Hussain Abbas, Zhao Rui Feng, Muhammad Malik
et al.
Abstract Firm connections of board members have long been a focal point for economists in developed and developing countries. The connections through boards of directors can prove valuable, as connected directors provide support and essential knowledge about public policies to the firm. However, generalizing the effects of board connections on firm dynamics based on previous cross-country studies is challenging due to differing political scenarios and regulatory conditions across nations. Therefore, this study investigates the role of military connections earnings management in non-financial firms listed on the Pakistan Stock Exchange from 2010 to 2022. By focusing on accrual-based and real earnings management, the research demonstrates that military-affiliated directors significantly reduce earnings manipulation due to their discipline, ethical standards, and adherence to governance principles. This study concludes that the audit quality used as a moderating variable further strengthens the integrity of financial reporting, suggesting that the Big Four auditors further exhibit reductions in earning manipulations. Overall, this study contributes by extending upper echelons theory to show how military experience, characterized by discipline and monitoring, constrains both accrual-based and real earnings management. It further highlights the interaction of military directors with external audit quality, forming a dual safeguard against manipulation. Finally, by focusing on Pakistan, the study enriches understanding of governance in emerging markets where institutions are weaker and monitoring roles of directors are crucial.
History of scholarship and learning. The humanities, Social Sciences
My writing focuses on one of Kafka’s most stimulating stories: Ein Bericht für eine Akademie, from 1922. It traces the path of an animal (the monkey Peter the Red) who, once captured, is forced to find an escape route by becoming man. However, it is not certain that the transition to human life is a gain for him, nor that the animal dimension is preferable.
The message that Kafka leaves us is that it is important to remember, not to forget what you think you have emancipated from (from your past, from your animal dimension), and not to forget that you have forgotten; because in an oblivion that knows how to recognize and denounce itself there is a possible hope. It’s about not forgetting the worst that happened, of course. But oblivion is not only oblivion of the worst, but also “of the best”. In the forgotten, removed animal dimension, there is not only the worst of the bestiality from which we have freed ourselves, but also the best of a possibility of redemption, in a credible freedom.
In the Theaetetus, which seeks a definition of knowledge, the first definition of Theaetetus, namely that ‘knowledge is perception’, is easily refuted without the need to refer to Protagoras. But for Plato the refutation of Protagoras is a goal in itself, and he devotes almost half the dialogue to this task. He argues that the doctrine of homo mensura amounts to saying that ‘all judgements are true’ and, using his ‘most exquisite argument’, he claims to prove that it is self-refuting. As many scholars have recognised, this alleged demonstration depends on the arbitrary dropping of the relativistic qualifier that specifies ‘for whom’ a given judgement is true. Plato does not justify the disappearance of the qualifier, but rather tries to disguise it. Indeed, Protagoras has an epistemological conception that is opposed to Plato’s theory of knowledge and that is fundamental to the logical justification of the political conceptions set out in the Republic. For Plato, therefore, the refutation of Protagoras’ doctrine of homo mensura is an imperative ethical requirement. He is not too demanding in his choice of arguments: he does not seek rigour in argumentation, only persuasive effectiveness – more than two millennia of interpretations have proved him right.
Inscribed within the theoretical framework of socio-political discourse analysis, this study takes as its subject a verbal sequence, Mali kura, which arose in the context of popular protest against the regime of Ibrahim Boubacar Kéita in 2020 and has become a common denominator of the discourses produced during the political transition underway in Mali. Using discursive data collected from the press and from the speeches of political actors from 2020 to 2024, we examine the formality of the sequence Mali kura. Linguistic description of the sequence’s two signifying forms (Mali kura, in bamanankan, and le Mali nouveau, in French) enabled us to establish their figment. Analysis of the sequence’s discursive functioning revealed its character as a social referent, through the notions of circulation, paraphrase, reformulation and lexicological productivity. As a social referent, it appeared that the sequence was given rhetorical and polemical modes of use. The study therefore concludes that the verbal sequence Mali kura/le Mali nouveau is a formula in Malian socio-political discourse during the period under consideration.
Mahdieh Akhondi, Karam Habibpour Gatabi, Zahra Hazrati Some'eh
The issue of women's political participation in developing countries is a complex phenomenon and is related to the dynamics and development of political systems. The purpose of this research is to understand and analyze the situation of women's political participation, which was done with qualitative methodology and Grounded theory method. For this purpose, in-depth and semi-structured interviews were conducted with seventeen women living in Tehran who were selected by purposeful sampling and a combination of snowball strategies and maximum changes. After data analysis, 85 primary codes, seven core categories, and one core category were extracted through the data coding system: Causal conditions (economic issues and challenges, egalitarian governance), background conditions (unequal political structure and patriarchal challenges), intervening conditions (personal-spiritual factors), strategies (merits and creating a platform for prosperity), and consequences (active political activism of women and rejection of passivity) political). Also, "women's political participation; Meaningful and multifaceted action" was counted as the core category and finally the paradigm model extracted from the data was established. The findings indicate that women are active actors and activists in political participation and take actions based on political issues; An action of the type of participation that identifies the obstacles and facilitating factors can open the way for their active political participation as effective citizens in the field of politics.
