Lucrative Contracts Research Articles

(Mis)Governing World Football? Agency and (Non)Accountability in FIFA

Abstract —We identify the variables that have enabled the Fédération Internationale de Football Association (FIFA) to evade internal and external legal and juridical rules and processes, allowing it to prioritise the interests of its leaders and staff rather than its stakeholders. An interdisciplinary theoretical framework highlights the weaknesses of the legal systems, democratic processes, market mechanisms and regulatory regimes governing FIFA’s activities since its foundation. The historical processes transforming FIFA into a wealthy enterprise whose leaders could abuse their power with impunity are reviewed. An evaluation of the structural reforms introduced in 2016 following the exposure of FIFA corruption by US authorities in 2015 then shows how they have strengthened the internal and external rules and procedures enabling stakeholders to hold FIFA to account, whilst arguing that the reforms have not eliminated the leadership’s ability to ‘capture’ its democratic processes, exploit its monopolistic controls over lucrative contracts and evade regulatory controls.

‘A Fly in the Ointment’: Apartheid South Africa’s Transnational Nuclear Network during the Cold War, 1953–1976

ABSTRACT This article focuses on apartheid South Africa’s nuclear sector and the regime’s attempts to cooperate with overseas energy companies to provide financial investments and crucial technologies. It highlights the connectedness of the South Africans in the global nuclear marketplace and their ability to secure technical support from Western states during the Cold War between 1953 and 1976. The article analyses the parallel negotiations with French and German firms to engage with the regime in sharing of sensitive knowledge and bargaining lucrative contracts. Using newly discovered archival records it is shown that French-German competition was at a boiling point at least twice in the 1970s. Moreover, the regime in Pretoria managed to garner enough support in the nuclear field to further the growth of its domestic industry, ultimately being capable of enriching uranium and obtaining a turnkey nuclear power reactor. The white minority government in Pretoria however failed to position itself as an important uranium supplier on a global scale, because of sanctions targeting domestic racial apartheid policies and a more robust international non-proliferation regime towards the 1980s.

The Impact of Religion and Culture on Political Corruption in Akinyele Local Government Area of Oyo State: A Case Study of 2015 General Elections

This study examines the impact of religion and culture on political corruption in Akinyele Local Government Area of Oyo State in reference to 2015 general elections. Many local governments in Nigeria lack many developments, social amenities, health facilities, rural development and power supply due to the syndrome of corruption and autonomy independence to control their resources without the state interference due to that scenario, lack of accountability, lack of credible leadership, instability of political and socioeconomic development as take place. Culture and religion as influenced voting patterns of the electorate during the 2015 Presidential general elections. The impacts of corruption on the politics of the country include the crisis of legitimacy, lack of party ideology, weak political institutions; economic underdevelopment and political violence and the role of “Godfatherism” as initiated electoral corruption. Some power brokers with sufficient financial muscles sponsored their anointed godsons for political offices in return for lucrative contracts and spoils of the public treasury looting. They sponsored thugs, bribed the electoral stakeholders, and influenced voters through vote buying and all sorts of electoral manipulation to ensure that their candidates scale through and control power at all levels. The questionnaire and the structured questions formulated by the researchers were given to project supervisor, who criticized and that the instruments are validated, for they were seen measuring what were expected to measure. Findings revealed that a total number of 30 respondents represented (22.3%) candidate’s choice, 27 respondents represented (20.1%) election campaign, 23 respondents represented (17.1%) family background, while 54 respondents represented (40.2%) religious belief. This implies that majority of the respondents in this study agreed that religious belief is the means by which religion and culture influenced the voting pattern of Akinyele Local Government Area in the 2015 general elections. The study recommends that all candidates contesting for any political office must declare their assets publicly to avoid cases of corruption.

