28 research outputs found

    Trade Agreements as a Venue for Migration Governance?:Potential and Challenges for the European Union

    Get PDF

    Investor-state arbitration in the Sultanate of Oman: lessons to be learned from the European Union’s approach to the investment court system

    Get PDF
    The Sultanate of Oman strives to promote economic growth. Foreign investment is one of the most important vehicles for achieving this purpose. The Oman Vision 2040 identifies Foreign Direct Investment as the basis of future economic development. To make Oman a more attractive destination for foreign direct investment, the government has developed and implemented a variety of policies. Modernizing the legal framework governing FDI is central to these policies. Considering this, the question arises as to whether the legislative structure governing investor-state arbitration as a means to ensure that Oman fulfils its obligations to international investors requires modification.Investor-state arbitration has played a crucial role in promoting direct foreign investment. It represents one of the legal procedures for resolving investment disputes between host states and foreign investors. Typically, bilateral investment treaties or multilateral free trade agreements provide for investor-state arbitration as a means of settling potential disputes between host states and international investors. However, investor-state arbitration has been criticised in recent years for being partial, less transparent, and severely impacting the regulatory authority of the host state. This critique has prompted calls for reform of the system for resolving investment disputes. The European Union has undertaken reforms to this system through the investment court system (ICS).This thesis analysis the legislative framework governing investor-state arbitration in Sultanate of Oman and evaluates the need for reform considering mentioned conditions and the Oman's desire to become a more attractive destination for international investments. This necessitates an examination of Oman's national laws pertaining to arbitration and foreign investment in order to identify potential weakness. In addition, bilateral and regional investment treaties, as well as international Conventions related to investor-state arbitration, to which Oman is a signatory, are examined in order to determine Oman's obligations in relation to investor-state arbitration. Furthermore, a comparison is made between ICSID arbitration and the EU's model of the Investment Court System in order to assess the EU's approach to reforming the investment dispute settlement system. This thesis concludes that many aspects of Oman's legal framework governing investor-state arbitration require revision. As a result, the Oman government must adopt an integrated plan to review and modernise this framework in response to Oman Vision 2040 and as part of its broader foreign investment and economic development policy

    New Player - Same Game? The influence of emerging donors on the policies of three traditional donors: The cases of the United States, Norway and the United Kingdom