The study provides a chronological review of public relations (PR) analysed from the perspective of psychology, highlighting milestones, concepts, theories and models. It offers a synthesis of its origins in Europe and how it was imported to the United States, where it was strongly implemented at the academic, political and business levels. The foundations of the emergence and development of PR have psychology as a fundamental pillar (Bernays, 1928) in understanding the propagandistic effects on people’s social behaviour. Therefore, it seems that it would be practically impossible to understand and apply this construct throughout history without this joint interdisciplinary work, both in explaining individual and collective response and in diachronically changing behaviour in organizations (Grunig, 1976). An in-depth exploration is carried out of the international manuscripts published to date which highlight the interactions of PR with psychology in terms of public behaviour, leadership and behaviour within organizations. The results bring to light an international perspective of basic contributions and some historic gaps along the way. The identification of several key events from the past helps to understand better the general conceptual framework that connects PR and psychology. The research reveals that there is still a gap regarding the existence of a general theory to explain the history of PR psychology. Nevertheless, from a PR perspective, its psychological influence on the behaviours of the population and the persuasion of stakeholders seems indisputable.
The central thesis of this article is that the Energy Charter Treaty can be deployed to expand the fossil fuel industry’s rights and contextually counter democratic forces that animate the ecological transition. More specifically, the article shows the entanglement between the suppression of ecological democracy and the expansion of fossil rights. To offer a more granular understanding of how the Energy Charter Treaty empowers the fossil industry, this article zooms in on the case of Rockhopper v Italy. The case was launched in 2017 by the UK company Rockhopper against the Italian Republic because the latter denied a production concession for offshore oil drilling off the coast of Italy. After a long process of resistance from local communities, in 2016, the Italian government adopted a law of general applicability banning offshore drilling within 12 nautical miles of the coast. Drawing on political theory, this article conceptualises people’s successful forms of resistance to the oil extractivist project as ecological democracy. By unpacking the main facts underpinning this case and the legal reasoning in the award, the article shows how the Rockhopper award has bestowed new property rights on the fossil fuel investor while contextually compressing democratic spaces vital for the ecological transition.
Law of Europe, Comparative law. International uniform law
This paper investigates the readiness of customers to shift toward cashless payment by identifying the main factors that impact that shift. The sample consisted of randomly selected individuals identified as potential users of cashless payment and are considered more likely to continue using the new technology. Five hundred eighty-six questionaries were returned and considered complete for the research. The outcomes were assessed employing CFA for validity and determined using Cronbach’s alpha for the reliability of the research, which was stratified by seven regions throughout the country was applied, by covering all levels of the society. The findings show that the perceived risk is connected to the level of correct and believable information offered to customers. It has been confirmed that the respondents trust cashless payment technology, and at the same time, self-efficacy had a lower impact on usage continuance intention. Consequently, the growth of self-efficacy would strengthen the intention to use cashless technologies. Several segments in the financial market may benefit from the results and develop more appropriate and reliable systems and the proper approach toward customers with needed information and insurance related to the security and benefits they may have by adopting the cashless technology.
One of the important issues in social sciences is the question on how a theory is developed in practice. The way a theory can create basic changes in operational milieu is of great importance in political-social theories. The present study aims at investigating how the theory of the jurist’s authority – as a theory of governance in the modern plural and complicated world – can extend to the multilayer and plural operational milieu. The question of the present study is focused on effectiveness of the theory of jurist’s authority on promotion of efficiency of public diplomacy (including important spheres of political activism) as well as religious activism (IRI) in the international system, and answers the question of through what parameters this effectiveness occurs. It seems that the theory of jurist’s authority as the most important part of the religious governance can affect the sphere of public diplomacy through its effective tools and variables. This affects the public diplomacy through “producing operational software and sources of soft power”, “creating common understanding and organizational cooperation of agents”, “creating discourse and institutions”, “desirable imaging and giving credit”, and “enjoying attraction in messaging and creating common understanding among nations”.
This essay interprets Machiavelli’s famous letter to Francesco Vettori in terms of a play-element that runs across his works. The letter to Vettori is a masterpiece of epistolary form, but beyond its most memorable passage, where Machiavelli recounts his evening in study, it has not received much scholarly attention. Reading the letter in its entirety is to discover Machiavelli’s account of an eclectic political education and the pleasures of playing with others. Machiavelli’s letter speaks to a basic ludicity in his political thinking, in which play is not opposed to the serious, and diverse play forms can be thought together. Hans-George Gadamer’s Truth and Method, Johan Huizinga’s Homo Ludens, and Roger Caillois’s Man, Play, and Games provide resources for reconstructing this play-element in Machiavelli’s thought.