PARTICIPATION OF FOREIGN CONTRACTORS IN PUBLIC TENDERS BY PKP POLSKIE LINIE KOLEJOWE S.A. BETWEEN 2021 AND 2022

The participation of foreign contractors in public procurement is indicative of the openness of a given economic system to external competition. Operating networks that provide rail transportation services to public entities is subject to sector-specific regulations for public procurements. Construction works in the railway engineering segment represent lucrative contracts, and their outcomes hold strategic significance for society and the economy. PKP Polskie Linie Kolejowe S.A., the national operator of railway lines, is a key player in the sectoral public procurement market in Poland. Upon analysing the participation of foreign contractors in the above company’s tender proceedings, it becomes possible to identify the strategies utilised by economic entities from outside the public funds holder’s territory to apply for public procurement.

What Is a Girl Worth?: Gender-Based Violence and Accountability in SportsWorld

Despite having clear policies that address athlete misconduct, including gender-based violence, at the collegiate and professional levels, members of SportsWorld—athletes, coaches, and staff—are rarely, if ever, held accountable. And, even when they face a penalty, more than 80% are allowed to either remain on the team or transfer and continue playing. In this paper, we explore the impact of this lack of accountability, including the “positive” benefits to players that include the opportunity to play in national playoffs and secure lucrative contracts as well as the negative impacts on victims and communities, most disturbingly the impact of serial abusers like Larry Nassar whose unfettered access to athletes resulted in hundreds of victimized individuals.

Exploring the Functional and Semantic Fields of ‘Heaven’ and ‘Hell’ Conceptual Metaphors in Media News Headlines

The research aims to conduct a functional analysis of the opposing conceptual metaphors ‘heaven’ and ‘hell’ within English headlines from BBC and The Guardian news between 1999 and 2023. The relevance of this study lies in the need to explore the lexical meaning of fundamental theological terms based on the unreal cognitive constructs in the context of evolving social paradigms. Various research methods were employed, including continuous sampling, classification, thematic analysis, definition analysis, and semantic analysis.The findings indicate that the conceptual metaphor ‘hell’ possesses a broader semantic field compared to ‘heaven,’ both in terms of definition and function. Metaphorical usage is prevalent, but headlines also feature ‘heaven’ and ‘hell’ within idiomatic, emphatic, allusive, direct, zeugmatic phrases, and contaminations. These metaphors encompass thematic areas with polar connotational meanings:Hell: Politics (political instability, struggle, political figure replacement, anti-crisis measures), Social life (reforms, discrimination, limitations, mandatory expenses), Crimes (abuses, threats, harassment, assaults, victims), Nature (natural disasters, difficult conditions, environmental catastrophes), Sport (injuries, competition, psychological attacks, overcoming), Entertainment (poor quality service, bad habits, imbalance, disruptions), Travel (unforeseen circumstances, transport collapses), Culture (culture shock).Heaven: Politics (political decisions, electoral victories), Social life (festivals, feasts, family relations, relationships between generations), Crimes (controversy resolution, search for solutions), Nature (biodiversity, renewal of nature), Sport (victories, lucrative contracts, goal achievement), Entertainment (parties, bright performances, romanticism), Travel (pleasure, rest, nature), Culture (acquaintance with outstanding cultural objects, visiting cultural events).This research demonstrates that the dichotomous representation of the conceptual metaphors ‘heaven’ and ‘hell’ is marked by polyfunctionality, driven by the universal evaluative component inherent in their meaning, rooted in the implied polarization of the concepts ‘good’ and ‘bad.’ The emotional and moral dimensions contribute to heightened news perception and effective communication within media discourse.