    Get PDF
    In June 2016, news services across the world reported that China was about to build the new headquarters of the Zimbabwean parliament for free. This incident is illustrative of an ongoing debate about the increasing influence of emerging countries – especially China – on the African continent. It also reflects ongoing changes in the field of foreign aid, which has for a long time been dominated by an economic relationship between rich industrialized states that gave a small part of their gross domestic product to poorer, and less industrialized states. Today, new trends are emerging. The reaction of traditional donors to these new trends is perhaps the most neglected question of all. How do they adapt their development policies in response to this new, perceived source of competition? This thesis is looking for answers to precisely this question. It looks at two thematic fields that are affected by emerging donors: first, the field of conditionality – it is often argued that emerging donors do not attach political or economic conditions to their aid activities while traditional donors do; and, second, that of trilateral cooperation – the cooperation between a Northern donor, a Southern aid provider and a recipient country. This study looks therefore at the reaction of selected traditional donors to their perceived loss of the monopoly on the development paradigm in these two thematic areas. While it would be interesting to study the reactions of all traditional donors, this endeavour is unrealistic. Therefore, this study focusses on three relevant cases: the United States of America (USA), Norway and the United Kingdom. These three cases follow a most-different-case-design: even though all three countries play a leading role in the international agenda setting, they differ highly when it comes to the institutional set-up of their development cooperation. The United Kingdom has its own department for international cooperation, the United States on the other hand have a strongly fragmented aid system. They also differ when one looks at their main motives behind development cooperation: Norway for instance pursues more altruistic goals than the other two. There is also a high variety in their aid budgets (the biggest budget for aid is in the USA), the share of aid in relation to the GDP (this one is highest in Norway and lowest in the USA), and in their sectoral and regional focus. The selected cases illustrate three very different donor countries which will strengthen the relevance of the study. The aims of the study are threefold. By illustrating the reaction of three traditional donors to the emergence of a new group of donors it allows for wider speculation about the potential reaction of traditional forces to the emergence of new power centres – development policy being only one of many fields within international relations that are affected by this shift. This might also lead to interesting hypotheses for the future broader relations between the North and the South, an area which is currently central to debates within international relations (IR). Moreover, another aim of the study is a theoretical one: in the process of investigating the reaction within traditional donor policy, the theoretical prism of discursive institutional change is used, investigated and further developed. This theoretical approach combines institutionalism with constructivist concepts after Vivien Schmidt (2008, 2010, 2011). This work further develops her concepts and enlarges its focus with other institutional concepts, which allow for a very graphic analysis of institutional change by dividing each countries development policies in narratives, rules and practices (Lowndes and Roberts 2013). Finally what is currently missing from the numerous publications on the broader topic is an empirical study of the actual reactions that goes beyond pure speculation. This study fills that gap and provides revealing empirical evidence from the three traditional donors. Empirically this work has found satisfying answers to a relevant question and shows that the three selected donors react differently to the emergence of new donors. The United Kingdom and the USA seem to push for a more selective policy in their development cooperation (so an increase in their conditionality) in the layers of narratives and rules, but are not yet able to implement these into their aid practices. Norway, on the other hand, has a difficult relationship towards conditionality which is illustrated by its hesitant increase in its selectivity but no increase within the rules or practices. All three donors vouch to increase their cooperation with new donors. The United States however insists on cooperating only with like-minded countries whereas Norway relies on the works of other (multilateral) institutions and the United Kingdom seems to be open to cooperate with all four emerging donors in trilateral projects. Future studies might profit from the outline of this work and build possibly on a broader sample: as such, it could be imaginable to include further donor countries to the theoretical framework established here or to add another thematic field (for instance the work of infra-structure development). The main theoretical questions were twofold: first, can ideas serve as an explanatory variable for institutional change? With respect to the material presented here, this question asks whether the ideas that traditional donors had about emerging donors can explain the changes within their aid policies. The answer to that question is slightly unsatisfying: yes, they can, but only partly. First of all, a distinction is necessary between the two policy fields. Within the older policy field (conditionality) ideas were particularly helpful to explaining a change within the narratives and rules of the donor institutions, but were much less influential to explaining the change (or rather non-change) for practices. Different – and more interest-based explanations – could be helpful in explaining the inertia in the practices of conditionality. Within the newer policy field, however, ideas could explain most of the change (or lack thereof in the case of Norway) and proved to be a useful explanatory variable. Therefore, future studies should continue to take the explanatory power seriously. Some of the other theoretical hypotheses can be confirmed: The theoretical hypotheses claimed that change is more likely to occur in less well-established thematic fields (such as trilateral cooperation) whereas it is less likely to occur in well-established, traditional fields (such as conditionality) as veto players are more active in a field with a long tradition than in one with less history to look back upon. Moreover, the claim was that change begins within the layer of narratives, continues within the layer of rules, but is least likely to occur in the layer of practices. Have these theoretical assumptions been confirmed by this study? These hypotheses were verified through the empirical study and give credit to theories focusing on path-dependent tendencies of long established fields. Moreover, the division of the institution of development cooperation into the layers of narratives, rules and practices has proven to be incredibly useful to understanding the underlying change processes that are otherwise difficult to decipher. The third and last aim of this study was to contribute to the academic debate about the (future) relationship between two distinct groups: established and rising powers. The two policy fields studied here – conditionality and trilateral cooperation – show the complexity of the issues at stake. While trilateral cooperation could be indicative of a closer cooperation (or at least closer contact) between the two groups, the investigation of conditionality has highlighted remaining differences and strong rivalries. Hence, the thesis has shown that the story of the relationship between these two groups of countries will never be easy to tell. Any relationship cannot be summarised under headings such as “good” or “bad”. Most of the time, relations between two countries can probably be characterised as “OK”

