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This paper explores foreign involvement in Africa as part of energy security. As the international players seek to secure the flow of oil at reasonable prices using sometimes approaches of stark contrast between the West and the East, we look at what is left from this game for Africa. The paper seeks to find out how international energy-related involvements impact the African states where internal institutions are too weak to manage abrupt changes that associate with the large oil sector such as political and fiscal reforms and the economic shocks. Africa is tremendously abundant in oil. Although Africa is just waking up as the new energy powerhouse, it has experienced intensive foreign engagement in other resources including slavery and raw materials long before the colonial era began. This paper argues that history of foreign exploitation for resources is accountable for Africa's failure to perform well despite its promising resource endowment but will remain so as long as Africa supplies resources for the world as crucial as oil. Liberal economists argue that resource industries bring foreign investments needed for states' economic development. Oil companies and foreign government resonate this argument as they claim to build infrastructure projects, provide aid and assist transparency and democratic progress in the places they operate. While external investors reap large commercial benefits, Africa has continued to suffer with wars, abject poverty and bad governance. This paper looks closely whether the approaches they use contribute to Africa's resource curse. It begins with brief discussion of the definition and causes of the resource curse existing in the literature. It then moves onto foreign involvements in Africa for oil security, the focus of this study, provided as part of the cause to the resource curse in the region. In this sector, it explains how Africa has stepped up as a strategic location for international energy, who involves in the African oil game and what approaches they employ by economic, political and military means. By this, the paper sheds light on the unaddressed relations between foreign resource extractions and the resource curse discussion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the final years of the Brazilian dictatorship, the Sarney administration adopted a nationalist position towards the protection of the Amazon. This position was taken in response to the perceived threat of a US directed intervention to protect biodiversity and limit CO2 production attributed to deforestation within Brazil's border. This nationalist position strongly asserted the sovereign right to exploit the natural resources within Brazil's borders in order to expand its economy and improve its relative position in the international sphere. By the end of the Sarney administration, decision makers had adopted a more 'internationalist' approach to dealing with environmental issues in order to preempt 'environmental conditionality' by US influenced international lending institutions. By the early 1990s, Brazil had become a leading advocate for an international regime on the environment. This paper argues that the international diplomatic community and Brazilian decision makers mutually constituted an identity shift that integrated Brazil into global norms and institutions through a combination of transnational activism, coercion, and social interaction. In contrast with orthodox theoretical explanations that posit causal powers to deep structures of the international system, this paper traces the processes that form the causal mechanisms behind an identity shift in an empirical case study. These causal processes are inherently reductionist, as change in the international system is produced by the embodied actions of the representatives of different institutions. It uses Foucault's theorization of governmentality to explain how environmental conditionality was used to introduce environmentalism into Brazil's foreign policy, and Checkel's theorization of social interaction to explain how environmental regulation was introduced into Brazilian governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Development research has undergone a profound change over the last two decades, witnessing a major shift in its focus, goals, and priorities. The emerging new realization that development cannot be equated with economic growth and that development is not a one-way traffic has prompted the need for donor countries and lending agencies to adopt a participatory approach to development. What is unique about such a new approach is that it creates a space, at least theoretically, for beneficiaries to influence the planning, implementing, and monitoring processes. Most plans are now done in consultation with stakeholders simply to ensure the effectiveness of development intervention. More important perhaps is that this changing development discourse is beginning to offer academic researchers and practitioners a wonderful opportunity to establish a much closer tie among themselves to achieve the goals of sustainable human development in the twenty-first century. Given such a dramatically changed context of international development, this paper examines the nature of relationship between the Canadian academia and practitioners, including the policy-makers. In particular, it explores the ways in which development scholars and practitioners work together to improve the performance of Canada’s development cooperation. The paper is comprised of three main sections. It first looks at the international context of development to explain how the focus of development research has shifted from transferring knowledge from the North to the South to the exploration of a mutually beneficial relationship between the industrialized and developing worlds. Section two examines two somewhat different models of development research that evolved over the last decade or so. The third section analyzes the current state of relationship between the Canadian academia and the policy world. The last section offers some concluding remarks based on the findings of this rather brief study. This paper finds that, while the new context of international development has created a space for development researchers and educators, both Northern and Southern, to work more closely with policy-makers and practitioners, Canadian academia and practitioners are still searching for a way of redefining their traditional territories. Given the lack of funding support, development research in Canada aims primarily at providing a critical analysis of development theories, approaches, and strategies. By contrast, the practitioners, including policy-makers, tend to work in relative isolation in the management of international development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares the cases of the European Union (EU) and NAFTA and examines how integration has affected politics, economic structures and economic performance in three countries: Mexico, Portugal and Spain. The paper reviews the relationships between regional integration, economic growth, and democratic consolidation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The nexus of foreign direct investment and economic growth in developing economies is incorporated into neoclassical economic theory. The necessity (but insufficiency) of economic growth to facilitate political development has been discussed at length by Rueschemeyer, Stephens and Stephens (1992), Amsden (1992, 2000), and Evans (1995). This paper is a development of an ongoing research project that seeks to explain the decision process utilized by executives of transnational corporations and lending institutions when undertaking investment decisions in the developing states with immature government institutions. The author has conducted interviews with the management of integrated global energy firms, international lending institutions, and the major commercial underwriters of political risk coverage. This paper will utilize a holistic level of analysis model to explain how these non-state actors evaluate political risk Further I will illustrate how these actors perceptions of political risk impacts directly the cost of political risk coverage, and the foreign direct investment decision process. I utilize a holistic analysis of the investment decision process and political risk coverage pricing related to the Baku-Tiblisi-Cehyan (Caspian) oil pipeline project. This project is an interesting test of the author’s theoretical models given the dynamic interaction of multiple actors having conflicting interests at various levels of state and corporate policy formation. Transparency in the process of state policy formation will be shown to be a key causal variable in explaining FDI. Given that the Caspian states are high absorbers, the construction of the pipeline to facilitate economic and political development is critical. I believe that the study of the relationship of political risk insurance to Foreign Direct Investment needs to be given voice. I make this argument from a philosophy of science perspective (Ragin 1994). