The revival of the Honourable Merchant? Analysing private forest governance at firm level

In the context of global climate governance, multinational corporations (MNCs) are increasingly seen as financial, technical and political partners. Looking at MNCs with core business activities linked to deforestation, this article analyses private governance activities focused on sustainability that occur at firm level. These activities include newly enacted, concrete policies and activities aimed at climate protection, such as the concept of carbon insetting. The current body of the literature on global governance focuses largely on collective action, with activities at firm level still under-researched and under-conceptualized. To better understand (a) what drives MNCs to undertake such activities and (b) why their performance differs both within and between industry sectors, three motives are proposed—preventing reputational damage, building resilience and assuming ethical responsibility—with the latter indicating a revival of the Honourable Merchant, an economic role model created in the early 16th century. The empirical analysis is, therefore, embedded in a theoretical framework that seeks to capture the complexity of corporate rationality.     

Fair Trade-Organic Coffee Cooperatives,Migration, and Secondary Schooling in Southern Mexico

We explore three trends in rural southern Mexico (Fair Trade coffee, migration, and conditional cash transfers) that could explain the rapid rise in education from 1995–2005 using survey data from 845 coffee farming households in Oaxaca and Chiapas, Mexico. Results from a household fixed-effects model show that household participation in a Fair Trade-organic cooperative contributed to about a 0.7 year increase in schooling for girls. US migration opportunities appear to have even stronger positive impacts on schooling for females. Although participation in Fair Trade-organic cooperatives appears also to have increased male schooling, increased migration opportunities have had an indeterminate effect for males.     

Sunset over the swamp – the independence and dependence of Belarus

The Federal Republic of Germany has since the end of the Cold War been at a crossroad in defining its role in European security. On the one hand, its contribution to democratic reform and economic stabilization in North Central Europe has enhanced enormously the prospects of representative government there; on the other, Germany remains wed to an outdated concept of military security and is reluctant to commit either the fiscal resources or the political capital to assume a role commensurate with Germany's importance in the development of a European Security and Defense Identity. Moreover, Bonn's precipitous diplomacy in the recognition of the breakaway Yugoslav states of Croatia and Slovenia betrays a willingness to permit Germany's allies to assume the less profitable burdens of hard security.     

Monetary policy in europe: towards a european central bank and one european currency

Most alternative blueprints for European Monetary Union (EMU) differ in their opinions about convergence requirements or the need for binding fiscal rules and controls of individual national governments' debt policies, but there is, if not complete consensus, widespread agreement that the European Central Bank (ECB) should be independent of political control from both European Community (EC) institutions and national governments. The main argument for an independent European central bank is empirical: those countries in which central banks are insulated from the political process and charged with maintaining price stability have experienced the lowest and most stable inflation rates in recent decades. The present paper reviews and critically evaluates this political economy literature which relates inflation performances to the constitutional features of central bank statutes. Based on this assessment the draft statutes of the ECB and the constitutions of the individual European national central banks are discussed in terms of the independence they grant central bank board members from partisan influences. Furthermore, concrete country-specific suggestions for enhancing central bank independence during stage two of the gradual transition to EMU, which is to be completed by 1999, are made. It is argued that in some countries laborious constitutional reforms of central bank statutes are overdue and must be implemented in order to make these institutions fit for an anti-inflationary EMU.     

Literatur

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

Internet of things – Need for a new legal environment?

The Internet of Things as an emerging global, Internet-based information service architecture facilitating the exchange of goods in global supply chain networks is developing on the technical basis of the present Domain Name System; drivers are private actors. Learning from the experiences with the “traditional” Internet governance it is important to tackle the relevant issues of a regulatory framework from the beginning; in particular, the implementation of an independently managed decentralized multiple-root system and the establishment of basic governance principles (such as transparency and accountability, legitimacy of institutional bodies, inclusion of civil society) are to be envisaged.     

Issue yield,campaign communication,and electoral performance: a six-country comparative analysis

Abstract

This article develops and tests a model that explains election outcomes on the basis of party strategy. It employs a new comparative dataset linking representative mass surveys from six European countries with Twitter analysis of campaign activity. The expectation is that parties whose issue agendas exploit electoral opportunities while avoiding risks will be rewarded at the polls. These risks and opportunities are modelled using issue yield, a general framework summarising public support, electoral alignments, and party credibility. Empirically, the article traces a three-step process: (1) the configuration of electoral risks and opportunities (which is captured through public opinion surveys) guides party communication (measured with Twitter data), and to the degree that (2) parties design their campaigns strategically (identified through issue yield), this in turn (3) improves their electoral performance (measured using official statistics). The analysis explains some of the most salient election outcomes of recent years.     

Genesis of atraumatic liver hemorrhages

Hepatic hemorrhages are not unusual after sharp or blunt abdominal traumata. They are of particular interest when deadly hepatic hemorrhages are under discussion as the single or contributory cause of death in forensic investigations, for instance after reanimation or acts of violence. The test results in rabbits demonstrate that artificial and specific enzyme-assimilation conditions can cause atraumatic hepatic hemorrhages in only a few days. With and without concomitant injuries, liver bleeding may have an atraumatic genesis. An additional human case report shows the possibility of confusion with atraumatic rhexis hemorrhage in the liver.