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Four years after the Panama Papers scandal, tax avoidance remains an urgent moral-political problem. Moving beyond both the academic and policy mainstream, I advocate the "democratization of tax enforcement," by which I mean systematic efforts to make tax avoiders accountable to the judgment of ordinary citizens. Both individual oligarchs and multinational corporations have access to sophisticated tax avoidance strategies that impose significant fiscal costs on democracies and exacerbate preexisting distributive and political inequalities. Yet much contemporary tax sheltering occurs within the letter of the law, rendering criminal sanctions ineffective. In response, I argue for the creation of Citizen Tax Juries, deliberative minipublics empowered to scrutinize tax avoiders, demand accountability, and facilitate concrete reforms. This proposal thus responds to the wider aspiration, within contemporary democratic theory, to secure more popular control over essential economic processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The equality of the European Union (EU) Member States is one of the principles that the European Union is based on. However, in terms of the economy, culture and influence, a hierarchy of EU Members States is evident. The European post-socialist or Central and East European (CEE) countries are often perceived as being at the lower end of the scale or on the ‘periphery’ of the EU. The aim of this paper is to gain insights into the specificities of the CEE countries’ legal scientific communication and the visibility of legal scholars’ work within the EU. Bibliometric analysis results show that scientific productivity has been significantly contributed to by papers published in domestic journals indexed in Scopus, with a share of 70%, and that the largest contributions are from Croatian, Romanian, Slovenian and Hungarian law journals. The Baltic States and EU candidate countries, representing nine out of 15 CEE countries, did not have their law journals indexed by Scopus in the period 1996-2013, which influenced their potential accessibility and visibility. The remaining 30% of papers were scattered over 112 international law journals, predominantly from the EU15 countries. On the other hand, the research shows that the recognition of papers measured in terms of the average number of citations speaks in favour of publication in international journals, with 2.9 citations per paper compared to 1.2 in domestic journals. It also shows that the citation of a paper is influenced by the language of the text and whether the paper has more than one author. Thus, although the vast majority of papers are published in domestic journals, the ones published in international journals are distinctly more visible in the academic community. In order to accomplish the integration of CEE countries into EU academic legal communication, the visibility of CEE countries’ legal scholars’ work is crucial. According to the analysis of this research, to achieve visibility, CEE countries’ legal scholars should publish more in a lingua franca, which nowadays means English. The other possible way is to enhance the visibility and strengthen the position of scientific journals published in CEE countries by accepting professional journal standards. Needless to say, the aspect of the content and issues explored and published is also crucial.

Welcome to this special issue of the Journal of International Women's Studies (JIWS). The papers included in this issue were selected from submissions presented at the fourth World Conference on [...]

Objective: The leadership of the American Surgical Association (ASA) appointed a Task Force to objectively address issues related to equity, diversity, and inclusion with the discipline of academic surgery. Summary of Background Data: Surgeons and the discipline of surgery, particularly academic surgery, have a tradition of leadership both in medicine and society. Currently, we are being challenged to harness our innate curiosity, hard work, and perseverance to address the historically significant deficiencies within our field in the areas of diversity, equity, and inclusion. Methods: The ASA leadership requested members to volunteer to serve on a Task Force to comprehensively address equity, diversity, and inclusion in academic surgery. Nine work groups reviewed the current literature, performed primary qualitative interviews, and distilled available guidelines and published primary source materials. A work product was created and published on the ASA Website and made available to the public. The full work product was summarized into this White Paper. Results: The ASA has produced a handbook entitled: Ensuring Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion in Academic Surgery, which identifies issues and challenges, and develops a set of solutions and benchmarks to aid the academic surgical community in achieving these goals. Conclusion: Surgery must identify areas for improvement and work iteratively to address and correct past deficiencies. This requires honest and ongoing identification and correction of implicit and explicit biases. Increasing diversity in our departments, residencies, and universities will improve patient care, enhance productivity, augment community connections, and achieve our most fundamental ambition--doing good for our patients. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Using a post-structural lens, I make arguments against homogenising people's conditions and circumstances. In particular, I acknowledge that the post-1994 reform agenda intended to streamline the previously fragmented and segregated higher education landscape under the apartheid regime. Black women, who are the main target of this article suffered triple marginalisation - race, social class and sexism. The aim of the article is to show the tensions that exist within the White Paper: A Programme for the Transformation of Higher Education (DoE 1997). The said tensions have stifled the attainment of gender equity and equality; effectively widening the gender fissures in post-1994 South African higher education. I argue that we should not take for granted phrases such as "equal opportunities" and "equal access" in policies. Instead, we should seek their meaning and achievement inter alia in earnest for the targeted group. Therefore, I postulate that gender and gendering is complex and very fragmented. For this reason, formulating transformation interventions on the premise of equality for all does not necessarily guarantee gender equality or gender equity. With this in mind, a "one-size fits all" approach to redressing gender equality is implausible and does not suffice in addressing salient gender injustices. I propose a multifaceted approach, which encompasses a realistic and holistic outlook on the divergent needs of black women in particular and women in general as a possible solution to the current challenges. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fiscal Federalism in Multinational States: Autonomy, Equality, and Diversity: edited by François Boucher and Alain Noël, Montreal and Kingston, McGill-Queen's University Press, 2021, 290 pp., CAN $37.95 (paper), ISBN 978-0-2280-0652-7 Perhaps the most helpful perspective on the importance of fiscal federalism to substate governments comes from University of Ottawa political scientist André Lecours. Nonetheless, De Schutter would restrict substate autonomy, leaving most policy decisions and welfare spending at the federal level. [Extracted from the article]