State-owned enterprise governance in the Pacific: The application of local values and practices in Samoa and Tonga

<p><b>This research examined how state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in two Pacific countries approach their governance roles in a context where concepts of good corporate governance are changing internationally. The research considered whether corporate governance practice can be enhanced by the application of local cultural values and principles, and whether there are lessons learned from these two countries that could be shared more broadly.</b></p> <p>The study explored insights from current and former SOE board chairs, directors, CEOs, senior public officials from the Kingdom of Tonga (Tonga) and the Independent State of Samoa (Samoa), and subject matter experts, who discussed their experiences and insights about approaches to corporate governance. The research also examined the literature on the rationale for the concept of ‘good governance’ which emerged in the latter half of the twentieth century, and corporate governance principles that support SOE models, to provide context for participant responses.</p> <p>Twenty-six interviews were undertaken in Tonga and Samoa between July and September 2019. Twelve participants were interviewed about Tonga’s SOEs, 12 participants were interviewed about Samoa’s SOEs, and two participants were interviewed about both countries’ approaches to SOE governance.</p> <p>The research finds that the principles of good corporate governance are dynamic and responsive, and can be modified to fit local situations. Despite the challenges implementing corporate governance principles, SOE directors and officials from Tonga and Samoa are asking how these tools can be applied in their country and are actively adapting and innovating the corporate governance model to improve local application. There are important assertive signs of ambiculturalism reshaping the good governance narrative with a Pacific flavour.</p>

State-owned enterprise governance in the Pacific: The application of local values and practices in Samoa and Tonga

<p><b>This research examined how state-owned enterprises (SOEs) in two Pacific countries approach their governance roles in a context where concepts of good corporate governance are changing internationally. The research considered whether corporate governance practice can be enhanced by the application of local cultural values and principles, and whether there are lessons learned from these two countries that could be shared more broadly.</b></p> <p>The study explored insights from current and former SOE board chairs, directors, CEOs, senior public officials from the Kingdom of Tonga (Tonga) and the Independent State of Samoa (Samoa), and subject matter experts, who discussed their experiences and insights about approaches to corporate governance. The research also examined the literature on the rationale for the concept of ‘good governance’ which emerged in the latter half of the twentieth century, and corporate governance principles that support SOE models, to provide context for participant responses.</p> <p>Twenty-six interviews were undertaken in Tonga and Samoa between July and September 2019. Twelve participants were interviewed about Tonga’s SOEs, 12 participants were interviewed about Samoa’s SOEs, and two participants were interviewed about both countries’ approaches to SOE governance.</p> <p>The research finds that the principles of good corporate governance are dynamic and responsive, and can be modified to fit local situations. Despite the challenges implementing corporate governance principles, SOE directors and officials from Tonga and Samoa are asking how these tools can be applied in their country and are actively adapting and innovating the corporate governance model to improve local application. There are important assertive signs of ambiculturalism reshaping the good governance narrative with a Pacific flavour.</p>

Leveraging Multi-Task Learning to Cope With Poor and Missing Labels of Mammograms

In breast cancer screening, binary classification of mammograms is a common task aiming to determine whether a case is malignant or benign. A Computer-Aided Diagnosis (CADx) system based on a trainable classifier requires clean data and labels coming from a confirmed diagnosis. Unfortunately, such labels are not easy to obtain in clinical practice, since the histopathological reports of biopsy may not be available alongside mammograms, while normal cases may not have an explicit follow-up confirmation. Such ambiguities result either in reducing the number of samples eligible for training or in a label uncertainty that may decrease the performances. In this work, we maximize the number of samples for training relying on multi-task learning. We design a deep-neural-network-based classifier yielding multiple outputs in one forward pass. The predicted classes include binary malignancy, cancer probability estimation, breast density, and image laterality. Since few samples have all classes available and confirmed, we propose to introduce the uncertainty related to the classes as a per-sample weight during training. Such weighting prevents updating the network's parameters when training on uncertain or missing labels. We evaluate our approach on the public INBreast and private datasets, showing statistically significant improvements compared to baseline and independent state-of-the-art approaches. Moreover, we use mammograms from Susan G. Komen Tissue Bank for fine-tuning, further demonstrating the ability to improve the performances in our multi-task learning setup from raw clinical data. We achieved the binary classification performance of AUC = 80.46 on our private dataset and AUC = 85.23 on the INBreast dataset.

