Diverse Policy Research Articles

Understanding Ethiopia’s Maritime Deal with Somaliland Through Abiy Ahmed’s Foreign Policy

This paper examines Ethiopia’s maritime deal with the de facto state of Somaliland in line with Abiy Ahmed’s foreign policy. A qualitative approach was employed, and secondary data sources obtained from the literature, such as books, journal articles, government and international organisation reports, newsletters, and other credible internet sources, were analysed through qualitative data analysis techniques. The study's findings can be summarised as follows: The study postulates that Ethiopia’s port deal with Somaliland raises regional tension in the Horn of Africa, a region often known for conflict and persistent instability. The deal also draws the contending interest of external forces. Turkey becomes the guardian of Somalia’s coastline, the UAE supports Ethiopia’s agreement with Somaliland, and Egypt provides direct military support to Somalia for the first time in four decades. This development contributes to the escalation of diplomatic strife between Ethiopia and Somalia and regional tensions. The study also examines Ethiopia’s post-2018 foreign policy since Abiy Ahmed took office. It underlines that Ethiopia remains without a clear foreign policy despite Abiy Ahmed’s attempt in his early tenure to revise the 2002 Foreign Affairs and National Security Policy and Strategy. The study asserts that the country’s foreign policy is significantly influenced by Abiy Ahmed’s highly personalised diplomacy and foreign relations that often bypass institutional approaches. In an assertion, the Ethiopian government was working to use multiple ports, including in Sudan, Eritrea, and Somalia, through port diversification policy. However, all the previous port diversification attempts were abandoned without a clear justification. In exchange, Abiy Ahmed signed a direct sea access maritime deal with Somaliland to recognise Somalia’s breakaway region. This development resulted in a suspicious attitude among Ethiopia’s neighbours, notably Eritrea and Somalia, who initiated a new tripartite bloc with Egypt. This has the potential to isolate Ethiopia in the Horn of Africa diplomatically

Research Gaps and Priorities in Hispanic/Latine Cognitive Aging and Health

The 2024 International Conference on Aging in the Americas (ICAA) explored cognitive aging, health policy, environmental factors, and migration among Hispanic/Latine populations. The event aimed to identify social disparities, institutional roles in dementia care, and financial support mechanisms for caregivers. A redesigned consensus-building approach using Mentimeter enabled quicker, real-time feedback across four panels: (1) Cognitive Aging, (2) Health Policy Reform, (3) Aging and the Environment, and (4) Aging, Migration, and Health. Key outcomes highlighted gaps in research, such as the need for longitudinal, culturally diverse datasets and policies that mitigate healthcare and environmental disparities. Participants prioritized early detection of age-related conditions, non-pharmacological treatments, and support for caregivers. Findings advocate for integrative research, improved data linkages, and policy reforms to address disparities in healthcare access and quality of life among older adults across the Americas.

Transforming Governance: A Systematic Review of AI Applications in Policymaking

This systematic literature review examines the transformative applications of artificial intelligence (AI) in policymaking, exploring its potential to enhance decision-making, public engagement, and governance effectiveness. Employing a rigorous research methodology, this review analyzed scholarly articles from Scopus, Web of Science, and PubMed databases using the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) framework, ensuring methodological transparency and reproducibility. The final dataset of 22 articles was synthesized into four key themes: (i) AI in policy development and implementation, which focuses on data-driven decision support in policy formulation; (ii) AI in public administration and governance, highlighting AI’s role in improving public sector efficiency and resilience; (iii) ethical and regulatory aspects of AI in policymaking, which addresses critical issues like transparency, privacy, and bias; and (iv) applications of AI in specific policy domains, encompassing areas such as public health, environmental sustainability, and education. Findings indicate that AI can support evidence-based policymaking by facilitating real-time data analysis, scenario modeling, and enhanced public participation. However, challenges persist, particularly concerning ethical considerations, algorithmic accountability, and regulatory frameworks that ensure AI is implemented responsibly and equitably. This review underscores the need for interdisciplinary collaboration, ethical standards, and robust governance frameworks to address these challenges and maximize AI’s benefits in policy development and implementation. The synthesis of insights from diverse policy contexts provides a foundation for future research, encouraging exploration of responsible AI integration in policymaking to advance public trust, accountability, and policy effectiveness).

Diversifying Policies With Non-Markov Dispersion to Expand the Solution Space.

