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The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals initiative has the potential to set the direction for a future world that works for everyone. Approved by 193 United Nations member countries in September 2016 to help guide global and national development policies through the year 2030, the seventeen goals build on the successes of the Millennium Development Goals, but also include new priority areas, such as climate change, economic inequality, innovation, sustainable consumption, peace, and justice. Assessed against commonly agreed targets and indicators, the goals should facilitate inter-governmental cooperation and the development of regional and even global development strategies. This book explores, through a series of case studies, the substantial challenges for assembling reliable data and statistics to address pressing development challenges, particularly in Africa. By highlighting the enormous potential value of creating and using high quality data, statistics, and records as an interconnected resource and describing how this can be achieved, the book will contribute to defining meaningful and realistic global and national development policies in the critical period to 2030.

Translated to English from the original Soviet General Staff report, this is an account of the naval support of the Petsamo-Kirkenes Operation in October 1944—the only large-scale ground/naval and air operation ever fought in the Arctic. With additional contemporary supporting material on wider-scale Arctic combat including descriptions of combat tactics and weaponry from noted Soviet military scholar James Gebhardt, this book provides a comprehensive and detailed description of the tactics and strategies employed by both Soviet and German forces during the operation from the official Soviet perspective.

The largest Arctic battle on record, involving 133,500 Soviets and 45,000 Germans and Quisling Norwegians, the Petsamo-Kirkenes Operation sought to liberate the northernmost part of Norway from German occupation during World War II. The Soviet navy played a previously unrecognized crucial role in the operation by providing fire support and transportation, as well as conducting raids and combat landings on the enemy-held coast. The harsh Arctic environment, including extreme cold, ice, and limited daylight, posed significant challenges to the Soviet and German forces. Despite these hardships, the Soviet forces achieved their objectives, defeated the German Army, and successfully liberated the area.

Arctic Naval Combat in Support of Ground Operations is a powerful companion to Gebhardt’s previous translation, The Petsamo-Kirkenes Operation: Soviet Breakthrough and Pursuit in the Arctic, October 1944, which details this operation’s ground offensive. Providing a starting point for the study and understanding of combined arms and services combat in the Arctic, an increasingly important and accessible part of the planet where military concerns are rapidly expanding, this work is a valuable addition to the literature of World War II military history and a significant additional perspective on the Soviet military.
 

How do voters weigh economic concerns in their calculus of partisan choice in voting booths and opinion polls? How do voters arrive at their perceptions of economic conditions and assign responsibility for them to incumbent governments? And when do people go beyond electoral reactions in expressing their sentiments about economic well-being?The contributors to Economics and Politics employ sophisticated methods of analysis to isolate the effects of specific economic conditions such as unemployment and inflation. While some look at the effects of aggregate data on the electorate taken as a whole, others examine individual perceptions of economic conditions gleaned from survey data. The contributors, from several European countries as well as the United States, consider the relationships between economics and politics both cross-nationally and individually in West Germany, the United States, France, Britain, and Italy.Taken together, these contributions present the most comprehensive comparative assessment of economic influence on mass political behavior. The crucial role of strategic politicians, intervening in the economy as well as in public evaluations of the economy, receives considerable attention; so do interventions such as wars and political turnover. In sorting out economic facts and assigning responsibility to politicians amid such uncertainty, the publics of Western democracies display considerable sophistication.

Laws subject people who perform sex work to arrest and prosecution.  The Compassionate Court? assesses two prostitution diversion programs (PDPs) that offer to “rehabilitate” people arrested for street-based sex work as an alternative to incarceration. However, as the authors show, these PDPs often fail to provide sustainable alternatives to their mandated clients. Participants are subjected to constant surveillance and obligations, which creates a paradox of responsibility in conflict with the system’s logic of rescue. Moreover, as the participants often face shame and re-traumatization as a price for services, poverty and other social problems, such as structural oppression, remain in place.
 
The authors of The Compassionate Court? provide case studies of such programs and draw upon interviews and observations conducted over a decade to reveal how participants and professionals perceive court-affiliated PDPs, clients, and staff. Considering the motivations, vision, and goals of these programs as well as their limitations—the inequity and disempowerment of their participants—the authors also present their own changing perspectives on prostitution courts, diversion programs, and criminalization of sex work.