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\"A series of in-depth accounts of 'the view from above' in shaping notions of territory, security and conflict\"-- Provided by publisher.

All other parts of the entrepreneurial ecosystem in any country are commonly governed by the political and legal aspects of the entrepreneurial ecosystem. This is a novel approach that examines the integrated effect of the entrepreneurial ecosystem's political–legal subsystem on the performance of MSEs based on system theory and the mediating role of entrepreneurial competence taking a resource-based view in to account. There has been no detailed examination of the entrepreneurial ecosystem of MSEs in Africa in general, and Ethiopia in particular. A total sample of 499 MSE operators engaged in the three priority sectors: manufacturing, construction and urban agriculture was selected from the population of 4086 operators in three metropolitan cities of Amhara National Regional State, Ethiopia, using a proportional stratified sampling. Though the political–legal aspects of the entrepreneurial ecosystem have a major impact on both entrepreneurial competency and MSE’s performance, the relationship between entrepreneurial competencies and MSE performance was found to be insignificant. The role of entrepreneurial competency in mediating the relationships between policy and business performance and other business environments and business performance was shown to be insignificant. It is suggested by the study that the policies that the government designs concerning MSEs should be workable and attractive including the provision of different incentives. Lastly, other researchers in the area are suggested to further clarify the contradictions in the findings regarding the relationship between entrepreneurial competencies and the performance of SMEs.

State capitalism is attracting burgeoning attention but comes with inconsistent findings toward internationalization. Given its prevalent appearances, the study has investigated the effect of state equity on outward foreign direct investment (OFDI) under the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), which may constitute a challenge to the international business theory and new hope for companies in emerging economies. Anchoring on the agentic perspective of institutional theory and a sample of Chinese public listed firms, we have unveiled that higher state equity pushes greater proactiveness in investing in those BRI destinations. However, state equity generates stronger pushing effects when the equity source is not from the central government whereas the organizational top managers’ foreign exposures attenuate such pressures. At the institutional level, furthermore, the coastal locale attenuates the effects of such pressures whereas firms are more likely to invest in countries with bilateral investment treaties (BITs) under the BRI theme. Overall, the study should extend our understandings toward the BRI phenomenon and enrich the theoretical knowledge of state capitalism from a political perspective.

\"International indigenism\" may sound like a contradiction in terms, but it is indeed a global phenomenon and a growing form of activism. In his fluent and accessible narrative, Ronald Niezen examines the ways the relatively recent emergence of an internationally recognized identity—\"indigenous peoples\"—intersects with another relatively recent international movement—the development of universal human rights laws and principles. This movement makes use of human rights instruments and the international organizations of states to resist the political, cultural, and economic incursions of individual states. The concept \"indigenous peoples\" gained currency in the social reform efforts of the International Labor Organization in the 1950s, was taken up by indigenous nongovernmental organizations, and is now fully integrated into human rights initiatives and international organizations. Those who today call themselves indigenous peoples share significant similarities in their colonial and postcolonial experiences, such as loss of land and subsistence, abrogation of treaties, and the imposition of psychologically and socially destructive assimilation policies. Niezen shows how, from a new position of legitimacy and influence, they are striving for greater recognition of collective rights, in particular their rights to self-determination in international law. These efforts are influencing local politics in turn and encouraging more ambitious goals of autonomy in indigenous communities worldwide.

The commentary encourages supplementing the geological and natural concept of the Anthropocene with a cultural and political aspect. These two perspectives are not mutually exclusive but are complementary. This approach can facilitate its transition from the language of academic debate to practical and necessary actions at the societal level. According to the authors, the slightly and impersonal Anthropocene should be shown in the context of cultural, economic and political dependencies and choices that created it and continue to reproduce its logic. This turn also opens up a new area for analyzing the Anthropocene from the perspective of a critique of political economy (an analysis of the costs of economic policies that reproduce and accelerate successive stages of the ecological catastrophe) as well as of civic culture (research “anthropocentric awareness” or “anthropocentric citizenship” in entire societies). Thus, the authors suggest rejecting the fatalistic determinism of the Anthropocene as a process that, although originally caused by (devoid of historical, economic and political contexts) humans, is now often treated as a phenomenon beyond the reach of social action. Plain Language Summary Can the concept of the Anthropocene, which originated in the geological sciences, but is now increasingly used by the media and in public space, be clearly defined from the perspective of the social sciences? In our opinion, the social understanding of the Anthropocene can facilitate its transition from the academic debate and the image of the Pop‐Anthropocene disseminated by the media to the creation of a necessary and practical policy framework. We also suggest treating the Anthropocene not as an idea in the geological and natural sciences, which is difficult for common people to understand, but as a phenomenon that brings political and economic consequences in the real social world. What is more, this phenomenon depends on political and economic forces that have never been anonymous. This turn breaks with the lack of political responsibility for the ecological consequences of decisions made by political and economic decision‐makers, as well as for the thoughtless attitudes of all other participants in social life. Key Points From a cultural perspective, the Anthropocene should be treated in two ways: as a “geological” state and as a model of “social and economic” In the third decade of the 21st century, it is important to give social analyses and concepts of the Anthropocene a political perspective It is time for the Anthropocene to move permanently from academic halls to the main agenda of political challenges globally and locally

