Nexus between income inequality and consumption of renewable energy in India: a nonlinear examination

Economic Change and Restructuring - While the association between income inequality and environmental degradation has been researched extensively by various scholars, the impact of income...     

Towards Strong Local Governance: Current Reform Scenario in Fiji

This article examines how the historical context of poor central-local relations and inefficient service delivery structure is used by the current military-led government in Fiji as a ploy for its local government reform agenda. Based on an analysis of secondary information on local government structure and a review of the reforms undertaken by the Review/Reform Committee, this article identifies the concentration of economic and political power at the central level as one of the major obstacles towards empowering local governance in Fiji. The article emphasizes the need for effective institutional reforms to devolve governance and resources from the centre to the grassroots.     

Compulsory voting and the dynamics of partisan identification

Compulsory rules are known to have far‐reaching effects beyond boosting electoral participation rates. This article examines the relationship between compulsory voting and partisan attachments. A theory of attachment formation and strength is engaged that argues that compulsory voting boosts the likelihood that one will identify with a party and, in turn, the strength of party attachments among identifiers. The statistical model accounts for both the hierarchical structure of the data (individuals in elections) and the dual nature of the dependent variable (individuals report a strength of attachment only for the party with which they identify). Using data from the Comparative Study of Electoral Systems, it is demonstrated that compulsory voting does indeed increase both the incidence and the strength of partisanship.     

Viewpoint: New Ethics for Space Commerce

The space age is likely to be dominated by space commercial activities. As these activities develop, it is important to consider business values, commercial ethics, and trade discipline. The failure to do so could result in space commercial development on the basis of greed for profit and competitive advantage for advancement, as has taken place on Earth. To better prevent this possibility, this article proposes that there is the need to develop a “New Ethics for Space Commerce” based on high standards of business morality and commercial honesty, with moorings in conscious social responsibility and due regard to ecological sustainability.     

Commercial Mining of Celestial Resources: Case Study of U.S. Space Laws

ABSTRACT

The fact that there are abundant mineral resources in space is shown by remote sensing and observation through space probes and analysis of samples, in situ and otherwise. That these resources are useful to humanity and can augment depleting Earth resources is also established beyond a doubt. Further, the technology to excavate and process the same in situ is feasible. The end-product can be used for other activities on the mined planet or transported to Earth. The processed material can also be recycled for use and manufacturing on the celestial body itself, or to refuel space probes on deep space missions. Thus, the utility of celestial natural resources to mankind is obvious, but the algorithms of law and economics in regard to excavation, processing, transportation, and use in situ are not yet adequately clear for business viability and reasonable profits. This article discusses the prospects of space mining on celestial bodies in this context, focusing on the case of U.S. space laws.     

Why growth is not enough: Household poverty dynamics in Northeast Gujarat,India

Despite high growth rates in Gujarat, exceeding 9 per cent per year over the decade of the 1990s, poverty in 36 villages located in the northeastern part of this state has changed hardly at all. In these villages, 9.5 per cent of households escaped from poverty over the past 25 years, but 6.3 per cent of households became poor at the same time. Escape and descent are not symmetric: different reasons account for escaping poverty than those for declining into poverty. Growth alone is hardly sufficient to achieve poverty reduction on any significant scale. Public policies will be needed to address directly the separate causes for descent into poverty.     

Dynamics of latent fingerprints: The effect of physical factors on quality of ninhydrin developed prints — A preliminary study

The conditions under which latent fingerprints are deposited affect the process of development that can be used to effectively recover these marks. The conditions which can play a part include environmental conditions, the type of surface on which latents are deposited, the ability of the donor to deposit fingerprints, contact time, force of contact with the object etc. Very little previous work is available in the scientific literature addressing these conditions and therefore, an attempt has been made in this present study to assess the effect of some of these criteria and their effect on the ability of ninhydrin to develop the marks. Latent fingerprints from good and bad donors were obtained on paper with variable pressure under controlled conditions. Laboratory prepared 1% ninhydrin solution was used to visualise the prints.     

Threat-Inducing Violent Events Exacerbate Social Desirability Bias in Survey Responses

A key challenge in survey research is social desirability bias: respondents feel pressured to report acceptable attitudes and behaviors. Building on established findings, we argue that threat-inducing violent events are a heretofore unaccounted for driver of social desirability bias. We probe this argument by investigating whether fatal terror attacks lead respondents to overreport past electoral participation, a well-known and measurable result of social desirability bias. Using a cross-national analysis and natural and survey experiments, we show that fatal terror attacks generate turnout overreporting. This highlights that threat-inducing violent events induce social desirability, that researchers need to account for the timing of survey fieldwork vis-à-vis such events, and that some of the previously reported post-violent conflict increases in political participation may be more apparent than real.     

Vulnerability and resilience: critical reflexivity in gendered violence research

South Asian women are a focus area for organisations such as the UN, World Bank and WHO, where violence against women severely constrains policy instruments such as the Millennium Development Goals. The field researcher is often invisible in research space, which informs policy in practice. Through critical reflexivity we rupture the silence on researcher vulnerability, foregrounding researcher resilience as the ethical compass in the research space of gendered violence. Through narratives of researchers as development actors in the river of corrosiveness involved in acid violence research, we offer a typology for researcher resilience for consideration in research designs for policy development.     

中印关系中的美国因素

中国、美国和印度之间的三边关系近来比较引人注目。冷战期间三方中的两方经常联合起来反对第三方,中印在经历短期的友好以后,也曾相互开战,之后美国因素逐步变得重要。随着国际格局的演变,中国和印度都在积极与美国发展关系,同时中印之间的关系也在不断改善。当前在恐怖主义的共同威胁和全球化的推动下,过去那种对抗和遏制的模式将不会再现,三个国家将更加紧密地结合。尽管中印关系中的美国因素依然重要,但在现实中其作用正在降低。