Problematic legal pluralism: causes and some potential ‘cures’

The tools of analytical positivism and economic analysis are applied to the phenomenon of legal pluralism. An analytical framework is developed to ascertain when legal pluralism is problematic in the control of wrongdoing. It is demonstrated that there are three specific cases: rivalrous compliance, sanctions for wrong behaviour that are deemed to be wrongs themselves, and the uncoordinated sanctioning of common wrongs. Then there is a discussion of the consequences and some approaches that can be used to ameliorate each case that has been identified. It is hoped that this framework will be used to guide future practical and theoretical discussions on legal pluralism and its potential problems.This is the accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Taylor & Francis at http://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/07329113.2014.892335#.VOXJ3S6Qne4

Natural Resource Contests and Precolonial Institutions in Papua New Guinea

This article investigates the role that precolonial institutions play in relation to post-colonial natural resource ownership contests. Papua New Guinea provides a unique case study as it is recorded as having the most decentralized precolonial political institutions of any post colonial state. After an examination of its precolonial institutions, colonial land policy, and three case studies, it is concluded that persistent highly decentralized customary political units coupled with customary notions inalienability of land, and overlaid with a state property rights regime, leads to resource contests. It is concluded that resource ownership contests can have serious adverse consequences for resource management and that they are not easily overcome

Accounting for Legal Pluralism: The Impact of Pre-colonial Institutions on Crime

This article investigates the impact of non-state legal institutions on crime by exploiting differences in pre-colonial legal institutions. In relation to criminal law, it is suggested that colonisation can be best characterised as the imposition of almost identical criminal law on a diverse set of pre-existing legal institutions; in this sense, this analysis inverts the legal origins and institutions literature. Given that remnants of pre-colonial institutions persist, it is suggested that the type of precolonial legal institution should have a direct effect on state crime control and the crime rate. This is so, as societies that were relatively stateless prior to colonisation are more likely to have high magnitude non-state sanctions that can act as substitutes for state punishments, but the presence of such non-state legal institutions also reduces the productivity of state enforcement, contributing to an overall increase in crime. This is tested using a measure for pre-colonial institutions on a dataset of 86 post-colonial states. Private enforcement of high magnitude punishments, despite the deterrent effect, results in a net increase in crime

Do Voluntary Commons Associations Deliver Sustainable Grazing Outcomes? An Empirical Study of England

In 1965, the Commons Registration Act came into force in England and Wales. The Act led to the removal of the capacity of commoners to regulate the intensity of grazing via traditional legal means. From this policy shock a number of voluntary commons associations were formed. These voluntary groups relied on their members to agree upon how the commons should be managed. Using two-stage least squares regression analysis we find that commons governed by these associations are much more likely to produce sustainable grazing outcomes. These results are robust to the existence of a variety of controls, including overlapping institutional frameworks. Importantly, they highlight the ability of voluntary environmental organisations to deliver sustainable environmental outcomes

Dictators Walking the Mogadishu Line: How Men Become Monsters and Monsters Become Men

History offers many examples of dictators who worsened their behavior significantly over time (like Zimbabwe’s Mugabe) as well as dictators who displayed remarkable improvements (like Rawlings of Ghana). We show that such mutations can result from rational behavior when the dictator’s flow use of repression is complementary to his stock of wrongdoings: past wrongdoings then perpetuate further wrongdoings and the dictator can unintentionally get trapped in a repressive steady state where he himself suffers from ex-post regret. This then begs the question why such a dictator would ever choose to do wrong in the first place. We show that this can be explained from the dictator’s uncertainty over his degree of impunity in relation to wrongdoing, which induces him to experiment along this dimension. This produces a setting where any individual rising to power can end up as either a moderate leader, or as a dreaded tyrant. Since derailment is accidental and accompanied by ex-post regret, increasing accountability can be in the interest of both the public and the dictator.Economic Research Southern AfricaThis is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Oxford University Press via https://doi.org/10.1596/1813-9450-777

The benefits of forced experimentation: strikingevidence from the London Underground network

We estimate that a significant fraction of commuters on the London underground do not travel their optimal route. Consequently, a tube strike (which forced many commuters to experiment with new routes) taught commuters about the existence of superior journeys, bringing about lasting changes in behaviour. This effect is stronger for commuters who live in areas where the tube map is more distorted, thereby pointing towards the importance of informational imperfections. We argue that the information produced by the strike improved network-efficiency. Search costs are unlikely to explain the suboptimal behaviour. Instead, individuals seem to under-experiment in normal times, as a result of which constraints can be welfare-improvin

Exorcising Malthusian ghosts: Vaccinating the Nexus to advance integrated water, energy and food resource resilience

Water-Energy-Food (WEF) Nexus interactions vary from seemingly negative and intractable wicked problems to opportunities for enhanced sustainability. The aim of this paper is to review the current state of understanding on WEF resource interactions and to provide a roadmap to enhance integrated resource management. A qualitative perspective based on expert insight and experience was supported by a more quantitative systematic analysis of the literature to define Nexus interactions, describe the nature of different challenges, and explore the factors that influence them. We found that Nexus challenges, and associated interactions (e.g. trade-offs and synergies), vary with complexity and spatial and temporal scale, and biases in research and culture act as barriers to progress. An interdisciplinary approach is needed to develop technical solutions employed through the use of orchestrated shocks (e.g. historic analogues, predictive modelling, experimentation, and scenario planning) to “Vaccinate the Nexus” and improve system resilience. To achieve this, multidisciplinary capability should be developed to solve interdisciplinary challenges, while protecting specialism. It is recognised that through embracing complexity and “Nexus (or Systems) Thinking”, future integration of resource management may be facilitated through holistic education, informed by interdisciplinary research, and ingrained in cross-sector policy and governance

Linking precolonial institutions with ethnic fractionalisation: what are we measuring?

This article highlights a link between measures for precolonial institutions and ethnic fractionalisation in postcolonial countries. A conceptual explanation is provided for why countries that were more politically centralised in precolonial times should be less ethnic fractionalised in current times. This result is confirmed for a sample of post-colonial countries in Africa, Asia, and the Pacific. This is followed by a comparative case study of in the south pacific countries of Papua New Guinea, Tonga, and Samoa. It is hoped that these results will lead to further empirical work focused at delving deeper into the link between these two measures to better understand what they are actually measuring, and why both are so closely related to economic development.British Council Small Research Gran