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Explaining EU hegemony toward the Mediterranean: theory deficits through the negligence of natural resources In the mid 90s, as part of the globalization process, EU states started to intensify their efforts to create new opportunities for investment and trade in the Mediterranean region. To that effect they launched the so-called Barcelona process with its centerpiece of an Economic Free Trade Area between EU and Mediterranean Barcelona participants. According to neo-liberal theory the economic liberalization of the Mediterranean would be of mutual benefit to both parties involved: investment and free trade would foster the region’s economic development, would reduce poverty and generate stability. Particularly investment in the Maghreb countries would be very attractive for European business in view of the region’s availability of cheap labour, favorable investment conditions and access to new markets. Critics of globalization and neo-liberalism, however, in particular Neo-Gramscians, consider the EU Barcelona process as an instrument of the EU elite for incorporating the Mediterranean region in their hegemonic bloc, to the profit of the EU and Mediterranean elite and at the expense of the Mediterranean ordinary population. Now, eight years after the launching of this initiative, it seems that the critics of globalization got it right: the living conditions of the populations of most of the Maghreb countries have not improved, in some countries they even worsened. But a close look at the reasons for the worsening living conditions of some Maghreb countries suggests that the reality is more complex than the theory is capable to grasp. While there is no doubt that EU companies profit from the unilateral trade between both regions, and that deregulation and privatization programs have already had their devastating effects, investment in labor intensive sectors is not taking place and is not expected to start off any time soon. So far the biggest share of the otherwise little EU investment in the Maghreb is taken up by a sector which Neo-Gramscian have difficulties to explain: investment in Algerian and Egyptian energy sector with the prospect of significant expansion in future. But as a Marxist approach the neo-Gramscian one has little regard for the role of natural resources in the economic process and for the fact that in contrast to the abundant availability of cheap labor, we are confronted with the limits of some critical natural resources. Therefore, empirical research led by Neo-Marxist theory would miss important motives for the EU’s consolidation of a hegemonic bloc with the Mahgreb countries’ elites: EU governments’ concern about energy supply dependencies and European energy companies’ objective in accessing the region’s cheaply extracted natural resources. Recognition of such a different form of EU exploitation of the Maghreb countries’ wealth would be imperative for a successful political strategy to improve the conditions in these poverty-stricken countries. While a Neo-Marxist approach in principle is well suited to explain the dynamics of the Euro-Mediterranean process, this paper will argue that important undercurrents of this partnership are left unexplained by the Neo-Gramscian theory, if it does not shed its orthodox Marxist tenet of ignoring nature and the constrains set by the limits of nature. The paper will start to discuss the general negligence of nature in IR theory in the age of globalization and will discuss - as Daniel Deudney has put it - how to bring nature back in. The empirical part is going to highlight the importance of the role of energy in Euro-Mediterranean relations and in particular the energy import dependencies of the European Union from Maghreb countries [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explores the issue of making the EU a gender-aware or gender-sensitive organization, i.e. genderizing it in the gender consultants’ parlance. Such a transformation would have a significant impact in making the EU not only post-hegemonic, but also post-patriarchal. Considerable steps have been taken to genderize the EU, but so far these have suffered from being largely based on a limited and top-down perspective. Nevertheless, the paper argues, there has been a significant developing country input into the EU’s gender agenda. In terms of development policy, gender made its first appearance in the l984 Lome III Convention, often taking a traditional ‘welfare approach’. The Cotonou Agreement of 2000 showed huge strides forward in gender awareness, including the ‘gender and development approach’ and efforts at mainstreaming gender. However, ngos and others have been extremely critical of the EU’s lack of commitment on the ground to implementing a gender-aware approach to development. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will evaluate the state of the art of the recently-emerged subfield of men/masculinities and development. It examines this research in the context of the evolving women in development (WID) and subsequently gender and development (GAD) literatures. It asks why Third World men and masculinities have so recently become important subjects in development studies, and what avenues appear particular fertile for future scholarly investigation and development initiatives. The paper draws upon the author’s own research for a forthcoming text on men in the Third World. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Globalization is portrayed by some analysts as forcing convergence to a liberal norm, while others argue for the continued efficacy of organized market forms of capitalism, to use Peter Hall’s description, despite globalization. Has there been a general move toward liberal market structures among European economies? And are there discernable differences in economic performance that can be traced to these transformations (or lack thereof)? This paper seeks to explore these questions empirically through an examination of institutional change and economic performance in six advanced industrial economies that offer a mix of liberal and coordinated economic structures (i.e., the United States, Britain, and Ireland on the liberal side; France, Germany, and the Netherlands as coordinated economies). The convergence question is often posed strictly in economic policy terms, an unfortunate limitation given that globalization reduces states’ ability to control economic change. The key question is how the broader institutions of economic and social regulation -- society rather than government -- respond to globalization. As such this paper first produces an empirical index based on capital mobility, labor relationships, economic regulation, and social attitudes for gauging whether markets in these states have largely liberalized or remain relatively coordinated. Comparative economic performance since 1989 (marking both the fall of the Berlin Wall and the introduction of the World Wide Web) will then be examined to see if there is any correlation between political-economic responses to globalization and economic outcomes. The hypothesis is that there will be more diversity among European capitalist economies than the mainstream reading of globalization would predict, but that more coordinated economies face rising opportunity costs that will comparatively hinder economic performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper argues that the gendered nature of economic development means the status of women must be included in an analysis of the link between economic development and democracy. Women do not participate in the process of economic development or benefit from its results in the same way men do. These differences impact structural and cultural changes that link economic development to democracy. Therefore, the status of women should be included in models linking economic development to democracy. In this paper, I discuss the literature linking development to democracy. Then, I demonstrate how economic development is gendered and theorize about the impact these differences will have on democracy. I conclude with some preliminary statistical support for my assertions and some thoughts on why gender matters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper offers a critical examination of the current WTO Development Round (the so-called ‘Doha Agenda’). In doing so, it takes issue with assertions that the Round has the capacity to correct imbalances in WTO commitments that actively disadvantage developing states. The paper argues that, should the Round be successfully concluded, the implementation of a second ‘single undertaking’ will see developing countries sign up to agreements and commitments that better suit the needs of advanced industrial states, while only accruing limited market access provision in areas of key economic interest to themselves. The paper makes four analytical comments in the development of its argument: 1. The ‘development centredness’ of the current Round is limited to a re-examination of existing commitments and an increase in the language of developmentalism. 