Search results

This research aims to examine the US–China policy shift from Obama to Biden emphasizing the centrality of Taiwan question in the geostrategic competition with Beijing and its prospect if the US strategy remains unchanged.

A conceptual framework is outlined, illustrating how the US grand strategy is driven by the ideological foundation of Exceptionalism. The paper highlights the associated US policy changes that evolved from Obama to Trump and then Biden to advance Washington's strategic interests in its rivalry with China over Taiwan.

Biden's policy led to an escalating geopolitical competition with Beijing over Taiwan to maintain US supremacy. The Biden administration is more stringent than the previous administrations on the Taiwan question and there is the conviction that the USA must not back down on Taiwan because the alternative will be a retraction of US world primacy to Beijing. With Washington's persistent hegemonic strategy, the US–China confrontation over Taiwan seems inevitable.

The research highlights how the Biden administration managed a perpetuated Ukraine crisis and forged unprecedented high-level ties with Taiwan, indicating the administration's determination to exacerbate contentions with Beijing over Taiwan rather than de-escalate.

This paper aims to contend that populism is damaging to both domestic and international politics; not only does it erode liberal democracy in established democracies but also fuels authoritarianism in despotic regimes and aggravates conflicts and crises in international system.

The research is divided into two main sections. First, it examines how populist mobilization affects liberal democracy, and refutes the claims that populism is beneficial and reinforcing to democracy. Second, it attempts to demonstrate how populism is damaging to domestic politics (by undermining liberal democracy and supporting authoritarianism) as well as international relations (by making interstate conflicts more likely to materialize). Theoretically, populism is assumed to be a strategy used by politicians to maximize their interest. Hence, populism is a strategy used by politicians to mobilize constituents using the main features of populist discourse.

The research argues that populism has detrimental consequences on both domestic and international politics; it undermines liberal democracy in democratic countries, upsurges authoritarianism in autocratic regimes and heightens the level of conflict and crises in international politics. Populism can lead to authoritarianism. There is one major undemocratic trait shared by all populist waves around the world, particularly democracies; that is anti-pluralism/anti-institutions. Populist leaders perceive foreign policy as the continuation of domestic politics, because they consider themselves as the only true representatives of the people. Therefore, populist actors abandon any political opposition as necessarily illegitimate, with repercussions on foreign policy.

Some scholars argue that populism reinforces democracy by underpinning its ability to include marginalized sectors of the society and to decrease voter apathy, the research refuted these arguments. Populism is destructive to world democracy; populists are reluctant to embrace the idea of full integration with other nations. Populists reject the idea of open borders, and reckon it an apparent threat to their national security. The research concludes that populists consider maximizing their national interests on the international level by following confrontational policies instead of cooperative ones.

This paper delves into the critical role of women in the domains of architecture, engineering, construction and urban planning, particularly within the context of the United Nations sustainable development goals (SDGs) and the imperative of achieving gender parity. Concentrating on the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries, this paper explores the profound importance of women as essential contributors to urbanisation and sustainable development. It scrutinizes the existing gender disparities within the architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) industries; evaluates prevailing women empowerment indices in diverse sectors; and presents a strategic framework for harnessing women’s engagement to cultivate inclusive and sustainable urban cultures in the GCC. This conceptual paper introduces an actionable framework that can serve as a guiding agenda for empowering women in the AEC sectors by incorporating their socio-cultural, economic and ecological contributions towards creating sustainable cities.

Centring its focus on Gulf Cities, this paper employs a comprehensive approach to examine the current gender disparities within the architecture, engineering and construction sectors. It probes potential barriers and advocates for leveraging women’s participation to foster inclusive and sustainable urban development in the GCC. The study introduces the Women’s Empowerment Index (WEI) for the Gulf AEC industry elucidating how these measures are translated into a tailored framework.

The paper presents a practical framework that provides actionable guidance for engaging various stakeholders, including governments, academia and industry players, to empower women within the AEC industries. An “Agenda for equitable AEC industries for sustainable urban development: Our Common Gulf Cities” is culminated in a Women Empowerment Index for the AEC Industry (WEI-AEC) designed to serve as a guidance tool to monitor progress within industry, governments and academia.

Future research endeavours could advance the framework by conducting institutional support analyses, multi-stakeholder collaboration studies and practical testing of the framework within real-world scenarios.

The findings of this study can guide and influence a diverse range of initiatives, including policy development, educational strategies, corporate endeavours, awareness campaigns, capacity-building programs, skill enhancement initiatives and knowledge exchange among the Gulf Cooperation Council countries.