Purpose>This paper aims to analyze how strategizing practices can legitimate construction of public sector policy. The Porto Alegre Film Commission was set up as part of a strategy to increase the city’s competitiveness as a tourism destination. The municipal government engaged with private and public stakeholders and embarked on a collective process of policy construction.Design/methodology/approach>The authors based their research on two theoretical lenses from business administration theory: strategy as practice (SaP) and neo-institutional theory (NIT), whereby SaP attempts to explain formation and implementation of strategy on the basis of a process that seeks a collective result, whereas NIT reveals the limits of this formation and implementation, attributing the process to influences of power and legitimacy. Thus, the authors get a more accurate view of the actors and the system of governance, considering the in-built reflexivity of these relationships and their capacity to change institutional arrangements. The authors conducted an in-depth case study with a qualitative approach, using semi-structured interviews, participatory observation and documentary analysis.Findings>The results revealed the role played by the government and how practices used in the strategizing process ensured the legitimacy of public sector policy formulation and engaged private and public stakeholders.Research limitations/implications>The authors recognize limitations such as the investigation being set in a single country and responses based on the interviewees’ perceptions of momentum. It would be interesting to undertake cross-national comparisons using empirical data that allow comparison of film commissions with different relationships between strategizing, power and politics.Practical implications>This case study analyzed the relationship between formal institutional agents and the strategies adopted to create and run the Porto Alegre Film Commission (PAFC), positioning Porto Alegre as a destination for film and video production and, reflexively, making it more attractive to tourists interested in getting to know the locations where publicity campaigns, films and soap operas were filmed. This formal institution agent was converted into a strategic catalyzer to influence the institutional issues in a creative industry in which trade associations and firms had encountered difficulties when they attempted to set up a film commission alone.Social implications>The evidence compiled showed that the practices, besides being strategic, were enacted in a specific context and directed toward results and survival of the PAFC. The practices shaped the results, because they were constructed together with other actors, achieving legitimacy through collaborative development of practices and targeting survival by establishing governance structures capable of riding out periods of political transition. In short, the collective construction of the PAFC policy, led by the public sector, legitimized it in the eyes of society.Originality/value>This study furthers the discussion about strategizing in an organizational field marked by power relationships and how their consequences can affect society in general. There is a need to take a closer look at the implications of strategizing for power relationships and how the consequences can influence the organizational field.

This timely and critically important work does what hostilities in the Middle East have made nearly impossible: it offers a measured, internal perspective on Palestinian politics, viewing emerging political patterns from the Palestinian point of view rather than through the prism of the Arab-Israeli conflict. Based on groundbreaking fieldwork, interviews with Palestinian leaders, and an extensive survey of Arabic-language writings and documents,Palestinian Politics after the Oslo Accordspresents the meaning of state building and self-reliance as Palestinians themselves have understood them in the years between 1993 and 2002. Nathan J. Brown focuses his work on five areas: legal development, constitution drafting, the Palestinian Legislative Council, civil society, and the effort to write a new curriculum. His book shows how Palestinians have understood efforts at building institutions as acts of resumption rather than creation-with activists and leaders seeing themselves as recovering from an interrupted past, Palestinians seeking to rejoin the Arab world by building their new institutions on Arab models, and many Palestinian reformers taking the Oslo Accords as an occasion to resume normal political life. Providing a clear and urgently needed vantage point on most of the issues of Palestinian reform and governance that have emerged in recent policy debates-issues such as corruption, constitutionalism, democracy, and rule of law-Brown's book helps to put Palestinian aspirations and accomplishments in their proper context within a long and complex history and within the larger Arab world.

Few words in both everyday parlance and theoretical discourse have been as rhapsodically defended or as fervently resisted as \"experience.\" Yet, to date, there have been no comprehensive studies of how the concept of experience has evolved over time and why so many thinkers in so many different traditions have been compelled to understand it. Songs of Experience is a remarkable history of Western ideas about the nature of human experience written by one of our best-known intellectual historians. With its sweeping historical reach and lucid comparative analysis—qualities that have made Martin Jay's previous books so distinctive and so successful—Songs of Experience explores Western discourse from the sixteenth century to the present, asking why the concept of experience has been such a magnet for controversy. Resisting any single overarching narrative, Jay discovers themes and patterns that transcend individuals and particular schools of thought and illuminate the entire spectrum of intellectual history. As he explores the manifold contexts for understanding experience—epistemological, religious, aesthetic, political, and historical—Jay engages an exceptionally broad range of European and American traditions and thinkers from the American pragmatists and British Marxist humanists to the Frankfurt School and the French poststructuralists, and he delves into the thought of individual philosophers as well, including Montaigne, Bacon, Locke, Hume and Kant, Oakeshott, Collingwood, and Ankersmit. Provocative, engaging, erudite, this key work will be an essential source for anyone who joins the ongoing debate about the material, linguistic, cultural, and theoretical meaning of \"experience\" in modern cultures.

Since 1980, the number of people in U.S. prisons has increased more than 450%. Despite a crime rate that has been falling steadily for decades, California has led the way in this explosion, with what a state analyst called \"the biggest prison building project in the history of the world.\" Golden Gulag provides the first detailed explanation for that buildup by looking at how political and economic forces, ranging from global to local, conjoined to produce the prison boom. In an informed and impassioned account, Ruth Wilson Gilmore examines this issue through statewide, rural, and urban perspectives to explain how the expansion developed from surpluses of finance capital, labor, land, and state capacity. Detailing crises that hit California’s economy with particular ferocity, she argues that defeats of radical struggles, weakening of labor, and shifting patterns of capital investment have been key conditions for prison growth. The results—a vast and expensive prison system, a huge number of incarcerated young people of color, and the increase in punitive justice such as the \"three strikes\" law—pose profound and troubling questions for the future of California, the United States, and the world. Golden Gulag provides a rich context for this complex dilemma, and at the same time challenges many cherished assumptions about who benefits and who suffers from the state’s commitment to prison expansion.