15,856 research outputs found
Federalism as an effective antidote to terrorism
Many governments as well as terrorist experts see the use of military and police forces as the only way to effectively counter terrorism. The most effective negative sanctions are considered to be military strikes, aggressive actions (including kidnapping and killing) against individuals known or suspected of being terrorists, or against persons supporting and harboring terrorists. Overt and covert military and paramilitary action is also thought advisable to pre-empt and prevent actions by terrorist groups, as well as against states suspected of hosting or tolerating terrorists. This paper argues that decentralization constitutes a powerful antidote as it strongly reduces the incentives for terrorists to attack and because the expected damage suffered is much smaller than in a centralized society. It moreover strengthens society, as economic, political and social decentralization (or polycentricity) is an essential element of a free and vigorous society. This in turn makes a society less vulnerable to terrorist attacks. Indeed, terrorism has no chance of success against a society that actively guards its fundamental liberal institutions, of which decentralized decision-making forms an essential part
Fiscal policy instruments and the political economy of designing programs to reach the poorest:
Poverty reduction, Hunger, Pro-poor policies, Government policy, Safety nets, information for development planning,
Oceanic Games: Centralization Risks and Incentives in Blockchain Mining
To participate in the distributed consensus of permissionless blockchains,
prospective nodes -- or miners -- provide proof of designated, costly
resources. However, in contrast to the intended decentralization, current data
on blockchain mining unveils increased concentration of these resources in a
few major entities, typically mining pools. To study strategic considerations
in this setting, we employ the concept of Oceanic Games, Milnor and Shapley
(1978). Oceanic Games have been used to analyze decision making in corporate
settings with small numbers of dominant players (shareholders) and large
numbers of individually insignificant players, the ocean. Unlike standard
equilibrium models, they focus on measuring the value (or power) per entity and
per unit of resource} in a given distribution of resources. These values are
viewed as strategic components in coalition formations, mergers and resource
acquisitions. Considering such issues relevant to blockchain governance and
long-term sustainability, we adapt oceanic games to blockchain mining and
illustrate the defined concepts via examples. The application of existing
results reveals incentives for individual miners to merge in order to increase
the value of their resources. This offers an alternative perspective to the
observed centralization and concentration of mining power. Beyond numerical
simulations, we use the model to identify issues relevant to the design of
future cryptocurrencies and formulate prospective research questions.Comment: [Best Paper Award] at the International Conference on Mathematical
Research for Blockchain Economy (MARBLE 2019
Systematizing Decentralization and Privacy: Lessons from 15 Years of Research and Deployments
Decentralized systems are a subset of distributed systems where multiple
authorities control different components and no authority is fully trusted by
all. This implies that any component in a decentralized system is potentially
adversarial. We revise fifteen years of research on decentralization and
privacy, and provide an overview of key systems, as well as key insights for
designers of future systems. We show that decentralized designs can enhance
privacy, integrity, and availability but also require careful trade-offs in
terms of system complexity, properties provided, and degree of
decentralization. These trade-offs need to be understood and navigated by
designers. We argue that a combination of insights from cryptography,
distributed systems, and mechanism design, aligned with the development of
adequate incentives, are necessary to build scalable and successful
privacy-preserving decentralized systems
Reducing Inequalities in Water Supply, Sanitation, and Hygiene in the Era of the Sustainable Development Goals
The Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and the World Bank's corporate goals of ending extreme poverty and boosting shared prosperity call for specific attention to the poor and vulnerable. The overarching objective of the SDGs is to end poverty in all its forms, but their key difference from the earlier Millennium Development Goals (MDGs) is the integration of social, economic, and environmental goals (UN 2015). This has significant implications for reforms aimed at improving service delivery. With this understanding as its guiding compass, the Water Supply, Sanitation, and Hygiene (WASH) Poverty Diagnostic Initiative focuses on what it would take to reduce existing inequalities in WASH services worldwide. This report, a synthesis of that global initiative, offers new insights on how data can be used to inform allocation decisions to reduce inequalities and prioritize investment in WASH to boost human capital. It also offers a fresh perspective on service delivery that considers how institutional arrangements affect the incentives of a range of actors
Network Neutrality and the False Promise of Zero-Price Regulation
This Article examines zero-price regulation, the major distinguishing feature of many modern "network neutrality" proposals. A zero-price rule prohibits a broadband Internet access provider from charging an application or content provider (collectively, "content provider") to send information to consumers. The Article differentiates two access provider strategies thought to justify a zero-price rule. Exclusion is anticompetitive behavior that harms a content provider to favor its rival. Extraction is a toll imposed upon content providers to raise revenue. Neither strategy raises policy concerns that justify implementation of a broad zero-price rule. First, there is no economic exclusion argument that justifies the zero-price rule as a general matter, given existing legal protections against exclusion. A stronger but narrow argument for regulation exists in certain cases in which the output of social producers, such as Wikipedia, competes with ordinary market-produced content. Second, prohibiting direct extraction is undesirable and counterproductive, in part because it induces costly and unregulated indirect extraction. I conclude, therefore, that recent calls for broad-based zero-price regulation are mistaken.
Government Decentralization as a Disincentive for Transnational Terror? An Empirical Analysis
Using panel data for a maximum of 109 countries over the years 1976-2000, we empirically analyze the impact of decentralization on the occurrence of transnational terror. Our results show that expenditure decentralization reduces the number of transnational terror events in a country, while political decentralization has no impact. These results are robust to the choice of control variables and method of estimation.terrorism, decentralization, federalism, governance quality, government effectiveness
Governance in Southeast Asia: Issues and Options
This paper attempts to analyze governance systems in Southeast Asia and proposes some policy suggestions that can improve governance practices in the region. It also discusses the links between governance and official development assistance (ODA) and the role of the Japan Bank for International Cooperation. To put the discussion on governance systems in a proper context, the paper discusses the governance and growth nexus in Southeast Asia; describes the operating governance systems in Southeast Asia; analyzes economic governance, more specifically in the areas of economic management and growth, revenue generation, social spending, access to services, cost of doing business, and corporate governance; and examines political governance, focusing on the rule of law and judicial independence, conflict management, and voice participation.governance, development program, corruption
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