Debt,democratization, and development in Latin America: How policy can affect global warming

The environmental Kuznets curve (EKC) hypothesis conjectures a nonlinear relationship between pollution and economic growth, such that pollution per capita initially increases as countries economically develop, but then reaches a maximum point before ultimately declining. Much of the EKC literature has focused on testing this basic hypothesis and, in studies that find evidence of an EKC, estimating the “turning point” level of development at which the per capita pollution‐growth relationship changes sign. This approach has not emphasized the policy relevance of specification issues or the potential role of policy variables. This research explores a modified EKC specification which conditions the pollution‐growth relationship on a country's level of debt and degree of democratization. These variables turn out to be significant, implying that different political and economic contexts can shift EKCs and their turning points. These findings suggest that policies to relieve debt burdens and institute political reform, in addition to their usual justifications, also could be used as a strategy to reduce carbon emissions from developing countries. © 2008 by the Association for Public Policy Analysis and Management.     

Does intellectual property lead to economic growth? Insights from a novel IP dataset

While policymakers often make bold claims as to the positive impact of intellectual property (IP) rights on both developed and developing country economies, the empirical literature is more ambiguous. IP rights have both incentive and inhibitory effects that are difficult to isolate in the abstract and are dependent on economic context. To unravel these contradictory effects, this article introduces an index that evaluates the strength of IP protection in 124 developing countries for the years 1995 to 2011. We illustrate the value of this index to economics study and show evidence that is consistent with IP leading to increased growth. Our results are further consistent with two causal pathways highlighted in the literature: that IP leads to greater levels of technology transfer and increased domestic inventive activity. Yet other aspects of our study fit uneasily with this simple story. For example, we find evidence suggesting that increased levels of growth lead to greater levels of IP protection, contradictory evidence in the literature linking IP with growth, a lack of evidence that increased levels of IP protection lead to actual use of the IP system, and problems with what IP indexes measure. Because of this, we suggest another – and so far undertheorized – explanation of the links between IP and growth: that IP may have few direct effects on growth and that any causality is a result of belief rather than actual deployment of IP.     

Designing for equitable civic engagement: Participatory design and discourse in contested spaces

A common theme of research on participatory democracy and citizen engagement centres on the need for empirical studies that conduct a deep exploration of the nuances and complexities of these processes. This article offers a distinct response to this need through an examination of two ethnographic case studies of a participatory budgeting process in a multilingual, highly diverse community in which Spanish-speaking Latino immigrants were involved. By analyzing participants discourse from the case studies, the findings highlight the risks and rewards of reframing participatory processes as design decisions rather than static procedures.     

On studying world order: A plea for systematic inquiry

Conclusion The creation of improved systems of world order requires great care. Alternative configurations may or may not prove more suitable, and each must be painstakingly examined on its own merits. For those of us who are actively concerned with studying about world order, this means the application of a far more rigorous conception of inquiry to our subject. So long as we cannot accept the Leibnizian claim that this is certainly the best of all possible worlds, our search for better ones must certainly be the best of all possible searches. This means that models of world order must be derived from appropriate hypotheses and subjected to the strictures of systematic analysis. World order studies must be treated in accordance with the strict canons of inquiry outlined in this essay. Only then can they begin to develop the highly generalized system of theory that characterizes any science.     

Ethics of Emotions as Ethics of Human Rights: A Jurisprudence of Sympathy in Adorno, Horkheimer and Rorty

This article considers in a different light the relationship between legal theory and ethics by means of an interpretation of the thought of Adorno and Horkheimer, and of the writings of Richard Rorty, as two moments of a marginal stream of ethics of passions that runs beneath the history of rationalist Western philosophy. It departs from the critique of Modernity as a dialectic of barbarism and civilisation, and from a genealogy of Auschwitz that finds its antecedents in Kantian morality. It also characterises modern culture as one of apathy and bourgeois stoicism, and establishes a link between the cold modern ethos and the dynamics of Nazi hardness. The article turns then to a consideration of some of the responses to the comprehensive crisis of Modernity: the imperative ‘Auschwitz never again’, Adorno’s ‘general enlightenment’ and Horkheimer’s ethics of sympathy. Finally it reflects upon Rorty’s proposal of sentimental education as an effective strategy to foster a human rights culture in Postmodernity, with the aim of bridging the tradition of moral sentiments and contemporary struggles for human rights. I am very grateful to Costas Douzinas, Sonia Romero, Shaun Haselhurst, David-Alexander Smith, José Bellido and the two anonymous referees for their comments, and to Alexander García-Düttman for his suggestions. This text is dedicated to Paul Gready.     

DNA-based and taxonomic identification of forensically important Sarcophagidae (Diptera) in southeastern Spain

Studying dipterans at the scene of a death can provide essential information for interpreting the evidence and help to reconstruct the events happened to a corpse in the past. Molecular tools have been employed for identification at specific levels in the cases of cryptic species or poorly conserved specimens. Identification of specimens is essential in forensic entomology since each species has a specific growth rate, which determines the calculation of the minimum post mortem interval (minPMI). In addition, phylogeographic reconstruction within a species can help to differentiate the haplotypes from a geographic area, thereby helping to clarify the possible relocation of a corpse. The morphological identification of Sarcophagidae species is often difficult, especially for the females. This is an important Diptera family since some of its species are among the first to reach a corpse, especially in warm areas. In this study, we compared the sarcophagids found in human corpses in forensic cases in Alicante (southeast of Spain) with specimens collected from baited traps in the same area and surrounding provinces. In total, 189 specimens were collected, comprising 72 from forensic cases and 117 from baited traps. Molecular identification was conducted by sequencing the cox1 mitochondrial gene and analyzing the sequences using ABGD, GMYC, and BIN species delimitation methods. The median joining algorithm in the PopART program was used to construct phylogeographic networks. Eight species in the family Sarcophagidae were identified. The most widely collected species were Sarcophaga argyrostoma and Sarcophaga tibialis. The haplotype networks obtained for these species did not indicate a clear geographic distribution of haplotypes. The S. argyrostoma samples from Alcoy were clearly isolated. The results demonstrated that this method is useful for identifying Sarcophagidae samples in forensic investigations and it can be employed for minPMI estimation.