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This study aims to examine the social inclusiveness of slum dwellers by focusing on three key institutions which are social relations, government and the labour market. The literature emphasises the activities of these three institutions as indicators of social inclusion. Also, they accurately describe the social interactions of slum inhabitants at different levels.

Three large slums (Makoko, Ilaje and Iwaya) in Lagos State were purposively selected for this study. Using a multi-stage sampling technique, there was the first level of cluster sampling across the communities and second-level random sampling of household heads in the clusters. In all, 400 respondents were sampled but 388 valid responses were used for the analysis.

The study found minimal levels of inclusion in many of the indicators. However, Makoko had a higher degree of inclusion with respect to social relations and political participation compared to the other locations. Due to the poor level of governance, the resilience of slum dwellers has waned.

The study was limited to three of the largest slums in Lagos State. Moreover, due to threats of eviction in recent times, many respondents were reluctant to provide adequate answers to some of the questions asked. However, the responses gotten were adequate to provide appropriate awareness and relevant recommendations.

The use of primary data made it possible for novel results to be generated on social inclusiveness in selected slums. The study extends the frontier of knowledge on social inclusion.

The purpose of this study is to provide a comprehensive review of the literature on financial inclusion, with a focus on its relationship to financial and economic development.

This paper begins by surveying the field of financial inclusion research over the past 15 years, highlighting the evolution of how financial inclusion has been studied in practice. By reviewing 107 studies published between 2008 and 2023 in 63 peer-reviewed journals, the study emphasizes the importance of recent research in this field.

The analysis reveals key findings on the positive impact of financial inclusion on economic growth, poverty reduction, financial stability and CO₂ emissions, among other factors. Despite the extensive empirical and theoretical work accomplished in the field, the study argues that there is still a need for further research on financial inclusion, including exploring new regions and financial and economic development indicators such as social capital, entrepreneurship and political stability.

This research aspires to map the emerging discourse on this topic, identify major gaps, and provide a productive line to guide future research. This will contribute to the ongoing debate led by the World Bank on financial inclusion as an effective measure to fight poverty. This study attempts to proffer ideas to encourage collaborative research and deepen our understanding on the role of financial inclusion.

This study offers a comprehensive overview of recent research on financial inclusion and highlights the need for further research in this field. This study also proposes a promising future research agenda to guide future advancements in the area of financial inclusion.

This paper aims to explore individuals’ economic empowerment and political empowerment association and the moderation role of entrepreneurship development programs on this relationship in the context of post-revolution Tunisia, which is a newer developing democracy.

The study uses a quantitative approach based on econometric modeling. A questionnaire was designed and administrated to a stratified random sample of 343 participants in the Entrepreneurship for the Participation and Inclusion of Vulnerable Youth in Tunisia program, funded by the United Nations Democracy Fund and implemented in rural northwestern Tunisia between 2017 and 2021. A coarsened exact matching method is also applied for robustness analysis.

The analysis shows that when individuals have enhanced economic decision-making agency and are involved in economic networks, they are more likely to demonstrate higher political empowerment. It also shows that expanding rural individuals’ economic opportunities by providing entrepreneurial resources, such as entrepreneurial training and microcredit, strengthens individuals’ economic empowerment and political empowerment association.

The study provides practical implications for policymakers in newer developing democracies. Citizens’ political empowerment and inclusion in rural areas could be promoted by developing entrepreneurship development programs, which could help reinforce the citizens-state relationship and establish more stable social contracts. The research also provides practical implications for the international development community, donor agencies and program designers through duplicating similar programs in other countries with weak central government structures (i.e. post-conflict environments, post-revolution).

The research attempts to contribute to the ongoing debates linking entrepreneurship, economic empowerment and political/citizen empowerment. It focuses on a Middle East and North Africa country, Tunisia, characterized by socioeconomic issues and low civic participation.

Without the voices of those impacted by homelessness, there is a risk that important understandings essential to the development of effective solutions to homelessness will remain obscured. The purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of the evidence base and insights into recommendations for development and implementation of policies and practices to promote meaningful involvement of people experiencing homelessness as part of a community response to homelessness in a mid‐size Canadian city.