This conceptual paper introduces a practical framework that can serve as a roadmap for implementing the study’s potential to shape policies, educational programs and corporate initiatives aimed at advancing both gender equality and the development of sustainable cities.

Sustainability is viewed as an encompassing perspective, as endorsed by the international policy context, driven by the UN’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). We aim to examine how women entrepreneurs transform capitals to pursue sustainability, and to generate policy insights for sustainability actions through tourism entrepreneurship.

Applying qualitative approach, we have generated empirical evidence drawing on 37 qualitative interviews carried out in Turkey, whereby boundaries between traditional patriarchal forces and progressive movements in gender relations are blurred.

We have generated insights into how women entrepreneurs develop their sustainability practice by transforming their available economic, cultural, social and symbolic capitals in interpreting the macro-field and by developing navigation strategies to pursue sustainability. This transformative process demonstrates how gender roles were performed and negotiated in serving for sustainability pillars.

In this paper, we demonstrate the nature and instrumentality of sustainable tourism entrepreneurship through a gender lens in addressing some of these SDG-driven challenges.

We advance the scholarly and policy debates by bringing gender issues to the forefront, discussing sustainable tourism initiatives from the viewpoint of entrepreneurs and various members of local community and stakeholder in a developing country context where women’s solidarity becomes crucial.

Based on the research of free trade agreements on alleviating service trade policy heterogeneity and its impact on manufacturing exports, this article aims to not only provide a basis for China's strategy of promoting regional economic integration, but also provide a policy reference for the manufacturing industry to expand the export market space.

This study uses the two principles of “answering” and “scoring” to quantify the indicators of service trade policy heterogeneity to test the relationship between heterogeneity of service trade policy, free trade agreement and manufacturing export.

According to empirical study, the export of Chinese manufacturing firms is severely hampered by the variety of service trade regulations, and the bigger the enterprise, the more hampered it is. In comparison to communications, transport and commerce, the financial industry's policy heterogeneity has a greater negative impact on certain industries. The major methods used to reduce the impact of service trade policy heterogeneity on manufacturing exports are product price increases and product quantity reductions. Also, by reducing the heterogeneity of service trade regulations and fostering industrial exports, the free trade agreement that China has signed can be quite successful. The open commitment in the area of national treatment, however, can reduce policy heterogeneity and advance manufacturing.

In the area of market access, the effect of export is superior to the open promise. Thus, in order to effectively support the stabilization of international trade, China should actively encourage the negotiation and signing of higher-quality and mutually beneficial free trade agreements.

The objective of this study is to analyze the influence of institutional quality on the attainment of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) using a data set comprising 45 African nations during the timeframe 2000 to 2020.

The data are divided into two periods, with the Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) data covering the years 2000–2015 and the SDGs data spanning from 2015 to 2020. Controlling for other factors, the researcher employs an index of institutional quality and applies the generalized method of moments (GMM) method to analyze the data.

The findings demonstrate a noteworthy inverse relationship between institutional quality and the achievement of both the MDGs and SDGs. The findings reveal a significant and positive link between economic growth and the achievement of the MDGs, while the impact on the SDGs is shown to be insignificant. Population growth significantly drives the SDGs. The results further reveal that trade openness and industrialization contribute positively to the achievement of both the MDGs and SDGs.

The findings emphasize the importance of improving institutional quality, promoting economic growth and supporting trade openness and industrialization for sustainable development in African countries.

The contribution of the study is twofold. Firstly and to the best of the author’s understanding, this research marks an initial endeavor to empirically investigate the nexus between institutional quality and the SDGs in the context of Africa. Secondly, it adds novelty to the literature by examining how institutional quality influences both the SDGs and their precursor the MDGs, providing insights into the actual contribution of institutions to development within the framework of these two major global compacts.

The paper presents the facts on the policy challenges and opportunities in the way forward of trade and economic co-operation in South Asia amid the coronavirus disease 2019, which comes to be the least economically integrated region worldwide. Due to tense geopolitics in South Asia, trade is heavily biased toward extra-regional markets despite of existing regional trade agreements (TAs) in the region.

Having tested the stationarity of data with structural break, the paper uses intra-regional trade in addition to other domestic economic variables as exogenous regressors in autoregressive distributed lag multivariate framework, hence raising the quality of statistical inference.

This paper highlights that intra-regional trade significantly affects the economic welfare as measured by Gross Domestic Product per capita of the people from the region, hence raising the need for higher regional trade openness. If trade barriers are overcome, all the South Asian countries will gain through effective implementation of regional TAs.

