Article Nine of Japan’s Constitution: From Renunciation of Armed Force “Forever” to the Third Largest Defense Budget in the World

Each year approximately 2,000 new detailed development plans are accepted in Sweden. When an area is covered by a new detailed development plan, it is often necessary that land has to be acquired to adjust the property units to the new plan. The owner conditions of the property units can usually be adjusted through negotiations between the seller and the buyer. But in some situations, when no agreements can be reached, it is possible to use coercive measures to purchase the land. Compulsory purchases are only permitted when certain legal criteria’s are met. The legal ability of compulsory purchases also affects voluntary negotiations since they function as "game rules". The compensations that are given in compulsory purchases then functions as a sort of minimum level of the compensations given in voluntary negotiations. The purpose of this thesis is to study the compensation that should be given in different situations when land is being compulsory purchased. Furthermore, the purpose is also to study the motives behind the legislation regarding compulsory purchases. In order to find an answer to the purpose of this thesis, a study has been made with a representative property unit. In the study, land was taken with coercive measures in four different situations from the property unit when a new detailed development plan covered the property unit. The four different situations were chosen to illustrate the differences between the given compensations. In the four different situations two different legal systems were applied. First, the existing legal system in Sweden was applied and then an alternative system based on principles that earlier could be found in the, now no longer existing, Act regarding development cooperation units (SFS 1987:11, lag om exploateringssamverkan) was applied. The result of the study shows that the compensation given depends upon the allowed land use in the new detailed development plan and upon which legal system that is applied. In the current Swedish legal system, the allowed land use for the specific property unit in the detailed development plan had the largest impact on the compensation given. In the alternative system, the total allowed land use in the detailed development plan was of importance for the given compensation together with what the property owner had contributed to the development area.Varje år antas cirka 2000 detaljplaner i Sverige. När ett område detaljplaneläggs behöver mark vanligtvis förvärvas för att anpassa fastigheterna till de nya förhållandena. Ägarförhållandena kan vanligtvis anpassas via förhandlingar mellan köpare och säljare. Men i vissa situationer, om ingen överenskommelse kan nås, är det tillåtet att använda tvångsregler för att förvärva marken. Tvångsreglerna får bara användas när kriterier uppställda i lagen är uppfyllda. Även vid frivilliga förhandlingar fyller tvångsreglerna en funktion eftersom de då fungerar som spelregler. Lagstiftningens ersättningsbestämmelser utgör en slags miniminivå för ersättningens storlek. Syftet med denna uppsats är dels att studera vilken ersättning som betalas i olika situationer när mark tvångsförvärvas inom detaljplanelagt område och dels att studera de motiv som ligger till grund för lagstiftningens utformning. För att besvara syftet har en typfallsstudie genomförts där mark frångick en typfastighet för fyra olika markåtkomstsituationer när en ny detaljplan blev gällande över området. Situationerna valdes för att tydliggöra att ersättningen som utgår vid olika markåtkomstsituationer kan variera. I studien tillämpades både dagens ersättningssystem samt ett konstruerat ersättningssystem som baserades på den upphävda lagen om exploateringssamverkan (ESL). Framkomna resultat visar att ersättningen kan variera dels beroende av vad marken ska användas till och dels beroende av vilket ersättningssystem som tillämpas. I det nu gällande ersättningssystemet är den största påverkan på ersättningen vad marken får användas till enligt detaljplanen. I det alternativa ersättningssystemet är det detaljplanens totala utformning som styr ersättningsbeloppet tillsammans med vad respektive fastighetsägare bidragit med till planområdet

On the measurement of social progress and well being: some further thoughts

Two years after the delivery of the report on The Measurement of Economic Performances and Social Progress (Stiglitz-Sen-Fitoussi),this paper provides some further reflections on the subject. Since 2008, when the work of the Commission began, the world has experienced several dramatic events which all call into question our measurement systems and the policies which were grounded on them: the financial crisis of 2007-2008, the grave events in Japan, the Sovereign debt crisis, and the revolutions in the Arabic world. In particular, the Japanese earthquake and its aftermath underlines three central shortcomings of our metrics: the measurement of the economic product,the measurement of well being, and the measurement of sustainability. For economists, these concerns are especially important, because we often rely on statistical (econometric analyses) to make inferences about what are good policies. Those inferences are only as reliable as the metrics that they are based on. Our statistical systems should tell us whether or not what we are doing is sustainable, economically, environmentally, politically, or socially and whether proposed policies will in fact enhance well-being . There would be little sense in pursuing policies aimed at increasing some widely used metric like GDP ifsuch policies lead to a decrease in well being.1- Economic indicators 2- Gross Domestic Products 3-Social indicators 4- Well being 5- Sustainability

Selling Japan In Mad Men's Postmodern America: The Visual Translation Of Japanese Icons And Images Through A Lens Of Western Advertising And Aesthetics

To what extent do Americans continue to fetishise images of Japan in Western popular culture? Evinced by generalised twentieth-century stereotypes, as well as twenty-first-century discussions of anime, manga and cosplay, it appears that World War II archetypes of Japanese society have had lasting residual effects that are slowly diminishing. This article unpacks cultural artefacts in order to understand how American's view of Japanese culture has evolved since then. For years, reductionist cinema portrayals, along with Ruth Benedict's 1946 anthropological study of Japan—a misguided attempt to redefine Japanese customs—impacted Western perceptions of a mysterious and militarised people during the ensuing decades. Benedict, in preparing her analysis, lacked immersion in authentic Japanese culture; instead, she attempted to gain perspective by interviewing Japanese Americans who had not lived in Japan since infancy. This important distinction significantly distorted her resultant theories on cultural differences. An examination of her influence—contextualised vis-à-vis the television drama Mad Men, films like Lost in Translation, and Walter Benjamin's aesthetic aura—sets the stage for determining the extent of fetishism still present in contemporary American society. These segues provide alternate lenses for disseminating communicatively unfamiliar cultural spaces between East and West and exploring Japan through contemporary Western eyes. While negative sociocultural exchanges portrayed in popular media continue to exemplify both gratuitous cultural simplifications and post-World War II hostilities, American perspectives of Japan have improved in the ensuing decades due to globalism and increasing cognisance of regressive stereotypes. Strong American loyalties toward anime and manga further provide a positive outlook on progressive discernment and congruous cultural interests

Deconstructing the Ideology of White Aesthetics

In this Article, the author provides a discussion on the dynamic between race and aesthetics. The author states that because Whites are the dominant group in America, they dictate what is beautiful. The consequence of this power dynamic is that the dominant group, Whites, can exercise preferences in deciding how to look or express themselves, whereas people of color are limited to either conforming to an imposed White standard or rejecting it. The author starts by laying out some of the features to what he terms the ideology of White aesthetics. He then commences to examine how this ideology has played out in Black-White relations and in relations between Asian Americans and Whites, and how it may be used to shed new light both on race relations and on behavior within communities of color. The author concludes by addressing potential counter-arguments