Multilateral Perspective Research Articles

What does populism mean for democracy? Populist practice, democracy and constitutionalism

ABSTRACT Over the last 30 years, scholarship has produced countless books, essays, and articles on populism by investigating it from various perspectives and angles. This article seeks to contribute to this ongoing debate by offering a political-philosophical reconstruction of populism to define such a phenomenon from a multilateral perspective. The essay will proceed as follows: The first section will investigate populism from a purely political-philosophical position, while the second will discuss the constitutional effects of such a phenomenon, to define it mainly as a form of anti-liberal and anti-judicial redefinition of democracy. Moreover, the first section will expose the dichotomy between the so-called left- and right-forms of the populist model and the populist threat to democracy, where the second will address populist constitutionalism and its antithetic relation to liberal constitutionalism. 1 1 This article is the result of a period of research spent at the CAS-SEE UNIRI – Center for Advanced Studies of the University of Rijeka, Croatia. I wish to thank the Institute and its members for the opportunity to develop this research. Part of this research has been presented at the doctoral seminar of the Doctoral School of History and Philosophical-Social Sciences, University of Rome Tor Vergata. I wish to thank my colleagues Alessandro Ferrara, Matteo Bianchin, Tonino Griffero, Claudia Gina Hassan as well as the doctoral students of our programme, for comments and suggestions.

Costs and Benefits of Regional Connectivity: An Analysis from Bangladesh Perspective

Aims: This paper aims to investigate the costs and benefits of regional connectivity in Bangladesh from the economic perspective through using the analytical tools of benefit-cost analysis.
 Study design: The study is conducted based on forecasted secondary data from different related published sources. A qualitative stakeholder survey is conducted to evaluate the intended impact of regional connectivity on the economy of Bangladesh.
 Methodology: The study uses qualitative research tools to assess the impact of bilateral or multilateral connectivity and uses the tools of benefits-costs analysis (NPV, BCR, and IRR) applied to evaluate the effectiveness of regional connectivity from bilateral and multilateral perspectives. Our key hypothesis is that ‘regional connectivity improves benefits’.
 Results: The study shows that Bangladesh can gain from connectivity. However, gains from regional connectivity, especially, bilateral connectivity is very sensitive to the changes in the variables particularly, transshipment charge, volume of transshipment, and cost of building physical infrastructure. With modest values of the parameters, we find that connectivity generates a positive net present value, if Bangladesh can charge rationally against the cost of building infrastructure. From the stakeholders’ point, connectivity is beneficial, particularly multilateral connectivity generates more net benefit than the bilateral connectivity. Besides, the economic costs, the security concern can play a big effect on the social cost of such connectivity. Meanwhile, grave concern is aired on incurring a huge project cost, if Bangladesh implements the project with a higher interest tide loan from India. Moreover, the imposition of congestion fees, water pollution, and traffic fees derive the benefit from transit facilities.
 Conclusion: The net gains from regional connectivity depend on trading patterns’ transshipment of goods, trade creation, and trade diversion among the partners through the connectivity process. Bangladesh needs to adopt gains-optimizing strategies for fixing the direct and indirect fees. Bangladesh should prioritize the silk-route connectivity more than the Asian Highway to attract FDI and sunset industry from China.

