Wide Gulf Research Articles

The Conflictual Core of Global Tax Cooperation

It is widely argued that the world is in a new era of global tax cooperation, evidenced by the multilateral OECD/G20 project on base erosion and profit shifting (BEPS). This article argues, however, that this cooperation-centric account masks fundamental conflicts between developing and developed countries, which recently culminated in a vote to shift reform work to the United Nations. This article contends that developing country-centered criticisms of the project are not random but instead reflect coherent concerns about the wide historical gulf in power and resources between developing and developed countries and how the BEPS reforms ignore, and may even exacerbate, that gulf. The reform’s defenders have largely missed this fundamental crux of the criticisms, focusing primarily on the project’s incremental short-term benefits for inter-developing country tax competition. This article’s framework for analysing global tax reform incorporates these deep conflicts and thus more accurately assesses the reform’s promise and risks.

Precise learning curves and higher-order scaling limits for dot-product kernel regression *

As modern machine learning models continue to advance the computational frontier, it has become increasingly important to develop precise estimates for expected performance improvements under different model and data scaling regimes. Currently, theoretical understanding of the learning curves (LCs) that characterize how the prediction error depends on the number of samples is restricted to either large-sample asymptotics () or, for certain simple data distributions, to the high-dimensional asymptotics in which the number of samples scales linearly with the dimension (). There is a wide gulf between these two regimes, including all higher-order scaling relations , which are the subject of the present paper. We focus on the problem of kernel ridge regression for dot-product kernels and present precise formulas for the mean of the test error, bias and variance, for data drawn uniformly from the sphere with isotropic random labels in the rth-order asymptotic scaling regime with held constant. We observe a peak in the LC whenever for any integer r, leading to multiple sample-wise descent and non-trivial behavior at multiple scales. We include a colab (available at: https://tinyurl.com/2nzym7ym) notebook that reproduces the essential results of the paper.

REVISITING DONALD MOON ON THE MORAL BASIS OF THE DEMOCRATIC WELFARE STATE

Donald Moon argues that neither rights nor equality can serve as adequate moral or political basis for a welfare state in addressing the Hegel’s dilemma. The Hegel’s dilemma is that organisation of economic life through the market in a democratic state produces great wealth as well as great poverty and individuals in such state fall in either category. The wide gulf in wealth among individuals in a market economy is a problem which a democratic welfare state seeks to address but, for Moon, rights or equality is not adequate moral and political basis of the welfare state for solving the problem. He proposes the principles of economic management, provision of services and social insurance as alternative and adequate bases for a welfare state in addressing the problem. This paper queries Moon’s proposal. The paper argues that Moon’s proposed institutional principles are inadequate in addressing the problem without a fundamental moral and/or political basis upon which these principles can be justifiably founded. The paper posits that rights provide a plausible and adequate foundational moral and political basis for the principles in order to adequately address the problem created by the market economy without jeopardising the idea of human self-respect.

Characterising Strategic Thinking in a Public University Setting: A Qualitative Approach

Background: Universities face challenges in the current dynamic higher education sector. As a result, university managers have to contend with finding ways that will help increase revenue to enable adequate provision of the core services covering teaching and learning, research and publishing, community engagement and promotion of beneficial partnerships. This calls for developing strategic plans by employing strategic thinking skills. The University of Zambia has not been meeting the targets in all its previous strategic plans in the period 2008-2022 as expected. The aim of this paper is to characterise strategic thinking with a view of rendering an explanatory understanding of strategic planning actors in the University of Zambia from their point of view. Methods: This paper is part of a larger qualitative case study which examined the applicability of strategic thinking at the University of Zambia from a sample of 175 participants. However, 26 strategic planning actors were enlisted as participants for this qualitative paper using criterion i type of sampling. Findings: A characterisation of the strategic thinking skills, which inform the mindset of strategic planning actors in their motivation to participate in the planning and implementation of strategic plans shows the use of environmental analysis, systems thinking, reframing and intelligent opportunism more than focused intent, thinking in time, reflecting skills hypothesis generation and testing and professional capabilities. This is shown by the first four strategic thinking skills exhibiting AV.FR ratios that are more than or equal to 1. There is a weak practice of strategic thinking in the strategic planning actors as shown by the AV.FR values especially when implementing strategic plans. Conclusion: There is a wide gulf among strategic planning actors in being consistent when it comes to applying strategic thinking skills. There is a weakening in the mindset of strategic planning actors in strategic thinking during the implementation phase of the strategic plan than during the development phase as the AV.FR ratios are less than 1 in the former. At the same time, the application of knowledge and practice gap exhibited by the executives in terms of professional capability has been recognized suggesting the need to develop programmes that will enhance the exposure of strategic planning actors to building strategic thinking ability which they can, in turn, pass on through mentoring of others.

