Climate justice and bargaining coalitions: a discourse analysis

This article adopts a perspective of climate justice as an object of discourse and takes the bargaining coalitions at the Conference of the Parties as the relevant units to map the heterogeneous discourse on climate justice at the Cancun COP16. Based on the statements of nine coalitions, the analysis identifies three discourses on climate justice. The conflict discourse articulates the North–South duality over issues of historical responsibility for climate change. The transition discourse points to solving the problem of sharing the cost of mitigating climate change through a process of global low-carbon growth. The vulnerability discourse focuses on the urgency of ambitious actions by all parties. These three discourses, and their appropriation by the bargaining coalitions, are inherent of new alignments among developed and developing countries alliances and blocs that simultaneously reproduce and surpass the North–South ideological divide.     

TRANSLATING DEVELOPMENT AID INTO CITY MANAGEMENT: THE BARRIO ACAHUALINCA INTEGRATED DEVELOPMENT PROGRAMME IN MANAGUA,NICARAGUA

This article seeks to understand how development aid is translated into city management practice in the global South and the implications of this for the power dynamics between municipal governments and international aid agencies. The study examines La Chureca, the rubbish dump and slum of Managua, Nicaragua, and its regeneration programme, the Barrio Acahualinca Integrated Development Programme. In the article, we explore the formulation and initial implementation of the Programme in terms of the construction of an action net in which, by a chain of translations, the Programme was transformed from an aid programme managed by international aid organisations into the management practice of the city of Managua. Despite the silent infiltration of important issues brought to the municipal political agenda by the development aid programme, small acts of defiance and resistance were also enacted by local actors who twisted the Programme to fit local needs. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Intergovernmental fiscal transfers as pork barrel

This paper uses a simultaneous equations model to analyze increases in intergovernmental fiscal transfers and associated vote changes in Portuguese legislative elections. The results suggest that election year increases in transfers by the central government to municipalities secure added votes, and that these transfers are targeted at jurisdictions where the government faces the risk of losing support.     

Issue Voting in Portugal: The 2002 Legislative Elections

This article analyses the relative impact of position versus performance issues in Portuguese voting behaviour at the 2002 legislative elections and examines the relative importance of issues compared to other determinants of voting behaviour. The article first defines issues and then presents a model of voting choice, before examining the salience of different issues. The impact of issues, as opposed to other major voting determinants, is evaluated as vote predicting factor.     

Capital and Labour Mobility and their Impacts on Mexico's Regional Labour Markets

Abstract

This paper studies the effects of capital and labor mobility on real wages across Mexican states for the period 1997–2006. Employing dynamic panel data methods, we find: (1) strong positive effects on real wages from foreign direct investment (FDI) and from migration; (2) domestic and foreign migration provide similar wage effects; and (3) alternative partitions indicate that real wages are more sensitive to FDI-related fluctuations across states with relatively lower wages and migration levels. Overall, these results provide support that real wages respond positively to fluctuations in capital flows and labour movements as predicted from the theory.     

Después del consenso: el liberalismo en México (1990-2012)

This article explores the renewal of liberalism in Mexico over the last two decades. It argues that after the long period of one-party hegemonic rule, intellectuals have embraced many of liberalism’s tenets in public debates, such as economic and institutional reform, the defense of individual rights and freedom of expression, etc. It argues that the end of authoritarian rule made this renewal possible and attempts to account for key factors that unite intellectuals from very different ideological backgrounds.     

Book reviews

Cook P &; C Kirkpatrick (eds), Privatisation in Developing Countries. International Library of Critical Writings in Economics. Cheltenham: Elgar Reference Collection, 2000. 120pp. ISBN: 1–85898–358–4 (Two volume set).

Entman RM &; A Rojecki, The Black Image in the White Mind: Media and Race in America. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2000.305pp. US$26.00. ISBN: 0–26–21075–8.