INDIA-AUSTRALIA TIES AND EMERGENCE OF THE QUAD: THE STRATEGIC COOPERATION IN THE INDO-PACIFIC REGION

The Indo-Pacific region has been witnessing an increasing level of strategic competition in recent years. This has led to the emergence of a new grouping known as Quad, which comprises the United States, Japan, India, and Australia. This article analyses the India-Australia ties and their role in the formation of Quad. It examines the drivers of strategic cooperation between the two countries, their evolving partnership, and the challenges and opportunities that they face in the Indo-Pacific region. On the other hand, Strategic cooperation between two countries is an essential aspect of contemporary bilateral relations. It is a manifestation of the need for mutual support and collaboration to achieve common objectives. This article also aims to analyse the drivers, challenges, and opportunities of strategic cooperation between two countries. It examines the factors that promote strategic cooperation, identifies the challenges that hamper it, and explores the opportunities for its enhancement. India-Australia ties in 21st century and the emergence of the Quad in contemporary geo-politics of the Indo-Pacific have changed dynamics of regional as well as global politics. The Quadrilateral Security Dialogue, is a strategic forum comprising four powers of the Indo-Pacific region. The emergence of QUAD in Indo-Pacific geopolitics has attracted significant attention from scholars and policymakers. This article also critically analyses the factors that have led to the emergence of QUAD, its strategic objectives, and its potential impact on the region's geopolitical landscape. Bilaterally, how PM Modi era has transformed India-Australia relationship from the ‘periphery’ of New Delhi’s ‘vision’ to ‘centre of thought’, through G20 and other regional and multilateral forums. Subsequently, the emergence of the Quad has been the game changer in the dynamics of bilateral as well as multilateral perspectives. Within Modi period, the relationship has been transformed completely at every level of engagements between India and Australia. This article also focuses on the drivers of this new changes in the relationship of both the countries, particularly strategic partnership and the challenges faced by the Modi era.

구독 기반 스트리밍 서비스의 지속적 사용 의도: 자의 및 구속 모델을 중심으로

With the rapid development of the digital era, the trend in consumption of digital products has undergone tremendous change in recent years to a subscription-based streaming service. The success of subscription-based streaming services depends heavily on customers’ continuance usage. Multilateral perspectives are also required as antecedents of continuance usage. In consideration of the distinctive features of these services, this study adopts the dedication-constraint framework and develops a model of subscription-based streaming service continuance, which is assessed empirically using data collected from 315 actual users of music streaming services. Results indicate that subscription-based streaming service’s continuance intention is jointly determined by two mechanisms: perceived benefits (usefulness and enjoyment), and service-specific investments (personalization and learning), with the former playing a more central role. Perceived usefulness and enjoyment directly promote satisfaction, while service-specific investments in personalization and learning increase switching costs. Theoretical and practical implications and future research directions are subsequently discussed.

사회혁신을 촉진하는 디자인 워크숍의 도구 개발 및 활용

Many cities are implementing projects such as urban regeneration or rural experience to address the problem of population decline in rural areas and small cities. In this study, a design workshop was held as part of the rural experience program in Mungyeong. The goal of this study was to investigate how facilitation tools can support participants' creativity, what role design workshops play in solving social problems, and whether facilitation tools can aid in the creation of new solutions. We held a workshop based on the design thinking process and used four different tools for each step of the process. The tools are called 'Ice Breaking', 'Myself Discovery', 'Sunflower Ideation', and 'Me and the City'. As a result, the tools enabled the participants to visualize and discover future directions for solving existing social problems. Secondly, the participants were able to open up and see new possibilities through a change of thinking, the formation of empathy with people from various backgrounds, and through the experience of multilateral perspectives from various people. Thirdly, the tools promote the self-reflection of the participants and affect their emotional development. In the design workshop, participants had initial difficulties approaching the design method but resolved it with the help of facilitators. In order to make design methods easily accessible, more research on design workshops and the use of facilitation tools is needed. This research is useful for understanding and improving the tools required to promote social innovation workshops, as well as for suggesting development directions for new tools.

Offshore FDI, tax havens, and productivity: A network analysis

AbstractResearch summaryMultinational enterprises (MNEs) use tax havens to benefit from international tax arbitrage and increase their capital efficiency. These activities are purported to distort global financial markets, erode national corporate tax bases, and are singularly targeted in the media. Despite this, MNEs continue to increase the dispersion of their tax haven activities by investing in multiple tax havens. We study how this dispersion affects home and host country productivity. We model the inward and outward offshore foreign direct investment (FDI) networks using longitudinal data on 212 countries. We find that increasing dispersion leads to productivity losses at home but productivity gains in the host country. Further, increasing the prominence of home and host countries in the offshore network, by connecting with central, well‐developed tax havens, improves their productivity.Managerial summaryIs offshore FDI routed through tax havens always unproductive to the MNEs' home and host countries? While governments attempt to contain such investments, MNE managers disperse them into multiple tax havens and continue benefitting from tax arbitrage. We show that all offshore FDI is not unproductive. As managers route their investments through multiple tax havens, their home countries may experience productivity losses, but the host countries receive productivity gains. Further, using central, well‐established tax havens bring productivity gains to both home and host countries. We thus show that MNEs' home countries need to reassess their offshore FDI policies since several of them also host these investments. Our paper extends a multilateral perspective on offshore FDI and possible benefits attainable, particularly from central tax havens.

