginal, which prevents us from truly speaking of a "happy freedom." But if the question is whether the French administrative law, from its peculiarities, its originality and its normative rules can recognize such freedom in favor of public entities, then the answer is negative. The public interest, the prerogatives of public power, competence, sovereignty, efficiency of public procurement, proper use of public money and the fundamental principles of public procurement, etc., are fundamental obstacles not only to the recognition of freedom of contract to public persons but also to the effective exercise by them. Some authors have concluded on the contractual freedom of public persons that "in theory it exists but in practice, nobody really ever met it

A systematic analysis of equity issuance: evidence from around the world

This study conducts a systematic analysis of seasoned equity offerings across a sample of twelve countries with differing legal systems at the micro level from 2009 to 2019. Civil law countries have been shown to exhibit reduced shareholder protection rights, causing the cost of equity for firms in those countries to be higher and thus making equity issues less attractive. In this paper, we start by using a series of logistic regressions to examine if firms in civil law countries are less likely to pursue financing through seasoned equity offers. More importantly, we employ a range of interaction variables to examine whether the SEO decision policies and likelihood to issue SEOs differ across legal systems based on firm-specific characteristics. Our results indicate significant differences in SEO decision relevance for some firm-specific variables. The results were mainly robust across our subsamples and alternate models, with a few exceptions specifically for our size subsamples

Review: The Media World of ISIS

The Islamic State group (IS) has grabbed the world’s attention as one of the most dangerous and gruesome terrorist organizations in history. The group has been studied from different disciplines such as political science, history, and theology. Michael Krona and Rosemary Pennington’s edited volume, The Media World of ISIS, is an attempt by media studies scholars to explore different aspects and dimensions of the IS usage of media