Negotiating from the margins: how the UN shapes the rules of the WTO

World Trade Organization (WTO) rules on agriculture are among the most contentious issues in the international political economy due to agriculture’s importance in the production of tradable commodities as well as economic development and food security in developing countries. In this article, I analyse a surprising and unexpected actor playing an important role in shaping WTO rules on agriculture – the United Nations (UN). While UN actors do not have a seat at the bargaining table, I argue that they invoke their delegated and moral authority and initiate actions to shape global trade rule-making. I demonstrate that UN actors have influenced the discourse, agenda and outcomes of trade negotiations by analysing three cases: 1) the Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO) orchestrating a Uruguay Round agreement in favour of food insecure developing countries; 2) the World Food Programme’s (WFP) blocking of trade rules on international food aid during the Doha Round negotiations; and 3) a proposal by the UN Special Rapporteur on the right to food for a legal waiver to protect public food stockholding that was taken up by WTO member states in 2013

Backdoor Bargaining: How the European Union Navigates the Food Aid Regime Complex

Scholars have long observed that states play off overlapping international institutions against one another in an effort to advance their policy objectives. This article identifies a strategy utilized by the EU in response to regime complexity that I term "backdoor bargaining." Unlike forum-shopping, regime-shifting, and competitive-regime creation strategies, which states use to move multilateral negotiations to an institution that they expect will produce a more favorable outcome, backdoor bargaining involves a state using negotiations within one institution to gain an advantage in negotiations taking place at another distinct institution in a regime complex. I demonstrate the plausibility of backdoor bargaining by showing that the EU used the renegotiation of the Food Aid Convention as a strategy to gain bargaining leverage in the agriculture negotiations at the World Trade Organization. The article also offers insights into the potential consequences of international regime complexity for the EU as a global actor and the coherence of its foreign policies

Singular systems of linear forms and non-escape of mass in the space of lattices

Singular systems of linear forms were introduced by Khintchine in the 1920s, and it was shown by Dani in the 1980s that they are in one-to-one correspondence with certain divergent orbits of oneparameter diagonal groups on the space of lattices. We give a (conjecturally sharp) upper bound on the Hausdor dimension of the set of singular systems of linear forms (equivalently the set of lattices with divergent trajectories) as well as the dimension of the set of lattices with trajectories `escaping on average' (a notion weaker than divergence). This extends work by Cheung, as well as by Chevallier and Cheung. Our method di ers considerably from that of Cheung and Chevallier, and is based on the technique of integral inequalities developed by Eskin, Margulis and Mozes

Singular systems of linear forms and non-escape of mass in the space of lattices

Singular systems of linear forms were introduced by Khintchine in the 1920s, and it was shown by Dani in the 1980s that they are in one-to-one correspondence with certain divergent orbits of oneparameter diagonal groups on the space of lattices. We give a (conjecturally sharp) upper bound on the Hausdor dimension of the set of singular systems of linear forms (equivalently the set of lattices with divergent trajectories) as well as the dimension of the set of lattices with trajectories `escaping on average' (a notion weaker than divergence). This extends work by Cheung, as well as by Chevallier and Cheung. Our method di ers considerably from that of Cheung and Chevallier, and is based on the technique of integral inequalities developed by Eskin, Margulis and Mozes

Spin-orbit interaction and spin relaxation in a two-dimensional electron gas

Using time-resolved Faraday rotation, the drift-induced spin-orbit Field of a two-dimensional electron gas in an InGaAs quantum well is measured. Including measurements of the electron mobility, the Dresselhaus and Rashba coefficients are determined as a function of temperature between 10 and 80 K. By comparing the relative size of these terms with a measured in-plane anisotropy of the spin dephasing rate, the D'yakonv-Perel' contribution to spin dephasing is estimated. The measured dephasing rate is significantly larger than this, which can only partially be explained by an inhomogeneous g-factor.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure

Morphological, Structural, and Spectral Characteristics of Amorphous Iron Sulfates

