Myths and lessons of liberal intervention: The British campaign for the abolition of the Atlantic slave trade to Brazil

This is the Pre-print version of the Article. The official published version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2012 Martinus NijhoffThis article takes issue with recent references to the British nineteenth century campaign for the abolition of the trans-Atlantic slave trade to Brazil that serve to bolster interventionist or imperialist agendas. In particular, such accounts reproduce two and a half myths about the campaign: that it can serve as a model for the present age; that the success of the campaign can be explained through the actions of the intervening party alone (with a corresponding neglect of those of the ‘target’ state); and the half-myth that the campaign’s success was due to military action (at the expense of institutional (legal) and normative factors and the capacity of the target state). I argue instead that this case – and interventions more generally – would benefit from an analysis that considers the role of force in relation to a series of residual institutional and cultural constraints within the liberal state and to political conditions in the target state. In light of the complexities and contingencies that these factors present the underlying lesson is that military force should be used sparingly, if at all

If not this World Trade Organisation, then what?

Reviews the criticisms made of the World Trade Organisation's negotiating position at the Cancun Ministerial Conference and considers whether an alternative method of creating international trade rules is possible. Examines opposition to the WTO's approach to the comparative advantage doctrine from supporters of trade liberalisation, the anti-globalisation arguments of its opponents and the politico-structural objections to WTO policy, including concerns of developing countries that most foreign direct investment comes from multinational enterprises. Comments on the WTO's allegedly undemocratic governance and considers how countervailing values might be introduced into international trade by reconciling the systems of public international law with those of international economic law

Imbedding Christian Values in the Public Education Setting: Creating a Democratic Classroom Environment

This article supports the need for Christian education in the sustainment of democracy and discusses the opportunity for Christian values to be implicitly imbedded into classroom through the creation of a democratic forum. This nation was founded on Christian principles. While the basis of today’s public education setting includes a basic understanding of the core skills (reading, writing and basic arithmetic), these skills alone are not enough for a student to achieve success. A student must also learn, through the education and spiritual process, courage, confidence and life skills in order to survive in today’s society. Furthermore, the ability to apply the core skills is necessary in order for an individual to fully achieve his or her potential. Through education and spirituality, an individual undergoes a transformation, gaining an understanding and appreciation of the world

Explaining Rising Regionalism and Failing Multilateralism: Consensus Decision-making and Expanding WTO membership

The beleaguered progress of the Doha Development Agenda of the WTO presents something of a puzzle for economic theory: if multilateralism is an effective forum for liberalisation (as it has been in the past), then why have the current round of talks faltered amid the proliferation of preferential trade negotiations? Several authors have argued that the consensus decision-making and single-undertaking principles of the WTO have lead to coordination failures amongst an increasingly expanded and diverse membership which has caused frustrated WTO members to form PTAs. This paper constructs a formal model which shows that the combination of the single-undertaking and consensus decision-making principles with an expanded and more diverse membership can lead to more than just coordination failure; it can render multilateralism less desirable for some parties than bilateralism. It is argued that these principles give countries de facto veto power meaning that their threat point during multilateral negotiations is a reversion to bilateral negotiations between all parties. Accordingly, countries with relatively less to gain from multilateralism can use their veto power to extract gains from those that would benefit substantially from the WTO. If an expanding membership has increased the number of such countries, then the benefits of multilateralism versus regionalism from the perspective of their negotiating partners may have been diminished to such an extent that they are no longer willing to wait for the conclusion of the Doha round before engaging in regional negotiations. This result adds credence to the idea that ‘variable geometry’ be introduced into the WTO system, such that it acts as an umbrella organisation for a web of sub-agreements.

Explaining rising regionalism and failing multilateralism: Consensus decision-making and expanding WTO membership

The beleaguered progress of the Doha Development Agenda of the WTO presents something of a puzzle for economic theory: if multilateralism is an effective forum for liberalisation (as it has been in the past), then why have the current round of talks faltered amid the proliferation of preferential trade negotiations? Several authors have argued that the consensus decision-making and single-undertaking principles of the WTO have lead to coordination failures amongst an increasingly expanded and diverse membership which has caused frustrated WTO members to form PTAs. This paper constructs a formal model which shows that the combination of the single-undertaking and consensus decision-making principles with an expanded and more diverse membership can lead to more than just coordination failure; it can render multilateralism less desirable for some parties than bilateralism. It is argued that these principles give countries de facto veto power meaning that their threat point during multilateral negotiations is a reversion to bilateral negotiations between all parties. Accordingly, countries with relatively less to gain from multilateralism can use their veto power to extract gains from those that would benefit substantially from the WTO. If an expanding membership has increased the number of such countries, then the benefits of multilateralism versus regionalism from the perspective of their negotiating partners may have been diminished to such an extent that they are no longer willing to wait for the conclusion of the Doha round before engaging in regional negotiations. This result adds credence to the idea that ‘variable geometry’ be introduced into the WTO system, such that it acts as an umbrella organisation for a web of sub-agreements.Multilateralism, Liberalisation, Trade negotiation, Variable geometry

The Intergenerational Transmission of Worklessness in the UK

This research analyses the magnitude of the intergenerational correlation in worklessness in the UK using the two British birth cohorts. By using the British Cohort Study of those born in 1970, the magnitude of the intergenerational correlation of worklessness can be assessed for a new cohort for the first time in the UK and the trend in intergenerational worklessness can be considered across time. Two empirical identification strategies commonly used in the literature are applied to UK data and a third empirical strategy, utilising the recession of 1981 is introduced to attempt to identify causality. The intergenerational correlation in worklessness in the UK is large and has increased across time, although the differences in the coefficients are not statistically significant. When a more restrictive measure of sons’ worklessness is introduced, this difference becomes statistically significant. This suggests supportive evidence of the intergenerational mobility literature for the UK. There are no statistically significant findings on causality in intergenerational worklessness, driven by either measurement issues or a lack of causality.Intergenerational mobility, unemployment

Modelling the quiet-time geomagnetic daily variations using observatory data

We present on-going work towards building a global model of the quiet-time geomagnetic daily variation using bservatory data. We select hourly mean data during June 2006 (solar minimum). We fit Fourier series in time, with a fundamental period of 24 hours, to the data at each observatory. We then use global spherical harmonic expansions to separate the daily variation signal, as characterised by the Fourier coefficients in time, into external and induced internal contributions. The models are assessed by comparison with the input data and with Campbell’s Sq model. The robustness of the separation of the field into external and induced internal sources is discussed