Reimagining socio-economic well-being through the integration of Arthashastra’s economic treatise and Madhva’s philosophical notion on social cohesion

The current coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic that has ravaged glocal societies of both developed and developing countries, has once again shown that there are some phenomena that are no respecters of societies. This is clearly observed in the most recent COVID-19 global statistics, where the most advanced country in the world has the greatest number of infections and deaths. Globally, there are 171.5 million COVID-19 cases, 153.7 million recoveries and 3.6 million deaths (worldmeters.info/coronavirus accessed 01 June 2021). Not only has COVID-19 devastated both developed and developing countries, but has also demonstrated the widening gulf between the rich and the poor. The Minority World were able to secure millions of vaccine doses for their citizens, while the Majority World had to wait in line. We have also witnessed an uprising recently (July 2021) in two of South African provinces of social dissolution where socio-economic and racial tension resulted in a number of deaths. It is within this context that this study aimed to examine how the integration of Arthashastra’s economic treatise and Madhva’s philosophical notion on social cohesion, can contribute to a just socio-economic society. Even though Arthashastra’s economic treatise and Madhva’s philosophical notion of social cohesion are common within Hinduism, and more specifically related to India, the global community will benefit from implementing the salient features from it for application in their contexts.

Edgar Allan Poe: Efemérides em trama

Edgar Allan Poe: Efemérides em trama

A Study of Alternative Measures in Resolving Cases of Child Sexual Abuse among the Ga Community in Accra, Ghana

Many children continue to be sexually abused worldwide. In Ghana, relatively high figures of child sexual abuse (CSA) are reported by the police daily. Although there are laws that seek to protect children from sexual abuse, in reality, there is a wide gulf between legislation and practice. This paper explores why this is so by examining the measures adopted in sanctioning perpetrators of CSA in the Ga community in Ghana. The study uses a qualitative approach to collect data from parents and guardians through in‐depth interviews. The study revealed that, generally, traditional rather than legal sanctions are adopted in handling CSA cases. This paper thus interrogates the consequences of the obvious contraventions of the law as traditional interventions are resorted to. We posit that CSA can be minimised only when child protection laws are enforced by the police and victims are reoriented to appreciate the benefits of seeking legal redress.Key Practitioner Messages Conscious efforts must be made to destigmatise child sexual abuse. Sensitisation programmes should be organised periodically by stakeholders to educate community members on child sexual abuse. The police in partnership with the media must also lead the campaign to educate the populace that choosing traditional options of redress and non‐disclosure of incestuous acts against children is a clear violation of the law and the rights of the child.

The gap between atmospheric nitrogen deposition experiments and reality

Anthropogenic activities have dramatically altered the global nitrogen (N) cycle. Atmospheric N deposition, primarily from combustion of biomass and fossil fuels, has caused acidification of precipitation and freshwater, and triggered intense research into ecosystem responses to this pollutant. Experimental simulations of N deposition have been the main scientific tool to understand ecosystem responses, revealing dramatic impacts on soil microbes, plants, and higher trophic levels. However, comparison of the experimental treatments applied in the vast majority of studies with observational and modelled N deposition reveals a wide gulf between research and reality. While the majority of experimental treatments exceed 100 kg N ha−1 y−1, global median land surface deposition rates are around 1 kg N ha−1 y−1 and only exceed 10 kg N ha−1 y−1 in certain regions, primarily in industrialized areas of Europe and Asia and particularly in forests. Experimental N deposition treatments are in fact similar to mineral fertilizer application rates in agriculture. Some ecological guilds, such as saprotrophic fungi, are highly sensitive to N and respond differently to low and high N availability. In addition, very high levels of N application cause changes in soil chemistry, such as acidification, meaning that unrealistic experimental treatments are unlikely to reveal true ecosystem responses to N. Hence, despite decades of research, past experiments can tell us little about how the biosphere has responded to anthropogenic N deposition. A new approach is required to improve our understanding of this important phenomenon. First, characterization of N response functions using observed N deposition gradients. Second, application of experimental N addition gradients at realistic levels over long periods to detect cumulative effects. Third, application of non-linear meta-regressions to detect non-linear responses in meta-analyses of experimental studies.