The relationship between the President of the Republic of Kosovo and the Assembly in general and in particular in the time period 2011-2016

The Constitution of the Republic of Kosovo in its basic provisions has defined the form of government and separation of state powers, as a fundamental principle of democracy, where the President of the Republic of Kosovo is not part of any of the state powers, but the constitutional powers he exercises affect that he has connections with all state powers. This paper addresses the relation of the President of the Republic of Kosovo with the legislative power, including the exercise of some of his constitutional powers, namely the convening of the constitutive session of the Assembly, the dissolution of the Assembly and the annual speech of the President in the Assembly of the Republic of Kosovo. The above-mentioned competencies, in addition to the theoretical aspect, are also analyzed in the practical aspect when these constitutional competencies of the President were materialized by President Jahjaga during the mandate 2011-2016. Also, the political stalemate and the actions taken by the President, Mrs. Atifete Jahjaga for his overcoming, criticisms and recommendations of the European Commission in the Progress Reports regarding the political stalemate in the country. since the declaration of Kosovo as an independent state in 2008, it has managed to complete a full constitutional mandate, five years, unlike its predecessors and successors until 2019. Therefore, this paper aims to elaborate the exercise of some constitutional powers and the practice of one of the most important constitutional institutions in the Republic of Kosovo, that of the President of the Republic of Kosovo.

Building the rule of law state as a guarantor of democracy in modern Vietnam

Building the rule of law state (referred to as the rule of law) is an objective trend for democratic countries in the modern world, including Vietnam. Thoughts about the rule of law in Vietnam, related to the people’s desire to have an independent state that is organised and acts in accordance with the provisions of law, represents the will and aspirations of the people, protects human rights and citizens’ rights under law, have emerged since the early years of the 20th century. Along with the national liberation struggle, the rule of law state in Vietnam was officially established in 1945, after the victory of the August Revolution (August 19, 1945). It has its own characteristics related to the socialist political regime under the leadership of only one party – the Communist Party of Vietnam.As in many countries around the world, the promotion and expansion of democracy is one of the objectives of building the rule of law in modern Vietnam. The article clarifies some theoretical issues about the rule of law state, the rule of law ideology formation and the rule of law state characteristics in Vietnam. A number of issues that require attention when building a rule of law state to ensure democracy in modern Vietnam is considered

From a Protectorate to a Member State of the European Union

The European Union was present in Kosovo even before the declaration of its independence. However, it was after 2008 and at the request of the Kosovar authorities to EU that Kosovo inaugurated a period of close ties with the organization, through the rule of law mission it launched for the country and through various programs of the European Commission, including the European Partnership Action Plan (EPAP) for Kosovo, Mechanism of the Stabilization and Association Process, and the Instrument of Pre-Accession (IPA). This chapter seeks to examine the evolution of European presence on Kosovo by analysing EULEX mission and other European instruments and the achievements by newly former states in achieving the Copenhagen criteria, contributing to the academic debate on the role of European Union aid in the new Western Balkans states for their emancipation and possible access to the organization. It also evaluates the mutualisation of responsibilities and maintenance of the European status quo in Kosovo, fostering a protectorate in an independent state.

