1,927 research outputs found
Perspectives de soutenabilité de la " Modernisation " de la gestion des services hydriques urbains en Europe
Cet article évalue le potentiel de soutenabilité du secteur de l'eau urbaine en Europe suite à sa modernisation. L'analyse procède en mobilisant le cadre théorique des régimes institutionnels de ressource et conclue que la modernisation offre un progrès nécessaire mais pas suffisant. Pour étayer ces résultats, nous procédons en trois temps : la présentation du processus de modernisation à l'œuvre ; l'exposé de la grille de lecture des régimes institutionnels de ressource ; l'application de la grille au secteur de l'eau urbaine en Europe
Modernisation of urban water services management in Europe and prospects for sustainability: an analysis in terms of institutional resource regimes
This article assesses the sustainability potential of the urban water sector in Europe following its modernisation. The analysis uses the theoretical framework of institutional resource regimes. This interpretative framework provides us with a typology of natural resource governance systems based on their coherence and their extent. Then, based on the interplay of hypothesis and conjecture, the framework is used to deduce the capacity of a regime to provide sustainable governance. We conclude that modernisation offers a path for progress which though necessary is not sufficient. This pessimistic assessment is based mainly on the observation of a lack of coherence in urban water systems in Europe. The study is divided into three parts: description of the modernisation process; presentation of the interpretative framework used in analysing institutional resource regimes; application of the framework to the urban water sector in Europe
Why Resource Regimes Fail in the Long Run? The Role of Institutional Complexity Traps and Transversal Transaction Costs
The Institutional Resource Regime framework is a realistic approach of the socio-ecological systems governance and sustainability, which is based on the combination of public policies analysis and institutional economics. If the effects identified by the framework have been confirmed, there is no clear understanding of the institutional mechanisms at work. The integration of a dynamic perspective provides the framework with tools capable of defining the workings of governance and extends its relevance to policy forecasting or specification. To do so, we propose to use concepts belonging to New Institutional Economics. Our research question is how changes in the characteristics of an Institutional Resource Regime contribute to improving the sustainability potential of a Socio-Ecological System. The paper provides an original analysis of environmental governance and transaction costs, which results in three generic theoretical propositions
Environmental Governance Dynamics: Some Micro Foundations of Macro Failures
This article proposes a new theoretical explanation to the question of environmental governance failures,
combining micro and macro explanations in the long run. We put forward the concept of Transversal Transaction
Costs (TTCs) as a critical source of governance failures. TTCs are transaction costs induced by interlinkages
between public policies and property rights, an area under-investigated by the natural resources governance
literature. We emphasise that TTCs are consequential in limiting the ability of environmental governance to
coordinate natural resource uses. Drawing on institutional complementary and cluster literature, we argue that
TTCs increased significantly over the years shaping governance evolution at the macro level in the long run. We
show that institutional resource regimes tend to get locked into an Institutional Complexity Trap (ICT), which
prevents improvement in coordination capacity and explains the persistence of environmental governance
failures. Four cases substantiate our conceptual proposition of transversal transaction costs. In addition, the
process-tracing of six water governance cases in Europe from 1750 to 2004 provides empirical support to the
macro dynamics of institutional complexity trap
The Skyrmion strikes back: baryons and a new large limit
In the large limit of QCD, baryons can be modeled as solitons, for
instance, as Skyrmions. This modeling has been justified by Witten's
demonstration that all properties of baryons and mesons scale with
in the same way as the analogous meson-based soliton model scales with a
generic meson-meson coupling constant . An alternative large limit
(the orientifold large limit) has recently been proposed in which quarks
transform in the two-index antisymmetric representation of . By
carrying out the analog of Witten's analysis for the new orientifold large
limit, we show that baryons and solitons can also be identified in the
orientifold large limit. However, in the orientifold large limit,
the interaction amplitudes and matrix elements scale with in the
same way as soliton models scale with the generic meson coupling constant
rather than as as in the traditional large limit.Comment: 10 pages, 26 figure
Institutional complexity traps in policy integration processes: a long-term perspective on Swiss flood risk management
Complexity is inherent to the policy processes and to more and more domains such as environment
or social policy. Complexity produces unexpected and counterintuitive effects,
in particular, the phenomenon of policy regimes falling short of expectations while made
by refined policies. This paper addresses this phenomenon by investigating the process of
policy integration and its nonlinearities in the long run. We consider that the increase in
the number of policies unexpectedly impacts the policy coherence within a policy regime.