Facilitators and barriers associated with youth player transition to professional first-team football: A key stakeholder perspective

The transition of elite youth footballers through academy systems towards the first team is highly complex, competitive, and often unsuccessful. A myriad of factors including technical competence, physical prowess, and the development environment combine to determine youth player progression. Current research has focused on broad investigations of multiple clubs and stakeholders, providing a valuable overview of the key aspects associated with elite youth player transition. This study aimed to provide an in-depth, context-specific investigation of key stakeholders within an elite level club in the United Kingdom (UK). Seven key stakeholders including the head of the academy ( n = 1), the head of sports science ( n = 1), coaches ( n = 3), and lead sports scientists ( n = 2) were recruited. Framework analysis led to the development of a practical framework outlining the key facilitators and barriers of youth-to-first-team transition. Facilitators of transition included overcoming adversity, high-level physical prowess, exceptional technical competence, and possessing at least one elite-level attribute. Barriers to transition included a lack of opportunity, lucrative youth player contracts and a lack of development-specific coaching. In addition, the developmental environment and developing individuals within a team environment were key influences on youth-to-first-team transition. This study complements recent broad investigations of the UK and global stakeholders by corroborating many of their findings while providing transferable, context-specific accounts of applied issues related to successful transition to first-team football.

Influence in the right-of-way: Assessing landowners’ risk decision-making in negotiating oil and gas pipeline easements

Pipeline rights-of-way (ROW) are the result of complicated easement negotiations between pipeline operators and landowners, where landowners must frequently weigh the financial benefits of lucrative contracts against the potential risk of living alongside oil and gas infrastructure projects. This study analyzes a survey of landowners both directly and proximally involved in a pipeline construction project to better understand their risk decision-making processes. We examine how landowners in a ROW understand risks across personal, property, and environment related risk domains, then compare these results to neighboring landowners. We additionally assess how landowners’ relationships to pipelines have changed due to direct positive and negative experiences with these projects. Findings suggest that landowners’ assembled knowledge of pipelines and resulting risk calculations are, in part, determined by personal exposure to pipeline development and negotiations with pipeline operators. We also find evidence of risk discounting in instances where landowners benefit from the pipeline project, or seek to justify their historical risk calculations. Results of the study reveal why landowners assume risks of proximity to pipelines. These findings can inform the practices of community interest groups engaging with landowners, as well as policymakers pursuing rulemaking to protect landowner interests.

Jobs and Punishment: Public Opinion on Leniency for White-Collar Crime.

Governments routinely offer deals to companies accused of white-collar crimes, allowing them to escape criminal charges in exchange for fines or penalties. This lets prosecutors avoid costly litigation and protects companies' right to bid on lucrative public contracts, which can reduce the likelihood of bankruptcies or layoffs. Striking deals with white-collar criminals can be risky for governments because it could affect the perceived legitimacy of the legal system. This article explores the conditions under which the general public supports leniency agreements. Building on theoretical intuitions from the literature, we identify three characteristics that could affect mass attitudes: home bias, economic incentives, and retribution. We conduct a survey experiment in the United States and find moderate support for leniency agreements. Whether the crime occurs on US soil or abroad does not affect public opinion, and the number of jobs that would be jeopardized by criminal prosecution only has a small effect. Instead, survey respondents become much more supportive of a deal when it includes criminal charges for the corporate managers who were personally involved in the alleged wrongdoing. In the court of public opinion, punishing a handful of individuals appears to matter more than saving thousands of jobs.

The political lives of ex-militant leaders in Nigeria’s Niger Delta

ABSTRACT This article analyzes the post-amnesty politics in Nigeria’s Niger Delta region. We argue that ex-militant leaders have risen to become influential political and economic actors since the implementation of the Post Amnesty Programme (PAP) for armed groups in the Niger Delta. Our argument suggests that the rise of ex-militant leaders as ‘new big men’ in the Niger Delta is a direct – yet unintended – outcome of the design and implementation of the PAP. We explain how ex-militant leaders were co-opted economically through the award of lucrative security contracts. Our findings show that ex-militants gained more power in their communities as they were given control over the access to the PAP programme. Ex-militant leaders subsequently used their positions of economic influence and power to become and remain influential political actors as well, thereby fundamentally changing politics at the community as well as state-level in the Niger Delta Region. This article also seeks to build on theories of neopatrimonialism, especially how patronage politics manifest in the context of peacebuilding in societies emerging from armed conflicts.