Policy diversity, encompassing the variety of policies an agent can adopt, enhances reinforcement learning (RL) success by fostering more robust, adaptable, and innovative problem-solving in the environment. The environment in which standard RL operates is usually modeled with a Markov Decision Process (MDP) as the theoretical foundation. However, in many real-world scenarios, the rewards depend on an agent's history of states and actions leading to a non-MDP. Under the premise of policy diffusion initialization, non-MDPs may have unstructured expanding solution space due to varying historical information and temporal dependencies. This results in solutions having non-equivalent closed forms in non-MDPs. In this paper, deriving diverse solutions for non-MDPs requires policies to break through the boundaries of the current solution space through gradual dispersion. The goal is to expand the solution space, thereby obtaining more diverse policies. Specifically, we first model the sequences of states and actions by a transformer-based method to learn policy embeddings for dispersion in the solution space, since the transformer has advantages in handling sequential data and capturing long-range dependencies for non-MDP. Then, we stack the policy embeddings to construct a dispersion matrix as the policy diversity measure to induce the policy dispersion in the solution space and obtain a set of diverse policies. Finally, we prove that if the dispersion matrix is positive definite, the dispersed embeddings can effectively enlarge the disagreements across policies, yielding a diverse expression for the original policy embedding distribution. Experimental results of both non-MDP and MDP environments show that this dispersion scheme can obtain more expressive diverse policies via expanding the solution space, showing more robust performance than the recent learning baselines.

Unveiling the Merdeka Curriculum in Indonesia: Insights from Educators and Policymakers on Its Effectiveness and Implications

This study aims to explore the effectiveness of the recently introduced Merdeka Curriculum in Indonesia, particularly the perspectives of educators and policymakers regarding its effectiveness, implications, implementation, and success. Semi-structured interviews are conducted with educators from primary to higher education institutions across diverse regions and policy makers from various government bodies, selected through purposive sampling. The results reveal that the implementation and success of the curriculum include aspects such as the internalization of Pancasila values among students, contextual learning, changes in student mindset, increased parental involvement, focus on character strengthening, and active learning. Additionally, the research offers practical recommendations for policymakers, educators, and stakeholders to optimize the curriculum's implementation, making it a valuable resource for future studies on educational innovation in similar socio-cultural settings.

Asymmetric Impact of Carbon Emission, Oil Price Shocks on Economic Growth in Nigeria (1981 – 2022)

The study examines the asymmetric impact of carbon emissions and oil prices on economic growth in Nigeria. The research is conducted using annual time series data running from 1986 to 2019. The study employs Nonlinear autoregressive distributed lag models (NARDL) as the estimation technique. The variables used in the analysis were Gross Domestic Product (GDP), Carbon Emission (CO2), and Oil Price (OP). The NARDL result shows that carbon emission has a negative and significant impact on economic growth in the long run and the oil price has a positive and significant impact on economic growth in both the short-run and long-run. Based on the empirical outcomes of the result obtained, the following recommendations were offered: The implementation of an economic diversification policy from oil reliance towards dependence on other sustainable energy types (renewable energy resources) should be sustained and strengthened especially. The private sector should also tap into the opportunities that are available in the oil sector, such as the decarbonization programme in order to reduce carbon emissions from fossil fuels.

Unveiling Discriminatory Structures Against Social Minorities: An Examination of Some Governmental Structures of Discrimination and Abatement in the United States

This paper examines the enduring structures that sustain discrimination in the US. It analyzes historical precedents, contemporary practices, and efforts toward its elimination. It begins by exploring legislative frameworks and highlights how policies such as the War on Drugs and immigration acts have disproportionately negatively targeted marginalized populations. It discusses how administrative practices, including law enforcement tactics and implicit bias, perpetuate differentially unequal treatment of people by categories within the criminal justice system. The study discusses how judicial precedents, notably the Supreme Court decisions, have also reinforced discriminatory structures, and how interpretations of civil rights laws have shaped policies affecting marginalized populations. Despite formal structures to combat it, persistent bias, institutionalized barriers, and power dynamics perpetuate discrimination. Lastly, the study examines how efforts towards the elimination of discriminatory structures have included legislative reforms aimed at addressing systemic disparities, affirmative action programs, and diversity and inclusion policies. The understanding of the intersectionality of multiple factors of discrimination is analyzed to be crucial in understanding the complexities of discrimination, as individuals experience multiple layers of oppression based on intersecting social identities.

