4,769 research outputs found

    Plural Vision: International Law Seen Through the Varied Lenses of Domestic Implementation

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    This Essay introduces a collection of essays that have evolved from papers presented at a conference on “International Law in the Domestic Context.” The conference was a response to the questions raised by the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision in Medellín v. Texas and also a product of our collective curiosity about how other states address tensions between international obligations and overlapping regimes of national law. Our constitutional tradition speaks with many voices on the subject of the relationship between domestic and international law. In order to gain a broader perspective on that relationship, we invited experts on foreign law to introduce us to the way other states attempt to reconcile international commitments and the domestic constitutional order. The essays collected here were presented in three separate panels during the conference. The organization of the volume follows the same organizational principle. The first three papers thus focus on questions relating to the implementation of international human rights as domestic law. The two papers that follow address issues relating to international obligations and the foreign affairs power. The final section, which comprises four papers, provides a comparative perspective on how other international law is introduced into the domestic legal systems of Australia, Canada, China and the United Kingdom. Each contribution attests to the continuing relevance of Holmes’ dictum: the life of the law is not logic but experience. Programmatic statements in founding documents or in law review articles do not determine the status of international law in the domestic context. It is worked out through the various legal histories of each state. As each state grapples to reconcile its national legal traditions with its international obligations, it is worthwhile to pause and consider the experiences of others. It is our hope that this volume contributes to that process

    Improving Russia's policy on foreign direct investment

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    Foreign direct investment brings host countries capital, productive facilities, and technology transfers as well as employment, new job skills, and management expertise. It is important to the Russian Federation, where incentives for competition are limited and incentives to becoming efficient are blunted by interregional barriers to trade, weak creditor rights, and administrative barriers to new entrants. The authors ague that the old policy paradigm of foreign direct investment (established before World War II and prevalent in the 1950s and 1960s) still governs Russia. In this paradigm there are only two reasons for foreign direct investment: access to inputs for production and access to markets for outputs. Such kinds of foreign direct investment, although beneficial, are often based on generating exports that exploit cheap labor or natural resources, or are aimed at penetrating protected local markets, not necessarily at world standards for price and quality. They contend that Russia should phase out high tariffs and non-tariff protection for the domestic market, most tax preferences for foreign investors (which don't increase foreign direct investment but do reduce fiscal revenues), and many restrictions on foreign investment. They recommend that Russia switch to a modern approach to foreign direct investment by: 1) Amending the newly enacted foreign direct investment law so that it will grant non-discriminatory"national treatment"to foreign investors for both right of establishment, and post-establishment operations, abolish conditions (such as local content restrictions) inconsistent with the World Trade Organization agreement on trade-related investment measures (TRIMs), and make investor-state dispute resolution mechanisms more efficient (giving foreign investors the chance to seek neutral binding international arbitration, for example). 2) Strengthening enforcement of property rights. 3) Simplifying registration procedures for foreign investors, to make them transparent and rules-based. 4) Extending guarantee schemes covering basic non-commercial risks.Environmental Economics&Policies,Labor Policies,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism,Economic Theory&Research,Payment Systems&Infrastructure,Environmental Economics&Policies,Foreign Direct Investment,Economic Theory&Research,National Governance,International Terrorism&Counterterrorism

    E-GOVERNMENT ON LOCAL PUBLIC POLICY. THE SINALOA CASE

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    Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs) have signiicantlyimpacted the organization and function of democratic governmentsin the past two decades. In this article we discuss the magnitude ofchanges in the public administration of Sinaloa, Mexico for effects ofthe adoption of e-government in the 2011-2015 period; also we showthe uneven and arbitrary manner that has been put into operation dueto the inexperienced and improvisation that has become a feature oflocal governments in the country

    Water management strategies in urban Mexico: Limitations of the privatization debate

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    Water management provides a critical lens onto the development process. For the last several centuries, improvements in clean water and sanitation have contributed to better health and increased life expectancies. Currently, however, developing countries seem unable to make much progress in bringing these benefits of development to significant sectors of their citizens. Water coverage is incomplete and water is of uneven quality. Just as serious, however, are the environmental impacts of water extraction, untreated sewage disposal, and the depletion of water sources through excessive withdrawals and pollution. In this research report, we present a framework for the analysis of the social appropriation of water based upon the concept of the New Culture of Water. Using that framework, we review the Mexican water sector in light of a set of original case studies. Although privatization might have some role to play in improving the performance of certain functions of water management agencies, it has clearly not proved superior to the public agencies we review. More importantly, however, the privatization solution has proved incapable of tackling the very serious problems of environmental destruction and the over-exploitation of finite water sources that plague the country. Our review of water management in Mexico, therefore, sheds light on some of the contradictions of a development process that is far from sustainable.Water management; Mexico; New Culture of Water; Privatization

    Ideologies implicated in IT innovation in government: a critical discourse analysis of Mexico’s international trade administration

