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Targets set out by state institutions, with respect to supplying water to deprived communities, seem to be idealistic and not realistic. Study envisioned to assess challenges of financing water infrastructure projects, and determines the role of the state towards infrastructure development by holistically planning and engaging with the private sector.

The study adopted a quantitative approach, whereby a questionnaire survey was conducted among different stakeholders involved in water infrastructure projects in South Africa. Data gathered were analysed using percentages, mean item score and standard deviation.

The study revealed that most challenges affecting the success of the financing of water infrastructure projects in South Africa are corruption, hostility towards private participation, cost recovery constraints, high fiscal deficits by state government, unreliable planning and procurement processes, and a rapid increasing number of municipalities that lack technical and administrative capacity to plan implement, operate and maintain water assets.

This research paper investigates projects’ financing challenges with a broad inspection on the role of the public sector. The apparent role of the international structures such as OECD, IMF and World Bank had no influence in the study. From the findings, it is clear that the central government and state institutions lack the necessary resources to accelerate infrastructure development, water infrastructure in particular. The study, thus, recommends a complete expansion and development of state capacity as well as improved collaborations with the private sector to drive the success delivery of services to the public.

Improved and flexible regulations and legislative guidelines are required to ensure that both sectors fulfil their side of the bargain, with an ultimate goal of meeting the predetermined targets of supplying adequate water to the deprived communities.

Critiques of elites define populism, which conceives of power relations as a unified, conspiring elite exploiting the good people. Yet, populism itself is inherently elitist, calling for a strong leader to take power and channel the will of the people. Elite theory, surprisingly overlooked in scholarship on populism, can clarify this apparent paradox and elucidate the dimensions of populism and its risk of authoritarianism in new ways. In contrast to populist ideological conceptions of power relations in society, elite theory points to the possibility that several elites with diverging voices and interests exist. Furthermore, elite theorists argue that such elite pluralism is a necessary component of a well-functioning democracy. Much scholarship on populism, often aiming to understand its causes and focussing on Western Europe and North America, points to the similarities of populist movements. The focus on similarities strengthens the understanding of populism as a uniform phenomenon and populist elite critiques as homogeneous. However, broader comparative studies show that different populist movements target a range of various elite groups. Indeed, the empirical reality of populist elite critiques targeting diverse elite groups is more in line with elite theory than populist ideological conceptions of power relations in society. A key to grasping the democratic challenges posed by the power relations between elites and masses in both populist critiques and populist solutions is an understanding of the institutional conditions for elite integration versus elite pluralism. This central discussion in both classical and modern elite theory is applied to analyse populism in this contribution.

This chapter insists that local cocreation projects need not only good intentions and the hard work of volunteers but also require funding and financing of the design and implementation of new solutions. It draws a conceptual distinction between funding and financing and explains who may help to provide funding and financing and why they may do so. As a part of this discussion, attention is drawn to the importance of writing good and persuasive funding applications and drawing up a strong and convincing business case to secure financing of new solutions. The new and emerging strategy for mobilizing private capital to help finance SDG projects is explained and illustrated, before closing the chapter with a discussion of the need to develop a proper system for fiscal accounting and auditing, which can prevent mismanagement and misconduct that eventually undermine popular support for local SDG projects.

The game plan firms must navigate in the quest of competitive advantage which is changing quickly. More and more firms acknowledge that future prosperity depends on achieving the joint goals of economic, environmental and social sustainability. This understanding has resulted in both firms and actors on the financial markets enhancing their focus on environmental, social and governance dimensions in their respective decision-making processes. In this chapter, the focus is on one key component of the changing game plan, the European Union’s (EU) Sustainable Finance Platform that envisions investors as a key driver of firms’ sustainability transformation. Based on survey data from Swedish listed firms, we discuss implications and outcomes of the Platform. Our results show that investors play an important role in setting the rules of the gameplan for firms. However, not to the extent that it meets the ambitions of the policymakers. This suggests either that the Platform will fail to meet its aims or that firms should expect further significant changes to the gameplan in the future.

