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Participatory budgeting's (PB’s) proponents hope that bringing development projects to historically underserved communities will improve well-being by extending infrastructure and services. This article details the logic connecting PB to well-being, describes the evolution of PB programs as they spread around the world and consolidates global evidence from research that tests hypotheses on PB's impact. The purpose of this paper is to address these issues.

Unstructured literature review and comparative case study across five global regions.

The authors find evidence for PB's impact on well-being in several important contexts, mostly not only in Brazil, but also in Peru and South Korea. They also find that very few rigorous, large-N, comparative studies have evaluated the relationship between PB and well-being and that the prospects for social accountability and PB's sustainability for well-being are not equally strong in all contexts. They argue that PB has great potential to improve well-being, but program designs, operational rules and supporting local conditions must be favorable to realize that potential.

This is one of the few efforts to build theory on where and why the authors would expect to observe relationships between PB and well-being. It is also one of the first to consolidate global evidence on PB's impact.

This study employs Stein Rokkan's methodological approach to analyse state formation in the Greater Middle East. It develops a conceptual framework distinguishing colonial, populist and democratic pacts, suitable for analysis of state formation and nation-building through to the present period. The framework relies on historical institutionalism. The methodology, however, is Rokkan's. The initial conceptual analysis also specifies differences between European and the Middle Eastern state formation processes. It is followed by a brief and selective discussion of historical preconditions. Next, the method of plotting singular cases into conceptual-typological maps is applied to 20 cases in the Greater Middle East (including Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey). For reasons of space, the empirical analysis is limited to the colonial period (1870s to the end of World War 1). Three typologies are combined into one conceptual-typological map of this period. The vertical left-hand axis provides a composite typology that clarifies cultural-territorial preconditions. The horizontal axis specifies transformations of the region's agrarian class structures since the mid-19th century reforms. The right-hand vertical axis provides a four-layered typology of processes of external intervention. A final section presents selected comparative case reconstructions. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first time such a Rokkan-style conceptual-typological map has been constructed for a non-European region.

Research and interest in food loss and waste (FLW) have increased, but barriers stand in the way of firms engaging in food recovery efforts. The purpose of this study is to gain a better understanding of how firms overcome these barriers.

This study followed a qualitative, field-study-based research design in which 23 decision-makers at food-based organizations were interviewed. Quotes were extracted and categorized to develop a conceptual model of the food recovery process.

The conceptual model that evolved helps to explain decision-making related to FLW across the following dimensions: barriers to food recovery, incentives to overcome the barriers, internal processes for engaging in food recovery and external relationships influencing internal incentives and processes. In addition, the barriers and incentives were divided into operational and managerial issues.

Building on the barriers to food recovery in prior research, we explored the processes that help firms overcome these barriers. The model developed in this study is an important step toward addressing these processes and relationships. It can serve as a foundation for a variety of future studies of food recovery.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a coupled lattice Boltzmann model for the simulation of the freezing process in unsaturated porous media.

In the developed model, the porous structure with complexity and disorder was generated by using a stochastic growth method, and then the Shan-Chen multiphase model and enthalpy-based phase change model were coupled by introducing a freezing interface force to describe the variation of phase interface. The pore size of porous media in freezing process was considered as an influential factor to phase transition temperature, and the variation of the interfacial force formed with phase change on the interface was described.

The larger porosity (0.2 and 0.8) will enlarge the unfrozen area from 42 mm to 70 mm, and the rest space of porous medium was occupied by the solid particles. The larger specific surface area (0.168 and 0.315) has a more fluctuated volume fraction distribution.

The concept of interfacial force was first introduced in the solid–liquid phase transition to describe the freezing process of frozen soil, enabling the formulation of a distribution equation based on enthalpy to depict the changes in the water film. The increased interfacial force serves to diminish ice formation and effectively absorb air during the freezing process. A greater surface area enhances the ability to counteract liquid migration.

This paper explores the relationship between state-led urbanization and primary industry development using the difference-in-differences (DiD) method.

The study uses the DiD method.

Exploiting county-city mergers during 2010–2018, the key strategy to expand the city outward and promote urbanization on the urban fringe by local government, the authors find that county-city mergers led to the growth of primary industry decline by 4.23%. The result can be explained by the loss of essential production factors, including land and labor used for farming. In addition, the negative effect is more pronounced for counties with more substantial manufacturing. The results indicate that urbanization in China relocates land and labor; however, it does not improve the efficiency of agricultural output.

This paper contributes to the understanding of urbanization and rural development from the perspective of the primary industry by showing production factor redistribution. Second, this study complements the literature on local government mergers.

