Towards a social ontology of market systems

Academic analyses of market systems are deeply divided. While economists tend to neglect the personal and sociological factors that shape the behaviour of market actors, sociologists tend to discount the possibility of a systematic analysis of the consequences of market interactions. Economists thus end up with unrealistic models of markets, and sociologists end up unable to explain the economic impact of markets. This paper outlines a project that aims to produce an analysis of markets that is both sociologically realistic and capable of explaining economic effects. The project will construct a realistic ontological analysis of market systems, developed using a critical realist methodology. Market systems, it will argue, are social structures that depend ontologically upon both human individuals and a number of normative institutions. These institutions tend to produce coordinated interactions between market actors, and these interactions underpin mechanisms that endow market systems with emergent causal powers. Different types of interactions underpin different market mechanisms, including mechanisms like those theorised by mainstream economists, but also others that they tend to neglect, and an adequate understanding of real-world markets depends on analysing these multiple mechanisms and how they interact. This will be a theoretical project in economic sociology, drawing on existing empirical work without conducting new empirical research. It will be focussed primarily on contemporary product markets in advanced capitalist economies, while selected historical and alternative contemporary models will be considered more briefly to illustrate both the historical specificity of the dominant contemporary model and the possibility of alternative types of market system

Voluntary Commitments as Emerging Instruments in International Environmental Law

Today we confront a critical environmental challenge: how to protect the human environment for ourselves and future generations in the face of our unprecedented capacity to alter fundamental physical cycles with global and longrange implications for the robustness of our planet. Scientists observe that we are leaving the stable Holocene Epoch, embarking on a new geological epoch, the Anthropocene, in which humans are the major force for change to the planet. There is evidence that the fundamental carbon and nitrogen cycles are accelerating significantly, and that the hydrological cycle is speeding up. The latter can lead to devastating impacts from more frequent and intense storms, floods and severe droughts. These developments inherently raise issues of intergenerational equity

European Neighbourhood Policy in the Mashreq Countries: Enhancing Prospects for Reform. CEPS Working Documents No. 229, 1 September 2005

This report assesses ways in which the Action Plan process that has been launched under the European Neighbourhood Policy (ENP) could become a more effective driver of political and economic change in the Mashreq region (covering Egypt, Jordan, Lebanon, Syria and the Palestinian territories), compared with the modest results from the Barcelona process to date. The development of the ENP has already provided a valuable systemic/institutional advance in Euro-Med relations and has been an important confidence-building measure in an increasingly uncertain political environment. But it has yet to provide momentum for economic, political and social advance in the partner states. Key elements in making the Action Plan process more effective would be the following: · The Commission needs to deepen the policy content of the ENP with sketches of different degrees of desirable EU acquis compliance as a function of different economic structures and capabilities of the partner states. · The task of policy-shaping in different sectors of the Action Plans with the partner states needs to be shared by the Commission with other international organisations, most importantly the World Bank, the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the European Investment Bank (EIB). · The policy-shaping recommendations in support of the economic parts of the Action Plans should be explicitly linked to financial or market-access incentives (or both) on offer from the EU and international financial institutions. The promotion of political reform in the partner states is a more delicate affair. Yet there is still some room for ‘positive conditionality’ if the Commission were to define more substantively the package of incentives that are offered to partner states

Labour rights in Peru and the EU trade agreement: compliance with the commitments under the sustainable development chapter

European Union (EU) trade policy has become increasingly contested and politicised. Citizens and politicians have become more and more concerned about the human rights and sustainable development implications of free trade. The European Commission in its ‘Trade for All’ Strategy has recognized the need for a more value-based trade policy. In the same vein, the EU has included a chapter on Trade and Sustainable Development in recent free trade agreements. However, there is still much uncertainty about the specifics of these legal commitments and about their implementation in practice. In this study, we aim to assess the labour rights commitments in the EU-Peru-Colombia agreement, with a specific focus on Peru and the agricultural sector. Based on an analytical framework that summarises the labour-related commitments of the sustainable development Title into three categories – upholding ILO Core Labour Standards, non-lowering domestic labour law, and promoting civil society dialogue – we conclude that Peru has failed to comply in a number of areas. We also make recommendations for the EU and civil society and suggestions for more profound and systematic research

Policy-driven planning in coalitions - A case study

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Trustworthiness and Motivations

Trust can be thought of as a three place relation: A trusts B to do X. Trustworthiness has two components: competence (does the trustee have the relevant skills, knowledge and abilities to do X?) and willingness (is the trustee intending or aiming to do X?). This chapter is about the willingness component, and the different motivations that a trustee may have for fulfilling trust. The standard assumption in economics is that agents are self-regarding, maximizing their own consumption of goods and services. This is too restrictive. In particular, people may be concerned with the outcomes of others, and they may be concerned to follow ethical principles. I distinguish weak trustworthiness, which places no restrictions on B’s motivation for doing X, from strong trustworthiness, where the behaviour must have a particular non-selfish motivation, in finance the fiduciary commitment to promote the interests of the truster. I discuss why strong trustworthiness may be more efficient and also normatively preferable to weak. In finance, there is asymmetric information between buyer and seller, which creates a need for trustworthy assessment of products. It also creates an ambiguity about whether the relationship is one of buyer and seller, governed by caveat emptor, or a fiduciary relationship of advisor and client. This means that there are two possible reasons why trust may be breached: because the trustee didn’t realise that the truster framed the relationship as a fiduciary one, or because the trustee did realise but actively sought to take advantage of the trust. Correspondingly, there are two possible types of agent: normal people who are not always self-regarding and who are trust responsive (if they believe that they are being trusted then they are likely to fulfill that trust), and knaves, after Hume’s character who is always motivated by his own private interest. We can increase the trustworthiness of normal people by getting them to re-frame the situation as one of trust, so they will be strongly trustworthy (i.e. change of institutional culture), and by providing non-monetary incentives (the correct choice of incentive will depend on exactly what their non-selfish motivation is). Knaves need sanctions, which can make them weakly trustworthy. However, this is a delicate balance because sanctions can crowd out normative frames. We can also increase the trustworthiness of financiers by making finance less attractive to knaves; changing the mix of types in finance could help support the necessary cultural change

The civil society forum of the eastern partnership four years on: progress, challenges and prospects

Established in 2009, during the Eastern Partnership Summit in Prague, the Eastern Partnership Civil Society Forum supports the development of civil society organisations from the EU-28 and the six Partnership countries, namely Armenia, Azerbaijan, Belarus, Georgia, Moldova and Ukraine. After four years of operation, the Secretariat of the Forum’s Steering Committee commissioned CEPS to conduct a comprehensive evaluation of its programme. This report singles out the institutionalisation and socialisation inculcated among its members as the Forum’s greatest accomplishment. In contrast to its internal developments, it argues that the external policy successes of the Forum remain modest. This report is the first attempt to conduct an in-depth assessment of the Forum's Annual Assembly, the Steering Committee and its Secretariat, the Working Groups and National Platforms. Ten actionable recommendations are put forward aimed at improving the Civil Society Forum’s standing and performance