Cash transfer-based social protection programs have increasingly been implemented as climate adaptation strategies in Global South countries for their capacity to address both climatic and non-climatic shocks. This systematic review investigates the role of cash transfer-based social protection programs in enhancing household climate resilience, based on 35 empirical studies retrieved from Web of Science and Scopus databases and snowball searches. Findings indicate that cash transfer social protection measures can predominantly improve households’ absorptive and adaptive capacities, despite some advancements in anticipatory capacities and limited transformative capacities due to systemic challenges. Key local constraints related to socioeconomic and political conditions can limit the positive effects of cash transfers. The pathways through which cash transfers contribute to enhancing household climate resilience include household welfare and income, livelihoods, savings, agricultural productivity, livestock, prevention of adverse coping strategies, reduction of debt accrual, increased tree coverage, relaxing migration, health, and life skills training. However, cash transfer programs demonstrate limited effectiveness in enhancing resilience where poverty and vulnerability are pervasive, cash benefits are insufficient or inconsistent, negative coping strategies persist, political capture constrains access, and gender inequalities remain entrenched. This review suggests that the design and delivery of cash transfers consider these challenges in climate-integrated adaptation programs to realize climate-resilient objectives, focusing on multidimensional factors that improve both ex-ante climate preparation and ex-post climate response capacities. However, more research on cash transfer-based social protection measures for climate resilience using qualitative or mixed-methods designs is needed in contexts other than African countries, especially in informal urban settings.
Peru’s export-oriented agricultural sector has expanded steadily, yet high informality, formal–informal income disparities and recurrent enforcement challenges persist. This study examines the degree of normative dissonance between the formal recognition and material effectiveness of labour rights under Peru’s export-oriented agricultural labour regime, particularly Law No. 31110. Using a qualitative, exploratory socio-legal design, it analyses legal norms, institutional reports, statistical evidence and academic literature from 2000 to 2025. The analysis considers normative design, institutional enforcement and material effectiveness, alongside a comparison with the general private labour regime. Findings indicate that Law No. 31110 formally preserves extensive individual and collective labour rights, while differences mainly concern the calculation, payment and application of specific benefits. Nevertheless, agricultural informality, income disparities and documented inspection interventions expose persistent obstacles to effective protection. Seasonality, productivity, firm heterogeneity, labour costs and enforcement capacity further influence regulatory outcomes. Normative dissonance thus stems not simply from regulatory differentiation, but from interactions between formal legal protection, institutional capacity and labour-market conditions. The study concludes that labour governance in export-oriented agriculture requires a balanced approach combining effective rights enforcement, formalisation, productivity enhancement and adaptation to the economic characteristics of agricultural production.
Research exploring how students perceive higher education service quality and institutional image is relatively sparse. Applying four dimensions of the HESQUAL model, this study explored students’ perceptions of higher education service quality and their perceived connection with institutional image. Qualitative methodologies were adopted in this research. Thirty undergraduate learners from different universities were conveniently sampled to respond to an open-ended questionnaire. Using thematic analysis, themes and subthemes concerning higher education service quality and their perceived connection with institutional image were identified. These service quality variables were support facilities quality, core education quality, physical environment quality, and administrative quality. The findings suggest that participants associated positive institutional image with highly knowledgeable and experienced academic staff, modern module syllabi and curricula, excellent support facilities, and modern learning facilities. This research provides important practical contributions to the management of higher education institutions, administrators, academics, and policymakers seeking to understand and respond to students’ perceptions of their institutions.
Hierarchical government trust refers to the persistent trust gap wherein citizens hold far greater confidence in higher-tier governments than in local authorities, a widespread phenomenon observed across diverse governance systems. Online and offline channels represent two primary modes of public service delivery. Nevertheless, existing scholarship has not examined whether these two types of services exert differential impacts on hierarchical government trust. Drawing on valid data from 3,127 respondents of the 2023 China Social Governance Survey, this paper conducts empirical analyses using OLS regression, together with Bootstrap-based mediation and moderation techniques. The empirical results reveal three core findings. First, both e-government services and offline government services significantly attenuate hierarchical government trust. Second, local government performance evaluation acts as a critical mediating mechanism: high-quality services enhance citizens’ perceptions of local governance effectiveness, which strengthens public trust in local governments. Third, government role perception moderates the association between offline government services and hierarchical government trust. Citizens with stronger service-oriented perceptions experience a more substantial reduction in hierarchical government trust when accessing high-quality offline services. These findings provide actionable implications for policymakers to narrow the central-local trust divide and consolidate the legitimacy of multi-level governance in the digital era.
AI-driven surveillance is testing the limits of international human rights law. Drawing on comparative case studies from India, Brazil, Kenya, and Palestine, this article asks a simple but pressing question: can mass algorithmic surveillance ever sit comfortably with the right to privacy under Article 17 of the ICCPR? The answer is that, at population scale, it should be presumed incompatible, though that presumption can be rebutted. The argument unfolds in three parts. First, by applying established Article 17 standards from ICCPR jurisprudence and treaty-body practice, it shows why indiscriminate surveillance warrants this presumption. It also shows how, depending on its design and effects, it can engage Articles 19, 25, and 26, with harms deepened by intersecting inequalities. Second, it places this legal finding within the political economy of AI surveillance as an industry, whose commercial logic and global supply chains echo the extraction and dependency that digital colonialism and TWAIL scholars have long described. Third, it assesses emerging governance regimes, including the EU AI Act, the Council of Europe’s Framework Convention on AI, and the UN Global Digital Compact. Author finds that they leave structural accountability gaps unaddressed, and we propose a rights-by-design treaty framework as a stronger response.
