This chapter explores the gendered dimensions of mathematics anxiety, shedding light on why female students consistently report higher levels of anxiety than their male peers. Drawing directly from students’ comments, it offers fresh insights into how gender shapes classroom engagement and behaviour. The chapter also critically examines the persistent perception of STEM as a male-dominated field, a concern that continues to influence students’ academic experiences. Grounded in students’ experiences, it concludes with actionable recommendations aimed at fostering more inclusive and supportive learning environments.

This chapter introduces a bold proposition: reframing mathematics anxiety as a potential catalyst for building student resilience. It delves into the emerging role of Artificial Intelligence (AI) in addressing mathematics anxiety, offering a perspective on technology’s place in mathematics education. Drawing on the author’s unique contributions to mathematics education, the chapter presents evidence-based recommendations for preventing mathematics anxiety and fostering more inclusive, emotionally intelligent learning environments. It is an indispensable resource for educators, researchers, and all those dedicated to reshaping the future of mathematics education.

The concluding chapter synthesizes the book’s core findings and situates them within debates on foreign aid and economic development, the political economy of development in Africa, and China’s global economic strategy. Overall, the allocation of finance in all three country case studies, Ethiopia, Zambia, and Ghana, serves to secure political support and sustain incumbents in power. However, the strategies employed to achieve these goals differ based on each country’s unique political history and ethnic dynamics. In Ethiopia’s authoritarian context, the central challenge is maintaining loyalty and support from non-coethnics within the state. The EPRDF established ethnic federalism and justified centralized control through economic growth. In Zambia, the focus is on allocating finance to maintain the support of coethnics, prioritizing loyalty within the ethnic group. In Ghana, on the other hand, preserving power involves attracting swing voters through nonethnic coalitions, resulting in the distribution of finance aimed at broad-based support. The chapter concludes by drawing policy implications for financiers and governments, emphasizing designs that account for political incentives and strengthen transparency and oversight.

Chapter 5 focuses on Ghana, one of Africa’s most institutionalized democracies, and contrasts its relatively balanced allocation of development finance with the regional favoritism observed in Zambia. Ghana’s stable two-party system – dominated by the National Democratic Congress (NDC) and the New Patriotic Party (NPP) – is characterized by cross-ethnic coalitions. While the NDC has traditionally drawn support from the Volta region and the Muslim North, and the NPP from the Akan-dominated Ashanti region, ethnic fragmentation has encouraged both parties to target swing regions through strategic resource allocation. Ghana’s political landscape is shaped by a commitment to ethno-regional balance in leadership and efforts to institutionalize regional equity, which curtail ethnic favoritism. Decentralization and broad-based representation further incentivize parties to compete in swing constituencies. Despite ongoing challenges such as rent-seeking and rising debt, Ghana’s independent institutions and vibrant civil society help constrain ethnic favoritism – offering a stark contrast to Zambia’s declining accountability during its democratic transition.

Chapter 4 explores Zambia’s transition to multiparty democracy and the consequent rise in political competition and regional favoritism, revealing a trend of diminishing accountability. Initially, under the United National Independence Party’s one-party rule led by Kaunda, favoritism was constrained by balanced leadership. However, the emergence of ethnic-based opposition post-1991 heightened pressures for patronage, leading to increased favoritism under subsequent regimes. Regional favoritism escalated under President Banda and peaked during the populist Patriotic Front (PF) government (2011–2021), which eroded checks and balances, appointed an ethnically imbalanced cabinet favoring Bembas and Nyanjas, and concentrated borrowed funds in strongholds. Legislative and judiciary institutions were also weakened, along with civil society organizations. Traditional financiers provided some constraints through conditionalities, while Chinese lenders aligned with elite interests, exacerbating the situation. Zambia demonstrates a case of democratization exacerbating ethnic patronage without sufficient accountability mechanisms.

This chapter analyzes the subnational allocation of development finance across forty-eight African countries from 2000 to 2021, drawing on cross-country data from Chinese, World Bank, and OECD-funded projects. It distinguishes between infrastructure-intensive and social sectors and tests how district-level political and ethnic characteristics shape allocation patterns. It also assesses whether these relationships vary by flow type-official development assistance (ODA) versus other official flows (OOF). In particular, it examines region’s electoral strategic value (stronghold, swing, or opposition), incumbent vote share, and ties to the leader’s ethnicity or birthplace. Comparing more accountable traditional financiers (World Bank and OECD donors) with less accountable Chinese financiers, the analysis finds that swing regions and coethnic or copartisan strongholds receive significantly more development finance – especially in hybrid regimes and liberal democracies – than opposition regions. Moreover, the disparity in allocation between coethnic and non-coethnic regions is largest in politically competitive environments.

