In recent years, Ukraine has implemented a decentralization reform to rearrange the relationship between the central government and regional/local authorities. The core component of the reform was local amalgamation. Using analytical tools from the field of territorial politics, Romanova (2022) explores the impact of the reform on the congruence between the outcomes of parliamentary elections, regional (state) council elections, and local (city) council elections. The book compares the electoral performance of parties in these three types of elections, held before and after the reform implementation. It finds that the national and subnational electoral maps became increasingly dissimilar once the reform was finalized, but their increased incongruence did not undermine Ukraine’s political cohesion.

Since 2015, the Chinese government has actively promoted the Chinese Dietary Guidelines (CDGs), which target public health and sustainable food consumption and production. This research column shows that Chinese people’s dietary patterns still deviate from the CDGs. It also explores how reducing these deviations will influence environmental sustainability. Finally, it investigates the key driving factors behind the deviations. The results show that reducing deviations will positively affect the overall diet quality. However, the impact on environmental sustainability is complex. How to improve environmental costs should be discussed.

The UN Guiding Principles on Business and Human Rights (UNGPs), unanimously endorsed by the UN Human Rights Council (UNHRC) in 2011, are a set of guidelines for states and companies to address human rights abuses in business activities. Governments are expected to formulate their National Action Plans (NAPs) to implement the UNGPs. This column discusses how and why Thailand became the first Asian country to launch its NAP in 2019. Criticized in a Universal Periodic Review by the UNHRC for its human rights abuses, the then military-led government of Thailand took the development of its NAP as an opportunity to address such criticism through strategic use of its international exposure.

Extreme weather shocks have occurred frequently owing to global climate change. Weather shocks deteriorate household welfare, such as poverty, food security, and health. Farmers often diversify their crops or incomes to cope with weather shocks. We find that weather shocks induce livelihood diversification. Moreover, livelihood diversification can improve household food security, but its effect is small, especially for poor households, implying that poor households have limited capacity to benefit from livelihood diversification.

Uganda implemented Universal Primary Education (UPE) in 1997, which eliminated primary school fees. Studies have found that the reform has improved education outcomes, particularly for girls, those in rural areas, and those from poor households. This study extends the existing findings by demonstrating that the reform also affected the brideprice practice. Our survey data reveal that longer UPE exposure is associated with a smaller likelihood of having a brideprice agreed upon at marriage. We conjecture that UPE increased female education and enhanced their economic opportunities, leading to greater bargaining power and reduced brideprice payment. The reduction can improve women’s welfare in Uganda, where brideprice is supposed to be returned to men upon divorce, thus making it difficult for women to choose marital dissolution even when their relationship turns sour.

In many developing countries, the revenue from crop sales serves to improves the rural household’s nutrition quality. However, depending on who controls agricultural income, the desired impact may not be realized. Using data collected in rural Burkina Faso, Nikiema and Sakurai (2021) showed that increasing the wives’ share of farm revenue increases food demand and dietary quality. Furthermore, the result shows that the effect size of wives’ share of farm revenue on the quality of nutrition is greater than the household’s per capita income. This suggests that women’s control over agricultural income is important for rural household food and nutrition security.

For Southeast Asian countries, the impacts of exporting fresh fruit to China appear to be different than exporting to Europe and North America. In fruit production networks centered on China, the weak power of supermarket retailers and the diminished weight of private standards yield more power to wholesalers and brokers. These characteristics of production networks provide smallholders access to export opportunities. Moreover, the spot-transaction nature of the networks encourages diverse Chinese entrepreneurs to invest individually in various network segments, and their repatriation may hinder capital accumulation in Southeast Asian production regions.

In transition economies such as Vietnam, the diverse organizational forms of enterprises can be classified as state-owned, private, and foreign-owned enterprises. This column uses regression analyses to examine the impact of agglomeration economies or their sources on the productivity of different types of firms in Vietnam. The findings reveal that the productivity of state-owned enterprises is unrelated to agglomeration economies, whereas that of private and foreign-owned firms is likely to increase in at least one type of agglomeration economy through various channels.

The rise of the Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), which is a Hindu nationalist party in India, over the last decade has been phenomenal. My research shows the process of the rapid expansion of the BJP in the most significant northern state, Uttar Pradesh, based on the aggregate data of elections and population data. The result confirms that the BJP’s phenomenal growth in the state has been due to its absorption of various peripheral castes/communities, which were traditionally support bases of the rival parties, into the BJP hold. Moreover, this change is observed more clearly in the areas where socioeconomic modernization is advanced.

National economic and technological development zones (NETDZs), an important innovation policy in China, play a significant role in promoting innovation. However, there are few empirical studies on their impact on innovation, especially green innovation. This study uses highly disaggregated micro-level data, including patent data, industrial firm data, and customs data to examine the impact of NETDZs on green innovation. The results showed that (1) NETDZs significantly promote green innovation, as measured by both patent quantity and quality; (2) the binding environmental indicators in China’s five-year plan enhance the promotional effect of NETDZs on green innovation; and (3) learning by importing, via both foreign direct investment and importing capital goods, is an important mechanism in the nexus between NETDZs and green innovation.

