Search results

The Rajapaksa regime over the 2005–2022 period promoted a national-popular project based on a militarised Sinhala-Buddhist nationalism promoting a market-driven rentier economy. It illustrated a form of patrimonial capitalism undermining public accountability and the efficacy of the state bureaucracy. This popular-national project was dependent on strengthening ties with China while distancing relations with India and the Global North (USA and the EU). The ways in which the external relations were coordinated reinforced discrimination against Tamil and Muslim communities, while disregarding their demands for justice and reparations. The increasing integration of the economy with financial markets, driven by the Central Bank, amplified the commercialisation of the state, restraining public revenues and state oversight. Meanwhile, the militarisation of the state involved the commercialisation of the military, opaque military budgets and violent repression of protests. The Rajapaksa regime, which enabled a minority-privileged (leisure) class to culturally flourish in regulated safe spaces, also instigated multiple protests from below demanding democracy as well as justice.

Introduction − Covid-19, which first emerged in Wuhan, People’s Republic of China, in January 2020, with an unknown source, spread to all countries of the world very quickly and caused the death of over two million people world-wide. This ever-increasing global need for health care has created a radical transformation in terms of not only in health care, but also in all public services. Transportation services for the transfer of patients to health institutions, education services due to the dangers of face-to-face training, justice services due to the postponement of non-urgent court proceedings, security services in terms of restriction sanctions and all public services in general due to the disruption of access to public services due to flexible working hours applied to public personnel has entered into an unplanned provision.

Purpose: The aim of this chapter is to identify the problems that arise in the provision of public goods and services due to the global epidemic of Covid-19, and to bring a new interpretation to the theoretical discussions about the optimal delivery level of public services when there is a situation of communicable disease.

Methodology: The principles of public goods and service provision of G20 countries, Covid-19 mortality rates, indicators of the well-being of healthcare delivery such as the number of bed and personnel, the type and number of devices used to diagnose the Covid disease, and the public service restrictions taken to eliminate Covid-19, have been evaluated by employing descriptive analysis. In order to prevent income and advanced levels from becoming distinctive features, G20 countries with similar income and development levels were selected for this research.

Findings: Due to the Covid-19 pandemic, there has been a distortion in the preference of provision of almost all public goods, and it has been observed that the delivery level of public services affects each other since all are linked like a chain. Failure to achieve what is expected from international organizations, which should be in a regulatory position in this regard, has increased concerns about the optimal presentation level of all public goods, especially health, in the future. As long as there is a global pandemic and countries do not take effective measures, a bad second best position that is far from optimal results but provides that instant solutions.

Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to illustrate that when produced through relations of power, West Nile virus (WNV), as it exists on the Public Health Agency of Canada's (PHAC) website, is an effect of the kinds of knowledge, techniques of power, and disciplinary apparatuses that operate on the website and in society.

Methodology/approach – The approach used in the in-depth research project which informs this chapter is an elaboration of Michel Foucault's work on relations of power which offers an effective way of studying the PHAC's website as a collection of authoritative knowledges and as a product of a set of systems, structures, and processes which have helped to assemble and distribute knowledge about WNV.

Findings – The findings discussed in this chapter offer a critical reading of the PHAC's overall production of WNV, focusing particularly on its initial emergence starting in 2001. Cumulatively, this chapter argues that myriad relations of power have produced WNV as a bio-socio-administrative construct.

Contribution to the field – This research illustrates one way that Foucault's theories of power can be used to conduct a critical analysis of both the discursive and material dimensions of the production of contemporary public health issues. Such an approach is useful to scholars who wish to place the emergence of a disease phenomenon within political, institutional, economic, cultural, and social relations of power; thereby drawing attention to how specific spaces, places, individuals, and institutions contribute to the production of contemporary health alarms.

Much of the research on the mental health impacts of the COVID-19 response have been focused on frontline healthcare workers (FHCW). However, other essential workers (OEW) have also faced many mental health challenges due to exposures associated with their employment status, which may be compounded by higher levels of social vulnerability. This chapter describes disparities among FHCW, OEW, and the general public regarding mental health outcomes associated with the pandemic. In addition, it considers the role that structural racism (e.g., historical redlining of neighborhoods and biased lending practices) plays in the higher vulnerability of OEW to the mental health impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic response. Mental health inequities overall, and among essential workers, must be addressed as part of the recovery from COVID-19 to build resilience to future public health emergencies. The model used by New York City to more equitably distribute mental health resources and support services is shared.

This study identifies measures to recover economic growth and build sustainable societies and markets in post-COVID-19 scenarios – with a perspective of resilience and adaptability to climate change and massive biodiversity loss. Additionally, this study uncovers the interventions implemented to address economic, environmental and social consequences of past crises based on a systematic literature review. Specifically, this chapter provides answers to the following six questions:

1. What has been done in the past to rebuild social, economic and environmental balance after global crises?

2. Where (geographical region) did the analysis on measures taken concentrate?

3. When have scholars analysed past measures to rebuild business and society after a global crisis?

4. How did the past measures to rebuild business and society after the global crisis take place?

5. Who promotes the measures to rebuild business and society after a global crisis takes place?

6. Why is it important to study the previous literature on past measures to rebuild business and society after a global crisis takes place?

What has been done in the past to rebuild social, economic and environmental balance after global crises?

Where (geographical region) did the analysis on measures taken concentrate?

When have scholars analysed past measures to rebuild business and society after a global crisis?

How did the past measures to rebuild business and society after the global crisis take place?

Who promotes the measures to rebuild business and society after a global crisis takes place?

Why is it important to study the previous literature on past measures to rebuild business and society after a global crisis takes place?

Finally, this chapter identifies future research opportunities to rebuild business and society after the past global crises.

In the discussion groups subjects will be taken up which are not dealt with in the lectures. The subjects to be taken up in the discussion groups of each week and the assignments relating thereto will be announced well in advance of the meetings.

This chapter has four parts. The first section addresses the legal analysis of the Argentine local governments' autonomous regime, considering its provinces and municipalities, and the second section analyzes the portfolio of policies – nationals, provincials, locals – to attend the emergency of COVID-19, which show that the Federal State was dedicated to the overall strategy: sustaining the income of citizens, businesses, and subnational governments; and the purchase and distribution of health equipment and supplies, while the attention of COVID-19 cases fell to the provinces and municipalities. The third section analyzes the coordination mechanisms during the pandemic mainly based more on presidential leadership with the support of governors and mayors than on institutional mechanisms. Finally, the role of the political agency especially as for the main interjurisdictional conflicts that took place in 2020 and 2021 once the authorities dimensioned the pandemic scope as well as the Kirchnerism/anti-Kirchnerism cleavage that characterizes Argentine politics since 2008.

The system of critical infrastructure in the United States is vast in size and geographic layout. These two factors along with the American system of Federalism impose great challenges in protecting these systems. Much of the physical protection of these assets is left to state and local governments making protection more difficult is that a large number of these critical infrastructures are owned by multinational corporations. It is through a complex coordinated effort spanning across all three levels of government that these systems are kept secure in the United States.