Search results for "Economy"
showing 10 items of 2131 documents
Mobility in and of the Empire: A Colonialist History of Mobility
2021
Mobility is freedom. Freedom is power. Those who wield control over the mobility of others control their freedom. The global reach of this control was first evident in the history of colonialism. The empire both incentivized and restricted travel, depending upon who aligned with the colonial vision of the world. Unfreedom is a situation when there is no evident bondage but there is still no exercise of freedom. Fast forward from the times of the European empires, the contemporary forms of colonialism institutionalized this. Television shows, social media, and the internet made people unfree to aspirations that would truly liberate them but rather glued them to shallow pursuits. In this intr…
The Making and Unmaking of Precarity : Some Concluding Remarks
2015
We live in societies in which the making and unmaking of precarity has a structuring power. In the labour market, precarity is created through laws and practices that reduce protections and benefits; but the labour market itself is also the place where precarity can be unmade through (at least partial) de-commodification and re-regulation. Precarity also penetrates people’s lives and mechanisms of identification, with practices of producing stigma but also of resisting it. Not by chance, the making and unmaking of precarity has become a central focus for contentious politics through the definition of the new subject of the precariat, and the struggles against precarity as a stripping of fun…
Giving up Farming as a Precarious Decision
2015
‘Precarity’ is a novel noun that is widely recognized and applied in timely political discourses and socioeconomic diagnoses of the present. It refers to fixed-term, temporary, low-paid, insecure, unpredictable, and often risky work. The occupational position of precarious people has been characterized as flexible or flexploitative, informal, casual, intermittent, non-standard, exceptional, often outsourced, or subcontracted. ‘Precarity’ is typically seen to characterize young people, women, immigrants, and service sector workers; but particular segments of creative and immaterial ‘new labour’ are also identified with the ‘precariat’. However, in spite of all these groupings, lists, and clu…
Validation of a measure of Service Climate in organizations
2012
El Clima de Servicio resulta crítico en organizaciones del sector servicios. Refleja la importanciaque las organizaciones atribuyen a la calidad del servicio así como los esfuerzos para complacer a los clientes. Considerando el trabajo de Schneider, White y Paul (1998) como punto de partida, este trabajo valida una medida del clima de servicio en español. Para ello se han desarrollado dos estudios de campo. Un total de 120 hoteles, ubicados en España, participaron en la investigación. La muestra estuvo conformada por 508 empleados de hoteles distribuidos en 152 unidades de trabajo. Nuestros resultados confirmaron que la validez de constructo y predictiva son satisfactorias, con cuatro facto…
Economic analysis of different supporting policies for the production of electrical energy by solar photovoltaics in western European Union countries
2010
Abstract Within various renewable energy technologies, photovoltaics (PV) today attracts considerable attention due to its potential to contribute a major share of renewable energy in the future. However, PV market development is, undoubtedly, dependent on the political support of any given country. In this paper, after a brief analysis of national support policies in PV technology in western European Union (EU) countries, the authors perform an economic analysis of the main support mechanisms as implemented in the same countries, based on the calculation of the cash flow, the Net Present Value (NPV) and the Internal Rate of Return (IRR) indices. The analysis shows that in some situations s…
Financial Market Development in Emerging Asia: the Corporate Governance Perspective (Presentation Slides)
2018
Presentation on why Asia is different from Europe and the USA from a corporate governance perspective: weak formal institutions (e.g. law enforcement), diverse informal institutions (e.g. in terms of social elite) and with institutional dynamism (ongoing development of regulations, e.g. privatization) using economic liberalization as primary engine of growth.
Elections, Referendums and Parties
2015
By the end of 2014, the Baltic states had held a total of 19 parliamentary, 19 municipal and 3 cycles of European Parliament elections. Lithuania, which elects its president via a national popular vote, had additionally held six presidential polls. Another 23 referendums have been held since August 1991. The rigidity of the Lithuanian and Latvian electoral and judicial institutions have been tested by the 2004 impeachment of Lithuanian president, Rolandas Paksas, and the subsequent early presidential election, as well as a referendum on the recall of Latvia’s parliament in the summer of 2011 and the following early election. Estonia is recognised as an electoral innovator, being the first s…
The Selection and Deselection of Technocratic Ministers in Democratic Spain
2017
This chapter analyses the presence of non-political ministers in the Spanish cabinet in the democratic period since 1977, where one out of five ministers did not belong to the ruling party at the time of her appointment and one out of three can be considered as a non-political minister. By observing the selection and deselection of these individuals, it shows the cabinet dynamic behind the ministerial appointments and the differences between the more political type of ministers and those coming from outside political pathways. Despite some outstanding exceptions, non-political ministers are often recruited from outside the parliament and have fewer chances to develop a relevant ministerial …
The Scope of Opportunities for Religious Peacebuilders
2016
Steen-Johnsen applies Brewer et al.’s understanding of scope of opportunities as access to strategic social spaces, when assessing what religious peacebuilders can do in various political contexts. She outlines how Ethiopian religious leaders are only able to engage in peacebuilding activities which are acceptable to the regime, such as proffering a coexistence discourse. The religious leaders cannot, however, launch ideas which can be understood as challenging the political strategies of the EPRDF regime. Steen-Johnsen suggests that this renders the contribution of religious actors to peace much weaker in this type of political context as they fail to address important political contentiou…
Absorption of Structural Funds – International Comparisons and Correlations
2013
Abstract Structural Funds represent one of the main instruments which The European Union uses to sustain regional development and to eliminate disparities between members. Specialized literature is relatively poor when it comes to approaching this subject. In the period 2002-2006, several papers were written, which identified the absorption process's influence factors, but all these materials represented ex-ante analysis, the empirical testing of theories being virtually impossible. The present paper, based on available statistical data related to the absorption process, aims at testing these factors, trying to elucidate the great differences obtained by the EU members within Central and Ea…