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What kinds of support do interstate rivals provide to domestic actors in ongoing civil wars? And how do domestic actors utilize the support they receive? This chapter answers these questions by comparing Iranian and Saudi military and non-military (mediation, foreign aid and religious soft-power promotion) support to the Houthis and to the Government of Yemen (GoY) during the Saada wars (2004–2010) and the internationalized civil war (2015–2018). It also focuses on the processes through which the GoY and the Houthis have utilized this support for their own strategic purposes. This chapter applies a structured, focused comparison methodology and relies on data from a review of both primary and secondary sources complemented by 14 interviews. This chapter finds that there were less external interventions in the conflict in Saada than in the internationalized civil war. During the latter, a broader set of intervention strategies enabled further instrumentalization by domestic actors, which in turn contributed to the protracted nature of the conflict. This chapter contributes to the literature on interstate rivalry and third-party intervention. The framework of analysis is applicable to civil wars that experience intervention by rivals, such as Syria or Libya.

This study employs Stein Rokkan's methodological approach to analyse state formation in the Greater Middle East. It develops a conceptual framework distinguishing colonial, populist and democratic pacts, suitable for analysis of state formation and nation-building through to the present period. The framework relies on historical institutionalism. The methodology, however, is Rokkan's. The initial conceptual analysis also specifies differences between European and the Middle Eastern state formation processes. It is followed by a brief and selective discussion of historical preconditions. Next, the method of plotting singular cases into conceptual-typological maps is applied to 20 cases in the Greater Middle East (including Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey). For reasons of space, the empirical analysis is limited to the colonial period (1870s to the end of World War 1). Three typologies are combined into one conceptual-typological map of this period. The vertical left-hand axis provides a composite typology that clarifies cultural-territorial preconditions. The horizontal axis specifies transformations of the region's agrarian class structures since the mid-19th century reforms. The right-hand vertical axis provides a four-layered typology of processes of external intervention. A final section presents selected comparative case reconstructions. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first time such a Rokkan-style conceptual-typological map has been constructed for a non-European region.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between tax avoidance and earnings persistence in the light of a developing economy, with the main focus on China.

In the analysis, the author conducts a survey on the tax avoidance situation of Chinese listed companies from 2012 to 2020. Then, a multivariate regression analysis is performed in order to analyse the relationship between corporate tax avoidance and earnings persistence.

The findings of the present study show that tax avoidance has a significant positive effect on earnings persistence. However, when the degree of tax avoidance is high, the “risk effect” of tax avoidance exceeds the “value effect”, and tax avoidance will reduce the persistence of earnings. This conclusion is even more prominent when the company is non-state-owned. Further research shows the increase of institutional investors’ shareholding ratio can improve “value effect” of tax avoidance, lessen “risk effect” of tax avoidance, and positively affect the relationship between tax avoidance and earnings persistence.

This study provides evidence for investors to understand the dual effect of tax avoidance on earnings persistence. The results may have implications for regulatory bodies. They can provide a better understanding of the corporate governance role of institutional investors in curbing opportunistic tax avoidance.

This study enriches the research on tax avoidance effects by analysing the impact of tax avoidance on earnings persistence. This study also compensates for the shortcomings of analysing earnings persistence mainly from the perspective of tax differences in the past, and promotes the study of the corporate governance effects of institutional investors under different levels of tax avoidance.

The institutional conditions of primary care provision remain understudied in low- and middle-income countries. This study analyzes how primary care doctors cope with medical uncertainty in municipal clinics in urban India. As street-level bureaucrats, the municipal doctors occupy two roles simultaneously: medical professional and state agent. They operate under conditions that characterize health systems in low-resource contexts globally: inadequate state investment, weak regulation and low societal trust. The study investigates how, in these conditions, the doctors respond to clinical risk, specifically related to noncommunicable diseases (NCDs).

The analysis draws on year-long ethnographic fieldwork in Pune (2013–14), a city of three million, including 30 semi-structured interviews with municipal doctors.

Interpreting their municipal mandate to exclude NCDs and reasoning their medical expertise as insufficient to treat NCDs, the doctors routinely referred NCD cases. They expressed concerns about violence from patients, negative media attention and unsupportive municipal authorities should anything go wrong clinically.

The study contextualizes street-level service-delivery in weak institutional conditions. Whereas street-level workers may commonly standardize practices to reduce workload, here the doctors routinized NCD care to avoid the sociopolitical consequences of clinical uncertainty. Modalities of the welfare state and medical care in India – manifest in weak municipal capacity and healthcare regulation – appear to compel restraint in service-delivery. The analysis highlights how norms and social relations may shape primary care provision and quality.

Recent developments in the EU’s anti-corruption strategy have brought the EU closer to meeting the UNCAC’s objectives, i.e. the Proposal for a Directive on combating corruption (2023) and the Proposal for a Directive on Asset Recovery and Confiscation (2022). This paper aims to discuss these developments from the perspective of the UNCAC, to identify missing elements in the EU’s asset recovery mechanisms.

Critical approach towards EU anti-corruption policy (discussing the problems and solutions). Review of EU developments in asset recovery law.

There is a political will on the part of the EU to fight corruption through the rules enshrined in the UNCAC. However, improving EU law by introducing a new type of confiscation of unexplained wealth and criminalising illicit enrichment, without establishing convergent rules for the return of corrupt assets from EU territory to the countries of origin, cannot be seen as sufficient action to achieve the UNCAC’s objectives. In modelling mechanisms of the return of assets, the EU should search for solutions to overcome the difficulties resulting from the ordre public clause remaining a significant factor conditioning mutual legal assistance.

This paper discusses the possible input of the EU, as a non-State Party to the UNCAC, to advance implementing the UNCAC solutions on asset recovery by establishing convergent rules for the return of corrupt assets from EU territory to countries of origin.

