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This paper aims to scrutinize some determinants that affect the functions and roles of contemporary parliaments. In particular, such parliaments attempt to involve in new areas that were not represented in parliamentary study and to play new roles in the areas of development, diplomacy, the establishment of post-conflict peace rules and achieving the objectives of the sustainable development. The study found that the most important determinants affecting the new roles of contemporary parliaments are the constitutional and legal frameworks.

This paper adopts three basic methodologies so as to reach some applicable scientific findings that can be generalized. The researcher has used the descriptive methodology, to shed light on the parliament’s various activities and new roles and to take note of the many surrounding factors and available dimensions that enable parliaments to perform such roles. The researcher has also used the comparative methodology, to study parliaments with a view to identifying their roles in a way that includes their similarities and dissimilarities and the possibility of generalizing the outputs.

The paper has reached many findings, the most important of which are: first, the need to present appropriate amendments to the constitutions to give space to parliaments to play more effective and influential roles. Second, the internal regulations of parliaments must be in line with the attitudes and aspirations of the parliament and its members, giving appropriate cover for playing new roles in various areas.

This study has found that contemporary parliaments can play new roles in various fields, whether internal or external and in different sectors as well, as a result of the great developments and complexities introduced around the world. Such developments and complexities have cast a shadow on governments and affected their abilities in dealing with the issues immediately because of the enormous challenges in addition to the ongoing developments occurring to the legislative systems in the world, at the technical level of the departments and secretariats of contemporary parliaments or for members of Parliament and the institution as a whole.

The new roles of contemporary parliaments have been affected by the determinants of the research, which are the constitutional framework, the legislative framework, the relationship between Parliament and civil society and the relationship between Parliament and the government. These factors cast a shadow over the expansion or contraction of the attempts of modern parliaments to play new roles.

This study has found that contemporary parliaments can play social roles in various fields of a social nature, which is find solutions to the problems experienced by societies emerging from civil wars, which need national reconciliation, for example, the reconciliation of the ethnic tribes carried out by the Iraqi council of representatives between the local tribes to resolve the internal problems, in addition the role of Borondian council by it is trying end the conflict between the tribes of Hotsi and Tutsi.

The importance of the study stems from the fact that it focuses on the most important determinants of the new roles of contemporary parliaments that may be conducted outside the traditional framework of the parliament's study of legislation and supervision. Such contemporary parliaments have played new roles that take the form of political, economic, social, humanitarian, diplomatic and environmental works and other works concerned with the climate and their attempts to end internal and external conflicts and disputes.

This paper aims to explore the relationship between designed and actual building performance as represented in an Royal Institute of British Architects- and Chartered Institution of Building Services Engineers-backed web-based comparison platform and the industry perception of the pressures surrounding building performance assessment. European directives and UK Parliamentary Acts have resulted in a range of mechanisms aimed at encouraging monitoring of energy consumption, responsive management and evidence-based design. Web-based feedback platforms aim to feed evaluation data back to industry anonymously; however, there exists a range of barriers and disincentives that prevent widespread and habitual engagement with building evaluation.

Using energy data from the CarbonBuzzweb platform and a series of semi-structured interviews, a mixed-methods study has been carried out. Analysis of the characteristics of the existing energy discrepancy between designed and actual performance shows where variance typically occurs. Interviews with industry actors presents a synopsis of the perceived and actual legislative and procedural pressures that exist in relation to building performance assessment.

The conclusions of this paper identify weaknesses in the current legislative and incentivisation mechanisms with regard to targeting building energy performance and industrial pressures that hinder broader industry engagement with post-occupancy evaluation.

The recommendations arising from this study are for adjustments to the existing legislative framework to increase participation in meaningful building energy evaluation targeted at the specifics of the energy gap and the motivations of industrial actors. This will specifically help to reduce building energy consumption and associated carbon emissions.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate local vulnerability and organisational resilience including coping/adaptive capacity to climate risks, specifically frequent flooding in Northern Cameroon.

The research is exploratory/deductive and draws upon qualitative methods, secondary and empirical techniques supplemented by semi-structured qualitative interviews with senior disaster managers. Secondary information sources, which include peer review articles, government reports/plans, newspaper articles and other grey literature, enhanced the analysis.

The research findings have unveiled the physical and social vulnerability of Northern Cameroon to frequent flooding. Results also show that institutional performance for flood management in Cameroon is ineffective, and adaptive capacity is highly deficient. Cameroon’s legislative framework for flood management is weak, and this exacerbates the poor implementation of structural and non-structural flood management measures. Results also indicate issues with relief, evacuation and foreign assistance in flood management. Recommendations that focus on enhancing capacity of response to frequent flooding via reducing vulnerabilities, managing resilience and enhancing adaptive capacity are provided.

Using Gallopin’s (2006) model of vulnerability, this paper makes a distinct contribution by offering insights into the role of adaptive capacity in disaster management systems in developing (African) countries via an evaluation of vulnerabilities and organisational resilience to repeated flooding in Northern Cameroon.