Current or past brine hydrologic activity on Mars may provide suitable conditions for the formation of amorphous ferric sulfates. Once formed, these phases would likely be stable under current Martian conditions, particularly at low- to mid-latitudes. Therefore, we consider amorphous iron sulfates (AIS) as possible components of Martian surface materials. Laboratory AIS were created through multiple synthesis routes and characterized with total X-ray scattering, thermogravimetric analysis, scanning electron microscopy, visible/near-infrared (VNIR), thermal infrared (TIR), and Mössbauer techniques. We synthesized amorphous ferric sulfates (Fe(III)2(SO4)3 · ~ 6–8H2O) from sulfate-saturated fluids via vacuum dehydration or exposure to low relative humidity

Majority Dynamics and Aggregation of Information in Social Networks

Consider n individuals who, by popular vote, choose among q >= 2 alternatives, one of which is "better" than the others. Assume that each individual votes independently at random, and that the probability of voting for the better alternative is larger than the probability of voting for any other. It follows from the law of large numbers that a plurality vote among the n individuals would result in the correct outcome, with probability approaching one exponentially quickly as n tends to infinity. Our interest in this paper is in a variant of the process above where, after forming their initial opinions, the voters update their decisions based on some interaction with their neighbors in a social network. Our main example is "majority dynamics", in which each voter adopts the most popular opinion among its friends. The interaction repeats for some number of rounds and is then followed by a population-wide plurality vote. The question we tackle is that of "efficient aggregation of information": in which cases is the better alternative chosen with probability approaching one as n tends to infinity? Conversely, for which sequences of growing graphs does aggregation fail, so that the wrong alternative gets chosen with probability bounded away from zero? We construct a family of examples in which interaction prevents efficient aggregation of information, and give a condition on the social network which ensures that aggregation occurs. For the case of majority dynamics we also investigate the question of unanimity in the limit. In particular, if the voters' social network is an expander graph, we show that if the initial population is sufficiently biased towards a particular alternative then that alternative will eventually become the unanimous preference of the entire population.Comment: 22 page

Semiclassical kinetic theory of electron spin relaxation in semiconductors

We develop a semiclassical kinetic theory for electron spin relaxation in semiconductors. Our approach accounts for elastic as well as inelastic scattering and treats Elliott-Yafet and motional-narrowing processes, such as D'yakonov-Perel' and variable g-factor processes, on an equal footing. Focusing on small spin polarizations and small momentum transfer scattering, we derive, starting from the full quantum kinetic equations, a Fokker-Planck equation for the electron spin polarization. We then construct, using a rigorous multiple time scale approach, a Bloch equation for the macroscopic ($\vec{k}$-averaged) spin polarization on the long time scale, where the spin polarization decays. Spin-conserving energy relaxation and diffusion, which occur on a fast time scale, after the initial spin polarization has been injected, are incorporated and shown to give rise to a weight function which defines the energy averages required for the calculation of the spin relaxation tensor in the Bloch equation. Our approach provides an intuitive way to conceptualize the dynamics of the spin polarization in terms of a ``test'' spin polarization which scatters off ``field'' particles (electrons, impurities, phonons). To illustrate our approach, we calculate for a quantum well the spin lifetime at temperatures and densities where electron-electron and electron-impurity scattering dominate. The spin lifetimes are non-monotonic functions of temperature and density. Our results show that at electron densities and temperatures, where the cross-over from the non-degenerate to the degenerate regime occurs, spin lifetimes are particularly long.Comment: 29 pages, 10 figures, final versio

Property (T) and rigidity for actions on Banach spaces

We study property (T) and the fixed point property for actions on $L^p$ and other Banach spaces. We show that property (T) holds when $L^2$ is replaced by $L^p$ (and even a subspace/quotient of $L^p$), and that in fact it is independent of $1\leq p<\infty$. We show that the fixed point property for $L^p$ follows from property (T) when 1. For simple Lie groups and their lattices, we prove that the fixed point property for $L^p$ holds for any $1< p<\infty$ if and only if the rank is at least two. Finally, we obtain a superrigidity result for actions of irreducible lattices in products of general groups on superreflexive Banach spaces.Comment: Many minor improvement