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In 2019, a popular revolution toppled Sudan's long-term military president, Umar al-Bashir. The country then entered a three-year transition toward democratic rule during which power was shared between Sudan's military and civilian political organizations. In this period, international organizations and foreign governments were quick to proclaim their support for Sudan's democratic transition. However, policy reforms during Sudan's transition went beyond changes to formal political institutions, as the transitional government implemented major programs of economic restructuring. These restructurings were supported by Sudan's international partners, who normalized a discourse that Sudan was “overindebted,” and who held that political and economic reforms ought naturally to accompany each other. As a result, the transitional government implemented a shock program of liberalization and austerity that imposed material hardship on much of Sudanese society, including during a global recession resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic. This contributed to endangering the transition itself and the progressive promises of Sudan's 2019 revolution.

This chapter traces the history of how Sudan was excluded from Western financial and commercial markets through the imposition of sanctions in the 1990s. This caused Sudan to explore non-Western sources of external financing in East Asia and the Arabian Gulf. This history then shapes the contested ways in which Sudan's debts are counted by international institutions to create the misleading impression that the country is overindebted. Finally, the chapter examines how different elites coalesced to impose a program of shock fiscal austerity and economic liberalization during a crucial political moment, which helped to imperil the country's fragile political transition.

Higher education (HE) in Slovakia is undergoing a second massive wave of transformation that is a direct post-socialist response to the Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance in the European Higher Education Area (EHEA) (ESG, 2015). In Slovakia, these standards have led to the end of the previous accreditation model and the emergence of a new accreditation agency. It is through the new forms of assessment and assessment standards that one can observe the second wave of the neoliberalisation of HE in Slovakia that stems from the Bologna Process (BP). The chapter describes the nature and consequences of this second wave. The question is whether the new accreditation standards in Slovakia take into account the idea of social justice in HE and what type of effects the second wave of ‘Bologna’ neoliberalisation is having on social justice. The chapter relies on a thematic analysis of the following types of documents issued between 2002 and 2020: strategic government documents, internal regulations of the accreditation agency and course accreditation manuals. It compares the discourses on the accreditation criteria in both waves of the neoliberalisation of HE in Slovakia. The results of the analysis show that the meaning of social justice in these discourses lacks the emphasis on the social dimension particularly in the second phase of the BP in Slovakia.

The history of Nepal gives some insight into its current status as a diverse and multilingual nation with more than 123 languages. Multilingualism is part of the founding philosophy of the country but since it was unified in 1768, government attitudes to language and language education have fluctuated. Though historically education in Nepal has been delivered exclusively in the Nepali language and, more recently, in English, the Government of Nepal is now committed to introducing mother tongue-based, multilingual education (MLE).

Nepal has among the lowest literacy rates in the world (UNESCO Institute for Statistics, 2015) and the government seeks to turn this trend around, particularly for students who do not speak Nepali as a mother tongue. The commitment to strengthening mother tongue-based MLE features prominently in the Constitution of Nepal (2015), the Act Relating to Compulsory and Free Education (2018) and the School Sector Development Plan (MOEST, 2018). This new constitution declares that “all the mother tongues spoken in Nepal shall be the national language” (2015 article 6).

Implementing these policy commitments in over 120 languages across seven provinces and 753 municipalities is the next challenge for the fledgling democracy. As a “wicked hard” policy area, doing so will require a solid understanding of local attitudes, beliefs, resources, and capacities. This chapter gives a unified review of the history, languages, ideologies, beliefs, and trends that currently influence MLE in Nepal and are likely to play a role into the future.