“Вы не должны […] негодовать на Веру”: Письма М.Н. Шульгиной С.С. Татищеву

In the period from autumn 1894 to spring 1896, while Vera Komissarzhevskaya was acting on the stage of the Vilna Theater (Nezlobin’s enterprise), her friendly relations with the high-ranking state dignitary, diplomat, and publicist Sergei Tatishchev began. Tatishchev offered to use his influence in theatrical circles to help Komissarzhevskaya sign a lucrative contract with the Alexandrinsky Imperial Theatre, where she aspired to act. Their correspondence, which lasted almost a year, reveals, on the one hand, Komissarzhevskaya’s determination to continue her theatrical career, and on the other, the complex personal history of her relationship with Tatishchev. Included in this article are letters to Tatishchev from Komissarzhevskaya’s mother Maria Shulgina, which give another point of view on the circumstances and fill in the gaps in the actress’s biography. Shulgina’s letters are published for the first time.

The Black Athlete in West Virginia: High School and College Sports from 1900 through the End of Segregation

As of 2021, West Virginia's two Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs), Bluefield State and West Virginia State, are the only two in the country that have a majority white student body. Both compete today in NCAA Division II intercollegiate sports and receive much less funding than the state's largest public colleges, Marshall University and West Virginia University. Despite such demographic and financial changes in the past fifty years of West Virginia higher education, there is a rich history of African American colleges and high schools in the state, and this is especially true for African American athletic achievement. For example, the Pittsburgh Courier voted Bluefield State in 1927 and 1928 and West Virginia State in 1936 as Black-college national co-champions in football, yet neither college enjoyed much athletic-program success following desegregation. The story of how these two colleges changed from national African American football powerhouses to majority-white universities is but one analyzed within The Black Athlete in West Virginia, but it is perhaps the central, most critical theme.In what is the work's strongest chapter, the authors trace how Bluefield State and West Virginia State became the first HBCUs in the United States to join a white-colleges-only athletic conference, in their case, the West Virginia Intercollegiate Athletic Conference (WVIAC). Both university presidents were strong believers in desegregation, and both initiated the process of joining WVIAC themselves within months of the Brown v. Board ruling. Within about six months, WVIAC college presidents met and approved both schools’ applications to join. Just like that, a West Virginia collegiate sport league was integrated, a relatively direct process that contrasts with the turmoil-filled integration stories present in chapters on Marshall and West Virginia University. But like so many civil rights stories, this simple narrative was not so cut and dry.Joining the WVIAC was celebrated among most in the two colleges, but some felt African American academic leadership betrayed Black athletes and that WVIAC membership was a step backward. First, the best African American teams from West Virginia colleges had a chance of being recognized as the national Black-college champion. This honor, typically determined by the votes of Black newspapers, was forfeited with WVIAC membership. Next, while desegregation was recognized by an overwhelming majority as a social good, the growing number of white students at each HBCU—especially Bluefield State—led to social conflict within a decade of joining the WVIAC. “While other campuses erupted in protests over the Vietnam War,” the authors write, “Bluefield's black students protested what they believed was a move by the state of West Virginia to make Bluefield State a white college and to erase its cultural heritage as a historically black college” (150). A bomb planted by an unknown perpetrator exploded in the campus physical education building in 1968. In response, the university closed its dormitories, effectively making the college a white commuter college (the surrounding county population was just 7 percent African American). Throughout all this, Bluefield State maintained a strong basketball culture largely comprised of out-of-state African American players, and social division grew.The only shortcoming in this well-researched book is that its title is a misnomer. It would have been better named “The Black Basketball and Football College Athlete in West Virginia.” Of the book's ten chapters, four are exclusively about basketball, and another four are more generally about school integration, with basketball and football serving as major cultural landmarks. Women's sports, high school sports, and other men's collegiate sports do receive an occasional mention, such as future US Olympic wrestler Bobby Douglas, but more of these examples would have provided greater depth. For instance, famed African American sportswriter Wendell Smith played baseball at West Virginia State College. Smith claimed that a white Major League scout told him that he would never be signed to a lucrative contract due to professional baseball's color barrier, at which point Smith promised himself to fight for baseball integration. He would go on to be a pivotal character in Jackie Robinson's story, which began for Smith on a baseball diamond just outside Charleston, West Virginia. Regardless, this is a strong contribution to sport history, to the history of school desegregation, and to West Virginia history. Anyone with interest in any of these topics should consider this work a top priority.

