The Ashgate Research Companion to Federalism

The Ashgate Research Companion to Federalism

Author: Dr Lee Ward

Publisher: Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

Published: 2013-03-28

Total Pages: 616

ISBN-13: 1409499154

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This comprehensive research companion examines the theory, practice and historical development of the principle of federalism from the ancient period to the contemporary world. The scope and range of the volume is unparalleled; it will provide the reader with a firm understanding of federalism as issues of federalism promise to play an ever more important role in shaping our world.


Reforming Education Finance in Transition Countries

Reforming Education Finance in Transition Countries

Author: Juan Diego Alonso

Publisher: World Bank Publications

Published: 2011

Total Pages: 307

ISBN-13: 9780821387832

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This book reviews the experience with one specific though widely introduced approach to funding general education, namely per capita financing (PCF), in six countries in the Europe and Central Asia (ECA) region in an effort to learn which outcomes were achieved and how. Six country case studies are the bulk of the book and were chosen as a project that the World Bank initiated back in 2007. The set of countries chosen (Armenia, Estonia, Georgia, Lithuania, Poland and the Russian Federation) was motivated by the fact that the World Bank was actively involved in supporting reforms in these countries and, in some cases, played a fundamental role in bringing these reforms to fruition. The hope is that, as a result, the likelihood of observing the outcomes of per capita financing is higher. An attempt was made at geographic variation across the ECA region as well. Chapter 1 provides a general introduction to the book. Chapters 2 through 7 discuss the country case studies. The case studies are presented in alphabetical order: Armenia (chapter 2), Estonia (chapter 3), Georgia (chapter 4), Lithuania (Chapter 5), Poland (Chapter 6), and Russia (chapter 7). All six chapters present a similar structure. First, an introduction is provided to motivate the discussion. Second, the historical background to the introduction of the PCF system is discussed. Third, the design of the PCF scheme is analyzed. Fourth, the peculiarities of the implementation of the scheme are described. Fifth, an assessment of a set of three main outcomes - efficiency, equity and transparency/accountability - is presented. A sixth and final section provides a summary of the lessons learned in each of the cases. Chapter 8 presents an in-depth overview of the case studies, within a common framework to compare these experiences.


On the Law of Peace

On the Law of Peace

Author: Christine Bell

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2008-09-25

Total Pages: 410

ISBN-13: 0199226830

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This book provides a comprehensive analysis of the use of peace agreements from a legal perspective. The book describes and evaluates the development of contemporary peace agreement practice, and the documents which emerge. It sets out what is in essence an anatomy of peace agreement practice, and locates this practice with reference to the role of law. The last fifteen years have seen a proliferation of peace agreements. These peace agreements have been produced as a result of complex peace processes involving multi-party negotiations between the main protagonists of conflict, often with the involvement of international actors. They document attempts to end conflict, and this book argues that they play an underestimated role in a political process that centrally revolves around law. Understanding peace agreements is important to understanding contemporary peace processes. Law plays two key roles with respect to peace agreements: first, to the extent that peace agreements themselves form legal documents, law plays a role in the 'enforcement' or implementation of the peace agreement; second, international law has a relationship to peace agreement negotiation and content, in an enabling or regulatory capacity. The aim of the book is to evaluate the role which law plays both in enforcing peace agreements and through a normative framework which constrains the ways in which they operate. This evaluation reveals a deeper link between the legal status of peace agreements and their normative regulation as mutually shaping, in what is argued to be a developing lex pacificatoria - or law of the peace makers. This lex pacificatoria stands as an account of the way in which international law shapes and is shaped by peace agreements, in ways which impact on contemporary debates about the force of international law.


Hidden Challenges to Education Systems in Transition Economies

Hidden Challenges to Education Systems in Transition Economies

Author: Sue E. Berryman

Publisher: World Bank Publications

Published: 2000-01-01

Total Pages: 148

ISBN-13: 0821348132

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This book provides diagnostic and strategic analysis of the challenges to educational systems in the transition economies of the Eastern and Central Europe and Central Asia. At the outset of the transition many of these countries educational systems had solved problems such as limited access, gender inequalities, and poor quality outputs that still plague other regions of the world. Many policy makers believed that education was not a problem sector in transition countries. This report presents originally unforeseen results which suggest that deep and broad problems are emerging in the sector and were threatening many countries' achievements in education. The region's education systems which once were a good fit with the planned economies and authoritarian political systems are proving to be a poor fit with market economies and more open political systems. Inequities in learning opportunities are increasing at a time when human capital is becoming ever more important in the region's recovery and development. The danger is that in some countries of the region these education problems, left unchecked, could threaten to create a vicious circle that will make poverty and social exclusion a powerful generational inheritance.


Armenia and Azerbaijan

Armenia and Azerbaijan

Author: Broers Laurence Broers

Publisher: Edinburgh University Press

Published: 2019-08-21

Total Pages: 292

ISBN-13: 1474450555

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The Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict for control of the mountainous territory of Nagorny Karabakh is the longest-running dispute in post-Soviet Eurasia. Laurence Broers shows how more than 20 years of dynamic territorial politics, shifting power relations, international diffusion and unsuccessful mediation efforts have contributed to the resilience of this stubbornly unresolved dispute. Looking beyond tabloid tropes of 'frozen conflict' or 'Russian land-grab', Broers unpacks the unresolved territorial issues of the 1990s and the strategic rivalry that has built up around them since.


Needs-based Resource Allocation in Education

Needs-based Resource Allocation in Education

Author: Kenneth Norman Ross

Publisher:

Published: 1999

Total Pages: 284

ISBN-13:

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The book explores a range of conceptual, methodological and empirical issues concerned with the application of needs-based resource allocation in education via formula funding of schools. The first part presents the policy context for needs-based formula funding, the second examines technical matters related to the construction of funding formulae and the third part presents case studies in five countries (Australia, England and Wales, United States and New Zealand). The conclusion offers a 'checklist' for senior decision-makers in Ministries of Education that highlights the pre-conditions for undertaking a successful implementation of needs-based formula funding.


Made in Russia

Made in Russia

Author: Carlos Whitlock Porter

Publisher:

Published: 2013-12-21

Total Pages: 430

ISBN-13: 9781648580147

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A stumbling block for Revisionists, just as it was for the post-war German defendants, is the seeming wealth of documents and testimony assembled by Allied prosecutors for the Nuremberg trials. The more than sixty volumes of trial material which appeared in the wake of the "Trial of the Major War Criminals" and twelve subsequent trials before the (American) Nuremberg Military Tribunal have for many years supplied a massive compilation of apparently damning evidence against Germany's National Socialist regime. Most Exterminationists, academic and lay, believe that Germany's "aggression" in beginning the war, and the numerous atrocities and war crimes laid to the German account, above all the alleged Holocaust of European Jewry, are amply documented in the so-called "Nuremberg record".