Investigating the Impact of Innovation Policies and Innovation Environment on Regional Innovation Capacity in China

Regional technological innovation serves as a key pillar for achieving high-level self-reliance and self-strengthening, a fundamental requirement for promoting balanced regional development, and a vital aspect of implementing the innovation-driven development strategy. We examine the impact of innovation policies on corporate innovation activities and the importance of the innovation environment in enhancing innovation capacity. By analyzing the implementation of innovation policies in three provinces in Central China from 2018 to 2022, this study introduces two indicators—policy intensity and policy volume—to assess the level of government policy support. The findings are as follows: First, local government innovation policies exert a significant positive impact on corporate innovation activities, with particularly strong effects observed in the implementation of R&D subsidies. Second, the implementation of regional innovation policies enhances regional innovation capacity by promoting increased R&D investment by firms. Third, the innovation environment moderates the influence of regional innovation policies on corporate R&D investment, amplifying the effect of R&D investment on regional innovation capacity. In summary, when formulating innovation policies, governments should consider the unique needs of different industries, regions, and enterprises, adopting flexible and diverse policy measures to optimize the innovation environment and accelerate the nation’s technological innovation development.

“Sometimes It’s Hard to Do the Right Thing”: The Gender-Inclusivity Leadership Spectrum of How PK–12 Administrators Understand Gender Diversity Laws, Policies, and Implementation

“Sometimes It’s Hard to Do the Right Thing”: The Gender-Inclusivity Leadership Spectrum of How PK–12 Administrators Understand Gender Diversity Laws, Policies, and Implementation

Do vulnerable social identities of faculty matter when predicting their inclusive practices at university?

Some qualitative studies have shown that faculty and chief diversity officers belonging to minority groups are firmly committed to advancing diversity, equity and inclusion in their universities. This suggests that identification with minority groups could be linked to the inclusive attitudes and practices of higher education professionals, an expectation that is consistent with the predictions of the Social Identity Theory proposed by Henri Tajfel and John Turner. Within the framework of this theoretical model, the quantitative study presented here was designed to test whether the vulnerable social identities of university teachers predict their diversity practices, if they do so through their beliefs and attitudes towards diversity, and whether certain sociodemographic variables act as moderators (gender and job tenure). With a survey-based design, we collected data from 972 faculty members from eight Spanish public universities, which we analysed using linear regression, structural equation analysis and moderation analysis. The results showed that lecturers’ affiliation to vulnerable groups significantly but weakly predicted their attitudes towards diversity and inclusive practices. The effect on practices was partially mediated by attitudes. In addition, the direct effect of social identity on inclusive research and teaching innovation was moderated by gender – it was only significant in women. In the discussion section, we interpret the weakness of the effect of social identity in terms of the possible limited commitment to minority group identities of university faculty, concurrent with fundamentally non-threatening contextual norms. As an application of the results, we propose the development of more solid and transformative diversity policies, clear and operational rules, convergent and coordinated management mechanisms, and training aimed at strengthening and integrating social and professional identities.

Beyond Numbers: Challenges in Measuring SDG4 Targets—Serbia’s Perspective

Achieving the targets and indicators outlined in Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG 4) presents significant global challenges, particularly in countries like Serbia, where diverse socio-economic contexts and policy planning shape educational outcomes. SDG4 focuses on providing inclusive and fair access to quality education for everyone and encourages lifelong learning opportunities for people of all ages. It comprises ten specific targets. This paper focuses on the complexities and challenges associated with measuring five of these targets, which were not analyzed in Serbia’s official report on SDGs. By using Serbia as a case study, the paper systematically examines national policies, educational data, and assessment frameworks, identifying persistent barriers that impede progress toward the SDG4 objectives. A comparative analysis was conducted to better understand Serbia’s progress in achieving these targets. This analysis compares Serbia’s performance with that of neighboring countries in the region as well as with more developed nations. Methodological limitations in data collection and monitoring further complicate efforts to accurately assess SDG 4 indicators. Through specific examples of non-measurable indicators, the paper illustrates these challenges and explores potential strategies for improving measurement accuracy and policy effectiveness. By evaluating Serbia’s experience, this study offers insights that are valuable for finding ways to start measuring targets that currently lack data, considering the close deadline for achieving the goals.

