The Changing Facets of Public Administration in the United Arab Emirates

ABSTRACT

This article is an in-depth profile of the public administration system in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). It specifically focuses on the relationship between the state, the market and civil society, the structure of the government and the civil service system and its functional areas. Reform initiatives undertaken in all these areas over the last decade have also been discussed. The findings reveal that the public administration system in the UAE has demonstrated considerable developments in facilitating the market forces, opening space for civil society and modernizing the civil service system.     

Electoral theocracy and hybrid sovereignty in Iran

Post-revolution Iran is uniquely based upon the contradictory principles of divine and popular sovereignty but with ultimate authority delegated to jurists. At the same time, the theocratic basis of clerical dominance is rooted within a pluralistic and decentralised theological tradition peculiar to the Shiite establishment. Despite the tutelary institutional arrangements engineered by the ruling clergy, elections have generated unexpected outcomes and unleashed power and policy shifts. Emphasising the political dynamic generated by elections, this paper examines the uncertainties stemming from electoral processes that have been constructed by conflicting electoral and theocratic principles. In developing the concept of electoral theocracy, the paper highlights the paradoxes underpinning the hybridity of Iran’s clerical and electoral authoritarian system of governance. These hybrid features have remained largely neglected in the literature on electoral authoritarian regimes.     

FRAGMENTED COMMUNITY AND UNCONSTRUCTIVE ENGAGEMENTS

Abstract

Since the beginning of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution, the Chinese have taken major steps toward repudiating accepted ideas of the superiority of western technology and the neutrality of science. In the West, the development of science and medicine within the capitalist system has led to the monopolization of science by elites. This is not an automatic result of scientific and technological advancement, as some western sociologists will have us believe. Rather it results from capitalist relations of production. In part, the Cultural Revolution was a great struggle to put human needs in control of science and technology, including medicine. The Chinese sought to tear down the system of hierarchical relations which developed with industrialization in the West and in the Soviet Union and which threatened to overwhelm China's socialist experiment as well. This cultural revolution promoted a political ideology in which acupuncture and other form's of traditional medicine could be studied and practiced as a science on par with western medicine because they meet the needs of the people—the basis for medicine within China's socialist context.     

Short run and long run effects of the world crude oil prices on the Malaysian natural rubber and palm oil export prices

With regard to the increasing in world crude oil prices, it is time to examine more carefully the claim that the increase in world crude oil prices tends to increase commodity prices. Hence, we examine the major commodity prices in Malaysia namely palm oil prices and natural rubber prices. We will analyse the relationship of both commodities＇ prices with world crude oil prices using the autoregressive distribution lag （ARDL） approach. Besides the analysis of bound testing approaches to see the level of relationships, short run and long run effects also are carried out in order to investigate which period has been significantly effected by the increase of world crude oil prices. The result reveals that long run relationship between world crude oil prices and both commodities prices exists.