FDI and Tax haven: A network analysis of productivity effects

Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) often use tax havens to benefit from the tax arbitrage opportunities. However, these activities distort the global financial markets and erode national corporate tax bases. These outcomes may adversely impact the level of economic activity and the productivity of the MNEs' home countries. More recently, MNEs have been increasing the dispersion of their tax haven activities to either obscure their tax arbitrage activities or because other tax havens offer different risks/opportunities. However, the home-host bilateral view used to examine the impact of tax havens assumes all such ties are homogenous and fails to capture the effect of this dispersion. By adopting a multilateral perspective and using longitudinal data of over 200 UN member countries between 2001-2012, we capture the differential impact of increasing centrality and prominence of the home country and host country in the offshore OFDI and IFDI network. We argue that increasing the centrality of the host country increases the financial efficiency of its MNEs and positively impacts its productivity. However, such activities appear motivated by capital gains rather than knowledge generation. In contrast, since MNEs use tax havens to park funds and minimize taxes, increasing the centrality of the home country negatively impacts its productivity. Moreover, we find that controlling for financial development attenuates the capital efficiency gains for both home and host country from their ties to tax havens and turns the relationship between ties to tax havens and productivity of home and host country unambiguously negative. We find support for these arguments.

Two faces of the same coin: Exploring the multilateral perspective of informality in relation to Sustainable Development Goals based on bibliometric analysis

The study aims to investigate the research field of informality from a dual perspective—unilateral versus multilateral—in relation to Sustainable Development Goals. It highlights the dynamics of the literature and potential future research directions through mapping that enables the investigation of scientific knowledge. To elaborate the temporal development of the informality research field in terms of publications, we extract articles from Web of Science published between 1978–2021. We investigate more than 5000 documents, focusing on author, keyword, paper, journal, and topic analysis. The empirical findings emphasise the conceptual structure from the unilateral perspective, with clusters focusing on informality, urban informality, and sustainable development. Moreover, the informal economy, informality and entrepreneurship, tax evasion, tax morale and tax compliance, the shadow economy, the informal sector, and corruption are clusters from the multilateral perspective. According to the intellectual structure of the field, A. Roy is the most representative author for the subarea of informality and Sustainable Development Goals, with articles mostly related to urban informality and cities. F. Schneider, K. Gerxhani, R. LaPorta, B. Torgler, J. Alm, A. Sandmo, C. Williams, H. De Soto, and R. Dell’Anno are the most representative reference authors for the entire spectrum of informality. Finally, World Development, Geoforum, Environment and Urbanisation , Urban Studies, Habitat International, American Economic Review, Journal of Economic Literature, and Journal of Public Economy are the most prolific journals in the field of informality.

The Development of Jamrani Multipurpose Project in India from a multilateral development bank perspective

The State of Uttarakhand in India has been studying the Jamrani Multipurpose Project in the last 40 years. The government’s feasibility study has been completed and all statutory clearances were obtained. It comprises the construction of a 150-meter-high roller compacted concrete dam across the Gola River, a 14-megawatt toe powerhouse, the expansion and modernization of irrigation canal systems and a drinking water component. The project benefits will include 117 million liters per day drinking water for Haldwani Town, increased water availability for 150,000 ha cultivable command area and annual energy generation of 63 gigawatt-hour as a byproduct. The project is estimated to cost $365 million and was proposed in 2019 for the Asian Development Bank’s financial assistance. A memorandum of understanding was signed in 2018 between the states of Uttarakhand and Uttar Pradesh, defining how the cost and benefits will be shared. The paper will discuss the ADB project appraisal process and describe the steps being taken to confirm and enhance the project economic feasibility, improve the mitigation of environmental and social impacts and review and confirm the technical studies.

