Enjoy a Hawaiian Christmas At the Westin Beijing Chaoyang

正Mele Kalikimaka!In partnership with Hawaii Airlines,this upcoming season,the Westin Beijing Chaoyang will provide guests with an extravagant summer-themed yuletide celebration.With coconuts,palm trees and white sandy beaches galore—a Hawaiian heat wave is set to sweep Beijing this Christmas!The centerpiece of this amazing event—the Christmas Tree-Lighting Ceremony     

Premier Li Keqiang's U.K. Visit

正Chinese Premier Li Keqiang’s four-day trip to Britain in June is expected to energize the China-Britain comprehensive strategic partnership,which sees its 10th anniversary this year,and whose strategic,reciprocal and global signif icance continues to grow.The trip,Li’s f irst to Britain since taking off ice in March last year,marks another major diplomatic event between China and Europe following President Xi Jinping’s Europe tour in late March.During his visit the Chinese premier met with Queen Elizabeth II     

A closer look at risk factors for public-private partnerships in Singapore: six case studies

ABSTRACT

Despite its global popularity over the past few decades, the public-private partnership (PPP) has not always led to successful outcomes, due largely to a number of risk factors associated with the projects. To explain how and why PPPs sometimes fail, this study considers the success-failure continuum of Singapore’s recent PPP experience from 2000 to 2019. After taking a critical, close look at the six failed cases, we identify the following latent risk factors: unstable financial capacity during the execution period of a project, force majeure unforeseen problems that arise, a lack of technical and/or financial foresight, poor corporate management (e.g. delays in construction and poor-quality service delivery), and an unfavourable investment environment stemming from the lack of a clear and supportive governance framework. In addition, we find that most risk factors tend to appear during the contract management (pre-operation) and project management (operation) phases. Such risks seem to drive the operational failure and subsequent contract termination of multiple unsuccessful PPPs, simultaneously (and sometimes sequentially) rather than in isolated fashion. All in all, this study offers for policymakers that better risk allocation and proper, mutual coordination between the public and private partners represent essential factors for PPP success.     

Harnessing Market Competition in PPP Procurement: The Importance of Periodically Taking a Strategic View

Public‐Private Partnerships (PPP) procurement is routinely portrayed as offering greater scope for harnessing competitive market forces to secure Value for Money (VfM) than traditional procurement approaches ( OECD 2008 ). The aim of this article is (a) to demonstrate the importance of periodically taking a more systematic and strategic view when assessing VfM in PPP procurement ( OGC 2003 ), and (b) to develop an analytical framework for such an analysis. Road infrastructure procurement in South East Queensland is used as a case study to test the usefulness of the proposed framework, and to show how a narrow focus on individual contracts increases the risk of overlooking overdependence on one supplier ( OGC 2003 ). Discussion focuses on the need to combine detailed analysis of individual contracts with longitudinal analyses of market competitiveness when assessing best VfM.     

Public–private partnerships and developing‐country agriculture: Evidence from the international agricultural research system

This study examines the role of public–private partnerships (PPPs) in promoting pro‐poor productivity‐enhancing technological innovation in the international agricultural research system. The study examines the extent to which PPPs are being used to overcome market and institutional failures that otherwise inhibit the development and dissemination of technologies targeted specifically to small‐scale, resource‐poor farmers in developing countries. Drawing on a survey of 75 PPP projects in the international system, findings suggest that while PPPs are changing the way the system manages its research agenda, few partnerships lead to joint innovation processes with the private sector. This indicates the need for closer examination of organizational practices, cultures, and incentives in the international agricultural research system. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

俄罗斯工会改革的历史与现实：基于社会统合主义的分析

俄罗斯工会在苏联解体之后经历了由计划经济到市场经济的转变,最终形成了社会统合主义的 模式。本研究在梳理俄罗斯工会改革历史的基础上,根据统合主义理论分析了俄罗斯工会在与政府的关系、对 工人利益的代表性和自身行动能力 3 个方面的现实情况。研究认为,俄罗斯工会在改革初期复杂、动荡的政治 经济背景下所追求的自由主义模式受历史因素影响并不成功。改革的转机出现在统一俄罗斯党成立之后,俄罗 斯工会与政府关系迅速改善,并在执政党的同情和支持下提升了自身对工人利益的代表性和行动能力,特别是 运用法律武器的能力。但俄罗斯工会也面临着新就业形式和移民劳工增长的挑战,还需要进一步的改革以适应 劳动力市场的复杂变化。     

公私合作行为的行政法实证分析——以“治安承包”为中心考察

现代行政国家行政任务不断增加,行政机关为完成行政任务,不得不同私人部门合作,公私合作兴起。公私合作行为是弥补公私合作背景下传统行政行为形式的不足而孕育产生一种新型的行政行为,主要体现为行政契约和私法上的契约。通过“治安承包”这种典型的公私合作行为形式的行政法实证分析,以期达到考察公私合作行为的法律形式。     

Violence against women as conveyed by surveys – the Finnish case

The methodological choices made in a survey may partly shape the picture a survey conveys of partnership violence. This article considers some of the choices made in the Finnish survey on violence against women, such as the way the violence was defined and how the definition tried to take into account the special characteristics of this kind of violence, in order to help the respondents to identify and recall different events of it. The empirical analyses showed that the used definition of violence had not reached all the respondents representing different population groups. The experiences of partner violence among older, less educated women, and the experiences of those who felt embarrassed or ashamed to speak about issues concerning their partner or partnership, were more probably under-represented in the survey.     

The Democratization of Welfare Between Rhetoric and Reality: Local Planning,Participation, and Third Sector in Italy

The third sector, traditionally considered in the Italian welfare state as a residual actor of social policies, has increasingly engaged itself in various types of partnerships and collaborative planning processes with the local authority in recent years. In the rhetoric of welfare reform, third sector organizations play an important role, for they contribute to regenerating local democracy, stimulating communities, and fighting social exclusion. The article examines 12 local area plans, which have been realized in eight regions of Italy since 2000, by relying on empirical data and interviews. The article concludes that the so-called co-governance of local welfare can produce very different levels of democratization and improvement of social programs. In some areas, it may be that valorizing the third sector can effectively renew social policies, while in others the exact reverse may happen. The article offers an analysis of the main factors that influenced this result.     

Structurally Excluded? Structural Embeddedness and Civil Society Competition for Funding

ABSTRACT

The debate about the funding and support of civil society by government bodies has become a central and politicized issue in many countries. European states in particular have sought to make use of civil society to deliver key supra-national policy aims of addressing economic and social disadvantage, as well as delivering national and territorial outcomes. To this end European structural funding has been used at a regional level to develop and engage organizations and their beneficiaries. One of the key considerations in such activity is the ability of civil society organizations to engage with the funding available, and whether structural barriers exist that potentially prevent organizations with relevant expertise participating. In order to illustrate this, this article investigates how civil society organizations fared in gaining funds from the 2007–2013 European Social Fund (ESF) programmes in Wales, what, if any, barriers were found to exist in acquiring those funds and what this means for the sector in Wales in the context of future funding. The wider significance of this work is in revealing how the structural embeddedness of organizations plays a significant role in determining organizational success in gaining ESF funds, and how this contributes to a cleavage in the sector as a whole. Thus, this article concludes that it is organizations that are structurally embedded that will be most successful in gaining ESF funds, due to their organizational characteristics and their institutionalized relationships with, and receipts from, the state. Other organizations, conversely, are shown to become structurally excluded.