For politics, people, or the planet? The political economy of fossil fuel reform, energy dependence and climate policy in Haiti

© 2019 Elsevier Ltd The uneven effects of the climate crisis and the need for decarbonization by reducing fossil fuel exploitation and eliminating subsidies create critical trade-offs and tensions for low-income developing countries. Recent reform of fuel consumption subsidies has shown a perennial mitigation bias largely imposed by external forces, in particular multilateral agencies and foreign governments in the context of the Paris accord. Contradictorily, external pressures to reduce subsidies have created competitive markets for multinationals to have a disproportionate role in supplying energy products which foreground the inequities in Haitian society that have spurred social and political resistance. Empirical work on energy-subsidy reform and climate policy do not sufficiently interrogate the interplay and implications of underlying assumptions, power imbalances between domestic and foreign actors, the challenging infrastructural and political context of renewable energy promotion, and immediate concerns to address worsening social conditions and development priorities. Drawing upon these policy debates, this paper considers the recent experience of Haiti to reform its energy subsidies required by the International Monetary Fund to enforce austerity. The paper takes a more integrated and critical approach to these policy discussions in a context of interconnecting political and socio-ecological crises and climate policy in Haiti. By inductively analyzing Haiti's main climate and energy policies and evidence drawn from field experience, the paper offers a more nuanced understanding of decarbonization and energy debates in this extremely vulnerable context. This approach gives priority to a more dynamic historical analysis of the socio-political context and factors that seek to advance climate justice

31st Annual Meeting and Associated Programs of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC 2016) : part two

Background The immunological escape of tumors represents one of the main ob- stacles to the treatment of malignancies. The blockade of PD-1 or CTLA-4 receptors represented a milestone in the history of immunotherapy. However, immune checkpoint inhibitors seem to be effective in specific cohorts of patients. It has been proposed that their efficacy relies on the presence of an immunological response. Thus, we hypothesized that disruption of the PD-L1/PD-1 axis would synergize with our oncolytic vaccine platform PeptiCRAd. Methods We used murine B16OVA in vivo tumor models and flow cytometry analysis to investigate the immunological background. Results First, we found that high-burden B16OVA tumors were refractory to combination immunotherapy. However, with a more aggressive schedule, tumors with a lower burden were more susceptible to the combination of PeptiCRAd and PD-L1 blockade. The therapy signifi- cantly increased the median survival of mice (Fig. 7). Interestingly, the reduced growth of contralaterally injected B16F10 cells sug- gested the presence of a long lasting immunological memory also against non-targeted antigens. Concerning the functional state of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), we found that all the immune therapies would enhance the percentage of activated (PD-1pos TIM- 3neg) T lymphocytes and reduce the amount of exhausted (PD-1pos TIM-3pos) cells compared to placebo. As expected, we found that PeptiCRAd monotherapy could increase the number of antigen spe- cific CD8+ T cells compared to other treatments. However, only the combination with PD-L1 blockade could significantly increase the ra- tio between activated and exhausted pentamer positive cells (p= 0.0058), suggesting that by disrupting the PD-1/PD-L1 axis we could decrease the amount of dysfunctional antigen specific T cells. We ob- served that the anatomical location deeply influenced the state of CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes. In fact, TIM-3 expression was in- creased by 2 fold on TILs compared to splenic and lymphoid T cells. In the CD8+ compartment, the expression of PD-1 on the surface seemed to be restricted to the tumor micro-environment, while CD4 + T cells had a high expression of PD-1 also in lymphoid organs. Interestingly, we found that the levels of PD-1 were significantly higher on CD8+ T cells than on CD4+ T cells into the tumor micro- environment (p < 0.0001). Conclusions In conclusion, we demonstrated that the efficacy of immune check- point inhibitors might be strongly enhanced by their combination with cancer vaccines. PeptiCRAd was able to increase the number of antigen-specific T cells and PD-L1 blockade prevented their exhaus- tion, resulting in long-lasting immunological memory and increased median survival