This paper aims to investigate the relationship between corporate environmental, social and governance (ESG) ratings and leverage manipulation and the moderating effects of internal and external supervision.

The authors draw on a sample of Chinese non-financial A-share-listed firms from 2013 to 2020 to explore the effect of ESG ratings on leverage manipulation. Robustness and endogeneity tests confirm the validity of the regression results.

ESG ratings inhibit leverage manipulation by improving social reputation, information transparency and financing constraints. This effect is weakened by internal supervision, captured by the ratio of institutional investor ownership, and strengthened by external supervision, captured by the level of marketization. The effect is stronger in non-state-owned firms and firms in non-polluting industries. The governance dimension of ESG exhibits the strongest effect, with comprehensive environmental governance ratings and social governance ratings also suppressing leverage manipulation.

Firms should strive to cultivate environmental awareness, fulfil their social responsibilities and enhance internal governance, which may help to strengthen the firm’s sustainability orientation, mitigate opportunistic behaviours and ultimately contribute to high-quality firm development. The top managers of firms should exercise self-restraint and take the initiative to reduce leverage manipulation by establishing an appropriate governance structure and sustainable business operation system that incorporate environmental and social governance in addition to general governance.

Policymakers and regulators should formulate unified guidelines with comprehensive criteria to improve the scope and quality of ESG information disclosure and provide specific guidance on ESG practice for firms. Investors should incorporate ESG ratings into their investment decision framework to lower their portfolio risk.

This study contributes to the literature in four ways. Firstly, to the best of the authors’ knowledge, it is among the first to show that high ESG ratings may mitigate firms’ opportunistic behaviours. Secondly, it identifies the governance factor of leverage manipulation from the perspective of firms’ subjective sustainability orientation. Thirdly, it demonstrates that the relationship between ESG ratings and leverage manipulation varies with the level of internal and external supervision. Finally, it highlights the importance of governance in guaranteeing the other two dimensions’ roles by decomposing overall ESG.

The immersion of global higher education in a competitive, economy-oriented paradigm calls for perspectives on internationalisation that are explicitly aimed at shaping cooperative, sustainable and alternative/decolonial futures. The authors of this chapter recognise the relevance of research perspectives that – epistemologically aligned with critical internationalisation studies – emphasise the dilemmas and contradictions of internationalisation of higher education (IHE). In this chapter, the authors therefore present reflections that confront the hegemonic discourse that portrays the phenomenon of IHE as an unconditional good. The authors dialogue with the idea of promoting a perspective of IHE from and for the Global South – that is, one that instead of suppressing, recognises the epistemic plurality of the world. To do so, the authors assume that any critical efforts to address internationalisation in the context of the Global South can be enriched when explicitly situated within colonial history. The authors argue that looking towards the future of IHE requires a look towards its past. Specifically, the authors bring together four interrelated lines of argument: (i) recognising the university as a historical producer and reproducer of colonial hierarchies; (ii) conceiving the Global South as a field of epistemic challenges; (iii) having a non-myopic view of South–South cooperation; and (iv) spreading the epistemological horizon of internationalisation. Such reflections might contribute to envisioning new horizons for IHE in the Global South and its relation with those who have been relegated to a status of invisibility.

This paper argues for the need to use multiple sources and methods that respond to research challenges presented by new forms of war. There are methodological constraints and contention on the superiority given to positivist and interpretivist research designs when doing fieldwork in war situations, hence there is a need to use integrated data generation techniques. The combined effect of severe limitations of movement for both the researcher and researched fragmented data because of polarized views about the causes of the war and unpredictable events that make information hard to come by militate against systematic, organised and robust data generation. The purpose of this paper, therefore, is to make fieldwork researchers understand significant research problems unique to war zones.

This research was guided by the postmodernist mode of thought which challenges standardised research traditions. Fieldwork experiences in Cabo suggest the need to use the composite strategies that rely on the theoretical foundation of integrative and creative collection of data when doing research in violent settings.

The fieldwork experiences showed that the standardised, conventional and valorised positivist and ethnographic research strategies may not sufficiently facilitate understanding of the dynamics of war. There should not be firm rules, guidelines or regulations governing the actions of the researcher in conflict. As such, doing research in violent settings require reflexivity, flexibility and creativity in research strategies that respond to rapid changes. Research experiences in Mozambique show the need to use blended methods that include even less structured methodologies.

Fieldwork experiences in Cabo challenges researchers who cling to standardised research traditions which often hamper awareness of new postmodernist mode of thought applicable to war settings. It is essential to study the nature of African armed conflicts by combining creativity and flexibility in the selection of research strategies.

The study focuses on drug safety regulation capture, reveals the inner mechanism and evolutionary characteristics of drug safety regulation capture and provides suggestions for effective regulation by pharmacovigilance.

The article introduces prospect theory into the game strategy analysis of drug safety events, constructs a benefit perception matrix based on psychological perception and analyzes the risk selection strategies and constraints on stable outcomes for both drug companies and drug regulatory authorities. Moreover, simulation was used to analyze the choice of results of different parameters on the game strategy.

The results found that the system does not have a stable equilibrium strategy under the role of cognitive psychology. The risk transfer coefficient, penalty cost, risk loss, regulatory benefit, regulatory success probability and risk discount coefficient directly acted in the direction of system evolution toward the system stable strategy. There is a critical effect on the behavioral strategies of drug manufacturers and drug supervisors, which exceeds a certain intensity before the behavioral strategies in repeated games tend to stabilize.

In this article, the authors constructed the perceived benefit matrix through the prospect value function to analyze the behavioral evolution game strategies of drug companies and FDA in the regulatory process, and to evaluate the evolution law of each factor.