Do Euro-Med agreements improve democracy and the quality of institutions in EU partner countries ?.

The European Union enforced respect of human rights and democratic principles an essential elements of all its preferential and non preferential trading agreements since the beginning of the 90's. In all EU external agreements, an essential element would imply that the EU can impose sanctions against violating states, that is, "suspension of high-level bilateral contacts, trade embargoes, suspension of arms sales, suspension of military cooperation and suspension of cooperation", as was the case for Serbia and Burma because of human rights abuses such as torture, political arrests or censorship. But its preference is to use positive action rather than penalties. This paper deals with Euro-Med Agreements, it aims at assessing the impact of these constraints on EU partners governance. Using within comparisons and difference-in-differences estimates, we find that these agreements improved Mediterranean countries governance but not the respect of democratic principles.Trade agreements; Panel data analysis; Governance; Euro-med; Partenariat euro-méditerranéen;

National borders matter... where one draws the lines too.

The fact that crossing a political border dramatically reduces trade flows has been widely documented in the literature. The increasing number of borders has surprisingly attracted much less attention. The number of independent countries has indeed risen from 72 in 1948 to 192 today. This paper estimates the effect of political disintegration since World War II on the measured growth in world trade. We first show that trade statistics should be considered carefully when assessing globalization over time, since the definition of trade partners varies over time. We document a sizeable resulting accounting artefact, which accounts for 17% of the growth in world trade since 1948. Second, we estimate that political disintegration alone since World War II has raised measured international trade flows by 9% but decreased actual trade flows (including inter-regional trade) by 4%...Trade, Borders, Political disintegration, Trade statistics.

Corruption and trust in political institutions in sub-Saharan Africa.

Cet article explore les interactions entre la confiance institutionnelle et la corruption à partir d’un riche corpus d’enquêtes-ménages comparables : les enquêtes Afrobaromètre réalisées dans 18 pays d’Afrique sub-saharienne. Plus précisément, il teste les théories de l’ « huile dans les rouages » selon lesquelles la corruption peut renforcer la confiance des citoyens en leur permettant d’accéder à des services publics autrement inaccessibles. Nos résultats infirment clairement ces théories. Nous montrons que la corruption réduit clairement la confiance et ce quelque soit la qualité des services gouvernementaux. Ils suggèrent toutefois que l’expérience et la perception de la corruption ont des effets distincts sur la confiance institutionnelle.This paper analyzes the impact of corruption on the extent of trust in political institutions using a rich collection of comparable data provided by the Afrobarometer surveys conducted in 18 sub-Saharan African countries. More specifically, we set out to test the “efficient grease” hypothesis that corruption can strengthen citizens’ trust since bribe paying and clientelism open the door to otherwise scarce and inaccessible services and subsidies, and that this increases institutional trust. Our findings reject this theoretical argument. We show that corruption never produces trust-enhancing effects regardless of the evaluation of public service quality. The results reveal how perceived and experienced corruption impact negatively, but differently, on citizens’ trust in political institutions. The adverse effect of perceived corruption decreases with the fall in public service quality, whereas the negative effect of experienced corruption decreases as public service quality increases.Africa; Trust; Corruption;

Le principe des responsabilités communes mais différenciées à Rio, Kyoto et Copenhague : Essai sur la responsabilité de protéger le climat

Dans la Déclaration de Stockholm, la communauté internationale reconnaissait en 1972 qu’il fallait résoudre l’apparente contradiction entre la protection de l’environnement et le développement économique des pays pauvres. Expressément formulé en 1992, dans la Déclaration de Rio, le principe des responsabilités communes mais différenciées est devenu la pièce maîtresse du Protocole de Kyoto, que le Sénat américain a refusé de ratifier. Au cours des négociations relatives aux engagements post-Kyoto, des divergences sur la mise en oeuvre de ce principe ont conduit à une impasse. L’Accord de Copenhague permettra-t-il à la communauté internationale d’assumer sa responsabilité de protéger le climat, dans l’intérêt commun de l’humanité ?In 1972, in the Stockholm Declaration, the international community recognized that the apparent contradiction between environmental protection and the economic development of developing countries must be solved. Expressly formulated in 1992 in the Rio Declaration, the principle of common but differentiated responsibilities became the central feature of the Kyoto Protocol, which the American Senate refused to ratify, alleging that it placed emerging nations in a privileged position. After a period of “arm wrestling” in the negotiations following the Kyoto Protocol, the Agreement of Copenhagen seems to undermine its legitimacy. Will such agreement enable the international community to face its responsibility to protect the climate in the common concern of humankind