MULTILATERAL VIEW OF SHOAH EVENTS THROUGH LITERARY TEXTS

The paper presents the potential of literary texts with the theme of Shoah in the field of forming the desired profile of citizens of a democratic society. After the introduction, we briefly focus on the anchoring of the Shoah in Czech curricular documents focusing on the educational field of Czech Language and Literature, then we deal with the possibilities of Literary Education in the presentation of Shoah events and then the importance of multilateral perspective on the Shoah and its educational and axiological potential. We demonstrate various multilateral views on the issue of the Shoah with artistic narratives in which one line of events of the Second World War is viewed from another or from different angles.

Cross-Societal Analysis of Climate Change Awareness and Its Relation to SDG 13: A Knowledge Synthesis from Text Mining

The awareness and the engagement of various stakeholders play a crucial role in the successful implementation of climate policy and Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). SDG 13, which refers to climate action, has three targets for combating climate change and its impact. Among the three targets, SDG 13.3 aims to “improve education, awareness-raising and human and institutional capacity on climate change mitigation, adaptation, impact reduction, and early warning”. This target should be implemented based on the understanding of climate change awareness among various groups of societies. Furthermore, the indicator related to awareness-raising is absent in SDG 13.3. Hence, this study aims to explore the differences in climate change awareness among various social groups within a country from a text mining technique. By collecting and analyzing a large volume of text data from various sources, climate change awareness was investigated from a multilateral perspective. Two text analyses were utilized for this purpose: Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) topic modeling and term co-occurrence network analysis. In order to integrate and comparatively analyze the awareness differences among diverse groups, extracted topics were compared by classifying them into four indicators derived from the detailed targets in SDG 13.3: mitigation, adaptation, impact reduction, and early warning. The results show that the Korean public exhibited a relatively high awareness of early warning compared to the other four groups, and the media dealt with climate change issues with the widest perspective. The Korean government and academia notably had a high awareness of both climate change mitigation and adaptation. In addition, corporations based in Korea were observed to have substantially focused awareness on climate change mitigation for greenhouse gas reduction. This research successfully explored the disproportion and lack of climate change awareness formed in different societies of public, social, government, industry, and academic groups. Consequently, these results could be utilized as a decision criterion for society-tailored policy formulation and promoting climate action. Our results suggest that this methodology could be utilized as a new SDG indicator and to measure the differences in awareness.

Traditional Mexican Cuisine: Heritage Implications for Food Tourism Promotion

This article analyzes how UNESCO's intangible human heritage designation has led to traditional Mexican cuisine being turned into a resource for gastronomic tourism, showing how the State has commodified traditional culinary knowledge for the promotion of tourism. This promotion includes an official discourse that has been appropriated by traditional women cooks, who use these promotional events to build new culinary canons. This article enables a discussion of how traditional Mexican cuisine has become part of a global logic, and how its designation as intangible heritage articulates tension, discussion, and negotiation among food tourism industry stakeholders. Findings show a multilateral perspective of the consequences of a cultural event becoming a tourist resource, as well as its conceptualization and transformation in the framework of today's global context, which requires a more flexible approach to provide definitions.

The double value of customer interactivity: the mediation effect of knowledge exchange quality

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationship between customer interactivity and the value it realizes for employees and customers, that is, employee creativity and customer-perceived economic value, and to test the mediation role of knowledge exchange quality in this relationship.Design/methodology/approachA cross-sectional empirical study using pairing data collected from the employees and customers of a high-contact service industry is designed to test the research model. Customers and employees in 75 hotels in China are surveyed. Equation model analysis is performed with SPSS and Amos.FindingsCustomer interactivity has a positive effect on the employee creativity and customer-perceived economic value, and the quality of knowledge exchange mediates the two processes.Practical implicationsThe findings provide suggestions for managers to take action to promote interactions between customers and employees and to encourage them to actively participate in the value creation process. Additionally, enterprises can establish a knowledge integration mechanism to improve the quality of knowledge exchange.Originality/valueThis study explores the value of interaction from the perspective of both sides of the interaction, enriching and expanding the theory of interaction. Few studies simultaneously consider the value of both parties in the interaction process. From a two-way perspective, this study extends the past unilateral angle to a multilateral perspective and clearly explains the mechanism behind continuous interaction. This study finds the key mediator variable – knowledge exchange quality – in how customer–employee interactions achieve value. It theoretically enriches the research on the interaction-value mechanism from the perspective of knowledge management.

