Accountability has been increasingly emphasized as a key to improving the quality and inclusiveness of basic education. However, reforms around the world inspired by this line of thinking have only generated lackluster results. The paper examines the gaps between theoretical expectations and the actual practices of individual accountability measures, and explores ways to bridge them. It argues that the more fundamental shortcomings of these reforms are the result of a partial understanding of the concept of accountability, in which the role of the government is either neglected or very narrowly emphasized. It concludes that government stewardship is vital in tackling these informational, incentive, and capacity challenges facing the sector and making education accountability reforms more coherent, coordinated, and practical.

The conditions for desecuritization of the water dispute needs to be better explained.Solely focusing on the material and power differential aspects of upstream-downstream relations misses out a critical element of how interest is constructed -the role of ideas. 11 We argue that ideas, beliefs, and perceptions shape interest and state behavior. To our knowledge, the paper is the first systematic enquiry into the ideas held by Chinese and Indian experts at both central and local levels and across public, private and non-governmental sectors. Using the Q methodology which is increasingly widely used as a quantitative measure of perceptions and beliefs, not only is it able to uncover in detail various aspects of ideas, such as central/ local government priorities, perceptions on India-China relations and collaboration and so on, but the Q method also allows different aspects of ideas to be presented in relation to one another in terms of both the degree and the significance of (dis)agreement. As such, the result presents a systematic overview that is also highly nuanced.The perceptions and ideas that emerge from our Q survey focused on three main issues: collaboration, development, and threat perceptions. The results of the Q survey are corroborated with the views presented in scholarly articles on the water dispute. Together, they reveal the debates surrounding a set of ideas and views among policy/expert communities in China and India on how the two countries should manage their dispute. These debates help account for the desecuritization narrative in the China-India water dispute. Among Chinese respondents, there was a prominent view that displayed significant sensitivity to Indian concerns and which emphasized the need to reduce Indian threat perception. They underscored the importance of building trust on both sides. This view helps account for the desecuritization narrative on the part of the Chinese. It contradicts the assumption in asymmetrical relations that the more powerful state tend to pay less attention to 11 Jutta Weldes.

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This paper explores corruption in global fisheries. While reducing corruption is critical for the effective management of the fisheries sector and the fulfilment of the UN's sustainable development goals (SDGs, and SDGs14 and 16 in particular), to do so, it is necessary to first have a systematic and comprehensive understanding of what corruption is and how it is manifested in the sector. There is literature on illegal, unregulated and unreported (IUU) fishing, but not much on corruption. The paper proposes an analytical framework and applies it with six revelatory cases to improve the conceptual clarity of corruption in fisheries. Specific corruption problems found in licensing, negotiating access agreements, lax enforcement, extortion, political corruption, money laundering and tax manipulation, human trafficking, etc. can therefore be better identified through this analysis, which lays a base for systematic responses to tackling corruption in fisheries and accordingly furthering the sustainable development of the sector.

Both China and India are adopting information and communication technologies to facilitate openness and transparency in their governments, and hence reduce corruption. Distinctive from their traditional anticorruption approaches, is the innovative e‐government approach an effective solution to corruption in these two large developing countries? This paper addresses the question through comparative in‐depth interviews with 44 mid‐ or senior‐level officials in the public sector in these two countries. The first study of its kind, our research shows that civil servants in both countries overall think positively about transparency and technology in reducing corruption. However, to what extent these innovative measures will be effective is conditional on various factors, such as political willingness, income inequality, and infrastructure readiness. What is worth noting is that the Chinese respondents were more positive regarding the role of transparency, whereas the Indian respondents were more positive about the role of technology, which may reflect the different facilitators of corruption and the constraints of anticorruption in China and India.