Payments for ecosystem services (PES) is widely employed in various settings; however, in what contexts and whether PES programs achieve their objectives by improving local livelihoods and conservation goals is still being debated. This dissertation assessed the impact of the Payments for Forest Environmental Service (PFES) policy on financial, natural and institutional capitals in order to respond to the critical question on whether and how much the PFES policy has contributed to poverty reduction and ecological enhancement. A case study from ...

Access to education is a basic human right that every government seeks to guarantee its people. Policymakers in the education sector continue to focus on formulating and implementing policies that ensure that all children have equal chances of accessing quality education regardless of their social, economic, or physical status. However, learners living with a disability are still facing numerous challenges in their quest for education.  Well-thought-out policy implementation strategies can assist in ensuring that learners living with a disability ...

In any country with a political system based upon democracy, it has been conventional wisdom that center-left or progressive regimes tend to expand welfare programs, while center-right or conservative governments are more likely to dismantle the welfare state. However, in reality, any political party with a distinct political position on welfare policies is usually put under public scrutiny, which makes it risky for them to simply follow their traditional beliefs, without taking into account public reactions over welfare-related decision-making. ...

Transparency laws are argued to bring accountability to organizational activities. This dissertation aimed at answering the general research question of how organizational factors such as organizational culture, structure (discretion), and endowment (resources) affect the proactive transparency behavior and outward (citizen-centered) accountability orientation of the frontline public bureaucrats in the context of Bangladesh. Proactive transparency behavior is a tendency to disclose information about organizational activities for citizens’ ...

Economic growth and poverty reduction have generally recorded monumental gains in the last two decades globally. On the other hand, worldwide regional inequality has widened considerably. In the year 2009, spatial or regional inequality was one of the major themes of the World Development Report. Similarly, Goal 10 of the United Nations Sustainable Development Goals aims at reducing inequalities within and among countries. These examples point to the relevance of issues of inequalities in contemporary global discourse on development. This study ...

This paper draws on the theoretical concepts from Inter-organizational relations theory, public governance, and public and private partnerships (PPPs), which are incorporated with the conceptions learned from the two cases of PPPs in technical vocational education and training in Singapore and the U.S. As a result, an initial conceptual framework was developed to guide in the understanding of the public and private partnership phenomenon. The framework includes a broad conceptualization of public and private partnerships, consisting of the ...