Endoscopic Therapy for Acute Diverticular Bleeding.

Diverticular bleeding accounts for approximately 26%–40% of the cases of lower gastrointestinal bleeding. Rupture of the vasa recta at the neck or dome of the diverticula can be the cause of this bleeding. Colonoscopy aids in not only the diagnosis but also the treatment of diverticular bleeding after a steady bowel preparation. Endoscopic hemostasis involves several methods, such as injection/thermal contact therapy, clipping, endoscopic band ligation (EBL), hemostatic powder, and over-the-scope clips. Each endoscopic method can provide a secure initial hemostasis. With regard to the clinical outcomes after an endoscopic treatment, the methods reportedly have no significant differences in the initial hemostasis and early recurring bleeding; however, EBL might prevent the need for transcatheter arterial embolization or surgery. In contrast, the long-term outcomes of the endoscopic treatments, such as a late bleeding and recurrent bleeding at 1 and 2 years, are not well known for diverticular bleeding. With regard to a cure for diverticular bleeding, there should be an improvement in both the endoscopic methods and the multilateral perspectives, such as diet, medicines, interventional approaches, and surgery.

Impact of multilateral place dimensions on corporate brand attractiveness and identification in higher education: Business school insights

This study scrutinizes how places meaningfully burnish corporate brand attractiveness and identification. To date, extant research adopts a mono-lateral, rather than multi-lateral perspective. Marshalling the corporate brand identification theoretical perspective, the findings make a theoretical advance by explicating how a nascent corporate brand can be enhanced through its positive associations with places. The research setting for this study was a newly-established business school and the research focused on international postgraduate students who are a key business school constituency. In this study, the tripartite place associations which meaningfully enhanced customer corporate brand attractiveness and identification were found to be country, city, and corporate locale.

A multilateral perspective towards blood network design in an uncertain environment: Methodology and implementation

Motivated by a real-life case study, this paper proposes a multilateral perspective for blood supply chain network design as an intricate decision-making problem. The proposed approach utilizes a novel multi-objective mathematical model by incorporating both quantitative and qualitative factors to comprehensively model the investigated case study. In the proposed model, the quantitative factors aim to minimize the loss of product freshness and total cost of the network. Moreover, the number of collection facilities, which are capable of collecting blood, are maximized through a formulation based upon qualitative criteria. Moreover, to cope with the uncertainty, a robust optimization approach is utilized, and an interactive fuzzy solution approach is applied to solve the proposed multi-objective model. The computational results demonstrate the capability of the proposed model in designing the blood supply chain network in practice. Moreover, some sensitivity analyses are conducted to show the findings observed in a real case study. The results show that the decision makers should be aware of quality-based requirements, because of significant impact on blood facility location, besides the cost-oriented consideration. Moreover, concerning of uncertainty, the results obtained from the robust approach outweigh those of the deterministic one. Finally, based on the finding, helpful managerial insights are provided for the decision makers in the blood supply chain network design.

Emerging countries’ dilemmas in multilateral frameworks: the case of the Japanese “miracle”