The United Nations Security Council Resolution 1325 (2000) requires that women’s experiences, needs, and perspectives are incorporated into the political, legal, and social decisions in order to achieve transitional justice. In a post-conflict society, peace, and security should be understood in a wider context of justice encompassing accountability process and mechanisms, reparations for victims and upholding the principle of equality in all spheres of lives. Thus, the objective of the UNSCR 1325 is to increase women’s participation in decision-making in the peace process to address the wider context of women’s situation in post-conflict society and committing to protect women’s socioeconomic rights. It is obvious that women’s mere presence in decision-making process is insufficient in restoring stability in post-conflict society. Women’s participation will only be meaningful if they are empowered to be active rather than passive participants. Hence, it is argued that women’s leadership could only be built, if they are given adequate representation in decision-making process and institutions. Women’s participation in decision-making and women’s economic empowerment has a symbiotic impact on each other. When women are not stable economically and unable to freely make social choices and take responsibilities, they will not have the courage to compete in an election. Thus, this brief study argues that the economic marginalization (overt and covert discrimination) exposes women to multiple discrimination in post-conflict society in Sri Lanka. Hence, countries like Sri Lanka need to address the existing gap in this sphere of women empowerment and leadership. It concludes that the realization of women’s rights to equality in post-conflict Sri Lanka may be a slow process, but the Sri Lankan experiences provide a good case study on how to face the different challenges in post-conflict context.

Social space, the central construct in field theory, offers dialogic organization development a generative image similar to open systems for diagnostic OD. Social space imagery enables people to think, feel, and act in ways that exercise greater choice over the realities they construct and that construct them. This process is illustrated through a “transitional space” that enabled people with severe disabilities to overcome stigma and isolation. Social spatial imagery moves dialogic OD away from systems imagery and language, addresses ambivalence about self and mind, clarifies the meaning of reality, and reconnects it to its Lewinian roots.

The authors discuss a large system transformation project they designed and implemented in Slovenia at the start of its independence in the early 1990s. Post-mortem insights are useful for practitioners who embark on similarly broad transformation processes. Design issues are discussed such as structuring the pre-contracting phase to guarantee inclusive stakeholder representation and participation throughout the transformation process and how intervention design needs to allow for experimentation and multi-stakeholder alliance building. Application of action research and action learning in a risk-averse environment typical of central governments helped create a sense of ownership, control, and collective accountability in the partner country.

Due to climate change and an increasing concentration of the world’s population in vulnerable areas, how to manage catastrophe risk efficiently and cover disaster losses fairly is still a universal dilemma.

This paper applies a law and economic approach.

China’s mechanism for managing catastrophic disaster risk is in many ways unique. It emphasizes government responsibilities and works well in many respects, especially in disaster emergency relief. Nonetheless, China’s mechanism which has the vestige of a centrally planned economy needs reform.

I propose a catastrophe insurance market-enhancing framework which marries the merits of both the market and government to manage catastrophe risks. There are three pillars of the framework: (i) sustaining a strong and capable government; (ii) government enhancement of the market, neither supplanting nor retarding it; (iii) legalizing the relationship between government and market to prevent government from undermining well-functioning market operations. A catastrophe insurance market-enhancing framework may provide insights for developing catastrophe insurance in China and other transitional nations.

First, this paper analyzes China’s mechanism for managing catastrophic disaster risks and China’s approach which emphasizes government responsibilities will shed light on solving how to manage catastrophe risk efficiently and cover disaster losses fairly. Second, this paper starts a broader discussion about government stimulation of developing catastrophe insurance and this framework can stimulate attention to solve the universal dilemma.

This paper addresses a highly under-research question of employee voice in Belarus using labour process theory, specifically, Ramsay’s (1977) cycles of control theory to assess the evolution of voice at transitional periphery. Using the sample of 10 industrial enterprises, the paper explores the degree of management control over formal voice and the role of trade unions in defending of independent voice at the collective level. Informal voice at the individual level is also analysed. The findings demonstrate that the degree of direct control over formal voice in Belarus exceeds that in the Soviet Union due to suppression of independent trade union voice. The loss of workers’ control over the labour process has led to decreasing informal voice at the individual level. However, the earlier argument on workers’ patience is not supported due to a growing number of organised workers protests.