Structuralism and human development: A seamless marriage? An assessment of poverty, production and environmental challenges in CARICOM countries

The article examines the current human development experience of CARICOM nations focusing on the interconnected challenges of poverty, production and the environment that show continuing uneven development. Using an extended structuralist framework based on international political economy dynamics, it incorporates organizational dynamics and domestic politics, especially the role of rents in influencing productive and inclusive development. In this way, the article examines the 2016 Caribbean Human Development Report (CHDR) and finds evidence that human development, proxied by expenditures on education and healthcare, has decoupled from productive capability evinced by decreasing industrial output. We concur with recent critiques of the human development paradigm (HDP) that it has ignored a productionist view of development and thus limits the scope of development policy to bring about broad production transformation. By and large, structural heterogeneity also represents a challenge in CARICOM countries. Linked to questions of development finance, we find that the CHDR’s analysis of environmental concerns offers a narrow instrumentalist view and further marginalizes a deeper understanding of CARICOM countries’ asymmetrical relationship with transnational forces in the global economy. This contribution offers an integrated approach showing continued peripheralization and helps identify structural, socio-political and technical drivers that underpin the region’s complex development challenges

Innovation, institutions and development: A critical review and grounded heterodox economic analysis of late-industrialising contexts

This paper critically reviews dominant approaches to the economics of innovation in contemporary developing societies, namely new institutional economics (NIE) and National Innovation Systems (NIS). Both traditions explain capitalist development in late-industrialising countries using underlying assumptions and logics of advanced industrialised societies with respect to transaction costs, path dependence, the nature and structure of institutions and economic history. At their core, both approaches proffer ideal-type institutions as an essentialist route to technological and productivity improvement akin to a staged theory of development. The NIS framework became dominant in scholarly and policy circles but has neglected the implication that the concept was developed at the Organisation of Economic Cooperation and Development during the emergence of first-stage neoliberalism. NIE has become an essential analytical toolkit of mainstream economists and international organisations promoting competitiveness in developing countries. Analyses of the economic performance of developing countries have thus diverged from structural perspectives on development, attributing instead lacklustre technological deepening to certain national features, institutional gaps or linkage failures. The paper exposes narrow assumptions and illustrates that the ‘transition costs’ that arise from new socio-institutional configurations during the development process induces firms and other actors to compete for rents. Conversely, power asymmetries, historical factors and constraining forces in the global capitalist system generate unevenness in productive forces and technological progress. The paper proposes a political economy of technological change that considers the structural, technical and socio-political interdependencies and tensions that underpin transformative policies to improve technological, coordination and collective capabilities in the economic system

Governing science—industry relations in the South

1 Context Policymakers in the South are searching for new developmental models and strategies to address their own difficulties. Some emerging countries, especially China, have witnessed outstanding improvements in science and technology (S & T) performance, and created new optimism for technological catch up and development. The international development community and Southern governments have therefore turned to S & T policies to help reduce poverty and improve prospects for improving produ..

The dynamics of industrial development in a resource-rich developing society: A political economy analysis

© 2018 SAGE Publications. This article criticizes the resource curse thesis for neglecting the interplay of international factors and domestic politics, that is the political settlement, in explaining industrial performance in a resource-dependent society – Trinidad and Tobago. Using political settlement, analysis secondary as well as interview data, it examines the dynamics at the macro and sectoral levels in iron and steel and telecommunications in Trinidad and Tobago. The historical evidence reveals that anti-colonial mobilizations spurred critical public investments in developmental institutions and industrial projects responsible for improving the country’s productive base and technological capability in the post- Black Power period. These investments were bolstered by a favorable geopolitical climate and the 1973 commodity boom. Sectoral case studies reveal how shifts in the country’s political settlement affected late-industrializing accumulation of accumulation technological capabilities. Hereafter neoliberal policies facilitated an increased role for external actors in economic policy and ethnic-based clientelism within the political economy