In many African countries, state power over land management does not always extend to every corner of its territory. Moreover, the state often acknowledges that customary laws govern rural common lands. This was the result of strategy of the ruling party in charge of running the state to garner political support in rural areas. How does the local political environment influence the implementation of land laws? My study of the case of Mozambique (Aminaka 2022) demonstrates that implementing land laws is heavily influenced by the political context.

This article overviews recent changes in the political elites of the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of China. Chen Quanguo, who led the detention of Uyghurs and other Muslims as secretary of the Party Committee of Xinjiang, was removed from office in 2021. Since Ma Xingrui’s appointment as secretary, repression in Xinjiang has eased. However, Ma also points to the continuation of "anti-terrorism" policies. Various re-education, work, and birth control measures—known in the West as forced incarceration, forced labor, and forced sterilization—are expected to continue under the new secretary.

Economic growth that exploits the benefits of globalization is the strength of the Turkish governing party, the Justice and Development Party (AKP). The AKP has deepened economic ties in globalization as an important tool of its foreign policy, which follows a free market economy and harmonization with the EU criteria. This study focuses on business associations, which have played important roles in the economic aspects of Turkish foreign policy, under the AKP administration.

In this study, we estimate the impact of decoupling on the global economy with the Institute of Developing Economies-Geographical Simulation Model (IDE-GSM), a computable general equilibrium model that was developed for both sectoral and within-country regional analysis. Depending on the extent of decoupling, the global economy would suffer from substantial income decreases. Moreover, there would be significant negative impacts on the gross domestic product for the Eastern (including China and Russia) and Western (including the United States) camps, while neutral countries, such as the Association of Southeast Asian Nations countries and those in South America, would profit from the others’ disputes. The implication of the findings is that the more profound the conflict between the two camps, the greater the advantages of being neutral.

Many studies produced after the seminal work of Durkheim (1897) have documented a decline in suicide rates during wartime due to increased social integration. However, there remains a need to apply a rigorous statistical approach to determine whether this theory is valid in a modern context. Aida (2020) revisited this issue in the context of the Sri Lankan Civil War. The results showed that during wartime, suicide rates in the target districts were 43% to 52% lower than baseline rates. This finding suggests that even in the modern era, significant social upheavals lead to a decline in suicide rates.

As proposed by economist Mushtaq H. Khan, political settlements have widely been applied to political economy analyses of countries in sub-Saharan Africa (hereafter, Africa). By reviewing the original concept and causal mechanism of political settlements, this column suggests that several factors, which were excluded from the mechanism but nevertheless influence institutional outcomes, should be also considered to elucidate the development outcomes of African countries. Certain case studies that apply political settlements have seemingly shifted away from the causal mechanism of institutional outcomes at the country level, which was proposed in the original framework of political settlements by Khan. However, the latest development of the Political Settlements Dataset has revealed the potential to refocus on country-level outcomes and strengthen the causal mechanism.

Aside from the serious impact of the coronavirus pandemic, the Japanese economy has been experiencing sluggish growth for several decades, and its prospects are not favorable mainly due to its declining population. One effective way for Japan to revive its economy and achieve growth is to expand and intensify its economic relationship with fast-growing East Asian countries. Japan succeeded in establishing two regional free trade agreements—Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP) and Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP)—with these countries. Japan needs to play a role in setting up an effective monitoring system to ensure the implementation and enforcement of commitments by CPTPP and RCEP members. Due to the increased uncertainty in the world economy, Japan is expected to contribute to the reform of the World Trade Organization (WTO) for establishing a rule-based free and open trade environment at the global level so that WTO members can conduct business efficiently and achieve economic growth.

Historically, Egypt has enjoyed a long-standing hydro-hegemonic position in the Nile basin. However, major shifts in regional power structures have challenged Egypt’s domination over the Nile. This is particularly true for Ethiopia, as it began building the Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam (GERD) in 2011 without prior consultation with Egypt. The GERD resulted in a major dispute between the two countries. However, news coverage of the dispute almost entirely overlooks Sudan’s influence on shifting the balance of power within the Nile basin. This research aims to investigate the decline of Egypt’s hydro hegemony, the factors that resulted in the waning of the decades-long Egyptian Sudanese alliance, and Sudan’s role in the reconfiguration of the hydro political landscape in the Nile Basin.

Taiwan is not an official member of the United Nations but has been actively addressing climate change along with the United Nation Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). It announced its official target in 2015, following the Paris Agreement, and submitted it to the secretariat of the UNFCCC. In March 2022, it further released its Net-Zero Emissions Roadmap and Strategy. Thus, the question emerges: why is Taiwan eager to address these issues? This article outlines three possible motivations, namely, climate impact, international participation, and economic development.

International nurse migration has increased recently in response to the growing global demand for nurses. India is among the major nurse-sending countries, and it fills the shortages in destination countries. However, the country itself is experiencing the shortage of nurses. Emigration from India is mainly explained by the gap between the private and public sectors in terms of remuneration, working conditions, and workplace environment in the country. The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has further increased the demand for nurses. Unless the working conditions of nurses are improved and decent work is created in India, the country will continually remain a major nurse-supplying country and will present with shortages.