Recasting Governance for Challenging Times

For the better part of the last twenty years, a multitude of international conventions, principles, standards have been agreed to strengthen governance and reduce corruption. These have led to a plethora of statements, institutions and regulations, experiments - each with their own valid inner logic. However, if we look for tangible, on-the-ground results, we are in for a big surprise, or rather disappointment. Taken together, the outcomes that have been reported (such as new control and tracking vehicles, anti-corruption legislation, and the like) have been at best intermediate, rather than final results to be sought. Moreover, they have bee difficult to upscale and easy to circumvent by agents that have a dynamism, adaptability and imagination that is difficult to match by the entities and vehicles that have been created to control corruption and facilitate accountability. As a result, impact on the ground remained at best imperceptible in “moving the needle” to achieve tangible progress. It has now been 10 years that some 70 percent of countries worldwide scored poorly (below 50, in a scale of 0 to 100) in Transparency International’s Corruption Perception Index — with no improvements of significance throughout this period. Growing signs of public discontent strongly suggest a widening gulf between elites and civil societies, and a consequent inability to respond to emerging societal demands. By now, it should be painfully evident that the time has come to take a dispassionately critical review of the approaches taken to date, and see how they need to be recast to respond to the evolving conditions around the world. This article is aimed at contributing to such review and help rethink, where necessary to recast such approaches to generate effective responses for the remainder of the century.

Poverty as the Explicit Theme in Aravind Adiga’s Between the Assassinations

Adiga is an influential voice of 21st century India. He depicts the agony of the subjugated class of India. In Between the Assassinations, Adiga presents a vivid picture of lives of the marginalized. The novel contains the theme of poverty, hunger and exploitation of poor as the main theme. The novel is a scrupulous examination of microcosm of India. It is a simmering fury at the wide gulf between the haves and have not’s. The novel provides a glimpse of the India of Darkness through its twelve stories spinning around the assorted aspects of life in the town Kittur. The novel highlights the social and political turmoil of India during 1984 and 1991 and reflects how poverty, the mother evil, gives rise to other evils in the society. The novel contains a wide array of characters from famished person to the richest person of the town, Kittur. It describes the harsh realities of poor villagers who have to but migrate to cities in order to survive and live on the streets.

Developing a Product Knowledge Graph of Consumer Electronics to Manage Sustainable Product Information

Transformational computing paradigms, such as artificial intelligence, home automation, and the Internet of Things, are being rapidly applied to consumer electronics products, thus aiding in the development of integrated and innovative features. Hence, ubiquitous computing and electronic devices are increasingly becoming essential to everyday life. In this context, a wide gulf often exists between the capabilities and technical features of consumer electronic devices and the consumers’ understanding of such devices and ability to operate them correctly and effectively. This study proposes a machine-readable knowledge model representing technical terms in product specifications along with a product knowledge graph to discover semantic relationships among various products. Formal concept analysis is applied to conceptually analyze the specification terms of heterogeneous electronic products and design a hierarchical knowledge structure of extracted concepts, to elaborate the proposed knowledge model.

Social Policy and State–Community Relationships: Storm over Forest Rights in India

Abstract Social Policy is concerned with minimising poverty and inequality through redistribution of goods and services. In the twentieth century, after the Second World War, European parliamentary democracies enlarged its ambit by making social policy an important instrument to create equality setting the benchmark for other countries. For the new independent countries in the global South, such as India, social policy followed different trajectories. In the aftermath of independence, India relied on preventive instruments to address the effects of famine, de-industrialisation and high levels of deprivation. Despite achieving high economic growth and rapid poverty reduction in the following decades, its dependence on targeted poverty reduction programme has remained. Recently, there has been some attempt to replace these strategies by rights-based programmes supported by legal framework advocated by civil society groups. Through a case study of The Scheduled Tribes and Other Traditional Forest Dwellers (Recognition of Forest Rights) Act, 2006 (referred to as FRA 2006), this article analyses the successes and failures in realising the goal of linking welfare provisions with the ideas of social citizenship and democratic rights. The article finds widening gulf in the interests of state actors and local community arising from the compromised interpretation of the social justice vision enshrined in FRA.

