Perspectives de soutenabilité de la " Modernisation " de la gestion des services hydriques urbains en Europe

Cet article évalue le potentiel de soutenabilité du secteur de l'eau urbaine en Europe suite à sa modernisation. L'analyse procède en mobilisant le cadre théorique des régimes institutionnels de ressource et conclue que la modernisation offre un progrès nécessaire mais pas suffisant. Pour étayer ces résultats, nous procédons en trois temps : la présentation du processus de modernisation à l'œuvre ; l'exposé de la grille de lecture des régimes institutionnels de ressource ; l'application de la grille au secteur de l'eau urbaine en Europe

Modernisation of urban water services management in Europe and prospects for sustainability: an analysis in terms of institutional resource regimes

This article assesses the sustainability potential of the urban water sector in Europe following its modernisation. The analysis uses the theoretical framework of institutional resource regimes. This interpretative framework provides us with a typology of natural resource governance systems based on their coherence and their extent. Then, based on the interplay of hypothesis and conjecture, the framework is used to deduce the capacity of a regime to provide sustainable governance. We conclude that modernisation offers a path for progress which though necessary is not sufficient. This pessimistic assessment is based mainly on the observation of a lack of coherence in urban water systems in Europe. The study is divided into three parts: description of the modernisation process; presentation of the interpretative framework used in analysing institutional resource regimes; application of the framework to the urban water sector in Europe

Why Resource Regimes Fail in the Long Run? The Role of Institutional Complexity Traps and Transversal Transaction Costs

The Institutional Resource Regime framework is a realistic approach of the socio-ecological systems governance and sustainability, which is based on the combination of public policies analysis and institutional economics. If the effects identified by the framework have been confirmed, there is no clear understanding of the institutional mechanisms at work. The integration of a dynamic perspective provides the framework with tools capable of defining the workings of governance and extends its relevance to policy forecasting or specification. To do so, we propose to use concepts belonging to New Institutional Economics. Our research question is how changes in the characteristics of an Institutional Resource Regime contribute to improving the sustainability potential of a Socio-Ecological System. The paper provides an original analysis of environmental governance and transaction costs, which results in three generic theoretical propositions

Environmental Governance Dynamics: Some Micro Foundations of Macro Failures

This article proposes a new theoretical explanation to the question of environmental governance failures, combining micro and macro explanations in the long run. We put forward the concept of Transversal Transaction Costs (TTCs) as a critical source of governance failures. TTCs are transaction costs induced by interlinkages between public policies and property rights, an area under-investigated by the natural resources governance literature. We emphasise that TTCs are consequential in limiting the ability of environmental governance to coordinate natural resource uses. Drawing on institutional complementary and cluster literature, we argue that TTCs increased significantly over the years shaping governance evolution at the macro level in the long run. We show that institutional resource regimes tend to get locked into an Institutional Complexity Trap (ICT), which prevents improvement in coordination capacity and explains the persistence of environmental governance failures. Four cases substantiate our conceptual proposition of transversal transaction costs. In addition, the process-tracing of six water governance cases in Europe from 1750 to 2004 provides empirical support to the macro dynamics of institutional complexity trap

The Skyrmion strikes back: baryons and a new large NcN_c limit

In the large $N_c$ limit of QCD, baryons can be modeled as solitons, for instance, as Skyrmions. This modeling has been justified by Witten's demonstration that all properties of baryons and mesons scale with $N_c^{-1/2}$ in the same way as the analogous meson-based soliton model scales with a generic meson-meson coupling constant $g$. An alternative large $N_c$ limit (the orientifold large $N_c$ limit) has recently been proposed in which quarks transform in the two-index antisymmetric representation of $SU(N_c)$. By carrying out the analog of Witten's analysis for the new orientifold large $N_c$ limit, we show that baryons and solitons can also be identified in the orientifold large $N_c$ limit. However, in the orientifold large $N_c$ limit, the interaction amplitudes and matrix elements scale with $N_c^{-1}$ in the same way as soliton models scale with the generic meson coupling constant $g$ rather than as $N_c^{-1/2}$ as in the traditional large $N_c$ limit.Comment: 10 pages, 26 figure

Institutional complexity traps in policy integration processes: a long-term perspective on Swiss flood risk management

Complexity is inherent to the policy processes and to more and more domains such as environment or social policy. Complexity produces unexpected and counterintuitive effects, in particular, the phenomenon of policy regimes falling short of expectations while made by refined policies. This paper addresses this phenomenon by investigating the process of policy integration and its nonlinearities in the long run. We consider that the increase in the number of policies unexpectedly impacts the policy coherence within a policy regime. We argue that, depending on the degree of policy interactions, this impact varies in direction and intensity over time, which explains nonlinearities in integration. The impact turns negative when the regime is made of numerous policies, which favors non-coordinated policy interactions. Finally, the negative impact prevents further integration as stated by the Institutional Complexity Trap hypothesis and explains the contemporary paradoxical phenomenon of ineffective policy regimes made of refined policies. Empirically, we draw on a relational analysis of policies in the Swiss flood risk policy regime from 1848 to 2017. We study the co-evolution of the number of policies and of their de facto interlinkages, i.e., the co-regulations of a common issue. Findings support that the Institutional Complexity Trap is a structural and long-term dynamic punctuated by periods of policy learning and policy selection. We identify three main phases in the evolution of the regime: the start (1848– 1874), the development (1874–1991), and the Institutional Complexity Trap (since 1991)