Discussion of Dhaliwal, Goodman, Hoffman, and Schwab (2019): Revisiting Tax-Related Reputational Costs

Discussion of Dhaliwal, Goodman, Hoffman, and Schwab (2019): Revisiting Tax-Related Reputational Costs

Don’t Look Down

Don’t Look Down

Manufacturing Advantage: War, the State, and the Origins of American Industry, 1776–1848

Manufacturing Advantage: War, the State, and the Origins of American Industry, 1776–1848

In-and-Out: How Fashion Journalists Write About Black NBA Dandies

The National Basketball Association (NBA), now flush with lucrative television contracts from its broadcast partners and an owner-friendly collective bargaining agreement, is as popular as ever. Besides athleticism only reserved for a small portion of humans and basketball plays that can only be made by not even most elite college players, what also keeps fans on the edge of their seats are the outfits worn by Russell Westbrook, James Harden, Lebron James and the many other fashionable players. Using what Bourdieu’s (1984) termed cultural intermediary in Distinction as a conceptual framework, this study will examine how 12 fashion journalists write about Black NBA dandies. According to Bourdieu (1984), cultural intermediaries are involved in the presentation and representation of cultural and symbolic goods and services, some of whom are salespeople, advertising executives, and interior designers. Cultural intermediaries serve as the link between production and consumption, giving the end consumer access to legitimate culture. As fashion journalists, these participants educate their readers on the latest in bespoke wear, haute couture clothing and Black style. The Black NBA body provides a medium for fashion journalists to highlight the exclusivity and democratic ideals of fashion because of the ways in which they peel off the layers of celebrity, position Black NBA dandies within a network of images, and create a dialectic tension between Black culture and a generic White culture.

Improvement classification of law terms through content-based learning

This research work is devoted to the features of the classification of legal terminology through content based learning. Including these legal services are necessary in professional activities. A high-quality written classifying terms through content based will be useful, for example, both for the owner of a judicial organizations who has concluded a lucrative contract abroad and for an ordinary foreman who wants to read a competent classification of instructions for legal documents.

The impact of economic sanctions on audit pricing

This study extends the literature on the association between business risk and audit pricing by exploring the economic sanctions of 2014 imposed by the Western community on Russia. The sanctions targeted predominantly Russian companies with state ownership, potentially leading to increased business risk for these companies. I find support for the notion that, post-2014, audit fees increased in the case of Russian state-owned companies. This evidence suggests that auditors passed on costs, arising from sanctions-driven increase in audit risk, to their clients. Further, the Russian government responded to sanctions by encouraging state-owned companies to terminate their audits conducted by auditing firms with foreign capital and/or foreign partnerships—Big 4 firms—meaning these firms were likely to lose their lion’s share of the Russian audit and consulting revenues. Nevertheless, I do not find evidence that Big 4 firms started to offer services at a discount to retain lucrative contracts with leading Russian companies. In contrast, the results indicate that Big 4 firms charged companies with state ownership higher fees for their audits, following the imposition of sanctions.

Two-tiered medicine: the increasing disparity in medical care in the UK.