Altitudes and Attitudes: Women’s Roles and Challenges in the Global Aviation Industry

This study explored the experiences and challenges faced by women in the aviation industry, aiming to shed light on gender dynamics and identify opportunities for promoting greater inclusivity. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with five female informants working in various aspects of the aviation sector. Thematic analysis was employed to analyze the data, revealing both positive experiences of inclusivity and ongoing challenges related to gender stereotypes, workplace biases, and work-life balance. The study highlighted the importance of mentorship and role models in supporting women's advancement, while also emphasizing the need for comprehensive diversity policies, leadership development programs, and inclusive workplace cultures. Recommendations were provided for industry leaders, women aviators, female students, and future researchers to address these challenges and foster a more equitable and supportive environment for women in aviation.

Measuring influencing factors affecting mortality rates during the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT Background The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed clear deficiencies in global public health policies and healthcare systems when confronted with the emergence of a novel and deadly infectious disease. Objectives With 4 years elapsed since the onset of the pandemic, ample data now exist to analyse the associations between the implementation of diverse public health policies, sociodemographic factors and COVID-19 mortality rates. Methods This study utilised the dataset compiled by ‘Our World in Data’ spanning the period of the COVID-19 pandemic from 2020 to 2022. Stochastic frontier analysis was employed to assess the influencing factors and their relationship with mortality rates resulting from COVID-19 infections across 156 countries or regions. Results This study yielded several key findings: (1) There remains a 33% margin for improvement in the global mortality rate concerning the COVID-19 pandemic; (2) During the initial stage of the pandemic, when an effective vaccine was not yet available, implementing public health control policies could reduce both the infection and mortality rates; (3) Areas characterised by higher population densities, a greater proportion of individuals aged 65 and over, and elevated prevalence rates of diabetes demonstrated higher mortality rates; and (4) Increasing vaccination coverage emerged as an effective strategy for reducing mortality rates. Conclusions As our understanding of the COVID-19 virus improves, global economies and social interactions have gradually returned to normality. It is anticipated that the findings of this study can serve as a valuable reference in combating potential future pandemics caused by unknown viruses.

The Subject-to-Tax Rule in East Africa: Is It Worth It?

The two-pillar approach focusses on BEPS issues in developing countries to a greater extent than preceding OECD agreements. In particular, the Subject-to-Tax Rule (STTR) is intended to address BEPS risks in low-income countries’ tax treaties. BEPS is undoubtedly a critical issue in East Africa since corporate income tax is an unusually important source of tax revenue in Africa. This article analyses the STTR alongside treaties and domestic law to understand the likely impact of the rule in the region. It also considers the diverse domestic policy landscapes to explore whether the STTR is an attractive measure for countries in East Africa. The author believes that implementation of the rule will be complex, challenging already stretched tax administrations. Furthermore, some low-income countries may prefer not to engage with reforms that increase source taxation. The analysis concludes that any hopes that the STTR will mark a major step in addressing BEPS in this part of the world are likely to be disappointed, but it could form part of a portfolio of measures for some specific countries.

The Subject-to-Tax Rule in East Africa: Is it Worth it?

The two-pillar approach focusses on BEPS issues in developing countries to a greater extent than preceding OECD agreements. In particular, the Subject-to-Tax Rule (STTR) is intended to address BEPS risks in low-income countries’ tax treaties. BEPS is undoubtedly a critical issue in East Africa since corporate income tax is an unusually important source of tax revenue in Africa. This article analyses the STTR alongside treaties and domestic law to understand the likely impact of the rule in the region. It also considers the diverse domestic policy landscapes to explore whether the STTR is an attractive measure for countries in East Africa. The author believes that implementation of the rule will be complex, challenging already stretched tax administrations. Furthermore, some low-income countries may prefer not to engage with reforms that increase source taxation. The analysis concludes that any hopes that the STTR will mark a major step in addressing BEPS in this part of the world are likely to be disappointed, but it could form part of a portfolio of measures for some specific countries.

Career progression opportunities and the retention of health visitors

There is a shortage of health visitors in England and career progression is known to increase staff retention in nursing. Therefore, a systematic search strategy was conducted and four main themes emerged following a reflexive thematic analysis. It found career progression opportunities improve staff retention, while barriers to career progression, including a lack of structured career pathways and progression opportunities, staff shortages, unavailable funding for staff training and gender inequalities, have a negative impact on staff retention. It is concluded that providing structured career pathways could improve the retention of health visitors. Further research examining the influencing factors on health visitor retention is recommended. Structured career pathways should be offered, allocating time during working hours for health visitors to attend courses and work on projects, and ensure that equality, diversity and inclusion policies include specific strategies for female career progression.