    The European Commission in the World Trade Organisation: a question of roles, responsibilities and interests

    Get PDF
    This thesis sets out to answer the question: What roles and responsibilities have accrued to the European Commission in relation to its operations within global trade negotiations, how have these been interpreted and pursued, and how have they been affected by changing patterns of interests and institutions in the world trading system? The thesis has as its central empirical focus the activities of the European Commission in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) from 1995 to 2003—that is to say, from the foundation of the Organisation to the failure of the Cancun Ministerial. It focuses on the roles and responsibilities of the Commission within trade negotiations and identifies the ways in which it has been affected both by the interests that it serves, or confronts, and by changes in the broader context of the negotiations themselves. The thesis argues that the need to maintain this complex balance of roles, responsibilities and interests in a changing environment creates patterns of path dependency and a search for consistency that reduces the possibility of creative adaptation on the part of the Commission. [Continues.

    Sino-Indian Relations in the Bay of Bengal.

    Get PDF

    African Studies Abstracts Online: number 42, 2013

    Get PDF
    ASA Online provides a quarterly overview of journal articles and edited works on Africa in the field of the social sciences and the humanities available in the ASC library. Issue 42 (2013). African Studies Centre, Leiden.ASC – Publicaties niet-programma gebonde

    Global and Local Issues from the Aspects of Law and Economy

    Get PDF

    The State of Governance in Bangladesh 2010-11: policy, influence, ownership

    No full text
    Includes bibliographical references (page 155 - 178)

    The anti-racist state: an investigation into the relationship between representations of 'racism', anti-racist typification and the state : a 'Scottish' case study

    Get PDF
    This study constitutes the first socio-historical reconstruction of Scotland-based anti-racist formation, spanning the post-WW” period to the present day. Historical in that a chronological map of anti-racist mobilisation is reconstructed; sociological in that anti-racist formation is analytically founded with the purpose of subjecting conceptualisations of ‘racism as a social problem’ to historical scrutiny by tracing its increasing public profile across time. This thesis is concerned with the making of the meaning of ‘racism as a social problem’, an understanding of which is framed by the interplay between anti-racist formation and the policy agenda of the British state. This interplay is contextualised and scrutinised specifically in Scotland, such that the state’s role in defining racism as a social problem is subject to critique. Focus is on the perceived role of ‘race’ and migration as social conflict variables, and state institutions as agents of legitimation, incorporation and regulation. Scotland provides a robust geo-political framework for analysis in that there is explicit recognition that the problem of racism in Scotland has been neglected historically. We have moved from a social policy context in which racism was not given sufficient attention by the Scottish arm of the British state, to a newly devolved institutional set-up which has allowed a significant place to the social problem of racism as specifically a ‘Scottish problem’. The newly devolved Scottish polity’s commissioned anti-racist media campaign – One Scotland, Many Cultures – provides an explicit statement of what the state means when it declares itself-anti-racist, how its agenda informs the signification of ‘racism’, and consequently how ‘racism’ is typified as a social problem requiring state intervention. This study explores ‘problem definition’ with the use of multiple methods of enquiry, including: archival recovery; elite interview; policy analysis; event analysis; media analysis; visual analysis; and audio analysis. Media analysis incorporates representations of anti-racist claimsmaking, which takes a specifically Scottish focus in the Scottish press and is systematised over a particular period ranging from 1994 to 2004. This is supplemented by interviews with anti-racist activists and policy officials, with a specific focus on those who played a key role at an institutional level pre-devolution and those with a close involvement in the development of One Scotland, Many Cultures. This triangulation is grounded via a historical approach which seeks, through archival recovery, to unravel the contextual construction of ‘racism as a Scottish problem’ from 1968 to 2004. This thesis concludes that the devolved polity’s problem typification draws on historical currents specific to representations of ‘racism’ as influenced by Scotland-based anti-racist formation, but adds a new dimension, such that the definition of ‘racism’ is ‘therapised’
    corecore