PurposeRegardless of economic interdependence, there is possibility that two countries occasionally have severe international stress. This is especially true between rising and ruling countries, which is referred to as “Thucydides’s Trap.” In order to analyze how a rising country can manage its growing presence in the world, the purpose of this paper is to examine the case of Japan as a rising power in the past.Design/methodology/approachThere seem to be similarities between the “Japan problem” and the “China problem” such as the economic ascendance of a rising country and the failures of American leadership in spite of different time periods. Thus, analyzing Japan’s experience in the past can help understand how the growing international presence of a rising country can be managed.FindingsWhen Japan created international economic policies, it aimed for the following three effects: for its trade liberalization to reduce western countries’ restrictions on its export products, for its economic assistance to contribute to developing countries’ stabilization and for its trade liberalization and its economic assistance to contribute to promoting its international trade and upgrading its international status. To accommodate an emerging country into the international system smoothly, not only the country itself but also others require comprehensive measures while considering policy interactions.Originality/valueMost previous studies that analyze the relationship between a rising and a ruling country examine conflicts between the two parties from a bilateral perspective. However, since the conflicts do not only involve the two countries, but also other countries in the world, it is important to consider how the two countries and other affected countries manage the growing presence of a rising power. Therefore, this paper aims to analyze how an emerging country integrates itself into the existing international system from a multilateral perspective based on the case of Japan.

Literature: The Archipelago Perspective

Abstract The history of the notion “continent” teaches us the relativity of geographical divisions. Let's consider the connotations of continent: holding together different lands presumes a continuity between them, and thus a similar content (continent, continuity, content). So, thinking about literature in term of space, and especially in the shape of a continent, leads one to question its status and its role. “Thinking literature across continents” implies crossing borders but we must question the meaning of passing through borders. What passes is, in itself, meaningless: it is the movement of passing, the transition itself, that gives meaning to what passes. Every voice, in every language, opens up one of these transitions. But a transition from one continent to another cannot be thought of as a translation that preserves a continuity of sense. What is forgotten in this map of multiple continents? The oceans, the seas, the islands, the peninsulas, the archipelagos. Today a multilateral perspective implies an “archipelagic paradigm” that highlights the ties between isolated territories, far from any continental identity. From this new perspective, let us think about what we could call the “discontinent.”

O acordo da OMC sobre tecnologia da informação (ITA) e sua expansão (ITA II): multilateralização do regionalismo

Tendo em vista o contexto da relação entre o multilateralismo e o regionalismo, a celebração de acordos plurilaterais no âmbito da Organização Mundial do Comércio, abertos à participação dos membros interessados, oferece uma perspectiva de multilateralização do regionalismo, na qual os benefícios dos consensos parciais podem ser estendidos à esfera multilateral. O ITA (Information Technology Agreement) – Acordo sobre Tecnologia da Informação é citado como exemplo desta possibilidade, e sua expansão, por meio da criação do ITA II, demonstra o fortalecimento desta tendência de multilateralização do regionalismo, embora com características especiais. Assim, o artigo se desenvolve buscando contextualizar e introduzir a temática do regionalismo e do multilateralismo, para em seguida apresentar a teoria da multilateralização do regionalismo e o ITA como uma dessas experiências, e a sua recente expansão como uma retomada da relevância de tal teoria. Diante dos impasses para conclusão da Rodada de Doha, a expansão desses consensos parciais e a continuidade das negociações na Organização Mundial do Comércio por meio da celebração de acordos plurilaterais setoriais tem se apresentado como uma possível saída, o que demanda uma rearquitetura da interpretação do papel da OMC na governança econômica global.

A Study on Legal Character and Conclusion Process of Inter-Korean Unification Agreement

Both Constitutions of South and North Korea stipulate for peaceful reunification of the Korean peninsula. Although it is really difficult to know exactly the way and time of the unification between the South and the North, one thing clearer is that a bilateral agreement between the two Koreas is absolutely necessary in order to achieve that long-awaited national goal. In this respect, this paper deals with some basic and procedural matters of the “Inter-Korean Unification Agreement”, especially from the perspective of international law. Prior to entering main arguments, this paper initially review the multiple legal status of North Korea, from domestic, bilateral and multilateral perspectives respectively. Second, this paper looks into the legal character of the Unification Agreement. Although some South Korean earlier case-law concluded that the 1991 Inter-Koran Basic Agreement was just a gentlemen’s agreement, not a treaty that has a binding force to its parties, the prospective Unification Agreement should be treated differently, considering following practices based on the 2005 Development of Inter-Korean Relations Act and also considering unification policy and strategy. To secure the binding force and its implementation, various domestic and international legal procedures need to be adopted, including registering the Agreement as a treaty at the United Nations.