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This study employs Stein Rokkan's methodological approach to analyse state formation in the Greater Middle East. It develops a conceptual framework distinguishing colonial, populist and democratic pacts, suitable for analysis of state formation and nation-building through to the present period. The framework relies on historical institutionalism. The methodology, however, is Rokkan's. The initial conceptual analysis also specifies differences between European and the Middle Eastern state formation processes. It is followed by a brief and selective discussion of historical preconditions. Next, the method of plotting singular cases into conceptual-typological maps is applied to 20 cases in the Greater Middle East (including Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey). For reasons of space, the empirical analysis is limited to the colonial period (1870s to the end of World War 1). Three typologies are combined into one conceptual-typological map of this period. The vertical left-hand axis provides a composite typology that clarifies cultural-territorial preconditions. The horizontal axis specifies transformations of the region's agrarian class structures since the mid-19th century reforms. The right-hand vertical axis provides a four-layered typology of processes of external intervention. A final section presents selected comparative case reconstructions. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first time such a Rokkan-style conceptual-typological map has been constructed for a non-European region.

A local healthcare organisation providing healthcare to 288,000 residents in Sweden struggled with a longstanding budget deficit. Several attempts to overcome the demanding financial situation have failed. A decommissioning programme was launched, and two years later, an evaluation indicated positive outcomes. The aim of this study was to explore factors politicians and public servants perceived as enablers to the successful implementation of the programme.

A deductive content analysis approach using a framework of factors facilitating successful implementation of decommissioning decisions was applied to analyse interviews with 18 informants.

Important factors were: (1) a review report contributing to the clarity of evidence, which (2) made the clarity of the rationale for change undeniable and (3) strengthened the political support for change. Additional factors were: (4) the strength of executive leadership, (5) the strength of clinical leadership supported by (6) the quality of project management and (7) a cultural and behavioural change seen as an important outcome for the path forward. A way to maximise the potential for a successful implementation of a large-scale decommissioning programme is to build a shared vision and a collaboration grounded in convincing evidence. Include public servants with a clinical background in the executive leadership team to contribute with legitimacy, competence, and trust in the decommissioning programme’s intention.

The paper addresses the limited knowledge of best practices in decommissioning processes and contributes empirical knowledge from a successful case.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate the extent to which a sample of US-based higher education institution’s (HEI’s) climate targets and associated climate action planning efforts align with the definitions of and practices associated with science-based targets (SBTs) that are typically used to organize corporate climate efforts. This analysis will be used to explore similarities and tease out differences between how US-based HEIs and corporations approach sustainable target setting and organize sustainable action.

The degree of intersection between a sample of HEI climate action plans from Ivy Plus (Ivy+) schools and the current SBT initiative (SBTi) general corporate protocol was assessed by using an objective-oriented evaluative approach.

While there were some areas of overlap between HEI’s climate action planning and SBTi’s general corporate protocol – for instance, the setting of both short- and long-term targets and large-scale investments in renewable energy – significant areas of difference in sampled HEIs included scant quantitative Scope 3 targets, the use offsets to meet short-term targets and a low absolute annual reduction of Scope 1 and 2 emissions.

This paper unites diverse areas of literature on SBTs, corporate sustainability target setting and sustainability in higher education. It provides an overview of the potential benefits and disadvantages of HEIs adopting SBTs and provides recommendations for the development of sector-specific SBTi guidelines.

This paper aims to examine the role of threats in the forced displacement of populations from their municipalities of origin in Colombia that is among the nations with the highest number of internally displaced people in the world with 6.7 million victims.

The data cover the period 2011–2017 and were obtained from the Unit for Attention and Integral Reparation to Victims. Using general panel data models and a difference-in-differences identification strategy, this paper finds that threats within the context of the armed conflict show a positive and significant contribution to forced displacement in municipalities.

Direct intimidations by illegal armed groups to the population seem to have an influence on the decision of the threatened person to leave the territory in general, although it is not a proportional reaction due to the fact that some victims of intimidations decide not to move to keep their assets and maintain territorial ties.

The study highlights that the implementation of the Peace Agreements signed in 2016 and the negotiation with illegal armed groups is an effort that the Colombian State must strengthen to prevent the occurrence of threats.

This paper’s contribution to the literature is twofold: the paper reveals that rising threats encourage forced displacement in Colombia, by embracing a municipality panel data perspective and a difference-in-differences design that were not applied in previous studies; and the results offer suggestive evidence of the importance of decreasing threats for positive peace outcomes, especially in the most affected territories.