Purpose – The aim of this study is to analyze the effects of macro- and micro-economic variables on the ratio of troubled financing (Non-Performing Financing, NPF).

Design/Methodology/Approach – The method used in this research is the data panel fixed effect with 13 banks and 4 periods of data report (semi-annual report 2014–2015).

Findings – The regression result achieved that variable inflation significantly influences the ratio of NPF. Variable Gross Domestic Product and assets total significantly influence the ratio of NPF too. While the SBI sharia’s variable and Financing to Deposit Ratio did not significantly affect NPF in Syariah’s Unit of Aceh Bank Pembangunan Daerah (BPD) in Indonesia.

Research Limitations/Implications – This study uses panel data which are a combination of time series data and cross-section.

Practical Implications – The policymakers can design a macro-policy carefully and better fiscal policies.

Originality/Value – This research was conducted on the Syariah’s Unit of BPD in Indonesia during the period 2014–2015 and it has not been done before.

In order to assess the state of health of Europe’s children, or to appraise the systems and models of healthcare delivery, data about children are essential, with as much precision and accuracy as possible by small group characteristic. Unfortunately, the experience of the Models of Child Health Appraised (MOCHA) project and its scientists shows that this ideal is seldom met, and thus the accuracy of appraisal or planning work is compromised. In the project, we explored the data collected on children by a number of databases used in Europe and globally, to find that although the four quinquennial age bands are common, it is impossible to represent children aged 0–17 years as a legally defined group in statistical analysis. Adolescents, in particular, are the most invisible age group despite this being a time of life when they are rapidly changing and facing increasing challenges. In terms of measurement and monitoring, there is little progress from work of nearly two decades ago that recommended an information system, and no focus on the creation of a policy and ethical framework to allow collaborative analysis of the rich anonymised databases that hold real-world people-based data. In respect of data systems and surveillance, nearly all systems in European society pay lip service to the importance of children, but do not accommodate them in a practical and statistical sense.

Purpose – The purpose of this research is to know the influence of manufacture of textiles, clothing, and leather and manufacture of paper, printing, and publishing on economic growth.

Design/Methodology/Approach – The method of research used was a causal research design in North Sumatera Province. The data used are secondary data sourced from Statistics Agency of North Sumatera Province. The method of analysis used in this research is SEM method using software Smart PLS.

Findings – The results show that manufacture of textiles, clothing, and leather and manufacture of paper, printing, and publishing influence to the economic growth.

Research Limitations/Implications – Limitations of the study included not analyzing by data pooling, and samples were restricted only to North Sumatra Province. The implication of this research is that the variables of manufacture of textiles, clothing, and leather give a significant contribution to the economic growth of North Sumatra. To this end, that need to be made some policies shoul be implemented to facilitate manufacture of textiles, clothing, and leather others invest in the district and city in North Sumatra.

Originality/Value – The originality of this study attempts to examine export indicators in certain segments where other studies do not examine them.

The visualization of ranking information in global public policy is moving away from traditional “league table” formats and toward dashboards and interactive data displays. This paper explores the rhetoric underpinning the visualization of ranking information in such interactive formats, the purpose of which is to encourage country participation in reporting on the Sustainable Development Goals. The paper unpacks the strategies that the visualization experts adopt in the measurement of global poverty and wellbeing, focusing on a variety of interactive ranking visualizations produced by the OECD, the World Bank, the Gates Foundation and the ‘Our World in Data’ group at the University of Oxford. Building on visual and discourse analysis, the study details how the politically and ethically sensitive nature of global public policy, coupled with the pressures for “decolonizing” development, influence how rankings are visualized. The study makes two contributions to the literature on rankings. First, it details the move away from league table formats toward multivocal interactive layouts that seek to mitigate the competitive and potentially dysfunctional pressures of the display of “winners and losers.” Second, it theorizes ranking visualizations in global public policy as “alignment devices” that entice country buy-in and seek to align actors around common global agendas.