Quality of democratic arrangements does matter. This kind of conceptual breakthrough has been made through painfully engagement with the nonphilosophical area of inquiry arisen by the COVID-19 pandemic. The pandemic has dramatically emphasized that health is a highly political domain. No surprise then that it made possible to challenge common thought about democratic procedures in political theory that considers procedure-independent standards suspicious. Therefore it is fair to state that the COVID-19 pandemic has taken the quality of democratic outcomes back on center stage in the debate in political theory, which has been dominated by fair proceduralism’s claim not to refer to any procedure-independent standards of good political decisions. Procedural values have traditionally been seen as a defining element of fair deliberation and essential for democracy. They have been extolled in social choice theory that claims that democracy does not exhibit any particular disposition to lead to good or just political arrangements. They are the focus of attention in Jürgen Habermas’ procedural rationality, though philosophers are now more skeptical about the divorce between procedures and substantive standards. Overall, issues surrounding the topic of ensuring citizens’ health make the topic politically central and philosophically interesting for epistemic theories and impartial proceduralism theories of democracy alike. The aim of this paper is to justify the legitimacy and authority of public health policies on the basis of arguments that do not simply are a matter of their being democratic. In the first part, I want to display and criticize the idea that proceduralism’s not getting one’s hands dirty with the substance of decisions and remaining neutrally adherent only to procedures is untenable in the present case. Having criticized democratic theories that want to restrict themselves to purely procedural values, in the second part I will focus on the idea of knowledge and make explicit its characters of being practical and shared. Eventually, it will help to have one example. M-Health will show that many valuable insights would be incompatible with the restrictions of the proceduralism. Philosophical consideration of health will combine epistemic issues with political ones triggered by technology and sharpened by the COVID-19 pandemic.
The Canadian medical residency match has received considerable attention in the medical community as several students go unmatched every year. Simultaneously, several residency positions go unfilled, largely in Quebec, the Francophone province of Canada. In Canada, positions are designated with a language restriction, a phenomenon that has not been described previously in the matching literature. We develop the model of matching with compatibility constraints, where, based on a dual-valued characteristic, a subset of students is incompatible with a subset of hospitals, and show how such constraints lead to inefficiency. We derive a lower bound for the number of Anglophone and Francophone residency positions such that every student is matched for all instances of (a form of) preferences. Our analysis suggests that to guarantee a stable match for every student, a number of positions at least equal to the population of bilingual students must be left unfilled.
Political institutions and public administration (General), Economic theory. Demography
Neo-republicans position James Harrington (1611–1677) as a seminal figure in a tradition that asks what set of institutions grant the individual freedom from domination. This article argues that the signal emphasis on freedom diverts us from the broader question of legitimacy motivating Harrington’s republicanism. Harrington contends that the liberty property confers is a necessary but insufficient condition for de jure government. The popular liberty that a broad distribution of wealth secures must be supplemented by a Roman concept of authority in order for the regime to become legitimate. Republican legitimacy requires the marriage of popular power and aristocratic virtue; it demands both the wide distribution of property and the integration of authority as auctoritas into the political constitution. The elucidation of Harrington’s dual theory of legitimacy makes it possible to reassess the distance separating a republicanism that follows Harrington from a liberalism that follows Hobbes.
It is established that in Western democracies public administration (Public Administration) is noted.
The fact is that public administration was subordinate to political power, therefore the relationship
between management and politics is always quite complicated, but to solve them, the growing majority
of contradictions are handled by modern information and communication technologies. At the same time,
having received special technological competence, the administrative apparatus claims to be more active
in the sphere of politics, but is unable to dominate through the increasing complexity and complexity of
public administration.
It has been established that in the encyclopedic dictionary of public administration public administration
is defined as the theory and practice of public administration, which is characterized by the implementation
of administrative procedures through public activities, the use of democratic governance tools, streamlining
public activities and the provision of administrative services as a means of realizing the rights and freedoms
of citizens. In Ukraine, public administration has gained official recognition as an educational specialty. At
the same time, many scientists, mainly in public administration, have their own opinions on the definition of
public administration. At the same time, it is difficult to establish a rigid framework for public administration
and related administration. The authors consider certain aspects of public administration, while the subjectsand objects are not clarified, and most importantly, the principles of building governance. Perhaps it is
precisely on the basis of such an approach that it is difficult in the legislative system to define public
administration as such.
It is proposed to determine the current state of public administration in Ukraine as the interaction of
state power institutions, local self-government and civil society institutions, organized on a legal basis with
the aim of realizing the interests of society and the state on the basis of new ones and improving existing
concepts, theories, principles and methods.
