Joyce Jacinta Rares, Michael Mamentu, Muhammad Ridha, Zainul Abidin
Universal welfare policies are increasingly adopted by countries in the Global South as instruments for human development and state legitimacy. However, uniform policy designs often encounter diverse social, economic, institutional, and geographical conditions. This study examines the implementation of Indonesia’s Free Nutritious Meal Program (Program Makan Bergizi Gratis, MBG) in North Sulawesi Province, focusing on the interaction between national policy content and local implementation contexts. This study employed a qualitative case study design. Data were collected between June and August 2025 through in-depth interviews with eight key informants, field observations in Manado City, Minahasa Regency, Sangihe Islands Regency, and Talaud Islands Regency, and analysis of relevant policy documents and official reports. The findings show that MBG implementation is characterized by administratively driven targeting, asymmetrical power relations among implementing actors, and limited adaptability to local social and geographical conditions. The interaction between a universal policy design and heterogeneous implementation contexts produces variations in program delivery and creates risks of social exclusion, particularly for remote island regions and vulnerable population groups. The findings demonstrate that universal welfare policies do not automatically produce distributive justice. Effective implementation requires closer alignment between national policy content and local implementation contexts, including geographically differentiated budgeting, greater operational flexibility for frontline implementers, and implementation arrangements based on empirical indicators of social vulnerability.
Wilian Quispe Nina, Robinson Bernardino Almanza Cabe, Antonio Victor Morales Gonzales, José Luis Chavez Cuarite, Adolfo Erick Donayre Sarolli, Ruben Washington Arguedas Catasi, Miluska Odely Rodriguez Saavedra
The purpose of the study was to understand how the digitization of the public sphere transforms citizens’ perceptions of how the state functions. The main objective was to analyze how political-institutional approval and institutional trust are shaped in the context of the growing digitization of the public sphere. To this end, a quantitative, non-experimental, cross-sectional design was used, with a sample of 1,400 people from four provinces in southern Peru. The analysis was performed using structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM), evaluating reliability, validity, and structural effects, as well as moderation through multigroup analysis. The results showed that positive evaluation of public services is the strongest correlate of institutional trust (β = 0.58, p < 0.001 in the baseline model; β = 0.45, p < 0.001 once political-institutional approval and controls are entered simultaneously). Political-institutional approval maintained a significant association with trust (β = 0.31, p < 0.001), with a smaller effect than services. The digital environment played a significant moderating role: both the type of media used to obtain information (Δ β = 0.14, p = 0.012) and the level of politicization (Δ β = 0.18, p = 0.006) intensified the relationship between service evaluation and institutional trust. Institutional trust is shaped mainly by tangible results linked to state performance. Political-institutional approval operates in a context of high political disapproval.
How did the United Nations, in their early years become an actor in the process of decolonization? This article shifts attention away from the diplomatic negotiations conventionally associated with international decolonization and toward the United Nations visiting missions, a largely overlooked instrument of the Trusteeship System entrusted with an epistemic mandate to investigate, inspect, and report on conditions in dependent territories. Drawing on actor-network theory, and particularly Michel Callon’s model of translation, the article traces how the visiting missions established themselves as an obligatory passage point through which knowledge about the territories had to pass. Following the actors through the moments of translations, the article shows how mission members, administering powers, and local populations alike were equipped, mobilized, and drawn into their respective roles through devices as varied as background reports, health protocols, and travel arrangements, weaving a network that connected New York’s diplomatic mandates to the everyday realities of the territories, and vice versa. Central to this process, the article argues, was not only the alignment of divergent interests among the actors involved, but the practices of assembling people, documents, and objects, and moving them across considerable distances, from the territories to the center in New York where decisions were made. The 1947 mission to Western Samoa serves as an extended illustration of this process. Rather than asking how much influence the UN exercised over decolonization, the article explores how the UN came to exercise any influence at all. It argues that this influence, though formally granted under the Charter, was not simply given by that grant. It had to be made credible and effective through fieldwork, material arrangements, and the subsequent uptake of the knowledge these missions produced, a resource for shaping the process of decolonization that emerged from the interactions of the many different actors involved in producing that knowledge.
Jawad Chahine, Wang Guangda, Fadi Ghosn, Lojain Suliman, Yamen Nissi
Rising geopolitical risks and supply-chain disruptions have increased interest in transport-network diversification and alternative connectivity systems. This article presents a scenario-based comparison between a traditional maritime chokepoint configuration centered on the Strait of Hormuz and a prospective diversified multimodal corridor connecting the Middle East and Europe. The study is grounded in an integrated theoretical framework that combines Geopolitical Risk Theory with a systems-based approach, operationalized through a multi-scale analytical framework (macro–meso–micro). At the macro level, the analysis captures global trade structures and geopolitical risk dynamics shaping route selection. At the meso level, it examines corridor configurations, infrastructure networks, and regional connectivity patterns. At the micro level, it focuses on operational performance, including flow efficiency, disruption response, and system adaptability. This multi-level perspective allows transport networks to be analyzed as complex systems shaped by both structural and geopolitical dynamics. Methodologically, the research adopts a mixed-methods design, integrating qualitative geopolitical analysis with a quantitative, scenario-based assessment of trade flows, assumed capacity conditions, and disruption scenarios. In addition, the study incorporates a technical approach through the development of a Python-based program that enables real-time computation and dynamic analysis, facilitating scenario modeling and performance evaluation of different transport routes under varying disruption conditions. The analysis evaluates the potential resilience implications of reducing chokepoint dependency through a prospective corridor-based configuration. It does not seek to demonstrate that a global transition is currently occurring or to establish geopolitical risk as its primary causal driver.
