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Neoliberalism’s global scale crisis has been most acute in Africa, in terms of economic welfare, human suffering, ecological damage, and policy sovereignty. Social opposition to the first rounds of dissent was quelled during the 1980s, and export-led growth strategies finally appeared to pay off when, during 2002–2011, commodity prices soared and “Africa Rising” became the watchword. However, as commodity prices plateaued during 2011–2014 and then crashed, authoritarianism has revived. The reimposition of neoliberal policies, a new round of unrepayable foreign debt (in part associated with Chinese-funded infrastructure), and renewed austerity are all bearing down. From internal elite circuits, this threatens to unleash a well-known combination of neoliberalism, neopatrimonialism, and repression by authoritarian leaders. New rounds of protests, often arising as a direct result of these economic catalysts, were witnessed in some of the most famous sites of struggle such as Tunisia and Egypt in 2011, Nigeria in 2012, and South Africa at various points in recent years. Ongoing strife has also brought intense pressure on governing regimes in Algeria, Burkina Faso, Burundi, Cote d’Ivoire, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ethiopia, Kenya, Senegal, Sudan, Togo, Zambia, and Zimbabwe, leading to major political reforms and even changes in regimes. This chapter examines the dynamics of this process to expose the neoliberal foundations of rising authoritarianism accompanied by repression – and resistance – across the African landscape.

The 1980s and 1990s constituted a boom period for foreign direct investment. The opening of dozens of new nations to foreign direct investment and the associated confidence in these countries' long-term growth potential led more multinational firms from more countries to undertake investment of greater magnitude in more countries than in any previous historical period. In his 1983 Harvard Business Review article “The Globalization of Markets,” Theodore Levitt (1983) famously advised companies that if they wished to survive, they should expand quickly to global scale. More recently, Thomas Friedman (2005) reinforced Levitt's conclusion in his book “The World Is Flat: Distance is dead. Markets have now converged.” Governments were helpless in the face of the power of global finance. The question posed to managers of multinational corporations was not where to invest globally but rather how fast. During this period, the United Nations reports that the magnitude of global foreign direct investment surged in real terms from $89 billion to $471 billion (constant 2,000 USD) or from 0.5% to 4.4% of global output. The percentage of those flows destined for developing and transition economies soared from 13.9% to a peak of 41.4%.

Michael E. Brown's book, The Concept of the Social in Uniting the Humanities and Social Sciences, demonstrates that prominent attempts to account for the social dimension of human affairs rely on an unstated notion of a “course of activity,” that is diametrically opposed to the conceptualization of sociality that is presumably intended to realize it. I want to focus on the idea of a “course of activity” in order to locate his work in and clarify its importance to the development of dialectical reason from Heraclitus through Hegel and beyond. Of special importance is the bearing of his research on the critique of contemporary theories of agency and sociality, and, since considerable attention has been paid, in this regard, to the arts and humanities, some of what I will say about this refers to art and its avant-garde moments—-particularly in my work on Dada and Brown's account of two avant-garde theatrical performances. 

This chapter examines what is entailed by separating agency from individuality and what it means for the idea of a “course of activity,” (going on) and its relation to the concept of sociality. This also bears on questions of ontology, as Brown's course of activity is generative and nonrepeatable. The course of activity and nonrepeatability are linked to both avant-garde practice and theoretical notions that reframe our temporal understandings. These include the avant-garde of dada and surrealism, and the reformulations of bourgeois time of Jean Duvignaud, Walter Benjamin, Ernst Bloch, and Jean-Paul Sartre. The question raised here is that of a teleological understanding—how we link the present course of activity with future events.

Aim of the present monograph is the economic analysis of the role of MNEs regarding globalisation and digital economy and in parallel there is a reference and examination of some legal aspects concerning MNEs, cyberspace and e‐commerce as the means of expression of the digital economy. The whole effort of the author is focused on the examination of various aspects of MNEs and their impact upon globalisation and vice versa and how and if we are moving towards a global digital economy.

Here are eight more people solidly behind the eight ball and their plans for setting up winning shots.

This article discusses the pay packages of executive officers at internetrelated business. Generally, the executives’ total compensation include salary, bonuses, commissions, stock options, and other financial compensation, such as forgiveness of loans, automobile expenses, etc. The 70 to 80 percent of the CEOs’ compensations are from gains of exercising stocks. In this tumbling market, shareholders are suffering the loss from the declining stock prices. However, many CEOs are still left with a mountain of wealth. Meanwhile, the board of directors also raises the stock options to retain their top talents even to those who are under‐performing. Besides CEOs’ compensations, we will also compare the CEO pay with non‐CEO pay packages. The CEOs compensations are still the highest. Furthermore, the average CEO made 42 times the average hourly worker’s pay in 1980, 85 times in 1990, and a staggering 531 times in 2000. Many shareholders are against these out of control pay packages. We conclude that it is time to review the process of determining the CEOs compensation, and that the significant presence of pay‐by‐performance should be taken into account in any examination of the practice and regulation of corporate governance.

The objective of this paper is to identify and provide a description, assessment, and analysis of frauds occurring in governmental entities at the federal, state, and local levels and to compare these findings to data from the private sector. Analyses are conducted along the following dimensions: the victim of the fraud, its perpetrator(s), the fraud scheme, and the detection and investigation of the fraudulent activity. In addition, the conditions under which the frauds occurred in both the public and private sectors are described, discussed, and analyzed. Data were obtained from a mail survey distributed to the membership of the Association of Certified Fraud Examiners. A total of 2,471 responses containing details of actual fraud cases were received. Of these, 611 cases described frauds that had occurred in governmental units and 1,860 depicted frauds that had occurred in the private sector. The findings of this study clearly indicate that no entity is immune to victimization by criminal activities of a financial nature.