Sustainable land resource management with agroforestry: empirical evidence from the Sunyani west district of Ghana, West Africa

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Collective Labor Rights and the European Social Model

This article explores the tension between competing discourses within the European Union, as this regional trading bloc seeks to capture further gains from market integration, whilst simultaneously attempting to soften the social impact of regional competition within its borders. This article analyzes the difficulty of maintaining the European social model, or a revised version of it, in the context of increased market integration. Through a close reading of two cases decided by the European Court of Justice in 2007, the article interrogates the extent to which discourses on social rights at the EU level can be made sufficiently robust to ensure the application of international or national labor standards as a buttress against increasingly mobile capital, in order to prevent "social dumping." It concludes, however, that the terms on which the foundational texts of the EU integration project operate - elevating "market" rights to equal, fundamental, status with social and labor rights - means that the exercise of social rights such as the right to strike is ultimately contingent on their compatibility with market integration

Race and Colonialism in the Construction of Labour Markets and Precarity

This article explores the interconnections and continuities between racial inequalities in the contemporary labour market and the legacies of colonialism and racial distinctions woven into the evolution of market economy. It argues that race is embedded in the legal form by which labour is regulated. In its focus on the legal relations between individual subjects, namely, the contract of employment, the dominant legal form for governing work relations, the standard employment relationship, erases from view the broader social and economic structures within which the bilateral relationship exists—that is, the unpaid work of social reproduction and the colonial extraction which make paid work possible. The article identifies a number of ways in which race, racism and the legacies of colonialism are implicated in the evolution of market economy and latterly in the construction of the postwar welfare state and contemporary labour market institutions. First, in the racial capitalism of slavery. Second, in the colonial extraction and commodification of labour power from the global South for the benefit of markets in the global North. Third, in relation to migrant labour and racialised segmentation of the labour market

Internal Control Systems and Performance of Life Insurers: Ghanaian Case

Life insurance companies are very crucial in the mobilisation of financial resources in a country, and therefore have a tremendous impact on the economic growth and financial stability of the country. The importance of internal control mechanisms in achieving these goals cannot be overemphasized. Despite the growing trend in internal control systems in financial institutions, there is little knowledge on the internal control practices that exist within life insurance companies in Ghana and how these influence their performances. It is against this background that this study set out to fill this gap. The main objective of this study is to examine the effect of internal control mechanisms on the performance of life insurers in Ghana. The multiple regression analysis was used to establish the statistical relationship between the COSO framework of internal control system and the performance of the Ghanaian life insurers. The findings from this study showed that internal control mechanisms have positive and unique contribution to explaining the performance of life insurance companies in Ghana. The study recommends among others that the life insurance firms need to improve upon the core principles of the various components of the COSO internal control integrated framework. For instance, with regards to the control environment, the insurance firms should demonstrate commitment to integrity and ethical values; they should exercise oversight responsibility, establish structure, authority, and responsibility, demonstrates commitment to competence, and enforce accountability throughout the firms. Keywords Ghana life insurance industry, internal control systems, firm performance DOI: 10.7176/RJFA/11-18-11 Publication date:September 30th 202

Russias Influence In Africa: Scenarios To Inform Greater Democratic Resilience

This paper is the result of a scenario-building exercise that NDI conducted in October and November 2022 with African, American and European analysts. Through the exercise, NDI sought to better understand potential trajectories of Russian influence in Africa over the next three years (2023–2025), especially developments that could have implications for democracy on the continent. This scenario exercise involved: background papers on various aspects of Russia's engagement in Africa; an online scenario-building workshop with African, American and European analysts; the development of four scenarios, each reflecting a different possible future identified during the online exercise; and further refinement of the scenarios based on consultations with selected analysts. Each of the four scenarios reflects a different combination of two key uncertainties: Russia's capacity to project power in ways that undermine democracy in Africa and the opportunities for Russia to do so

Decentring Europe in EU social law scholarship

Editorial for European Law Open, December 202

Computing Statistical Precision of Efficiency and Productivity Change Indices: A Bootstrap Application to Ghanaian Polytechnics

This study employs a bivariate smoothing bootstrap technique to obtain a statistical inference for Technical Efficiency and Malmquist Indices and their components of Polytechnics in Ghana over the period 2009-2014. The main contribution of this paper is to provide an Efficiency Analysis using a non-parametric approach with a robust estimator. This methodology is empirically being applied in the analysis of Polytechnic Education in Ghana because it affords us the opportunity to compute the statistical significance of changes in Polytechnics’ Technical Efficiency and Productivity Indices and their respective components. Results showed that averagely, Technical Efficiency fluctuated over the period; however, Polytechnic Education experienced a significant technological regress, with few Polytechnics achieving increases in productivity led by improvements in efficiency. Policy implications are derived

Theorising the relationship between social law and markets in regional integration projects

This article explores regional integration projects in the global South and constraints upon them. Its focus is on the use of economic sociology of law as a methodological approach through which to rethink the relationship between law, markets and state – and to explore how these interact in the context of one regionalisation project (the European Union) as well as interrogating whether economic sociology can similarly cast light on another regionalisation project (the African Union). The article examines the role of the ‘social state’ and of labour market institutions as part of an array of adjustment mechanisms responding to the liberalisation of trade and the opening of national borders: to what extent can social law and social rights mediate the operation of markets, and what does this mean when viewed from the perspective of developing as well as industrialised countries