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The purpose of this paper is to explain why corruption is a serious problem in Myanmar and why the anti-corruption measures initiated by its military government are ineffective.

The paper describes Myanmar’s unfavourable policy context and analyses the perceived extent and causes of corruption in Myanmar before evaluating the effectiveness of its anti-corruption measures.

Myanmar’s location in a bad neighbourhood surrounded by corrupt countries, its vulnerability to the natural resource curse and ethnic conflict, as well as more than five decades of ineffective military rule have hindered its anti-corruption efforts. Corruption remains a serious problem in Myanmar because of the military regime’s lack of political will and failure to address these causes: low salaries; red tape; weak rule of law; and cultural factors. The Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC)’s performance during its first two years cannot be assessed because of the lack of information on its budget, personnel and activities. As the ACC is led by two former military generals, it is not perceived to be independent, and has been criticised for focusing on investigating corruption cases and corruption prevention at the expense of corruption education.

This paper will be of interest to those policy-makers, scholars and anti-corruption practitioners, who are interested in learning about the causes of rampant corruption in Myanmar and why the anti-corruption measures initiated have failed to curb it.

Nigeria gained independence from the British in 1960, and by 1963, it became a republic. For the 61 years of independence, Nigeria has passed through civilian and military rule successions. Most of the time, self-rule had military leaders in control of governance. The British government did not prepare the country for self-rule and was in control from 1960 to 1963, with the Governor-General acting as the ultimate power in selecting who remained in control. The country left by the British was divided along the ethnic, regional, and religious lines, which made it difficult to have a nationalistic ideology governed by the common good. This faulty foundation was the primary purpose of the postcolonial era's failed statehood and fragile state. Every criterion used to gauge the performance of governance in this era indicated that the military and civilian leaders did not move the country forward. One noticed that when the British dismantled the leadership structure in the precolonial era, they broke the link between the new and the old, which would have ensured the new had the cultural and historical foundation to succeed.

Public sector entities face conflicting demands from stakeholders. The literature suggests identifying and prioritizing stakeholders can improve accountability. Thailand, an emerging economy, and currently under military rule, provides an interesting context to investigate stakeholder tensions. The purpose of this paper is to investigate how and why the Thai Government bureaucrats prioritize their stakeholders.

The study draws on the managerial branch of stakeholder theory and stakeholder salience theory to examine the importance of various stakeholders and of the stakeholders’ salient attributes perceived by the Thai Government bureaucrats in discharging its accountability. The study uses a survey questionnaire mailed out to the central government departments in Thailand.

The study finds that single most important stakeholder is the Office of the Auditor-General. The public is perceived as the second. This is dissimilar to the western-centric accountability focus on the public, and challenges claims by the Thai military coup that it will bring democratic rule. “Legal power” supporting the stakeholders’ claims for government accountability is the most influential attribute in determining stakeholder importance and prioritizing attention for government bureaucrat’s discharge of its accountability.

Such findings increase understanding of the applicability of stakeholder theory and stakeholder salience theory in the context of military rule in emerging economy countries such as Thailand. This paper also provides suggestions of how stakeholders may shape their salience in order to gain priority. This also provides an immediate suggestion for reforms of the Thai regulatory frameworks in prioritizing stakeholders and promoting the government’s greater accountability.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the general direction and pattern of modern economic and financial crimes statutes in Nigeria.

This paper examines Nigerian economic and financial crime statues.

This paper identifies the trend and features, which are common to all the statutes irrespective of economic and financial crime covered by them.

This paper shows that although Nigerian economic and financial crimes statutes have evolved gradually from Military era Decrees, and target different aspects of economic and financial crimes, there are certain features, which are common to all of them.

The purpose of this article is to explore the future of democracy, given the transition the countries of the world are experiencing.

The paper draws on literature concerning democracy, ICT and artificial intelligence. A framework for understanding the working of democracy is developed. This framework or model is tested in 20 countries, and conclusions are presented.

Globally, there is a shift taking place away from representative democracy toward less democratic forms of government.

Most studies are implicitly dogmatic in assuming that representative democracy is a superior form of government. The influences of corporations, media and the elite are moving representative democracy away from the ideal of democracy.

The future of democracy is uncertain. It is not likely that representative democracy will become the universal form of government. Global government is possible, but it is not likely to be a representative democracy.

Major pillar of Via Campesina in Brazil, the Landless Workers’ Movement (Movimento dos Trabalhadores Rurais Sem Terra – MST) political platform combines land reform and agro-ecology, claiming for a profound change in the hegemonic agriculture model in the country, hoisting the ‘food sovereignty’ flag. However, this was not a linear trajectory. Focusing on events that took place in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, the birthplace of the MST, this chapter aims to analyse the different path followed by MST there in order to consolidate the ‘conquered’ settlements. The organization approached, initially, a network of technicians and social organizations critics of the technological package of the Green Revolution in Brazil. Afterwards, choose to support the deployment of conventional agriculture in the agrarian reform settlements, prioritizing collective organization of labour through cooperatives of production, practicing an agriculture based in the intensive use of pesticides, chemical fertilizers and commercial seed varieties. Thanks to the growing international connections of the MST, that paved the way for the creation of Via Campesina, and to the proximity to ‘militant technicians’ coming mainly from the agronomy student movement, in the end of the 1990s, MST resumed its dialogue with alternative agriculture strands, particularly with agro-ecology, campaigning for an agriculture based on principles of environmental conservation and valorization of the peasant way of life.

Turkey represents a fascinating case in late industrialization or “late late developing”. Under the Kemalist tradition of continuous modernization, the Turkish context of the 1990s, which heavily involves the military establishment, may actually support high‐technology sectors. Such a conclusion is derived from an examination of economic and geopolitical realities, and benchmarks provided by highly industrialized countries. A strategic TOWS analysis underlines the strengths, weaknesses, threats, and opportunities, of a hypothetical microelectronics industry. Strategies for such industry are suggested including international strategic alliances.

In this chapter, I will first conceptualize social movement theory before examining the importance of student movements and student activism. I then will link social movement theory to the university in Egypt. Next, I will contextualize university activism by describing the authoritarian structures of Egypt’s university system. Then, using secondary data sources, I will characterize university activism during the three transitional political periods (under the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces (SACF), under President Morsi, and after the ousting of Morsi), and conclude with a discussion on the implications of student activism on future university reform.

The purpose of the study is to investigate the relationship between international financial integration (IFI) index and democracy (DEM) in Pakistan by using long-time series data from 1975 to 2013.

The IFI index is constructed by principal component analysis. IFI consists of foreign direct investment (FDI), remittances (REM) and external debt (ED), whereas the Polity IV index is used for DEM. Johansen and the autoregressive distributed lag method for cointegration methods are used to find a long run relationship. Dynamic ordinary least square (DOLS), fully modified ordinary least square (FMOLS) and canonical regression (CR) have been used to find the nature of the relationship. Rolling window analysis has been done to find the year wise coefficients.

DOLS, FMOLS, canonical regression CR and cointegration results suggest a significant negative long-run relationship between IFI and DEM in Pakistan. Rolling windows analysis highlights that DEM has improved IFI in Pakistan from 2008 to 2013.

This study constructs an index for financial integration using principle component analysis on capital inflows, i.e. FDI, REM, ED, to explore the impact of DEM on IFI in Pakistan from 1975 to 2013. This study investigates for the first time ever the relationship between IFI index and DEM in Pakistan.