Thinking alike, acting alike? An assessment of organizational homophily and paradigmatic pragmatism in networks for local integration policies

As migrant integration policies touch upon almost all spheres of citizens’ life, collaboration across policy levels as well as across policy domains is needed. Over time, a series of both policy and analytical paradigms on the integration of migrants emerged, going from the traditional ideas of differentialism and assimilation, over multiculturalism, interculturalism, integrationism, liberal egalitarianism and mainstreaming, up to superdiversity and intersectionality. While networks for integration policies are likely to be at least partly driven by these paradigms, recent studies seem to nuance this assumption based on so called paradigmatic pragmatism, meaning that cities draw on a variety of ideas and pragmatically combine them under the header of diversity policies. The need for multi-level and multi-actor governance on migrant integration, the theoretical knowledge about homophily in organizational networks, and the recent findings on paradigmatic pragmatism, raise the question to what extent collaboration between public and non-profit organizations active around migrant integration is based on a shared policy paradigm on the integration of migrants. This question is answered based on a multiple case study of four central cities in Flanders (Belgium), covering 1.403 organizations. In the quantitative and qualitative (social network) analyses, comparisons along both the axes of cities and policy domains are made. Findings contribute to literature on organizational homophily, showing that clustering of organizations is likely to be at least partly driven by policy paradigm on integration. This is however nuanced by the observation that policy paradigms appear to be ambiguous, which in turn reveals opportunities for more flexible collaborations between actors and for avoiding deadlocks in policy making.

Board gender diversity, CEO power and LGBTQ-supportive corporate policies

This study investigates the effect of two key corporate governance mechanisms, board gender diversity, chief executive officer (CEO) power, and their interactions on firms’ implementation of lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, and queer (LGBTQ)-supportive policies. Using 348 Fortune 500 firms from 2003–2023, our study reveals that the presence of three or more female directors on the board is positively associated with LGBTQ-supportive policies. We also find that CEO formal (informal) power has a positive (negative) impact on LGBTQ-supportive policies. Lastly, we document that whereas the effects of the interactions of CEO formal power with both the gender diversity measures are positive, the interactions between CEO informal power and gender diversity measures: critical mass and token are positive and negative respectively. Overall, the results suggest that CEO power could act as a double-edged sword, and a high female director representation reduces the negative effect of CEO informal power on LGBTQ-supportive policy implementations.

The challenges of diversity in nursing faculty recruitment: the case of Finland

Diversity considerations in hiring faculty in higher education have garnered significant attention globally in recent years. However, analyses of faculty recruitment dynamics outside the United States, particularly in schools and colleges of nursing, have been limited. This paper explores how concepts related to racism apply to recruitment in nursing education, focusing on the specific context of Finland. Despite the increased admission of foreign students to English-language nursing programs, potential biases against the recruitment of nurse educators from foreign backgrounds persist in Finland. Local data, anecdotes, and an analysis of the broader literature suggest that robust diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) policies and guidelines are necessary to enhance the experiences of both instructors and students. Additionally, training and support mechanisms may be needed to enable nursing faculty members from foreign backgrounds to thrive and fully participate in shared governance within academic institutions. By examining the challenges and proposing strategies for increasing diversity in Finnish nursing education, this paper aims to contribute to the broader discourse on diversity in nursing as a profession.

Social and institutional inclusion in multi-ethnic schools enable better intergroup relations for majority youth and higher school achievement for minority youth

Inclusive school climates have been related to more friendly and equal intergroup relations among majority and ethnic minority youth. Yet, comprehensive research distinguishing majority and ethnic minority group perspectives on both social and institutional inclusion, and looking beyond individual perceptions of inclusion is missing. Taking a multi-group and multi-level approach, we assessed the actual social climate (aggregating majority intergroup attitudes within schools) and institutional climate (coding school diversity policies); and we tested associations with intergroup relations (i.e., individual intergroup bias and contact) and school performance (i.e., self-reported Dutch language grades) as individual outcomes for both majority and minority youth. To this end, we draw on a large-scale survey of 1814 native-origin majority and 1068 Turkish- and Moroccan-origin minority youth in the same 65 Flemish-Belgian middle schools. As expected for majority youth, a more inclusive ingroup social climate predicts less intergroup bias; and more social and institutional inclusion jointly predict more intergroup contact with minority peers. For minority youth, an inclusive outgroup social climate predicts higher Dutch grades; yet social and institutional inclusion were unrelated to their intergroup attitudes or contact.