Effects of agricultural commercialization on land tenure, household resource allocation, and nutrition in the Philippines:

Agriculture Economic aspects Philippines., Produce trade Philippines., Land tenure Philippines., Households Philippines., Nutrition Philippines.,

Neo-Sufism in Modern Arabic Poetry, 1960-2005: A Study in the Poetry of 'Abd al-Wahhab al-Bayyati, Salah 'Abd al-Sabur and Adonis.

This thesis brings a contemporary critical approach to the use of Sufism in Arabic poetry after 1960, focusing on three major poets, 'Abd al-Wahhab al-Bayyati, Salah 'Abd al-Sabur and Adonis. Using appropriate theoretical approaches, the objective is to make a significant contribution to the development of a post-Orientalist, interdisciplinary understanding of the Middle East's cultural and psychological environment. It investigates the proposition that these poets have attempted to synthesize radical social and political beliefs with aspects of their spiritual and cultural heritage in order to create a visionary new conception not only of Arabic poetry but Arab civilization as a whole. The cultural institution of poetry - 'register of the Arabs' - has a unique spiritual and revolutionary power in a historically aniconic society in which it has been for centuries the dominant artform, enabling sensitive insight into the modern Arab existence. On the basis of an initial investigation of the artistic, philosophical and socio-political aspects of Sufism, as well its relation to modern European thought, the thesis examines how committed modernist Arab poetry shifted towards a 'neo-Sufi' paradigm, reviving Sufi concepts, principles and historical figures. As such, the project focuses on the extrinsic ramifications of these poets' neo-Sufi experiences, analysing what role Sufi ideas play in modern Arabic thought within the sphere of autocratic state ideologies and local and regional political struggles. Consequently, it considers how neo-Sufism relates to the development of a uniquely Arab postmodern condition, and how the relationship between Arabic poetry and political commitment evolved since 1960. The thesis contemplates the Arab poet both as individual and as social being, in a world where profound senses of identity confront the need for change. By investigating the constantly evolving interaction between creative, individualistic instincts and external social reality in the contexts of Arab nationalism, the Palestine question, Communism, political Islam, Western hegemony and globalisation, it aims to illuminate the predicament of the later 20th century Arab intellectual on specific and universal levels

The politics of bank structural reform: Business power and agenda setting in the United Kingdom, France, and Germany

Following the financial crisis, the United Kingdom introduced major structural reforms to address concern about Too-Big-To-Fail (TBTF) banks, while France and Germany adopted much weaker reforms. This is puzzling given the presence of large universal banks engaged in market making activities in all three countries, which suffered significant losses during the international financial crisis, and given the commitments to reform made by political leaders in all three countries. The paper explains this policy divergence by analysing how dynamics of agenda setting contributed to the emergence of policy windows on structural reform. We explain the United Kingdom's decision to delegate the process to an independent commission as an example of venue shifting which helped to insulate the process from industry framing, and resulted in “conflict expansion” by mobilizing a wider coalition of actors in support of bank ringfencing. By contrast, in France and Germany the agenda was tightly managed through existing institutional venues, enabling industry to resist the framing of the issue around TBTF and limiting the role of non-business groups—a process we label as “conflict contraction.” We argue that analysis of agenda setting dynamics provides new insights into the cross-national variability of business power

Bank power and public policy since the financial crisis

Despite much commentary in the media and the popular assumption that the banking industry exerts undue influence on government policy-making, the academic literature on the role of the banks since the 2008 financial crisis remains theoretically and empirically under-specified. In particular, we argue that different forms of financial power are often conflated, while favorable policy outcomes are too-readily assumed to be evidence of regulatory capture. In short, we still know relatively little about how bank influence varies over time and in different national contexts, the extent to which banking interests are unified or divided, and the conditions under which banks are capable of producing meaningful variation in policy outcomes. This article has three objectives: 1) to explain why the debate on bank influence matters; 2) to examine the evidence of bank influence since the international financial crisis; and 3) to set out a range of conceptual tools for thinking about bank power

Care farming and green care in Salford

This report presents a University of Salford (UoS) investigation into the potential for care farming in Salford as part of the University’s teaching, research and enterprise activities. The work has critically engaged with the notion of care farming with a view to better understand how this approach can contribute to helping communities with diverse needs in terms of physical and mental health as well as wider determinants of health such as social inclusion and employability. Through the establishment of, and engagement with a network of key local stakeholders, the work developed a model that has explored the potential of a care farm. What has emerged is a first step towards the design and establishment of an urban care farm that that could serve as a centre for learning and research as well as integrate existing activities as part of a green and blue network identified through the stakeholder engagement work. This report provides a direction for future work on care farming in Salford in general, and in terms of the University’s teaching and learning activities in particular

Small Area Estimation of Public Confidence

This paper explores the use of a spatio-temporal approach to small area estimation for improving understanding of attitudes to policing. The study focusing on confidence in the police in London using sample survey data. The Public Attitudes Survey (PAS) collects data on the experiences and perceptions of Londoners with respect to crime, policing and anti-social behavior. While the most robust survey of its kind in the world, it is not designed for use at the neighborhood level but rather to produce annual, Borough level estimates on a rolling average basis. However, there is a demand for reliable, local level data for quarterly assessment and planning. In this study, we present a Bayesian spatio-temporal hierarchical modeling approach to small area estimation to address this. In this approach, information is “borrowed” from neighboring regions in space and time to increase effective sample size. This enables reliable estimates, forecasts and classification of trends in confidence at the neighborhood-level

Enforcing the European Semester: the politics of asymmetric information in the excessive deficit and macroeconomic imbalance procedures

The European Semester is an information-driven surveillance system that relies upon budgetary and economic statistics collected from the European Union’s member states and analyzed by the European Commission. This is true for both the Excessive Deficit Procedure (EDP) and the Macroeconomic Imbalance Procedure (MIP). This article employs Principal–Agent theory to analyze the politics of asymmetric information in the EDP and MIP. The study explores how the statistical requirements of the Six-Pack have been enforced by the Commission and the Economic and Financial Affairs Council to strengthen the EDP, even as the statistical integrity of the MIP received less protection. The article examines how the misrepresentation of statistics by Spain’s Autonomous Community of Valencia provoked the first financial sanction in the history of Economic and Monetary Union, as well as the Commission’s unsuccessful efforts to strengthen the reliability of MIP statistics