‘Safe sex’: evaluation of sex education and sexual risk by young adults in Sydney

In this qualitative study, 28 young adults (18-29-year-olds) living in Sydney define ‘safe sex’, report on their experiences of sex education, and reflect on the relationship between the sex education received in school and the reality of sexual activity. Participants had a broadly neoliberal understanding of health and risk as something individuals should manage through an ideal of rational decision-making. Yet regardless of how comprehensive or limited their sex education experiences, most noted a wide gulf between safe sex as taught in the classroom and the reality of actual sexual encounters, arguing that sexual decision-making was rarely rational, and shaped by age and experience, drug use, sexual desire, and complicated interpersonal dynamics. Sex education that aims to empower by presenting individuals as sole decision-makers when it comes to prophylactic use fails to acknowledge the social contexts of sex described by participants. Significantly, young people defined ‘safe sex’ not only in biomedical terms such as disease transmission and pregnancy, but also in terms of the social and psychological consequences of sexual encounters, with an emphasis on consent.

From Multiculturalism to Humanistic Secularism: Harnessing Nigeria's Cultural Diversity

The Nigerian state is deeply polarised along ethnic and religious contours, with a widening gulf between the poor masses and the rich few, which reflects the culpability of the ruling elite. However, the actual character of the class struggle is often blurred by the politicization of ethno-cultural and religious differences in a manner that undermines political order and national unity. Ethnicity and religion are thus usedby the political class to manipulate the citizens' consciousness of their ethno-cultural and religious identities to serve the masked parochial class interests. This has made the political arena very volatile and conflict-laden. Stemming the tide of this incessant clash of values and violent ethno-religious conflicts requires a creative adaptation of multiculturalism and secularism. This paper defended a sophisticated understanding of state in the globalization era, which includes citizens' appreciation of their cultural differences, mediated by consciousness of their shared humanity and a strong commitment to the ideals of a civilized community. It argued for a genuinely humanistic secularization of state affairs, harnessing of the country's diverse cultural heritage, and promotion of religious accommodation rather than cultural assimilation and the interference of religion in state affairs, or vice versa.Key Words: multiculturalism, humanistic secularism, cultural diversity, cultural integration, national unity

The Shadow Lines: Interrogating the Great Divide

The article The Shadow Lines: Interrogating the Great Divide questions the concept of border and Partition- a solution to the problems of social unrest on religious grounds or political motivation. During the British Raj feeling of suspicion and hatred were planted in the heart and mind of millions of Indian people. The gulf of communal disharmony widened with time and this resulted in the partition of India and Pakistan in 1947. The ulterior motives of British Empire, the Congress Party and the Muslim League caused the partition of India. The then political leaders failed to resolve their difference over power-sharing. The ever widening gulf between the Hindus and the Muslims on communal issues was said to be the main cause of partition, though both the communities had a long history of peaceful co-existence for more than a thousand years. The Partition divided friends, families, lovers and neighbours. It led to the disintegration of human values, rootlessness and alienation

