Circulating power: humanitarian logistics, militarism and the United Arab Emirates

While critical authors have interrogated the roots of business logistics, this paper extends the analysis and contributes to a larger critique of the cohering field of Humanitarian Logistics (HL), noting the overlap in the logistical cartographies of militarism and humanitarianism. The focus is on the UAE’s expanding logistics space into the Horn of Africa and the production of specialised HL zones like Dubai International Humanitarian City (DIHC). The article makes three core arguments. First, a logistics lens enables us to expand the study of aid beyond immediate conflict zones, into more distant spaces often constructed as ‘stable’. Second, the placement of logistics at the core of aid delivery has been a key mechanism for inserting market imperatives into humanitarian activities. Third, this gives countries outside the advanced core, such as the UAE, power to leverage and expand their logistics space for multiple purposes, in war making, aid, and commercial activities

Reforming Fiscal Institutions in Resource-Rich Arab Economies: Policy Proposals

This paper traces the evolution of fiscal institutions of Resource Rich Arab Economies (RRAEs) over time since their pre-oil days, through the discovery of oil to their build-up of oil exports. It then identifies challenges faced by RRAEs and variations in their severity among the different countries over time. Finally, it articulates specific policy reforms, which, if implemented successfully, could help to overcome these challenges. In some cases, however, these policy proposals may give rise to important trade-offs that will have to be evaluated carefully in individual cases

Deficiencies in education and poor prospects for economic growth in the Gulf countries: The case of the UAE

Our paper shows that the deficient educational system and the large share of unskilled foreign workers in the Gulf countries are serious impediments to a successful implementation of the strategies of these countries to reduce their dependence on foreign technologies and to restructure their economies in order to make them less dependent on oil exports. A novel element in our analysis is that we emphasise the role of the deficient educational system as an important problem, next to the well-documented quandary of a high incidence of unskilled foreign workers in the workforce. We use new survey data, both at an establishment level and economy-wide, to provide evidence on how the poor educational facilities lead to a poor provision of training, low skill levels, serious skills mismatch and deficient transfer of knowledge. These inadequate facilities and the lack of incentives to improve them also lead to low R&D efforts to promote local technologies and hamper a restructuring of the economy.

Formatting the Public Sector with ICTs: Exploring Institutional Sources and Processes

Part 2: Section 1: National and International PoliciesInternational audienceThis paper discusses the process in which e-government projects are initiated and locally negotiated within the public sector organizations. The issue is explored by employing the theoretical concept of global formats. The concept of formats is employed to explore two interlinked themes: the institutional sources for e-government projects and the processes of locally appropriating these projects within the organizational setting. This paper focuses on an e-government project that was successfully implemented in one of Dubai’s public sector organizations