Toward Innovation In Global Food Regime

The market-oriented focus of the global food regime, as it functioned from the late 1940s to the early 1970s, has proved inadequate. Preoccupation with perfecting markets led food policy makers to underemphasize the need for increased production in the Third World. It also led them to exaggerated attention to short-term surplus disposal and too little concern about scarcity. The regime emerged from a context in which unilateral actions and domestic considerations prevailed. This resulted in regime pathologies in which mutually beneficial international food solutions were not reached and multilateral coordination to analyze and solve food problems was discouraged. Such regime inadequacies cumulated over time; while they did not cause the food crisis of 1973-74, they blunted international responses to it. Reform of the global food regime is needed to (1) raise priorities accorded to rural modernization in Third World countries, (2) increase attention to malnutrition and chronic hunger, (3) provide resources for development, and (4) structure and stabilize the market so as to provide security of supply and income. The legitimacy of multilateral forums and processes also must be enhanced

International Regimes: Lessons From Inductive Analysis

International regimes are attitudinal phenomena. They are thus subjective and exist primarily as participants\u27 understandings, expectations or convictions about legitimate, appropriate or moral behavior. Regimes are identified and their tenets described by studying records of participants\u27 perceptions gleaned either from interview transcripts or from appropriate documents. Theorizing concerning international regimes currently focuses upon identifying analytic characteristics that might become bases for comparative empirical studies and foundations for generalization. Particularly promising are comparisons of international regimes with regard to specificity, formality, modes of change, and distributive bias. The regime that buttressed late 19th century European colonialism is compared to the international food regime of the present day with respect to these analytic features. Observations on the two cases suggest reasons why some international regimes are durable and others fragile, why some invite wide compliance and others provoke deviation, and why some change while the international structure of power remains constant but others change only after the weak become strong

Perspectives On International-Relations Of Food

The international system of production, distribution and consumption of food is managed by states, corporations and international organizations. International organizations play minor roles in the food regime, principally as arenas for policy coordination among state bureaucracies and as agents for modest multilateral programs. All of these actors work within the framework of aset of norms, rules and practices that constitutes a global food regime. Currently, the regime is undergoing change. Growing demand for food, tighter connections among markets, and greater reliance on technology have increased theimportance of international adjustments. American preponderance in shaping regime features and insuring food security through reserves has declined. The dramatic price rises and rationing of international food supplies that occurred during the crisis of 1973-74 exposed serious deficiencies in the existing regime. At least five world food problems--potential shortages, instability, insecurity, low productivity and malnutrition--continue as real or potential threats. To solve these problems the norms of the current regime that has existed since World War II are seriously under challenge. Re-evaluation and reform of the major principles characterizing the food regime are needed

The future of sovereignty in multilevel governance Europe: a constructivist reading

Multilevel governance presents a depiction of contemporary structures in EU Europe as consisting of overlapping authorities and competing competencies. By focusing on emerging non-anarchical structures in the international system, hence moving beyond the conventional hierarchy/anarchy dichotomy to distinguish domestic and international arenas, this seems a radical transformation of the familiar Westphalian system and to undermine state sovereignty. Paradoxically, however, the principle of sovereignty proves to be resilient despite its alleged empirical decline. This article argues that social constructivism can explain the paradox, by considering sovereign statehood as a process-dependent institutional fact, and by showing that multilevel governance can feed into this process

Species and abundance of ectoparasitic flies (Diptera) in pied flycatcher nests in Fennoscandia

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