IMPERIAL AND SOVIET DIMENSIONS OF THE UKRAINIAN NATIONAL ISSUE IN O. LOTOTSKY’S JOURNALISM

This paper aims at studying O. Lototsky’s journalistic works during the revolutions of 1905-1907, 1917-1921 and the emigration of 1920-1930. The main focus is on the analysis of the position of Ukrainian lands in the imperial era and the Soviet period, as well as the vision of key problems and political prospects proposed in the articles of O. Lototsky. The research methodology is based on the principles of historicism and objectivity. Both general scientific and special-historical methods are used in the study, namely: historical and comparative, problematic, research tools of the history of ideas (intellectual history) and biographistics. The scientific novelty of the research is determined by its focus on the analysis of the content of Lototsky’s journalistic works in the context of opportunities to solve the Ukrainian national issue in the conditions of the Russian Empire and the Soviet Union. Conclusions. O. Lototsky’s creative legacy contains a significant amount of journalistic material. Their topics are diverse: from reviews of the economic situation of Ukrainian lands to the analysis of the state of educational institutions in the Russian Empire and the problems of the clergy. Considerable attention in these materials is devoted to the Ukrainian national issue. Due to O. Lototsky’s active social activity from 1906 to 1917, the topics of his essays frequently intertwined with the problems in which he was directly involved (for example, the status of the Ukrainian language and the abolition of bans on its use). The position of the Ukrainian lands as part of the Russian Empire and other states in the specified period was of his particular concern. During the emigrant era, the publicist continued to express his vision of the situation of Ukrainian territories within the USSR. The leading idea expressed in most of O. Lototsky’s materials of that period was that the state policy of both the Russian Empire and the USSR did not provide for the creation of an independent Ukrainian state, let alone support for Ukrainian culture. Given the historical experiences of the Ukrainian lands, O. Lototsky in the 1920s and 1930s was an active supporter of the creation of an independent state. O. Lototsky’s diverse creative legacy, his active social and political activities leave many more aspects for further elaboration, analysis, and determination of the significance of his heritage in the intellectual history of Ukraine and the Ukrainian movement.

From National Autonomy to Independent State: The Bund in the Face of the State of Israel, 1948-1989

The title of the article ’From National Autonomy to Independent State‘ refers to the gradual change that occurred in the wake of the Holocaust with respect to the Bund’s refusal to recognize the State of Israel as the national home of the Jewish people during its first forty years. Yet notwithstanding the historical anti-Zionism ideology of the Bund, the movement never wavered in its identification with the State while remaining critical of Israel’s policy towards the Arab refugee problem created by the War of Independence (1948-1949).

Black Nationalism

The popular media often illustrate black nationalism with images of Malcolm X and black leather-jacketed, Afro-wearing, armed Black Panthers in the 1960s, and, in later decades, Louis Farrakhan and hip-hop artists such as Public Enemy. Although historians disagree about black nationalism’s composition and origins, they argue that it has a long pedigree in American history, traceable at least to the first half of the 19th century, if not earlier. While men were most often black nationalism’s public exponents, and some emphasized manhood and female subordination, black nationalism also appealed to many black women, some of whom also exercised leadership and organizational skills in its service. Marcus Garvey, a Jamaican, led the first mass black nationalist organization in the United States, the Universal Negro Improvement Association (UNIA), during the 1920s. Like 19th-century black nationalists, Garvey advocated an independent state for people of African descent, black uplift, and the “civilizing” of Africa. Although not original to him, his emphasis on the right to self-defense, independent black economic development, and pride in African history boosted the UNIA’s popularity. Garvey fell victim to state oppression in the United States, but some former Garveyites joined the Moorish Science Temple of America (MSTA) and probably also the Nation of Islam (NOI), both of which rejected Christianity, identified blacks as Asiatics, and adopted particularist interpretations of Islam. In the 1950s and 1960s, Malcolm X, the charismatic son of Garveyite parents, became the Nation’s chief recruiter. Personal differences with Elijah Muhammad, the Nation’s leader since the 1930s, eventually led to Malcolm X’s departure in 1964. Although he was assassinated in 1965, Malcolm X’s calls for armed self-defense, self-determination and black pride, and identification with anticolonial struggles heavily influenced Black Power advocates. Some civil rights organizations and workers, who were disillusioned by intransigent white racism and distrustful of white liberals, championed Black Power, which was multifaceted and sometimes more reformist than nationalist. In the early 1990s, polls suggested that black nationalist ideas were more popular than during their supposed heyday in the late 1960s, before internal dissension and state repression undermined many Black Power groups.

The Chechens and Kurds of Kazakhstan between Historical and Second Homelands

Almost all minority ethnic groups in Kazakhstan are immigrants. This means that in addition to their current place of residence, Kazakhstan (their “Second Homeland”), they also have a place of origin (their “Historical Homeland”). The leadership of the country has approached this situation, which offers opportunities as well as dangers, by explicitly exhorting the official ethnic representations of minorities to nurture contacts with their Historical Homelands. In this article the examples of the Chechens and Kurds will be used to show how the representations of both ethnicities actively and politically pursued this task. For both groups, representing a nation without an independent state, a fourth actor must be added to the “triangle nexus” familiar from diaspora studies, respectively Russia and Turkey, whose positions the Kazakhstani government cannot simply disregard. What emerges from the study is the strong emotional link of both minorities’ representatives with Kazakhstan as their Second Homeland.