The Political Dimensions of Military Spending and Debt Service in Southeast Asia
Although the imperatives of external debt service have led to a reduction in the size of defence budgets in most Third World countries, the impact of military spending cannot be understood separately from the political attractiveness of external borrowing in the 1970s. While the cumulative impact of defence expend itures has been to worsen Third World borrowers' debt levels and hamper their debt servicing efforts, this is of secondary importance compared to the low political capacity of many debtor governments to mobilize and redirect the human and material resources under their nominal control towards that end. Many Third World countries used much of the borrowed capital to fin ance current budget deficits, government consumption and arms imports. Generally, the four major Southeast Asian borrowers ? Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand ? did not use foreign capital to finance their budget deficits, but appear to have invested some borrowed funds in domestic defence indus tries. One result is an apparent arms import-substitution effect: their arms imports actually declined as a percentage of total imports even as their external debt increased. Thus, their arms imports do not impair their debt service performance the way they have worsened the debt service problems of heavily indebted Third World countries elsewhere.
Analysis of the Global Defence Budget and Its Economic, Social and Environmental Impacts
The global defence budget forms a very important aspect of a country's spending and its whole mechanism. We observe an increasing trend in the global defence budget. This paper aims to examine this trend, the reasons for the same and deeply analyse the impact on the economy, society and the environment of a country. Data extracted from the World Bank database for three countries the US, India and Nepal have been used to understand the economic impact of these trends by performing simple linear regression analysis, taking military expenditure as the independent variable and Gross Domestic Product (GDP) as the dependent variable. The paper also elucidates the issue of terrorism and the dominance of the developing countries in the arms race leading to unwanted social impacts on various government sectors, crowding out their allocation of resources. In conclusion, the paper talks about the negative aspect of the rising global defence budget and some policy suggestions such as peace economy to serve as alternatives because a war not only brings atrocities but the aftereffect of destruction is unbearable.
An assessment of the Impact of Devolution on Women Empowerment in Nakuru County
-Women have been grossly marginalized in organs of decision-making and governance structures. The Constitution of Kenya has sought to bridge this gap by providing both women and men the right to equal treatment, including the right to equal opportunities in political, economic, cultural and social spheres. However, gender equality has not been achieved and women are still lagging in terms of decision making processes. The main objective of the study was to detemine the impact of devolution on women empowerment in Nakuru County. The study found that substantive women representation, development of programs and accessibility of services had a positive effect on the women empowerment in Nakuru County. The study also found out that increased accessibility of Services by women influenced women empowerment, this study also concludes that the introduction of development programs had the greatest impact on women empowerment in Nakuru County. The study recommends that more programs targeting women should be introduced as these have the greatest impact on women empowerment. The findings may be used to make conclusions and recommendations.