At the beginning of the 21st century, a new class of information workers, the “information have-less” has risen. This class of workers alleviates the influence of information and communication technologies (ICTs) revolution on poverty and unemployment. The purpose of this study is to investigate the presence of this class of workers in Egypt and assess the size and potential growth of this category of workers.

The study clarifies the conceptual framework of the new division of labor, in the information age. The Central Agency for Public Mobilization and Statistics, American Chamber of Commerce in Egypt, Ministry of Communications and Information Technology and Information and Decision Support Center websites provided secondary data for this study. These data are used to assess the size of “the information have less” in Egypt.

The division of work and class, in the 21st century, depends on the level of skills possessed to work with ICTs. So, class and labor nowadays could be divided into self-programmable labor (Innovators). Information have-less labor class, adding value to the economy by learning skills and presenting repetitive work. Generic labor class, who cannot work with ICTs, and work in jobs, that do not need computers or other ICTs. The study has shown that the “information have-less” labor class is present in Egypt since the beginning of the 21st century, in all its categories; entrepreneurism, the service sector and the manufacturing sector. There are approximately 50% of this labor class in the service sector and only 13% of the information have-less works in manufacturing sector despite the great opportunities that Egypt has to expand manufacturing to absorb more employment. The inclusion of information technology (IT), in all domains, has not decreased employment in Western countries but has reallocated information have-less employment toward the service sector, and there would probably be the same effect in Egypt.

The study highlights the need for Egyptian policymakers to encourage the manufacturing and service sectors to provide huge working opportunities. The Egyptian government has to change the educational policies, at all stages, to include digital learning skills so IT can be incorporated in a wide range of economic activities. Further research includes: conducting a survey to measure the contribution of the entrepreneurial part of the information have-less employment in Egypt. In addition, a model may be developed, by the researcher to examine the reallocation of employees in Egypt.

Studying employment, in Egypt, using the conceptual framework of the information age is rarely being done.

This paper aims at studying numerically the entropy generation of nanofluid flowing over an inclined sheet in the presence of external magnetic field, heat source/sink, chemical reaction along with slip boundary conditions imposed on an impermeable wall.

A suitable similarity transformation technique has been used to convert the coupled nonlinear partial differential equations to ordinary differential equations (ODEs). The ODEs are then solved simultaneously using the finite difference method implemented through an in-house computer program. The effects of different controlling parameters such as magnetic parameter, radiation parameter, Brownian motion parameter, thermophoresis parameter, chemical reaction parameter, Reynolds number, Brinkmann number, Prandtl number, velocity slip parameter, temperature slip parameter and the concentration slip parameter on the entropy generation and Bejan number have been discussed comprehensively through the relevant physical insights for the first time.

The relative strengths of the irreversibilities due to heat transfer, fluid friction and the mass diffusion arising due to the change in each of the controlling variables have been delineated both in the near-wall and far-away-wall regions, which may be helpful for a better understanding of the thermo-fluid dynamics of nanofluid in boundary layer flows. The numerical results obtained from the present study have also been validated with results published in open literature.

The effects of different controlling parameters such as magnetic parameter, radiation parameter, Brownian motion parameter, thermophoresis parameter, chemical reaction parameter, Reynolds number, Brinkmann number, Prandtl number, velocity slip parameter, temperature slip parameter and the concentration slip parameter on the entropy generation and Bejan number have been discussed comprehensively through the relevant physical insights for the first time.

Current evidence indicates that humans and animals are at increased risk of multiple health challenges due to microplastic (MP) profusion. However, mitigation is constrained by inadequate scientific data, further aggravated by the lack of evidence in many African countries. This review therefore synthesized evidence on the current extent of MP pollution in Africa and the analytical techniques for reporting.

A literature search was undertaken in research databases. Medical subject headings (MeSH) terms and keywords were used in the literature search. The authors found 38 studies from 10 countries that met the inclusion criteria.

Marine organisms had MPs prevalence ranging from 19% to 100%, whereas sediments and water samples had between 77 and 100%. The most common and dominant polymers included polypropylene and polyethylene.

This review shows that most studies still use methods that are prone to human errors. Therefore, the concentration of MPs is likely underestimated, even though the authors’ prevalence evaluations show MPs are still largely pervasive across multiple environmental matrices. Also, the study reveals significant spatial disparity in MP research across the African continent, showing the need for further research in other African countries.

Even though some reviews have assessed MPs pollution in Africa, they have not evaluated sample prevalence, which is necessary to understand not only concentration but pervasiveness across the continent. Secondly, this study delves deeper into various methods of sampling, extraction and analysis of MPs, as well as limitations and relevant recommendations.