For the development of modern public administration in Ukraine, the use of principles that have been
introduced into the public administration system and management as a whole, and which serve as the basis
for the formation, organization, functioning of public administration bodies and reflect the essence and
reality of public administration processes, remains characteristic.
Political institutions and public administration (General)
Важливою детермінантою соціально-економічного розвитку регіонів є фінансова децентралізація, яка сприяє, з одного боку, зменшенню ролі держави в їхньому фінансовому забезпеченні, з другого — створює можливості для зміцнення автономності місцевих бюджетів. На основі аналізу кращих практик економічно розвинутих країн розкрито особливості прояву фінансової децентралізації в контексті її впливу на економічне зростання регіонів і територіальних громад. З’ясовано джерела формування доходів. Показано, що доходи бюджетів субрегіонального рівня формують (у переважній більшості) місцеві податки, значну питому вагу серед яких становлять майнові податки, причому у федеративних країнах їхня вагомість у доходах бюджетів є значно нижчою, аніж в унітарних. Різним країнам властивий різний ступінь децентралізації, однак «багатші» країни більш децентралізовані. Доведено, що не існує оптимального рівня фінансової децентралізації, бо кожна країна йде власним шляхом розвитку. Виокремлено причини фінансової децентралізації, серед яких такі: низька ефективність діяльності сфери освіти, охорони здоров’я, соціального захисту, державного управління; надмірні витрати на утримання мережі та управлінського апарату; незадовільні темпи впровадження новітніх технологій, малі неспроможні громади, бажання підвищити ефективність та якість суспільних послуг, хоча на початку 2000-х років для країн Східної Європи у пріоритеті були завдання розбудови власної демократичної політичної системи. Висвітлено перші кроки фінансової децентралізації в Україні та показано недоліки розпочатої реформи. Визначено пріоритети проведення бюджетної політики в Україні в умовах реформи міжбюджетних відносин. Наголошено на недоцільності дзеркального перенесення досвіду реалізації реформи фінансової децентралізації у країнах Європи і світу на терени України. Зазначене потребує детального аналізу особливостей її прояву в межах кожної країни.
Education (General), Theory and practice of education
While previous studies reveal mixed findings on the relationship between analytic cognitive style (ACS) and right-wing (conservative) political orientation, the correlation is generally negative. However, most of these studies are based on Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic (WEIRD) societies, and it is not clear whether this relationship is a cross-culturally stable phenomenon. In order to test cross-cultural generalizability of this finding, we re-analyzed the data collected by the Many Labs 2 Project from 30 politically diverse societies (N = 7,263). Social conservatism is measured with the binding foundations scale, comprising of loyalty (patriotism), authority (respect for traditions), and sanctity (respect for the sacred), as proposed by the moral foundations theory, while ACS is measured by the three-item modified cognitive reflection task. The level of WEIRDness of each country was calculated by scoring how much a culture is Western, educated, industrialized, rich, and democratic. Although social conservatism is negatively associated with ACS in the aggregate, analysis indicates that the relationship is significantly stronger among WEIRD and remains negligible among non-WEIRD cultures. These findings show the cross-cultural variability of this relationship and emphasize the limitations of studying only WEIRD cultures.
Vincent Lloyd’s 2016 book <i>Black Natural Law</i> presents four case histories in which African American intellectuals used the natural law tradition to mount defenses of the rights, capacities, and dignity of members of their communities. This essay uses the discourse of black natural law as reconstructed by Lloyd to reread Caliban’s political arguments and social and aesthetic project in <i>The Tempest</i>. Although the natural law tradition became increasingly secularized during the century of revolution, black thinkers such as W. E. B. Du Bois and Martin Luther King, Jr. drew on the religious renditions of natural law that were alive in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. Reading Shakespeare with black natural law is not simply an audacious leap into our troubled present, but also brings new focus on the forms of scripturally-inspired pluralism that natural law theory supported in Shakespeare’s age.
Contemporary political thought is deeply divided about the role of ontology in political thinking. Famously, political liberal John Rawls has argued that ontological claims are best to be avoided in political thought. In recent years, however, a number of theorists have claimed that ontology is essential to political philosophy. According to the contributors to this ‘ontological turn’, ontological investigations may foster the politicisation of hegemonic political theories and can highlight new possibilities for political life. This essay aims to contribute to the debate about ontology in political philosophy by arguing that a compelling case for ontology can also be made in light of Rawls’ political liberalism itself, in particular, by taking seriously Rawls’ commitment to the politicisation of justice and the task of orientation of political philosophy. To make this case, the paper brings Rawls' perspective in conversation with the critical methodology and the ontology of agonism and reflections on parrhesia or frank truth-telling of Michel Foucault.