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This paper aims to examine the interrelationships between subnational conflicts in Myanmar and other variables of interests from the following four major domains: economic, human security and vulnerability of people, aggressiveness or militancy of the armed forces and global and regional climates.

Autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL) bounds testing approach has been applied on annual data from 1960-2017, to deal with the problems of autocorrelation and non-stationarity of key variables.

First, an increase in crop yield, cereal productivity, food productivity and per capita availability of arable land unequivocally and significantly lower the severity of conflict in Myanmar in the long run. Second, the authors uncover strong evidence that the intensity of conflicts bears a positive relationship with the vulnerability of the people of Myanmar. Third, the authors detect that both regional and global climate variables have limited and rather inconsistent impacts on subnational conflicts in Myanmar. Finally, the authors find that the aggressiveness (militancy index) of the armed forces has significant impacts upon subnational conflicts and economic variables of Myanmar in the long run.

This paper is completely data-driven and explains the long-term dynamics of the intensity of the civil war in Myanmar. ARDL bounds testing approach has been used to examine the interrelationships between subnational conflicts in Myanmar and other variables of interests. It is a novel approach, which overcomes the problems of autocorrelation and nonstationarity and offers reliable results.

This paper aims to explore the influence of entrepreneur’s political involvement on private-own enterprises’ (POEs’) selection of two inter-organizational conflict resolutions approaches (private approach and public approach), in the context of China’s transition economy.

Drawing on a sample of POEs operating in China’s transition economy in the year 2000, this study investigates the possible association between the entrepreneur’s political involvement and the approach chosen to resolve inter-organizational conflicts. A further step is taken to look into the implications of such a choice.

The empirical study reveals that those POEs with greater entrepreneurial political involvement have the propensity to rely on public approach. In general, POEs are more satisfied with the private approach than the public approach when managing conflicts. Besides, the study shows that the positive effects derived from the entrepreneur’s satisfaction on private approach will be weakened in more established institutions.

This paper has its unique contribution in highlighting the significance of how entrepreneurs’ political involvement interferes with inter-organizational conflict resolution.

I have invoked the idea of “global citizen” as part of the change that the development of a world polity is producing. Earlier chapters described what many observers have noted: the declining charisma of the nation-state (Hobsbawn & Ranger, 1983; Mann, 1990; Meyer et al., 1997; Shils, 1958). One question this observation raises is what then happens to national citizenship? Does it weaken or disappear (see Janowitz, 1983)? Or is it transformed?

Terrorism is not a new phenomenon in human life. It existed during Biblical times when Joseph, the seventeen‐year‐old son of Jacob, was kidnapped and sold into slavery by his jealous brothers. Although terrorists have been active throughout history, it is only recently that we have seen an increase in scholarly interest in the phenomenon of terrorism. One reason for this is the fact that terrorist activities have increased dramatically since the 1960s. Everyday we read in the newspapers and hear on radio and television details of the latest terrorist outrage. Many American colleges and universities now offer a course or two on terrorism as a part of their curriculum.

Tracking global trends has evolved into an analytic and prognostic industry in and of itself, and we do not pretend to offer a comprehensive overview of global trends and globalization. We offer a selective catalog of what we see as the major global trends that impact upon public managers in developing and transitional nations.⁵

This chapter is part of a larger project that examines recent educational expansion efforts in the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago, a nation that provides a valuable case study of challenges shaping higher educational expansion efforts in developing countries. The initial goal of the project was to identify supply and demand issues in postsecondary training. Though we did not collect data with the intent to examine neo-institutional or status competition dynamics, this theme emerged inductively from a series of interviews conducted with individuals and focus groups, making it an ideal case study for this volume.

Soil is a non-renewable and increasingly deteriorating resource, yet it is barely protected by European Union (EU) legislation. This constitutes a puzzling gap within the otherwise encompassing and progressive environmental policy of the EU. To explain the integration resistance of soil protection, I draw on insights from rationalist and sociological institutionalist theory. The institutional rigidity of the community method of environmental decision-making limits policy change to favorable interest constellations, but this constraint is usually compensated by agenda competition among the national environmental pioneers. However, successful agenda-setting depends on the skillful combination of political venues and issue frames. Matters of land politics, such as soil protection, are difficult to frame in terms that make them suitable for European policy venues. The theoretical argument is illustrated using an in-depth case study of the agenda-setting, negotiation, and eventual withdrawal of the ill-fated proposal for an EU soil framework directive, with a focus on the changing role of Germany. Reframing of soil politics as locally bound and as essentially national affair, subnational actors extended the conflict to include the German federal chamber as policy venue. As a result, Germany turned from “pusher by example” and first mover to “defensive front-runner,” successfully pursuing a blocking strategy.

Within the field of international relations, global environmental governance is frequently discussed in terms of “international regimes,” defined as “social institutions that consist of agreed upon principles, norms, rules and decision-making procedures, and programs that govern the interaction of actors in specific issue areas” (Young, 1997, pp. 5–6). Viewed from the regime theory perspective, nation-states are seen as territorially bounded entities with a monopoly on the use of (economic or military) force (Agnew, 1999). As a result, they are assumed to have primary authority in matters of global environmental governance. It is nation-states that engage in the negotiation of international treaties (in which the elements of a regime may be formalized), which are then taken home to be either implemented or ignored as the nation-state sees fit. Given that political power is defined by state boundaries within the regime approach, the internal politics of nation-states is considered to be of relatively little import in much of the literature. Aside from some interest in the concept of sovereignty (Litfin, 1998), the notion of transgovernmental coalitions (Risse-Kappen, 1995; Slaughter, 1997), and two-level games (Putnam, 1988), in the main the state remains conceived as a homogenous and unitary actor, a “fixed territorial entity…operating much the same over time and irrespective of its place within the geopolitical order” (Agnew & Corbridge, 1995, p. 78). While a recent focus on knowledge and the role of nonstate actors in international regimes has led to a revision of the nature of interests, politics, and influence, the state remains defined in terms of national government, albeit with potential internal conflicts and the roles of domestic actors noted. Implicitly, regime theory assumes that subnational governments act under the (sole) influence and direction of national government. Critically, the potential role of subnational government is either ignored or subsumed within the nation-state.