We argue that, depending on the degree of policy interactions, this impact varies in direction
and intensity over time, which explains nonlinearities in integration. The impact turns
negative when the regime is made of numerous policies, which favors non-coordinated
policy interactions. Finally, the negative impact prevents further integration as stated by the
Institutional Complexity Trap hypothesis and explains the contemporary paradoxical phenomenon
of ineffective policy regimes made of refined policies. Empirically, we draw on a
relational analysis of policies in the Swiss flood risk policy regime from 1848 to 2017. We
study the co-evolution of the number of policies and of their de facto interlinkages, i.e., the
co-regulations of a common issue. Findings support that the Institutional Complexity Trap
is a structural and long-term dynamic punctuated by periods of policy learning and policy
selection. We identify three main phases in the evolution of the regime: the start (1848–
1874), the development (1874–1991), and the Institutional Complexity Trap (since 1991)
Sylvain Barone, Rémi Barbier, François Destandau, Patrice Garin (eds.), 2018, Gouvernance de l’eau : un mouvement de réforme perpétuelle ? Paris, L’Harmattan, 260 pages.
Gouvernance de l’eau : un mouvement de réforme perpétuelle ? est un ouvrage collectif qui surprend en bien. En effet, les éditeurs visent et atteignent deux objectifs qui ne convergent pas naturellement. D’une part, l’ouvrage vise à donner voix aux participantes et participants des Doctoriales en Sciences sociales de l’eau (édition Montpelliéraine de 2016). D’autre part, l’ambition analytique de l’ouvrage comme un tout est réelle. La compilation offre une perspective compréhensive des leviers..
A tale of two skyrmions: the nucleon's strange quark content in different large N_c limits
The nucleon's strange quark content comes from closed quark loops, and hence
should vanish at leading order in the traditional large (TLNC) limit.
Quark loops are not suppressed in the recently proposed orientifold large
(OLNC) limit, and thus the strange quark content should be non-vanishing at
leading order. The Skyrme model is supposed to encode the large behavior
of baryons, and can be formulated for both of these large limits. There
is an apparent paradox associated with the large behavior of strange
quark matrix elements in the Skyrme model. The model only distinguishes between
the two large limits via the scaling of the couplings and the
Witten-Wess-Zumino term, so that a vanishing leading order strange matrix
element in the TLNC limit implies that it also vanishes at leading order in the
OLNC limit, contrary to the expectations based on the
suppression/non-suppression of quark loops. The resolution of this paradox is
that the Skyrme model does not include the most general type of meson-meson
interaction and, in fact, contains no meson-meson interactions which vanish for
the TLNC limit but not the OLNC. The inclusion of such terms in the model
yields the expected scaling for strange quark matrix elements.Comment: 4 page
The Hitchin connection in arbitrary characteristic
We give an algebro-geometric construction of the Hitchin connection, valid
also in positive characteristic (with a few exceptions). A key ingredient is a
substitute for the Narasimhan-Atiyah-Bott K\"ahler form that realizes the Chern
class of the determinant-of-cohomology line bundle on the moduli space of
bundles on a curve. As replacement we use an explicit realisation of the Atiyah
class of this line bundle, based on the theory of the trace complex due to
Beilinson-Schechtman and Bloch-Esnault.Comment: 47 page
DiMoPEx-project is designed to determine the impacts of environmental exposure on human health
The WHO has ranked environmental hazardous exposures in the living and working
environment among the top risk factors for chronic disease mortality.
Worldwide, about 40 million people die each year from noncommunicable diseases
(NCDs) including cancer, diabetes, and chronic cardiovascular, neurological
and lung diseases. The exposure to ambient pollution in the living and working
environment is exacerbated by individual susceptibilities and lifestyle-driven
factors to produce complex and complicated NCD etiologies. Research addressing
the links between environmental exposure and disease prevalence is key for
prevention of the pandemic increase in NCD morbidity and mortality. However,
the long latency, the chronic course of some diseases and the necessity to
address cumulative exposures over very long periods does mean that it is often
difficult to identify causal environmental exposures. EU-funded COST Action
DiMoPEx is developing new concepts for a better understanding of health-
environment (including gene-environment) interactions in the etiology of NCDs.
The overarching idea is to teach and train scientists and physicians to learn
how to include efficient and valid exposure assessments in their research and
in their clinical practice in current and future cooperative projects. DiMoPEx
partners have identified some of the emerging research needs, which include
the lack of evidence-based exposure data and the need for human-equivalent
animal models mirroring human lifespan and low-dose cumulative exposures.
Utilizing an interdisciplinary approach incorporating seven working groups,
DiMoPEx will focus on aspects of air pollution with particulate matter
including dust and fibers and on exposure to low doses of solvents and
sensitizing agents. Biomarkers of early exposure and their associated effects
as indicators of disease-derived information will be tested and standardized
within individual projects. Risks arising from some NCDs, like pneumoconioses,
cancers and allergies, are predictable and preventable. Consequently,
preventative action could lead to decreasing disease morbidity and mortality
for many of the NCDs that are of major public concern. DiMoPEx plans to
catalyze and stimulate interaction of scientists with policy-makers in
attacking these exposure-related diseases
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