A scoping literature review was conducted, focusing on homelessness and social exclusion/inclusion.

Based on this review, the authors provide insights into the processes of social exclusion and inclusion as a beginning place for developing strategies for meaningful engagement in community responses to homelessness. Roots of social exclusion, towards social inclusion and creating social inclusion were three themes which emerged as central to developing inclusionary policy. First, the roots of social exclusion associated with homelessness are located in unequal power relations, highlighting contextual factors that produce exclusion with implications for health and well‐being. Second, towards social inclusion, reflects theoretical perspectives and principles that have been used to inform inclusionary practices. Third, creating inclusion highlights some strategies that can support inclusion for people experiencing homelessness and foster development of inclusionary policy.

There is little evidence of effective practices that promote social inclusion or attention to specific strategies that engage diverse homeless populations that account for gender, ethnicity and other important differences. A key next step is the development of guidelines for social inclusion at the organizational and municipal levels of decision making with those impacted by homelessness.

The governance of rural areas has undergone considerable changes over the past decades. Its scope has broadened to incorporate a range of issues beyond, the once dominant, agricultural interests. At the same time, the process of policy making has changed from one of government to one of governance: from centralist and state-led policy initiatives to policy formation and delivery by a combination of public and private stakeholders with a growing role for the local and regional levels (Winter, 2002; Goodwin, 1998; Storey, 1999; Rhodes, 1996). The European Union has fuelled the emphasis on the regional and local level through its regulations for the delivery of structural funds (Geddes, 2000). The EC's White Paper on European Governance states that working in partnership is one of the leading principles of ‘good governance’ (CEC, 2001). In several countries national governments have embraced multi-sector partnership working, or area-based policy making with the objective of enhancing efficient and inclusive policy delivery.Area based programmes are frequently presented as a means of addressing civic exclusion, both through the inclusive nature of the partnership structure, and through the local nature of the partnership, which is perceived to allow greater access to excluded groups than centralised policy. (Shortall, 2004, p. 113)

Research on opinion polarization in the USA repeatedly finds more divergence among politically privileged groups: respondents who are college educated, politically interested, party identified or have a liberal/conservative orientation. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether their excluded counterparts can be polarized by exposure to political information on the internet.

Quantile regression and visual analysis of raw data from the online and face-to-face samples in the 2012 and 2016 American National Election Studies (n=9,563) assessed the impact of online political information on opinion polarization among ideological moderates, political Independents, respondents without a college degree, and those with low interest in politics.

Exposure to online political information during the survey was associated with significant polarizing shifts toward more consistent ideological positions in all four groups.

Engaging the middle is a social justice issue as much as a matter of political conflict, and evidence suggests that politically excluded groups use the internet to translate their own views into the language of policy opinions and popular (polarized) politics. Recommended policy interventions include information literacy programs. Further research should use experimental models and browser histories.

Current research on political polarization leaves open the question of whether larger portions of the electorate are available to join the fray. This study shows that excluded publics can be polarized via exposure to online information.

Purpose – This study investigates the interplay between strategic performance measurement and management accounting to gain a deeper understanding of how strategic measures of performance evolve with the managerial accounting practices.

Design/Methodology/Approach – The study explored the performance measures used at a bank focused on the development and sustainability initiatives in Africa. Thirty-two semistructured interviews were conducted with directors, managers, and analysts from nine different categories of job families.

Findings – Analysis shows that managers assimilate a comprehensive, multifaceted measurement system to understand the creation and delivery of sustainable value. The results show that the managerial accounting practices adapt to incorporate an integrated set of performance measures that afford sustainable value to the stakeholders. The findings provide rich insights into how the managers adapt their information assimilation practices to the changing demands of the different stakeholders and adopt practices which innovate measures of performance that are aligned to the strategic goals. Finally, the findings illustrate that the interplay between strategic performance and managerial accounting practices has the potential to improve or inhibit sustainable development.

Originality/Value – Little is known about how performance measures evolve, and how they interplay with the managerial accounting practices within organizations. This study reveals that the interplay of strategic performance measurement and managerial accounting can only be understood in the confluence of organizational change and sustainability. While acknowledging the need to embrace change and sustainability simultaneously, the study offers insights into the dynamics of change – the duality of emergent managerial accounting practices and the evolution of strategic performance measurement systems.