2. Should it be concluded, the Round will continue to push the trade agenda forward and begin to liberalise those areas that are of growing economic importance to the lead industrial states (investment, competition policy, government procurement, and perhaps e-commerce). 3. Developing states will be locked into an extension of the liberalisation process through a ‘single undertaking’. 4. By agreeing to commitments in areas of importance to lead industrial states, developing countries are actively disadvantaging themselves. Their capacity to diversify into non-traditional areas (that is, to develop beyond the production of agricultural goods, raw materials and some semi-manufactured, low technology goods) will be stifled. This derives from the ability of industrial states to stake out their claim in new sectors prior to any market entry on the part of developing states. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Is diplomacy an art of compromise or enterprise? This is the main challenge towards today’s Chinese foreign policy especially its American policy. The paper argues that the key to this question is how to manage the two basic goals: security and development. During the Iraq war, China focused on development factor more than security one. For the development means oil supply and Iraq market demand; the security factor has three basic meanings of state-power-will. Based on a survey on How Chinese View the Iraq War, one can see that China won the hard power in the short term and lost its soft power in the long term. The paper argues in the second part that from the Iraq war we can see that China considers the U.S. both as opportunities (which focus on America’s investment and export market) and challenges (America’s anti-terrorism campaign makes pressures on China’s strategic security environment) and explores what this means to the future Chinese-American relationship and international politics? [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper will address why developing countries remain segregated into area studies of IR and why at the same time Latin American IR remains so attached to a statist/realist methodology. Globalization has had an impact on policy in Latin America but hardly any impact on the way the policy process is conceived and understood, beyond simple assertions of perforated or porous sovereignty. The paper thus seeks to reinterpret dominant understandings of Latin American political economy in the light of the intellectual challenges posed by globalisation, and examine the light this in turn sheds on the ways key globalisation debates are conducted in IPE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In spite of the increasing wealth of individual countries over time, we witness an ever increasing gap between rich and poor countries across space. The question that naturally emerges is what has brought rapid economic growth in the well-developed countries while the less developed countries have been left far behind. In this paper, I examine the divergent patterns of economic development across countries, using the standard spatial analysis methods. Besides, I test the impact of economic freedom, trade, geographic distance and institutional quality on economic development, using the standard statistical methods. The findings of the spatial analysis demonstrate that neighboring countries have the same characteristics in terms of economic development. To put it simply, economically developed countries are located in one part of the globe while underdeveloped countries are clustered in another part of the globe. The preliminary statistical results are strongly in favor of institutions, supporting the arguments of the mainstream literature on the effect of institutions on economic performance. The trade variable is statistically insignificant. Economic freedom and geographic distance shape economic development to some degree although the effect of economic freedom decreases dramatically when one introduces the institutional quality variable into the equation. Thus, the findings of the paper are at loggerheads with preferred development policies such as economic freedom and free trade that international donors have been recommending for developing nations, while the root problem remains weak institutions that allow corruption to flourish, impeding economic growth. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Many of the migration movements in the post-Soviet countries that have taken place since 1990 are unique to the region given the circumstances of economic transition, political and social liberalization. Tajikistan is one of the poorest post-Soviet countries where remittances are considered as one of the main growth drivers. Based on its economic specialization it can be characterized as labor-supplying country. How successful are democratic transitions in laborsupplying/ highly remittance-dependent countries - is the key question of the analysis in this paper. Economic specialization shapes identity of the people and impacts their perception of democracy and participation in the politics. In other words, there is interrelationship between "what we do", "who we are", "and "how we think". The issues of Tajik circular labor migration to Russian Federation and impact of the mode of migration, length of stay and structural position in Russia and Tajikistan on the political orientation of the migrants is central in this paper. Based on this analysis the puzzling question of the direction of political change in Tajikistan becomes important. No democratization is possible with the nature of constituents and their level of participation in politics of Tajikistan. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper looks at the idea of patrimonial capitalism and its application to Russia. The paper problematises the view that the form of political economy -often described as a version of state capitalism- developed in Russia in the Putin era can lead Russia out of its economic torpor. It is argued that the form of Russia's political economy is the problem and not the solution. Before the crisis this patrimonial capitalist system supported itself on the back of high hydrocarbon prices and looked for its development to global capital mixed with national resource wealth. These sources of investment capital are, of course, now much shrunken. Under these conditions the political risks of creating a developmental regime and breaking with the patrimonial capitalist system are high since they mean an attack on that system rather than its transmutation through development in which there are resources both for 'partners' in patrimonialism and for the establishment of new economic sectors that can, in time, replace as sources of political power those natural resource and other sectors that are the bedrock of patrimonialism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies Iran?s foreign policy and decision-making process and culture. It discusses the "how"s and "why"s of Iran?s strategic philosophy and their implications for the decisions made by the system since 1979. Post 9/11 changes in the region brought fundamental transformations in Iran?s image worldwide in addition to changing its worldview. The paper will identify the principles of Iran?s strategic thoughts and factors affecting them since the inception of the Islamic Republic in 1979. This will include in-depth examination of domestic and international cases. The paper will briefly trace the historical, international and domestic context of Iran's political and strategic decision-making culture, and analyze the regional impact of decisions made. It will also spotlight the domestic and external debates that the entire process has generated, and conclude with the identification and implications of such changes in Iran?s foreign policy-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What makes people concerned about the natural environment? What kinds of people are willing to pay for environmental quality and sustainability? Since the 1990s, scholars have sought to answer questions like these using increasingly sophisticated statistical techniques applied to microdata from cross-national social surveys. The most recent work, employing multilevel models of individuals nested in their nations of residence, argues that richer people are greener: residents of more economically developed countries, and relatively wealthier people within a given country, are more concerned about the environment and more willing to pay to protect it. This paper questions this view, using data from a larger sample of countries over a longer period of time (the second, fourth, and fifth waves of the World and European Values Surveys), and new analytical methods better able to illuminate distinct longitudinal and cross-sectional relationships. The paper shows that, insofar as there is any relationship between development and environmental concern, concern is actually higher in poorer countries; over time there is no systematic relationship at all between growth in GDP/capita and changes in environmental concern. Within countries, richer people are indeed more concerned about the environment, though only moderately more so than poorer people. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The power of audience costs to tie a leader's hands relies on a reliable punishment mechanism. Punishment by an audience, in turn, requires two related but distinct judgments by the audience: 1) a policy preference against breaking a commitment; 2) an appraisal that the leader is blameworthy for the broken commitment. We know a good deal about the first but little about the second. Both formal models (e.g. Fearon 1994) and empirical tests (e.g. Tomz 2007) assume away or confound this second stage, yet modern democratic politics offers many cases where policy reversals and failures have not damaged a national leader. This paper presents findings from a survey experiment conducted on a nationally representative sample that specifically investigates blame dynamics in public commitment scenarios associated with audience cost theory. Domestic blame targets appear to be largely ineffective while embedding a public commitment in a multilateral context permits leaders to re-direct blame when backing down and suffer almost no audience costs. The paper then uses psychological and legal theories of blame appraisal to explain this difference and develops a surprising implication: rather than boosting the credibility of military threats and uses of force, multilateralism may multiply potential blame targets and loosen rather than tighten the hands of leaders issuing public promises. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on the economic causes of civil conflict has so far ignored the role of foreign direct investment (FDI). This paper begins to fill this gap. A closer look at the effects of FDI on the processes of political violence is justified by the foreign investors' potential for a two-fold impact: economic and political. On the one hand, investors wield the power to transform the economies of developing countries, thus changing economic inequalities and creating opportunities for grievance and for greed among domestic groups. On the other hand, investors themselves are strategic players with the goal to maximize profits and the ability to alter their environment through political channels. Still, only investors in some economic sectors have both the incentives and the ability to exercise political power in their host states. This paper investigates how the strategic interaction between foreign investors and host country actors influences the probability of civil conflict. It identifies the types of FDI that are likely to alleviate the risk of civil conflict (service sector FDI), as well as those investments that exacerbate it (primary and, sometimes, manufacturing FDI). Analyses using a new data set of industry-level FDI stock and flows lend some empirical support to the argument. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The history of US nuclear strategy offers an interesting case study of idea influence: while the dominant historical narrative is filled with accounts of the enormous effect civilian strategists and their ideas had on US policies, critics note that actual correlation between expert ideas and expert ideas is sporadic at best. The present paper analyzes the influence of expert ideas on Cold War US nuclear strategy during the debate on counterforce in the late 1950s and early 1960s. It answers the question why the highly rational language of civilian strategist came to dominate the deterrence policy discourse for the better part of the Cold War. Contrary to existing theoretical accounts of idea influence, the paper conceptualizes influence as discursive: ideas are influential when they monopolize the language of the policy discourse, thereby acting as constraints on the beliefs and perceptions of key actors. In order to avoid the pitfalls of previous rational and reflectivist approaches, the selection of ideas for policy use is explained through the concept of persuasiveness. Persuasive ideas are not merely intellectually compelling, but also fit with existing policy problems, ideas, and the general policy environment. Thus, persuasiveness is able to explain strategic use, as well as discursive dominance and subsequent institutionalization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper discusses and analyzes European security from the perspective of Eastern Europe. The main argument is that in the region the EU is faced and has to deal with three different paradigms of European security simultaneously: cooperation, competition and conflict. The problem and challenge for the EU is that as a consensual winwin actor it is not equally or necessarily at all well prepared to play all of them. The paper introduces the main policies and instruments the EU has developed for the region and discusses the main developments/operations the EU has undertaken. The paper ends with some conclusions pondering the relative weight the three paradigms can be expected to have as well as discussing the role of the EU in the region in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper explains how Brazil answered the competing alternatives of regional integration (FTAA and ALBA), focusing in representative critical junctures for Brazilian strategy in the period as a contextual analytical strategy. The paper sheds light especially in the critical moments such as the rise of unilateralism by the Bush administration and the breakup of Mar del Plata Summit, analyzing the consequences for the regional political scenario. The research used the theoretical background of the theories of regionalism and regional integration, influenced by international insertion studies. The explanation logic starts with the assumption that MERCOSUR, as core of the South American regional integration, is the main base for the Brazilian project of consolidating itself as a regional power and global player, overcoming its status of middle power. Paper uses combined new institutionalisms and foreign policy analyses techniques, supported by methods of single case studies and historical series. We conclude that Brazil seeks to reinforce its South American integration axis in a broader agenda of power projection in the regional and international scenarios. This is done by a progressive adoption of a deeper integration agenda and through the creation of arrangements and interdependences that favors the Brazilian leading position in the process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper will examine the nature and extent of organizational continuity and change at the U.S. Department of Defense during the controversial six-year tenure of Donald Rumsfeld, the second longest-serving secretary of defense in U.S. history. It will survey and assess Rumfeld's impact on organizational mission, budget, structure, and personnel. In addition, attention will be devoted to Rumsfeld's lasting effect on significant policy areas, such as defense strategy, command and force structure, weapons procurement, U.S. intelligence reform, and key operations (namely Iraq and Afghanistan). This paper will probe to what extent organizational change was a product of Rumsfeld and to what degree it may have simply been tied to the post-9/11 environment. A central contribution of the paper will be an assessment of the extent to which Rumsfeld's organizational impact has endured under the leadership of his successor, Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates and is likely to continue in the years ahead. In what areas of Pentagon life has Rumsfeld's legacy endure and is likely to persist? Where has Rumsfeld's impact been modified and reversed? Where has it been accepted and valued?. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Norway, a leading aid donor and peacemaker is held in great esteem by the international community as a pioneer in conflict resolution and global development. Yet, radical critics argue that Norway is an agent of the west 'recolonising' the global south to advance economic liberalization and the dismemberment of states. There is a relative lack of objective research to fully evaluate these competing perspectives. This paper seeks to understand the operation of what is known as the 'Norwegian Model' focusing on its core feature, the extensive use of NGOs in peace processes and conflict resolution. The paper considers the close partnership between the Norwegian state and NGOs, generous state funding and the creation of knowledge networks. These processes are illustrated with empirical materials drawn from Norwegian peacemaking in Guatemala, the Middle East, Sudan and Sri Lanka. Providing a political economy approach, the paper places the Norwegian Model and NGO led peacemaking in the broader contexts of economic liberalization, economic inequality and militarism. The paper seeks to contribute to the global discourse on NGOs, conflict resolution and global governance and to greater effectiveness and accountability of NGO peacemaking and the 'Norwegian Model'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The pluralist-solidarist debate within the English School of International Relations boils down to the conceptualization of the boundary between International Society and World Society. Assuming that pluralism and solidarism are ends of a spectrum, solidarity can only develop up to a certain point without accompanying developments in World Society. But what makes international society move towards the solidarist end of the spectrum, where the authority of states gradually decreases?. This paper suggests that the boundary should not be seen as a clear threshold, but rather as gradual evolutionary steps along the continuum. Shifts along the spectrum can be linked to the telos of international society. Since world order is order among individuals, it is morally superior to an order among states. As the paper argues, the substantive elements of the telos correspond to the three values (security, human rights and welfare) along which progress, in the Adlerian sense, is conceptualized. In the outlined framework, the shift to increased levels of solidarism in international society is progress towards these substantive goals. Therefore, world society is in fact the substantive goal of progress in international relations. As elements of progress are identifiable, the proposed framework also renders the distinction between levels of solidarity measurable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper represents the early stages of a new project that explores Sino-EU cooperation and competition on the African continent. Existing literature which explores China's growing influence in Africa has been characterised by an exclusive focus on China's policies vis-à-vis Africa, and has been frequently undergirded by a growing anxiety that Western influence is in danger of being undermined. This paper seeks to problematise these assumptions by exploring whether the EU and China, who both aspire to attain a 'responsible' identity in the international community, may cooperate in their respective development and security policies towards the African continent. The main focus of the paper is on how the EU has attempted to influence Chinese development aid policies towards Africa. In this paper, I argue that China's quest for recognition as a 'responsible great power' has made it susceptible to Western pressure to alter its 'irresponsible' aid policies. I explore the degree to which the EU has acted as a 'socialiser' in getting Beijing to accept and internalise international norms that govern developmental aid, as well as the limitations to the EU's influence. The paper also makes a contribution to its field by generating implications for understanding the moral authority the EU possesses in the Asia-Pacific region (usually seen as a sphere of American influence and strategic interest) and the 'target audience' for China's quest for recognition as a 'responsible great power'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What impact do international economic conditions have on the likelihood of major power war? This paper addresses this longstanding question by starting from the contemporary empirical observation that the rise of emerging great powers - most notably, China and India - has been driven, at least in part, by the current wave of economic globalization. With this backdrop, the paper asks a specific question: Does a move towards deeper international economic integration foster a change in international power configurations that subsequently results in an increased chance of major power conflict? Liberal IR theory has traditionally seen economic interdependence as a force for international stability. Yet realist theory tends to see shifts in the balance of power as a cause of war. The paper constructs a theoretical argument that unites economic theory on the differential growth impact of trade, financial flows and technology diffusion with realist arguments on the conflict implications of polarity shifts and dynamic power differentials. It then tests the argument using evidence from the 1870-1914 period. The paper concludes that economic integration can indeed drive a rapid shift in the balance of power, and that it can consequently be a potent underlying driver of major war. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the ability of U.S. states' international representatives and governors to help attract foreign direct investment (FDI) and promote exports. Analyzing new empirical data collected from all 50 states from 1995-2006, the paper draws upon relevant research within the subfields of federalism, foreign policy analysis, U.S. state politics, and international relations. The study is informed by the author's numerous interviews with U.S. state officials in state capitals and international offices as well as extensive interviews with 12 former or current governors. The paper assesses governor-led trade and investment missions and U.S. states' representatives abroad—the tools used most often in economic paradiplomacy but not adequately measured and tested in current literature—as well as the information garnered from governors themselves. Results show U.S.-state level and individual-level variables matter and governors' travels and U.S. states' international offices help with FDI and exports. As glocalization continues to increase, this topic has possibilities for connecting theory and policy because of politics in motion at both domestic and international levels due to the global economy. This topic reminds scholars of the many avenues for research using qualitative and quantitative methodology to evaluate subnational governments' connections with foreign relations, activities most often are seen in federal systems. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While criticisms of International Monetary Fund (IMF) structural adjustment programs date back to their inception in the early 1980s, there has been a trend in more recent literature away from critiques focused on both the underlying assumptions of the SAPs and their consequences, and toward critiques focused more on policy implementation than the theory behind the policies. This paper is a first attempt to systematically gather information on critiques of the Fund by examining the case of Ghana, a country frequently touted by the Fund as being a great success story, yet one that continues to lag in terms of human development (135/177). The past twenty-five years of Fund policy in Ghana and critiques of these policies by scholars and experts on economic development is compiled in an attempt to detail who is making critiques, the content of these critiques, and to whom the Fund is most likely to pay attention. This paper attempts to demonstrate this process quantitatively. The hope is that this data will allow us to pose some hypotheses about theoretical hegemony in the field and why the IMF is able to resist fundamental change. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The overall objective of this paper is to understand the sources of variation in institutional quality and thus differences in development trajectories. Building on theories emphasizing the importance of high quality institutions for economic development, this paper develops and tests the argument that institutional quality and resulting divergent paths of economic development can be understood as a result of differences in leaders' perceived threat of losing power without compensation. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Israel is often lauded for the tactical brilliance of its intelligence and military forces, yet its terrorism problem remains acute. This paper examines one aspect of Israeli counterterrorism: the different strategies Israel has employed to fight terrorist groups over the years. Israeli strategies include gentle approaches such as trying to foster economic development and negotiating with Palestinian leaders. More commonly, they involved coercive approaches, using force against a regime hosting the terrorist group, the people among whom the terrorists operate and on which they draw upon for support, or both. Often concurrently with these gentle and coercive approaches, Israel has tried to disrupt the group directly through arrests and killings of its leadership. Finally, Israel has often used a variety of defensive measures, although these only became prominent during the second intifada with the building of the massive and highly visible security barrier. For each strategy, the costs and benefits are examined. The paper concludes with several broader observations on Israeli counterterrorism. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the last decade a significant body of feminist research on global governance emerged, however this research hardly analyzes processes of economic governance. At best feminist scholars deal with global economic governance in the context of gendered impacts of economic restructuring. What is missing is a systematic analysis of the gender norms and rules that underlie processes of economic governance and lead to gendered outcomes of economic policies. This paper seeks to expose a feminist research agenda for investigating issues of global economic governance. It starts with discussing the liberal feminist governance literature arguing that these approaches are deficient for theorising gender in processes of economic governance. Drawing on discourse theoretical approaches I argue that governance has to be captured as a process of boundary drawing in which the object of governance - the (gendered) meaning of economic and social phe-nomena - get constructed. Emphasising the role of knowledge as a form of social power (power/knowledge nexus) this paper illustrates how processes of economic governance can be analyzed from a gender perspective. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper takes a comparative stance in exploring different explanations for corporate behavior in conflict zones. Traditionally the state is perceived and analyzed as the central actor for the provision of public goods, especially security. Over the past few years business has gained increased attention as contributors to governance. At the same time, their contribution to security has remained remarkably under-researched. Existing research and literature on business behavior in conflict zones has often been policy-oriented and has mainly focused on how corporations contribute to violence, highlighting the extractive industries. Starting from the view that private actors play an increasing role in global governance, this paper analyses whether, how and under which conditions corporations contribute to the provision of public goods, such as economic development, political order and (even) security, in conflict zones.The authors draw insights from heuristic case studies of companies from different industries operating in four countries or regions currently or previously marked by violent conflict (Angola, African Great Lakes Region, Israel/Palestine, Northern Ireland). To describe and explain the variance in behavior of companies (i.e. their different contributions to governance), a shared analytical framework will be used by the authors. The analytical framework offers different ‘variable clusters’ (actor characteristics of companies, product and production characteristics, political and social environment of home and host state, conflict dynamics) and working hypotheses developed from existing literature and research. The heuristic case studies will provide an empirical foundation to comparatively strengthen and / or weaken (discard) variables for explaining corporate behavior. The case studies draw on interviews at corporate headquarters and local branches, analysis of corporate and third party documents, as well as field research. With this paper the authors intend to generate systematic empirical knowledge of corporate behavior and to contribute to the explanation of the role of businesses in conflict zones. As the explanation of corporate governance contributions is not core to any one theoretical domain we draw on various theoretical concepts and thereby contribute to building bridges between various disciplines (IR, peace and conflict studies, organization studies, business ethics). ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes that the development dilemmas of the 21st century are related to what the developed world wants of the developing world and prescribes as solutions for them. These dilemmas arise from philosophies and ideals not originating in those countries seeking development. For small-island, developing states, these dilemmas lead to socio-economic confusion and conflict. The first part of the paper discusses three global philosophies or ideals - development, market forces also known as laissez-faire, and capitalism also known as market capitalism. The second part of the paper focuses on dilemmas facing The Bahamas. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the effects that U.S. and Jordanian bilateral trade policies have had on facilitating trade between the two states since 2000 and how private actors have helped transform bilateral trade relations. The basic premise of this paper is that in light of contemporary relations between the United States and the MENA region it is increasingly important to understand the effects of trade liberalisation and bilateral trade agreements on both economic development and integration. A liberal institutionalist approach is used to answer three core questions. Firstly, what the effect of the Jordan-U.S. Free Trade Agreement has been after six years? Secondly, what has been the role of non-state actors? And finally, how can economic reform and liberal trade lead to greater growth in economic integration between states? An analysis is presented of the growth of the Textiles and Clothing (T&C) sector in the Jordanian economy and the growing importance of this sector in U.S.-Jordan trade. Based on field research conducted in Jordan and the United States, the T&C sector is reviewed to illustrate how a number of private economic actors coupled with public-private partnerships have taken advantage of trade liberalisation between the United States and Jordan to transform bilateral trade relations. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the impact of a country’s embeddedness in international networks on the level at which a country implements an international environmental regime. Specifically, the paper examines whether countries that are more embedded in networks of inter-governmental organizations and in networks of international non-governmental organizations are more committed to implementing the United Nations Framework Convention on Climate Change (UNFCCC). As social phenomena seldom have univariate explanations, the paper controls for a host of economic, political, and sociological explanations both at domestic and at the international level. The paper employs a cross-sectional analysis across 128 countries with varying levels of economic development. The dependent variable is operationalized as an ordinal variable where the levels are ranked based a country’s commitment to implementing the UNFCCC: (1) a country does not yet have a plan on how to implement the UNFCCC; (2) a country has designed such a plan and submitted it to the secretariat to the UNFCCC; (3) a country has begun implementing global climate change policies by hosting an international mitigation project; (4) a country has been regularly submitting inventories of its use of the global atmosphere; (5) a country has implemented mitigation policies domestically, including an increase in fossil fuel taxes and/or a decrease of fossil fuel subsidies, and/or provided funding for international mitigation projects. The key independent variable is operationalized as a country’s embeddedness in international networks. Various kinds of networks enable communication among countries and are conduits of environmental norms. The paper operationalizes this embeddedness in the following ways: (a) a number of NGOs in each country that are members of the World Conservation Union and (b) a country’s memberships in various intergovernmental environmental organizations. The paper controls for the impact of a host of factors at domestic and international levels. First, it controls for economic factors by including concentrated costs that are imposed on domestic actors as well as diffused benefits that accrue to diffused actors. Further, the paper controls for the impact of political factors, i.e. institutions providing access to policy making and those impacting the support base. The paper also controls for domestic sociological factors, i.e., normative influences on policy makers. Lastly, the paper controls for international factors, such as a country’s dependence on exports of fossil fuels, and a share of this global environmental problem that can be attributed to a country. Empirical analysis, employing an ordinal logistic regression model, indicates that higher embeddedness in international networks of environmental NGOs is associated with higher level of implementation of this international regime. Further, the analysis supports the hypotheses of the impact of some of the control variables, including the impact of domestic institutions, local air pollution, and domestic environmental norms. In terms of the international factors, the analysis support the hypotheses on the impact of the role of country’s export dependence on fossil fuels and the impact of the country’s share in the global environmental problem. The empirical results are robust with respect to three specification checks. First, the results are robust with respect to how the dependent variable is treated. The results hold even when the dependent variable is conceptualized as nominal (using a multinomial logistic regression model). Second, the results are not impacted by the Kyoto-holdouts. Third, the results also hold with the inclusion of continental dummies in the model. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the consequences for participation in global production networks at the level of the nation state, and represents the first attempt to empirically test some competing claims in the growing literature. The current literature bifurcates between an optimistic “win-win” view and a pessimistic “win-lose” view, where the former predicts positive development outcomes for both dominant and subordinate participants and the latter predicts positive outcomes for dominant actors that come at the expense of subordinate ones. Using newly developed measures of “Producer Driven Power,” and “Buyer Driven Power,” this paper shows that dominant positions do positively affect economic growth. Further, occupying a dominant position became more important for economic growth during the “globalization” period than in previous years. However, there is only weak evidence that subordinate positions slow economic growth. Instead, there is strong evidence that dominant positions are simply more effective for economic growth than subordinate positions, and that some non-western countries have made significant progress toward occupying dominant nodes. I conclude by suggesting future direction for empirical work on global production chains. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The role of the European Union (EU) Peace II Fund and the International Fund for Ireland (IFI) in building the peace dividend in Northern Ireland is examined through the perspectives of community groups, funding agencies, local strategic partnerships, civil servants and development officers. The findings presented in this paper explore the role of economic assistance in building peace, reconciliation and sustainable development in Northern Ireland through examining the views of 98 participants from Northern Ireland, the Border Area, and Dublin with direct experience of the protracted ethnopolitical conflict and the role of EU Peace II and IFI. The focus of this paper is to explore the respondents images of the funding agencies in building the peace dividend in northern Ireland for both the EU Peace II Fund and IFI Fund. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The proliferation of preferential trade agreements (PTAs) has made it increasingly important to determine their effects on trade flows. At the center of the debate over the impact of these agreements are the questions of whether they are trade diverting or trade creating (Rahman et al 2006) and whether they are on balance trade-liberalizing or protectionist (Krueger 1999). Goldstein et al (2007) find the impact of nonreciprocal PTAs to be negative, contradictory to the underlying goals for such agreements. This paper seeks to further test this and other studies that have found a negative relationship between nonreciprocal trade agreements, preferences, and trade using a recently implemented non-reciprocal trade agreement between the U.S. and Sub-Saharan Africa, the African Growth and Opportunity Act (AGOA) of 2000. The AGOA seeks to promote trade, investment, and economic cooperation between the U.S. and AGOA countries by offering 36 eligible African countries duty-free access for most goods, providing coverage for additional commodities above and beyond those covered under the Generalized System of Preferences (GSP). U.S. non-oil imports under the AGOA have become the largest category of trade for eligible countries. A traditional gravity model is employed to test whether the AGOA is trade creating for eligible countries targeting the U.S. market. The findings of this study suggest that AGOA membership or eligibility for AGOA textile benefits have no significant impact on trade. The uncertainty of the life span of preferences, eroding preferential margins, and the inability for African producers to respond adequately to preferences are theoretical explanations for these results. The importance of this paper is to advance our understanding of the effect of PTAs, specifically those between a major economic power and less developed countries at a time when preferences are eroding yet remain at the center of debate in the current Doha Round. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper explores the impact of social capital on economic performance in the context of post-communist transition. Social capital is a concept that has been introduced to examine the potential benefits of norms, networks, and trust as the “missing link” that, together with physical and human capital, could explain the inequality in economic growth. The concept was widely adopted by transition scholars who wished to understand the relationship between markets and states and to explain why the accepted set of economic and political reforms achieved extremely diverse results across Eastern Europe. While the concept has been gaining wide popularity in transition and development scholarship, empirical studies of social capital have been missing. Also, the scholarship has not examined the relationship between social capital and performance despite suggestions of a symbiotic relationship. This study attempts to fill this void through an investigation of the impact of social capital on the security of property rights and capital reinvestment in transition economies. Original evidence collected through surveys of managers and owners of SMEs in Serbia and Montenegro is employed in a rare quantitative analysis of the role of social capital in the provision of informal means of contract enforcement. This alternative strategy for enhancing the security of one’s property rights is important in environments where formal property rights are not enforced because institutions lack legitimacy or where institutions are inefficient in implementing formal rules and regulations. This paper examines the impact of such strategies on the overall prospects for economic growth. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The creation of formal institutional mechanisms to facilitate the participation of ordinary citizens in the allocation of sub-national budgets - broadly referred to as "participatory budgeting" - is now a widespread and mainstream practice in much of the Global South. While proponents have hailed participatory budgeting as a sign of democratic deepening and as evidence of deliberative democracy in practice, critics have drawn attention to the role of the World Bank and Northern aid agencies in the promotion of participatory budgets and assert that they are part of an effort to construct neoliberal hegemony through very limited forms of popular consultation. Still other critics point to participatory budgets as examples of governmentality, following Foucault. This paper, based on particapant observation research in particpatory budgets in Bolivia, Ecuador and Peru between 1999 and 2007, argues that the analyses of neither the proponents nor the critics of participatory budgets fully capture the internal dynamics of popular engagement in local budgeting. Adopting an anthropological perspective, the paper asserts that participatory budgets are not fully tools of either democratization or neoliberal governmentality. Rather, the participants in participatory budget processes in the three Andean countries strategically manipulate participatory spaces to pursue their own individual livelihood strategies, often mixing democratic rhetoric with patrimonial practice. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Students of development are often confronted with ethical dilemmas. Economic growth promises to alleviate poverty, improve health and welfare, as well as create employment and improved working conditions. Yet, policies supporting economic growth often result in environmental degradation, human rights deterioration and social welfare decline, in particular in developing countries, but also carry adverse consequences for the more vulnerable segments of the population in developed countries. Theorising about such dilemmas and designing policies aiming to confront them, is implicitly or explicitly based on an understanding of ethics. In western traditions, for example, such an understanding is based on what guarantees individual fortification and promotes social welfare. Critics argue that based on such an understanding, approaches to development lack an ontological criticism for a different meaning of human existence, besides the logic of individual emancipation and the “materialistic” satisfaction of human longing for liberty. This paper explores alternative visions of human development and tries to identify how these are expressed, represented and promoted by the relevant actors in the global development governance. The paper also discusses the political feasibility of alternative visions to human development, as well as the conditions that would encourage their feasibility if these were desirable. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lack of information is a severe barrier to effective participation by developing countries in the international trade regime. Information systems in international regimes are the sets of institutions, actors and procedures involved in collecting, analysing and disseminating information about members' actions and the regime's effectiveness. The multilateral trade regime's information system, including the Trade Policy Review Mechanism as its latest and most institutionalised form, has evolved over more than five decades. The TPRM in particular, in operation since 1989, shoulders a fundamental responsibility in making the trade regime more transparent. This paper asks whether the TPRM has been an adequate response to the demands for information and transparency in the trade regime, particularly from the perspective of developing countries. The paper builds a framework for the demand and supply of information in international regimes, using it to explain the evolution of information systems in the trade regime. It then conceptualises the functions of an ideal-type information system and inquires whether the TPRM was at all designed to perform as an effective information system. Finally, the paper investigates developing countries' participation in the mechanism to outline several challenges that prevent the TPRM from fulfilling its stated objectives and potential. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the past few years, discussions on the gendered impact of globalization have centered on how neoliberal policies associated with economic restructuring create tensions between women's (subordinated) market labor and unpaid caring work. Concern about these tensions' impact on women’s lives has reached the development mainstream, and has recently begun to influence gender-related policy frameworks at international development institutions such as the United Nations and the World Bank. While there is reason to celebrate the recent attention given to women’s previously invisibilized caring labor in the development mainstream, there is also a need to be attentive to the ways that feminist concerns have been circulated, interpreted and reinscribed with alternative meanings by these institutions. In this paper, I examine the discourses of care and reproductive labor that currently frame UN and World Bank gender and development policy. I demonstrate that these framings tend to represent women’s reproductive roles through a reified gender and colonial positioning. Through an examination of recent World Bank policy papers, I discuss the ways that these reified accounts have tended to serve the goals of neoliberalism rather than feminist agendas. I conclude with a discussion of how feminist researchers and activists can facilitate strategic forms of resistance to mainstream discursive framings and policy solutions regarding the caring labor dilemma. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In recent years microfinance has garnered growing attention in the government, banking, and non-governmental arenas as an alternative to largely unsuccessful state-run and multilateral development and aid programs. Proponents of microfinance suggest the industry is well-equipped to assist many of the world’s over four billion poor. However, there are still many questions about the impact of microfinance on the quality of life for the poor, and much debate about what “solid” evidence there is to support it as a contextually relevant form of economic development. The research presented in this paper focuses on one component of community sustainability and quality of life that is inextricably linked to poverty: the natural environment. Environmental conditions are of paramount importance to many of the world’s poor due to their reliance on natural resources for both subsistence and income, yet they remain absent from microfinance theory and practice which often focuses on broad applicability rather than locally-informed interventions. Logically and intuitively, there is much potential for microfinanced enterprises to incorporate the local natural environment either as a source for inputs or a sink for outputs. This paper explores the relationship between microfinance-led poverty alleviation and environmental sustainability based on field work with microfinance and sustainable development NGOs in the US and Jinga, Uganda. It uses contextual analysis gauge the potential to create an environmentally-informed microfinance intervention to improve quality of life for the poor. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Current discussions about globality highlight the extent to which current transformations of the economy are gendered. Scholars highlight the role of women’s paid and unpaid labor in the economy in exploring the links between household and market, as well as the importance of gendered discourses in enabling/legitimating current organization and reorganization of the economy, and the ways in which raced/classed tropes and norms of sexuality act to constitute both the laboring body of the female and the desiring body of the consumer. This paper suggests that the two approaches â€" those highlighting discursive constitution of sexed labor, and those that highlight the discursive constitution of sexed desire â€" are not reconcilable. The underlying reason is the disjuncture between cliterocentric (sexual desire) and uterocentric (reproductive care work) conceptions of economic subject, where the latter enters labor and the former enters consumption. But exploring liminal subjects where the two merge â€" in this case, sex workers â€" we find that we hit the limits of our analyses. By providing an alternate reading of embodied economic subjectivity within a poststructuralist, postcolonial reworking of Marxist feminist frameworks, this paper suggests ways to retheorize sexed subjects in a more integrative manner. In the process, it also enables us to examine links between global discussions about heterosex and global discussions about female care work, and address some theoretical and ethical problems in the broader feminist literature, as highlighted in the Butler-Frazer debates about the relationship between sexual regulation and the organization of gendered global economic exploitation. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although regionalism has proliferated in sub-Saharan Africa since the advent of decolonization, success in terms of economic development are not promising. Examining intra- regional trade shows that there has been an increase as a result of regional trade integration; however the rate of increase differs among 4 key blocs in sub-Saharan Africa. This paper examines and test factors that affect the level of intra-regional trade among four regional trading blocs in sub-Saharan Africa: the Common Market for Eastern and Southern Africa (COMESA), the East African Community (EAC), the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS), and the Southern African Development Community (SADC). The main thesis of this paper is to reviewing and confirming the argument that multiple memberships in various regional trade agreements adversely affect intra-regional trade of a specific agreement. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

ABSTRACT: TITLE: Economic Liberalization and Private Sector Participation in Water: A National Agenda for Water Policy ReformMaking sense of policy processes requires an understanding of how power and knowledge define spaces of engagement, privileging few and excluding the others. To do so calls for a historical perspective that situates contemporary water policy reform in India in the larger processes of neoliberalism that led to a shift away from the development planning of the Nehru Mahanalobian socialist model. This paper provides a historical overview of the particular ways of thinking of trying to manage water problems within the mainstream economic development policy discourse, by understanding how these particular ways of thinking have gained ascendancy in water policy provisions in the way in which water is perceived, defined, managed and tackled. It focuses on how resource management policies in urban landscapes are a complex configuration of interests between a range of actors whose agency matters and whose interactions are shaped by power relations. The paper traces and situates the shifting narratives of water policy reform from a public service to an economic good in the politics of globalization and liberalization of the Indian state. ..PAT.-Unpublished Manuscript [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]