This chapter reflects on how international organizations may affect the legal position of non-members – and the international legal system more generally – by imposing or exporting norms. It considers the aspiration latent in universal international organizations to bend the outside world to their will, looking at examples from the practice of the UN Security Council and the International Criminal Court. It then turns to the practice of the OECD and the EU to examine some of the ways in which regional international organizations may export norms to non-members through international cooperation and unilateral action, and some of the normative concerns that this form of engagement raises.

This conversation brings together national and international policymakers to discuss the impact of digitalisation on access to justice. The background of the discussion is provided by the United Nation’s Global Goal 16 to ‘provide access to justice for all’. The policymakers contributing to this conversation represent the ministries of justice of Germany and Japan, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), the International Institute for the Unification of Private Law (UNIDROIT) and the Pathfinders for Peaceful, Just and Inclusive Societies. The discussants explore the potential of technology to provide meaningful access to law and justice. They do so within the context of their organisation’s policy initiatives such as digitalising courts and other justice institutions. Referring to reform experiences, they pay attention to facilitators and barriers of technological change. The policymakers also consider the risks of technology for access to justice and emphasise the need to keep digital vulnerability in mind.

This chapter contributes an ethnographic case study on the creation of international tax norms at the OECD during the ‘Base Erosion Profit Shifting’ initiative. I argue that what makes countries share taxing rights and multinational corporations give money, as in tax to specific jurisdictions and not to others, is not necessarily this ‘natural’ law of reciprocity, but changes to the dominant modes of relatedness, conversation, and presence in international tax norms. Tax scholars, but also recent anthropological studies on tax, explore taxes against a gift-exchange logic. I suggest that this conceptual obsession with mutual interest, return, and benefits obscures the fact that taxes are often unilateral monetary transactions. More generally, it overlooks the human capacity to give and provide, under specific conditions, without calculating or receiving something in return. While taxation is not a form of sharing, I argue that it is productive to pay attention to the many similarities between these two types of transfers. They share, at times as I show in the chapter, more commonalities than taxation and reciprocal gift exchanges, and there are moments when taxation facilitates and enables sharing.

This chapter examines ‘Regulatory Policy’ by addressing various questions that arise in considering ‘whether’ and ‘how’ to regulate. Regulatory policy includes a range of methodologies such as cost-benefit analysis and regulatory impact assessment. This chapter focuses on the methodologies used by public regulators. This chapter discusses the methods that help regulators assess who will be impacted by regulation, whether a regulation is effective, and what its costs and benefits will be. The chapter discusses the history of regulatory policy and delves into cost-benefit analysis, regulatory impact assessment, and consultations. The chapter includes a brief analysis of better regulation policies.

The Australian economy performed surprisingly strongly throughout most of the five-year period under consideration. The performance was surprising, that is, given the troubles – concentrated in the years 1997–99 – that afflicted most East Asian economies, which together account for more than half of Australia’s exports. By the end of the five-year period, however, the triumphalism that had accompanied Australian official reaction to the Asian economic crisis began to look premature. In 1999–2000, the government had to apply the brakes (in the form of higher interest rates) to the economy largely because of external constraints: a worsening current account deficit and a depreciating currency. The economy was showing all-too-familiar signs of the stop–go pattern that had choked off growth in earlier periods. Fears were mounting that the economic growth that had occurred throughout the period – the country’s longest boom since the 1960s – was drawing to an end.

An extraordinary development occurred in the Australian economy in the last quarter of 2008: for the first time since the first half of 1991, gross domestic product (GDP) declined. But even more extraordinarily – and despite the then Prime Minister Kevin Rudd’s assertion that ‘the worst global economic recession in 75 years means it is inevitable that Australia too will be dragged into recession’ – data for the first quarter of 2009 showed that the economy had resumed growth. Among the countries of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development, Australia alone avoided recession as conventionally defined (two consecutive quarters of negative growth in GDP).

This chapter sets out the challenges and controversies in public export financing in the EU. It puts forward a statement of the problem concerning the inadequacy of the international rule book in regulating Export Credit Agencies (ECAs) with a specific focus on non-transparency. The chapter then sets out what is known about the operation of ECAs internationally and in the EU, before highlighting what is unknown about both the market and the activities of ECAs. The chapter concludes with a call for greater data transparency to underpin international cooperation efforts to develop a more inclusive and sustainable legal framework to prevent a race to the bottom in the provision of subsidies in the form of public export finance and to promote the Sustainable Development Goals through the work of ECAs.