Despite the longstanding male dominance in the socio-politico-economic spheres, recent decades have witnessed remarkable improvements in gender inclusion. Although the issue of gender inclusion has been widely documented, answers to the question of whether institutional arrangements and information technology shape gender inclusion remain contentious. This study, therefore, empirically examines the effects of institutional quality and ICT penetration on gender inclusion on a global scale.

To control for the endogeneity of modeled variables and cross-sectional dependence inherent with large panel datasets, the study employs the Driscoll-Kraay Fixed Effects (DKFE) and the system Generalised Method of Moments (GMM) estimators for a panel of 142 countries from 1996 to 2020.

The empirical findings from the DKFE and system GMM estimators reveal that strong institutions significantly enhance gender inclusion. Moreover, by disaggregating institutional quality into various governance indicators, we show that besides corruption control, which has a positive but insignificant effect on women’s empowerment, other governance indicators significantly enhance gender inclusion. Furthermore, there is evidence that various ICT measures promote gender inclusion.

The study results suggest that policymakers in developing countries should implement stringent measures to curb corruption. Moreover, policymakers in low-income countries should create avenues to facilitate women’s access to ICTs. Hence, policymakers in low-income countries should create and equip ICT training centers and render them accessible to all categories of women. Furthermore, developed countries with high-tech knowledge could help developing countries by organizing free training workshops and sensitization campaigns concerning the use of ICTs vis-à-vis women empowerment in various fields of life.

The present study fills a significant research gap by comprehensively exploring the nexuses between governance, ICT penetration, and the socio-politico-economic dimensions of gender inclusion from a global perspective. Besides the paucity of studies in this regard, the few existing studies have either been focused on region and country-specific case studies in developed or developing economies. Moreover, this study is timely, given the importance placed on gender inclusion (SDG5), quality of institutions (SDG16), and ICT penetration (SDG9) in the 2015–2030 global development agenda.

In the last two decades, there has been much research and attention on information and communications technologies (ICTs) as tools that can contribute to the economic and social lives of persons with disabilities (PWDs). However, few studies have sought to explore and document the experiences of PWDs who use these technologies to access the democratic space. Using Democratic Governance as a conceptual framework, this qualitative study seeks to address this gap in the literature by exploring the experiences of several visually impaired Caribbean youth with the use of ICTs to access the democratic space.

This study uses the qualitative research design and is guided by Husserl’s Descriptive phenomenology. The study sought to explore common patterns elicited from the specific experiences of 14 visually impaired citizens in Jamaica and 9 in Barbados through the use of semi-structured interviews.

The findings suggest that ICTs have in some ways contributed to the lives of these visually disabled youth, specifically as it relates to improving their ‘political knowledge’ and encouraging ‘political talk’. In other words, ICTs have played a contributive role in terms of including visually impaired Caribbean youth in the democratic space.

This study contributes to improving our understanding of how and in what ways ICTs can promote the inclusion of visually impaired persons in the democratic space.

This article aims to highlight the main limitations of the emancipatory potentials of digital inclusion policies and information and communication technologies (ICTs). Increasingly, empowerment is put forward as one of the main goals of digital inclusion. By applying user-centric and participatory approaches, assumptions are made that individuals will be empowered and, as such, will be re-included in society.

These assumptions, however, tend to ignore the social, economic, political and technical conditions within which individual choices are made and within which individuals must inevitably act. Instead of attempting to narrow the existing social gap between class-divided societies, and of probing the limitations given at the macro-level by questioning the wider social structure, digital inclusion policies tend to individualize problems that are in fact social in their nature.

This contribution will, therefore, aim to identify the key causes of structural (dis)empowerment and how these resonate to digital inclusion. The article positions itself within the political economy of communication research tradition and aims to confront the structural consequences of social inequalities, existing social hierarchies and power structures against mechanisms of digital inequalities and against the implementation of digital inclusion policies.

By proceeding from a critical perspective, it aims to demonstrate the limitations of user-centric and micro-level approaches, while questioning their normative interpretations of digital empowerment which tend to be reductionist in their essence and instrumental in their aims.