Market Darwinism vs. Market Creationism: Adaptability and Fairness in the Design of Greenhouse Gas Trading Mechanisms

International rule-making and compliance routines with respect to the Kyoto Protocol are evolving rapidly. This paper examines potential designs of emissions-trading programs by comparing the emissions credit trading (ECT) and cap-and-trade models for achieving cost-effective reductions in atmospheric greenhouse-gas (GHG) loading in terms of their adaptability and fairness. Adaptability is a valuable attribute when markets and their governing institutions are evolving rapidly or when regulated entities do not yet have well-established and predictable compliance routines. Fairness in both procedures and outcomes is central to efforts to establish and maintain institutions of international governance. The key difference concerns the awarding of tradable emission rights, which occurs at the launch of a cap-and-trade program but following when firms reduce emissions below baselines in an ECT scheme. Implications of this difference are explored in terms of institutional adaptability and fairness during program-design stages. By not locking in emission rights at the outset, and by being amenable to incremental roll-out, ECT appears to have superior adaptive and fairness qualities during periods of rapid institutional evolution.     

The socioeconomic and demographic determinants of crime in Iran (a regional panel study)

The raising trend both in violent and property crime are of major concern in Iran. Using a panel data modeling (province wide), the paper provides an econometrics assessment of the relationship between crime against properties and violent crimes as functions of deterrent, social, economic and demographic factors in Iran, in the framework of Becker-Ehrlich crime supply theory. The findings indicate that, although deterrence hypothesis is not confirmed for burglary and assault, it explains the variations of murders and threats. Economic factors play key role in burglary and threat explanation, but they do not affect willful murders, however, Literacy explains both murders and threats. Average of families’ income is explored as a deterrent factor for crime against properties.     

Reviews

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Sectarian Relations in Arab Iraq: Contextualising the Civil War of 2006–2007

Discussions surrounding sectarian relations in Iraq have often been reduced to extremes of either overemphasising the Sunni-Shiʿa divide to a near Manichean level or, the other extreme, reducing them to the point of irrelevance in Iraqi history and society. This paper challenges both views and attempts an examination of the dynamics of Sunni-Shiʿa relations in Arab Iraq and how these interact with Iraqi nationalism. As will be shown, sectarian identity advances and recedes depending on wider circumstances, often at the expense, but not to the exclusion, of national identity.

The post-2003 period in general and the civil war of 2006–2007 in particular offer us a wealth of highly charged sectarian discourse in the form of songs, poems, speeches and publications. I have relied on a considerable sample of such forms of public discourse to analyse the rising salience of sectarian identity in the period under consideration in a broader attempt at analysing the dynamics of Sunni-Shi‘a relations in Arab Iraq generally. It will be seen that sectarian relations are dynamic and responsive and that civil wars are not necessarily the end of the process; rather, in some cases, sectarian civil wars are merely a violent stage which many mixed communities around the world — including Iraq perhaps — have unfortunately gone through.     

Volunteering in the Arab World: Bringing Back People into Politics?

This article analyzes the concept of volunteering in the Arab world. The main argument is that the nature of the Arab world in addition to the historical development of civil society directly affected the philosophy of volunteering in the region. Since civic services were not framed nor included in the national agendas of the state, this had a direct negative effect on the development of the act. However, due to social, economic, and political factors, this trend is changing: As of 2000, organizations and societies started to understand the importance of volunteering and its link to the social and economic revival of societies; Arab states started to encourage the act by providing the right legal and political environment. However, these different policies are not building democratic societies nor encouraging civic engagement. The article concludes with recommendations for how to bring people back into civic and political society as well as suggestions for future research.