Regulation and the Geography of Inequality

We live in an era of widening geographic inequality. Around the country, the spread between economically and culturally thriving places and those that are struggling has been increasing. “Superstar” cities like New York, San Francisco, Boston, and Atlanta continue to attract talent and grow, while the economies of other cities and rural areas are left behind. Troublingly, escalating geographic inequality in the United States has arrived hand-in-hand with serious economic, social, and political problems. Areas that are left behind have not only failed to keep up with their thriving peers; in many ways they have stagnated and seen opportunities evaporate. At the same time, superstar cities are running up against extreme housing affordability problems, rendering middle-class life all but unsustainable. To make matters worse, the widening gulf between dynamic and stagnant places increasingly feeds into a democratic crisis of unrepresentative government at the federal level. The dominant explanations for widening geographic inequality focus largely on inexorable economic trends. Forces like “agglomeration effects” and globalization have reshaped the economy, benefitting some areas and harming others. We think these explanations leave out a crucial factor: the effects of specific regulatory choices on economic geography. The Progressive Era and New Deal regulatory order in the United States promoted geographic dispersion in economic activity. The unraveling of this regulatory order around 1980 coincided with the reversal in geographic convergence and the beginning of an era of growing divergence. More specifically, regulatory policies in the areas of transportation, communications, trade, and antitrust helped construct an era of geographic convergence in the mid-twentieth century and deregulation in those same areas contributed to the rise of geographic inequality over the last generation. To combat geographic inequality and its attendant downsides, we make the case for reincorporating geographic factors into federal regulatory policymaking in transportation, communications, trade, antitrust, and other domains.

Enhancing Student Interactions in Online Learning: A Case of Using YouTube in a Distance Learning Module in a Higher Education Institution in Uganda

One of the challenges facing higher education institutions in general and Uganda in particular, is the widening gulf between increased use of technology for teaching and learning and achieving meaningful learning outcomes, especially in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic. In this paper, we report on one use of technology where a teacher’s integration of YouTube videos in teaching increased students’ levels of interaction with the content of the video, with peers and with the instructor (teacher). Guided by the sequential mixed-method design, a series of online learning activities were designed and matched with a carefully selected YouTube video. The activity was piloted and refined for use on purposefully selected teaching staff. The staff watched the videos that were uploaded on the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) and responded to online learning tasks at individual and group levels. The VLE served as a knowledge sharing space for reflections. The paper concludes that lesson design was critical in enriching the VLE with carefully selected YouTube videos. Our key recommendations are: focus on the learning outcomes, design for the desired interactions, build into the task reflections, and decide whether to pre-select YouTube videos for students or to allow students to find appropriate YouTube videos; use reflections and knowledge sharing spaces. Further work has built reflective questions in the video which allows student to pause and reflect.

9/11 and the Collapse of the American Dream: Imbolo Mbue's Behold the Dreamers

Behold the Dreamers follows a Cameroonian couple who, as newcomers to America, harbor dreams of success unavailable to them back home. Undocumented immigration, the widening gulf between rich and poor, and the thinly veiled racism of an avowedly "post-racial" culture converge in this new generation of immigrants' painful encounter with the American dream. I consider the ways Mbue's novel shares themes with a "second wave" of post- 9/11 literature—first, in centering the disillusionment of a protagonist aspiring to the American dream; next, in its representation of New York as a space haunted by 9/11, but also of resistance to the state; and last, through a failed white-savior narrative, culminating in the expulsion of racialized bodies from the West, that debunks the notion of the post-racial society. Shedding light on how 9/11's political and affective wake pervades Mbue's novel leads to my reassessment of how post-9/11 literature is understood as a genre.

The Qur’ān and the Bible: Text and Commentary

The Qur’ān and the Bible: Text and Commentary

Role of Government in Developing Human Resource – Proposing-An Instrument for Improvement at Public Sector Organizations

South Asia is a land of wonderful people and innumerable natural resources. Be it agriculture to textile, be it a sport to international diplomacy and be it a tactical force to strategic weapons, Pakistan has been bestowed with a unique blend of human genes, soil and spirit. Nevertheless, as with every Great Nation, the challenges are also huge. Among them, challenges of managing population and employing the versatile human resource are of grave importance. This paper is a humble research effort which endeavors to compile the individual, yet functional, human resource organizational components already established one. The greatest challenge to Human Resource Development in Pakistan is that it does not maintain any institution to regulate human resources. Secondly, Pakistan has insignificant legislation for workforce management. The third Human Resource challenge, now being faced is a wide gulf between HR industry and academia. On the other hand, HRM has spread in all the arteries of business development world compared to the corporate world of 1980s. Finally, this paper proposes measures to be taken, under Government patronage, for ensuring sustainable Human Resource Development. These measures include formulation of a strategic HRD policy, making HR department a mandatory organ in every commercial and military undertaking, specifying key roles of every HRD player, continuous review of HRD policy and effective HRD quality assurance mechanism.