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    We develop a perspective of IT innovation in the public sector as a process that involves three complementary areas of ideology and concomitant dispute: first, the widespread view of e-government as a transformative force that leads to major improvements of public sector functions for the benefit of society at large; second, ideologies concerning the substantive policies enacted by public sector organizations; and third, ideology regarding public sector modernization. Our research examines how the objectives of IT projects and their actual effects in government are influenced by such ideologies and contestations that surround them. We develop our theoretical contribution with a critical discourse analysis that traces the ideological underpinnings of two consecutive IT projects for the administration of international trade in Mexico. This analysis associates the objectives of the IT projects with the emergence and ensuing contestation in Mexican politics of two ideologies: the first ideology concerns free international trade as imperative for economic development; the second ideology concerns public sector modernization that sought to overcome historically formed dysfunctionalities of public administration bureaucracies by adopting management practices from the private sector. The analysis then identifies the effects of the ideologically shaped IT projects on two key values of public administration: efficiency and legality. The insights of this research on the role of ideology in IT innovation complement organizational perspectives of e-government; socio-cognitive perspectives that focus on ideas and meaning, such as technology frames and organizing visions; and perspectives that focus on politics in IT innovation

    Constraints to the Development of Technological Capabilities of Climate Change Actors in Agricultural Innovation System in Southeast Nigeria

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    Effective climate change adaptation and mitigation requires actors who have acquired requisite technological capabilities to efficiently use climate change equipment/information to counter the ravaging impacts of climate change. The study identified the constraints to the development of technological capabilities of climate change actors in agricultural innovation system in Southeast Nigeria. Five sub-systems (education, technology transfer, policy, research and farmer) that constitute an agricultural innovation system were identified and the staff in each system served as actors. Both interview schedule and structured questionnaire were used to collect data from a sample size of 176. Exploratory factor analysis was for data analysis. Statistical analyses of the data show funding/manpower (0.959), organizational (0.785) and weak policy (0.916) related factors constrained the development of technological capabilities of the actors. The study recommends adequate funding to enable the actors enhance and develop their technological capabilities. Keywords: Climate change, technological capabilities, actors, agricultural innovation system, southeast Nigeri

    Negotiating for nature: Conservation diplomacy and the Convention on Nature Protection and Wildlife Preservation in the Western Hemisphere, 1929--1976

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    In 1941, as the United States entered the Second World War, leaders from twenty American nations signed into effect a broad-based treaty for the protection of migratory wildlife at the Convention on Nature Protection and Wild Life Preservation in the Western Hemisphere. This dissertation examines the unique set of questions, problems, and concerns framers of the Convention dealt with in the development of a conservation program to ensure the protection of migratory wildlife as it crossed political borders. Although it provided no solid system of enforcement, the provisions of the Convention opened the door for new, more specific conservation treaties between the United States and other Pan American Union nations as well as fostered a collective effort at conservation between all nations in the hemisphere. This treaty came together as the result of the confluence of the devastating droughts in the 1930s, the severe decline of migratory birds throughout the Americas, and the prevailing policy of isolationism spreading in tandem with the concerns over the tensions in Europe. These stimuli generated enormous concern on the local, state, and federal levels of most governments in the Pan American Union, but nowhere more so than in the United States. This concern encouraged the development of a migratory wildlife treaty that would extend from the northern border of the U.S. to the southern tip of Argentina, and was then also used to establish parks, refuges, and forests to protect habitat, and to promote preservation of natural resources. This Convention marks the first real multi-lateral attempt to forge a coherent conservation plan with the Southern hemisphere and is one of the most long-lasting and successful efforts at conservation diplomacy to date

    Mexico’s National Anti-Corruption System: Reaching the Finish Line?

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    Compliance with the private standards and capacity building of national institutions under globalization: new agendas for developing countries?

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    There are two assumptions regarding regulatory instruments under the globalizing economy. These are: (1) increasing role of private standards in shaping the economic activities of developing countries; and (2) diminishing role of national institutions in "open" and "liberal" markets. In other words it was considered that global private standards would eventually replace already weak or absent national and local institutions in developing countries. The purpose of our paper is to suggest an alternative interpretation to this widely held view about national regulations and institutions in developing countries under the "new standard regime" in the food and agricultural sector where the regulatory framework is traditionally stronger at national level. The role of national regulatory institutions is considered to diminish as the countries compete in the "open" and "liberal" global market since firms are obliged to comply with global private standards. Instead, we have observed cases in developing countries which demonstrate an opposite phenomenon. In these cases, the local and national institutional capacity had actually being enhanced through learning in the "open" and "liberal" market at global level. In other words, we discovered that while the global (private) standards intend to control and shape the economic activities in developing countries through value chains, the local institutions also were transformed in a co-evolutionary manner to sustain the viability of existing local economic activities. This paper hence tries to illustrate our argument with cases from developing countries to demonstrate how the process of adapting to survive in the "new regime" compliance to global (private) standards may have positive impacts on national and local institutions. Moreover, we intend to highlight some common features of transitions which are taking place in regulatory frameworks within the context of a global "new standards regime" (public-private regulations). We will discuss the following cases of standards compliance and their impacts on enhancement of national and local capabilities: (1) the salmon farming industry in Chile, (2) and the fresh agricultural products in Mexico. These cases illustrate the complex interactions between global standards (both private and public-private) and national and local institutions. As the cases are slightly different, the comparison brings about interesting dimensions in illustrating institutional capacity building "trajectories" from both private and non-private standards.Standards, Role of National Institutions, Capacity Building, Latin America, Agri-food
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