One of the many impacts of the coronavirus pandemic has been on the already complex interplay between the NHS and the private sector. During the worst of the lockdown in March, significant government funding underpinned the finances of the main private providers in order to purchase additional capacity for treating public-sector patients. All of the funding for ‘NHS’ Test and Trace has gone into the private sector, preventing development of a sustainable legacy for COVID-19 testing capacity in the health service, and delivering lucrative contracts to Serco and Deloittes.1 Even now, after the NHS should be returning to business as usual, in some parts of the country it is possible only to access screening for malignancy through private referral, including for patients who fall into groups where regular monitoring is recommended owing to genetic risk or previous malignancy. From the letters that cross my desk, there is also an increase in private activity where patients are starting …

Framing First Contact: From Catlin to Russell by Kate Elliott

Reviewed by: Framing First Contact: From Catlin to Russell by Kate Elliott Ron Tyler Framing First Contact: From Catlin to Russell. By Kate Elliott. (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2020. Pp. 200. Illustrations, notes, bibliography, index.) During the nineteenth century, when artists and writers alike were debating and defining what it meant to be an American, artists combined landscape with history painting to offer seemingly direct but ultimately complicated and revealing comments on our national origins. Paintings of the spectacular American landscape reached a high point during these years, fostering belief in a pristine wilderness just waiting to be settled and made productive by European immigrants. In an effort to elaborate on one of the foundational themes of American history, a number of artists chose to depict the moment of “first contact” between Native Americans and Europeans. At the same time, the federal government encouraged these efforts with lucrative contracts for paintings to fill the vacant walls of the new capitol in Washington, D.C. In this context, Kate Elliott, associate professor of art history at Luther College in Decorah, Iowa, examines the first contact works of Robert Weir, George Catlin, Thomas Moran, Albert Bierstadt, and Charles M. Russell, reiterating that these images are “about Anglo-American attempts to define itself in contrast to the Other, not attempts to understand the Other” (15). Weir, who spent decades teaching landscape and topographical drawing at West Point, has one painting, Embarkation of the Pilgrims from Delft Haven, Holland, 22 July 1620 (1836–1843), in the U.S. Capitol rotunda and might have had another if a congressional committee had selected his depiction of Henry Hudson’s 1609 landing. Elliott describes Weir’s vacillation over Hudson’s first contact with the Lenape (Delaware) Indians, initially painting a scene of welcome and goodwill in 1835, but three years later, as thousands of Cherokee Indians were on the Trail of Tears to Indian Territory, he rendered it as a fraught and anxious encounter. The theme of a pristine wilderness at first contact persisted in Catlin’s La Salle series (now in the National Gallery of Art) as well as in the great landscapes of Bierstadt and Moran. Catlin painted a series of twenty-eight small pictures of La Salle’s explorations “in the wild days of the west,” focusing much more on the landscape than on La Salle (43). They were intended for the museum of French history that King Louis Philippe was [End Page 195] creating at Versailles, but they never reached him because a revolution had driven the monarch from the country. That might have saved Catlin the embarrassment of being rejected; surely the small, hastily done works would never have hung in the same gallery with the great history paintings by French artists like Horace Vernet. (In fact, when the La Salle series was on exhibit at the Amon Carter Museum in Fort Worth in 1970, a visitor asked me if the paintings were reproductions.) Elliott highlights Bierstadt and Moran’s famous scenes of untainted wilderness, which they elaborated upon to create first contact moments. Bierstadt was successful with his Discovery of the Hudson River (1874) and Settlement of California, Bay of Monterey, 1770 (1876), while Moran failed with his Ponce de Leon in Florida, 1513 (1878). Elliott suggests that the bitterness of the Civil War and Reconstruction and the rancor of sectional division were still too fresh to allow a painting of a southern scene to be placed in the capitol. Charles M. Russell brought a different perspective to first contact with his Lewis and Clark Meeting Indians at Ross’ Hole (1912) for the Montana state capitol. Despite the title, he pictured the event from the Indians’ point of view, with Lewis and Clark occupying only a small space on the right side of the nearly twelve-by-twenty-five-feet picture. This handsomely designed and illustrated volume is another fine production of the Charles M. Russell Center at the University of Oklahoma. Ron Tyler Amon Carter Museum of American Art (Retired) Copyright © 2021 The Texas State Historical Association