Jalilian H, Tribe M &; J Weiss (eds), Industrial Development and Policy in Africa. Edward Elgar Publishing, 2000. 292pp. ISBN: 1–84064–120–7

Jing J (ed.), Feeding China's Little Emperors: Food, Children and Social Change. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 2000. 279pp. ISBN: 0–8047–3134–9. US$17.95. http: //www. sup. org

Kleinen J, Facing the Future Reviving the Past: A Study of Social Change in a Northern Vietnamese Village. Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1999. 239pp. ISBN: 981–230–039–2. US$29.90. http: //www.iseas.edu.sg/pub.html

Kebede JA, The Changing Face of Rural Policy in Tanzania: From Collectivism to Capitalism. London: Minerva Press, 2000. 86pp. ISBN: 07–5410–828–7. £8.99

Lane RE, The Loss of Happiness in Market Democracies . New Haven: Yale University Press, 2000. 465pp. ISBN: 0–300–07801–3. £22.50

Madsen W, Genocide and Covert Operations in Africa : 1993–1999. Lampeter, Ceredigion, Wales: Edwin Mellen Press, 1999. 568pp. ISBN 0–7734–8002–1.

Mankekar P, Screening Culture, Viewing Politics: An Ethnography of Television, Womanhood and Nation in Postcolonial India. Durham and London: Duke University Press. 429pp. 1999. ISBN: 0–8223–2390–7.

Mathoma P, Mills G &; J Stremlau (eds), Putting People First: African Priorities for the UN Millennium Assembly. Johannesburg, SANA, 2000. 129pp. ISBN: 1–919819–14–5

Nurnberger K, Prosperity, Poverty and Pollution: Managing the Approaching Crisis. Cluster Publications, 1999.487pp. ISBN: 1–875053–15–8.

Harvey D, Limits to Capital , Verso, 1999. 478pp. ISBN: 1–85984–714–5

O'Conner JS, Orloff AS &; S Shaver, States, Markets, Families: Gender, Liberalism, and Social Policy in Australia, Canada, Great Britain, and the United States. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1999. 280pp. ISBN: 0–521–63881‐X. £15.95. h ttp: //www. cup. cam.ac.uk

Oi J &; A Walder (eds), Property Rights and Economic Reform in China. Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999. 354pp. ISBN: 08047–3788–6. £13.95. http: //www.sup.org

Parenti C, Lockdown America: Police and Prisons in the Age of Crisis. London: Verso, 1999. 244pp. ISBN: 1–85984–3034. £15.00

Townsend RF, Agricultural Incentives in Sub‐Saharan Africa: Policy Challenges , World Bank Technical Paper no.444. Washington DC: World Bank, August 1999. ISBN: 0–8213–4528–1. Available from World Bank offices and Oxford University Press.

Verdery K, The Political Lives of Dead Bodies, Reburial and Postsocialist Change. New York: Columbia University Press, 1999. 185pp. ISBN: 0–231–11230–0. US$25.00. http: //www.cc.columbia.edu/cu/cup

Zouev A (ed.) Generation in Jeopardy: Children in Central and Eastern Europe and the former Soviet Union. New York: Unicef, 1999. 206pp. ISBN: 0–7656–0290–3. US$19.95. http: //www.unicef.org     

The Linkage between Security,Governance and Development: the European Union in Africa

The international community currently favours an approach to development that stresses a triangular linkage between security, good governance and economic development. This approach clearly informs the European Union's agenda in Africa, which has progressively integrated governance and security elements. This paper will show that this agenda is at least as much determined by the bureaucratic and national affiliations of the concerned EU actors as it is by African realities and international trends. African security indeed triggers a competition between the different European institutions, eager to be the driving force for a policy that can offer some additional resources and autonomy. The consistency and the credibility of the EU security policy in Africa will therefore depend on the responses provided to these institutional rivalries.     

Colonisation,Institutions and Development: New Evidence

This article analyses current attempts to identify the factors underlying long-term economic growth. The author criticises some of the arguments and historical evidence on which the two main explanations that dominate recent literature are based: the institutional approach and the approach focusing on the importance of geographical factors. Using an approach which is deliberately eclectic, the author considers the role of geography, international trade, human capital and institutional quality in explaining development. A new estimation is carried out through Two Stages Least Squares (TSLS) with instrumental variables. The results of the empirical model confirm the central role of institutions in long-term economic growth. However, certain geographical conditions also seem to have influenced countries' chances of progress. The human capital is a less robust factor in explaining economic growth and trade openness does not seem significant in any estimation. Nevertheless, several questions remain to be answered, suggesting that cross-country estimations need to be complemented with a deeper historical analysis.