Sylvain Barone, Rémi Barbier, François Destandau, Patrice Garin (eds.), 2018, Gouvernance de l’eau : un mouvement de réforme perpétuelle ? Paris, L’Harmattan, 260 pages.

Gouvernance de l’eau : un mouvement de réforme perpétuelle ? est un ouvrage collectif qui surprend en bien. En effet, les éditeurs visent et atteignent deux objectifs qui ne convergent pas naturellement. D’une part, l’ouvrage vise à donner voix aux participantes et participants des Doctoriales en Sciences sociales de l’eau (édition Montpelliéraine de 2016). D’autre part, l’ambition analytique de l’ouvrage comme un tout est réelle. La compilation offre une perspective compréhensive des leviers..

A tale of two skyrmions: the nucleon's strange quark content in different large N_c limits

The nucleon's strange quark content comes from closed quark loops, and hence should vanish at leading order in the traditional large $N_c$ (TLNC) limit. Quark loops are not suppressed in the recently proposed orientifold large $N_c$ (OLNC) limit, and thus the strange quark content should be non-vanishing at leading order. The Skyrme model is supposed to encode the large $N_c$ behavior of baryons, and can be formulated for both of these large $N_c$ limits. There is an apparent paradox associated with the large $N_c$ behavior of strange quark matrix elements in the Skyrme model. The model only distinguishes between the two large $N_c$ limits via the $N_c$ scaling of the couplings and the Witten-Wess-Zumino term, so that a vanishing leading order strange matrix element in the TLNC limit implies that it also vanishes at leading order in the OLNC limit, contrary to the expectations based on the suppression/non-suppression of quark loops. The resolution of this paradox is that the Skyrme model does not include the most general type of meson-meson interaction and, in fact, contains no meson-meson interactions which vanish for the TLNC limit but not the OLNC. The inclusion of such terms in the model yields the expected scaling for strange quark matrix elements.Comment: 4 page

The Hitchin connection in arbitrary characteristic

We give an algebro-geometric construction of the Hitchin connection, valid also in positive characteristic (with a few exceptions). A key ingredient is a substitute for the Narasimhan-Atiyah-Bott K\"ahler form that realizes the Chern class of the determinant-of-cohomology line bundle on the moduli space of bundles on a curve. As replacement we use an explicit realisation of the Atiyah class of this line bundle, based on the theory of the trace complex due to Beilinson-Schechtman and Bloch-Esnault.Comment: 47 page

DiMoPEx-project is designed to determine the impacts of environmental exposure on human health

The WHO has ranked environmental hazardous exposures in the living and working environment among the top risk factors for chronic disease mortality. Worldwide, about 40 million people die each year from noncommunicable diseases (NCDs) including cancer, diabetes, and chronic cardiovascular, neurological and lung diseases. The exposure to ambient pollution in the living and working environment is exacerbated by individual susceptibilities and lifestyle-driven factors to produce complex and complicated NCD etiologies. Research addressing the links between environmental exposure and disease prevalence is key for prevention of the pandemic increase in NCD morbidity and mortality. However, the long latency, the chronic course of some diseases and the necessity to address cumulative exposures over very long periods does mean that it is often difficult to identify causal environmental exposures. EU-funded COST Action DiMoPEx is developing new concepts for a better understanding of health- environment (including gene-environment) interactions in the etiology of NCDs. The overarching idea is to teach and train scientists and physicians to learn how to include efficient and valid exposure assessments in their research and in their clinical practice in current and future cooperative projects. DiMoPEx partners have identified some of the emerging research needs, which include the lack of evidence-based exposure data and the need for human-equivalent animal models mirroring human lifespan and low-dose cumulative exposures. Utilizing an interdisciplinary approach incorporating seven working groups, DiMoPEx will focus on aspects of air pollution with particulate matter including dust and fibers and on exposure to low doses of solvents and sensitizing agents. Biomarkers of early exposure and their associated effects as indicators of disease-derived information will be tested and standardized within individual projects. Risks arising from some NCDs, like pneumoconioses, cancers and allergies, are predictable and preventable. Consequently, preventative action could lead to decreasing disease morbidity and mortality for many of the NCDs that are of major public concern. DiMoPEx plans to catalyze and stimulate interaction of scientists with policy-makers in attacking these exposure-related diseases