After the precipitated decline of the Soviet Empire and its satellite states, a system change seemed to be called for, and many countries embarked on social and political reforms focussing on property structures in the economy. This raised the issue of governance in the institutions that would constitute the structures in which production would have to take place. In particular, some Central European countries opted for mass privatisations of the means of production, on the face of it so as to have the people participate in the wealth of the nation. In fact, the wealth of the nation depends on the structures in which it is constituted. Dissipation of property rights will reduce the value of the nation's productive capital, whereas an intelligent structure that creates good governance structures at the same time, increases the value of the producing capital. This relatively simple insight lies at the heart of our understanding of how to analyse different processes of mass privatisation. This essay develops a theoretical framework by which different governance structures can be analysed. The framework consists of a blend of the economic theory of property rights, new institutional economics and Austrian economic theory.

The purpose of this paper is to review the economic studies on Brexit, highlighting that they have focused mainly on its negative impact on trade. The economic intuition behind these outcomes is provided, explaining why they are asymmetric with the UK being much more harmed than EU-27.

The importance of foreign multinationals in the UK and of UK’s multinationals abroad is shown using a non-standard quantification, which may be preferable than conventional methodologies. In addition, EU trade and investment legislative regimes are explained. Particular attention is paid to the change after the 2009 Lisbon Treaty which transfers foreign investment to the exclusive competence of the EU as opposed to EU states.

The data show that EU-27 is a much less important investment than trade partner for UK.

Although modelling the economy-wide impact of multinationals is challenging, the data and EU legislative framework analyzed suggest it is very much worthwhile. Other considerations about UK’s diminished leveraging power to negotiate after its EU’s withdrawal are also considered.

The Financial Action Task Force (the chief international agency against money laundering) blacklisted Israel (June 2000) as one of the 15 countries that fail to cooperate in the international efforts to combat money laundering. Soon after, the Israeli Parliament enacted the Prohibition on Money Laundering Law, 5760–2000 (the ‘Law’). The Law has far‐reaching legal, economic and policy implications. This paper attempts to sketch the global backdrop against which the Law was adopted, analyse its provisions, expose its implications and draw attention to its pros and cons. It is structured along the following lines: the first section sets out the international campaign against money laundering. The second section describes the pressures exerted by the international community to persuade Israel to join the club of countries that counteract money‐laundering operations. The third and fourth sections analyse the ratio legis of the Law and its provisions, respectively. In the fifth section an account is provided of the problematic aspects of the Law. The last section provides some conclusions that may be drawn at this early stage.

To examine political and economic institutional constraints that can facilitate or impede the implementation of sustainable development policies in urban areas.

A case study of Santa Monica, California is sued to examine the practical limitations of implementing sustainable development even under politically supportive conditions. The US experience is particularly instructive because it more clearly contrasts the differences between political, bureaucratic, and planning approaches to urban policy.

The analysis indicates policymakers must give more attention to the political and economic institutions that govern cities, particularly those that value individual choice, market economies, private property, and guarantees of civil liberties that encourage an open political process. Sustainable development in US cities has tended to emphasize centrally directed resource use. The analysis finds Santa Monica has fallen short of its sustainable development goals and progress has been uneven in large part due to the confounding influences of these alternative institutions.

The successful application of sustainable development policies will require adopting a more open‐ended, market‐based, and dynamic approach.

This paper more clearly identifies the forces that determine the success or failure of sustainable development policies while outlining an approach that is more likely to reconcile conflicting tendencies in complex policy environments.

Safeguarding people who have sustained a traumatic brain injury (TBI) requires not only knowledge of safeguarding practice and procedures, but also the implications of a brain injury. This paper provides an introduction to the nature and impact of TBI upon individuals and their families. Drawing on anonymised case material and practice experience, it explores how the sequelae of TBI, in particular cognitive, emotional and behavioural changes can produce potential safeguarding issues. The person with TBI's potential vulnerability to different forms of abuse is then considered and the relevance of the legislative framework explored. The paper then summarises key points for safeguarding practice in this complex field. It concludes by emphasising that gaining knowledge of how TBI impacts on individuals and their families is essential to understand their risk of abuse. In doing so, it also highlights that simplistic dichotomies between victim and perpetrator can ignore the complexity of the interactions in which safeguarding occurs.

This paper aims to identify the possible sources of organizational decoupling and their effects in public universities, as they transition from cash to accrual accounting, by assessing the phases of the innovation assimilation process.

To assess the transition, the authors develop a framework that integrates the possible sources of decoupling with the phases of the innovation process. This framework is then applied to the analysis of six Italian public universities moving from cash to accrual accounting.

The results point to regulation gaps and adverse organizational conditions as the main culprits of decoupling behaviours in the production and use of information. Delays in the characterization of the legal framework and ambiguities in the definition of accounting standards by the regulator are the first barriers to an effective transition. The organizational barriers, instead, depend on lack of adequate skills, over-bureaucratization, limitations of the IT systems and organizational complexity. Such limitations generate hybrid accounting systems that jeopardize the informative function of financial reporting.

From a theoretical viewpoint, this paper contributes to a conceptualization of accounting innovations and reforms as processes whose impact depends on dynamics that arise and interact differently across phases. From a practitioner’s point of view, it highlights the factors that may produce adverse effects during the implementation process: these may be taken into account during planning, so as to develop the appropriate remedial actions.