The study relies on the multivariate technique with regional trade share as the main exogenous variable. In addition, the regulatory and economic conditions of all countries are different which also tends to affect the mutual degree of trade relations.

Over the economic reasons, the manmade barriers owing to political differences are the root cause for the low intra-regional trade. Amid the pandemic, South Asian courtiers have the high time to leverage the bilateral trade for mutual benefits. India being the largest economy can play a decisive role in pushing forward the regional trade bloc – South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (SAARC) – for achieving its objective through multilateral engagements in a wider perspective.

The present study makes pioneer efforts to examine the dynamic linkages between regional trade and economic growth. The results provide new insight into the dynamics of benefits driven by trade interdependency.

This paper aims to discuss the positioning of international organisations (IOs) in the realm of international law. It proposes a more robust approach, arguing IOs have legal obligations akin to states to the extent which could be fulfilled by them. This paper suggests making IOs parties to international treaties like the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), International Covenant on Economic Social and Cultural Rights (ICESCR) and Geneva Convention 1949 to codify their international responsibilities. In addition, it proposes amending multilateral treaties to grant IOs membership and create binding legal obligations for them, thereby enhancing the overall legal framework for IOs.

The paper opted for qualitative analytical approach of research by referring to international treaties and scholarly papers.

The authors have evaluated the bindingness of international law on IOs. The authors argue that jus cogens and customary international law are equally binding on IOs. However, treaties could only be binding on IOs to the extent of their consent. The authors have assessed prior violations of IOs. The authors argue that, to prevent such violations by IOs, creating obligations is the first step. Second, amendments are required in the existing international treaties that reflect the foundations of international humanitarian and international human rights law like the Geneva Convention 1949, ICCPR, and ICESCR, to permit IOs to join these treaties, resulting in binding international legal obligations.

The most prominent assertion of this paper is that IOs as subjects of international law are bound by the principles of international law, including treaty law with consent, customary international laws, general principles of law and peremptory norms. To fulfil these obligations, a regime needs to be introduced wherein amendment is made in treaties to make IOs parties to them and structuring the law on responsibility for IOs. Considering the multifaceted nature of IO, the role it performs in contemporary times requires them to be bound by rules of international law just like states. There is a need to settle their position in global governance and give them more teeth to understand and fulfil their duties to ensure smooth functioning in the long run.

The paper fulfils an identified gap in the positioning of IOs under the international law.

This paper aims to examine whether tax disclosure in Global Reporting Initiative (GRI)-based sustainability reporting mitigates aggressive tax avoidance.

This study uses a multiple regression method for 714 nonspecially taxed firms listed on the Indonesia Stock Exchange in 2014–2018.

The findings demonstrate that disclosing tax payments in GRI-based sustainability reports reduces aggressive tax avoidance. Additional analysis indicates that the number of GRI-based sustainability reports positively affects aggressive tax avoidance. However, disclosing tax payments in multiple GRI-based sustainability reports negatively affects aggressive tax avoidance.

Recent prior studies demonstrate that aggressive tax avoidance does not indicate an organizational culture that devalues corporate social responsibility. This paper argues that firms cannot find the link between tax and corporate social responsibility when tax payments are not incorporated in sustainability reports. GRI considers tax a sustainability issue and seeks to institutionalize this concept by recommending that firms disclose taxes in their sustainability reports. This research analyses whether disclosing taxes in GRI-based sustainability reports may serve as a form of soft law by convincing firms that tax is a sustainability issue, thereby reducing their tax avoidance. This topic has received little attention in previous research.

This study investigates the correlation between economic development and scientific knowledge production indicators in the BRICS countries from 2000 to 2020, highlighting the importance of human resources, natural resources, and innovation. Addressing a gap in the existing literature, this study aims to contribute significantly to understanding this relationship.

Employing a descriptive statistical approach, this study utilizes GDP and per capita income as economic indicators and scientific data from WoS and SCOPUS databases, focusing on scientific document production and citations per document.

The analysis reveals a strong correlation between economic development and scientific performance within the BRICS nations during the specified period. It emphasizes the interdependence of economic progress and scientific prowess, underscoring that they cannot be considered independently.

However, limitations exist, notably the reliance on specific databases that might not cover the entire scientific output and the inability to capture all factors influencing economic and scientific development.

Understanding this interdependence has crucial originality. Policymakers and stakeholders in BRICS countries can leverage these insights to prioritize investments in human capital development and scientific research. This approach can foster sustainable economic growth by reducing reliance on natural resources.