Lake Taupo: a multi‐sector collaborative partnership towards sustainable development

This paper explores the motivations for and processes of a unique multi‐stakeholder collaboration aimed at the long‐term sustainable development of a region. The region is that of Australasia's largest lake, Lake Taupo, New Zealand. Lake Taupo has geographic features that have not only enabled the development of a strong economy based on tourism, forestry and agriculture but have also generated particular environmental problems. The findings of the case study present highly innovative solutions that are premised on collaboration and on a ‘business case’ for sustainability. From extensive interviews with a wide range of stakeholders, the case confirms extant literature that looks at the roles of leadership, stakeholder engagement, and first movers in bringing about change, but it also highlights further findings that include the surprisingly important role of fringe stakeholders, the difficulties presented by uncertain regulation, and the need to innovate in tailoring solutions to fit the peculiarities of a specific problem. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

How Western Marxism is attempting to survive the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe

She is the author of Fragile Democracy: The Use and Abuse of Power in Western Societiesrecently published by Transaction.     

How to Become an Independent Agency: The Creation of the German Federal Network Agency

The German Federal Network Agency (FNA) was established in 2005 as multi-utilities regulator thereby creating Germany's first energy regulator. It maintains a quite exceptional position in the landscape of German agencies because of its far-reaching independence from political influence. This independence represents an empirical puzzle, because in Germany no comprehensive agencification of the federal administration can be observed and independent agencies are rather an exception than a rule. This article explores whether this puzzle can be plausibly solved by the approach of institutional isomorphism. It argues that the German government faced informal pressure from the European Commission and its endeavour to build a network of European energy regulators at the European level. Furthermore, independent regulatory agencies increasingly became a kind of guiding model in the utilities sector. Therefore, mechanisms of coercive and mimetic isomorphism can be seen as plausible explanations of the agency's independence.     

War as the Continuation of Hegemony by Other Means: How Contemporary Wars Reach into Societies

Much thinking on war has been inspired by von Clausewitz’ famous dictum of “war being merely the continuation of policy by other means.” Such a politics/war dialectic conceives of war as being excluded from life within state and society; yet, contemporary warfare is in many ways constitutive for societies on and off the battlefield. Recent debates on war call for rethinking war in a more vernacular, critical sense. By joining this call, the article takes its cues from the theory of hegemony as developed by political theorist Ernesto Laclau in order to pave a theoretical avenue on how war reaches into society. Paraphrasing Clausewitz, I argue that war is the continuation of hegemony with other means, explaining how and why war has stabilizing and constraining effects on (democratic) political and societal life. Illustrating my argument with observations from the “Global War on Terror,” I am able to show how war is entangled with society having dire consequences for societal cohesion in Western societies.     

Beyond State Consent? International Legal Scholarship and the Challenge of Informal International Law-Making

Netherlands International Law Review - The article explores scholarly attempts to come to terms with the phenomenon of informal international law-making in its multiple manifestations. It is shown...     

Preventive Obligations: Some Introductory Comments

Netherlands International Law Review -     

Decolonisation and development in Burma

Over the last decade, economists have conducted numerous studies concerning trade barriers posed by national tariffs. In spite of this interest, few comprehensive analyses of transport barriers have been attempted. This seems surprising since transport costs, like tariffs, influence the magnitudes of trade flows, and types of goods exchanged internationally.

Recent changes in United States import statistics permit estimation of the incidence of international transport and insurance charges by product and by country. Using these records, this study shows that the overall ad valorem incidence of India's transport costs is approximately 14 per cent, or more than double current MFN tariffs. However, the spread between transport charges and tariffs is greater on some products of special export interest to India.

Analysis of the transport charges by processing stages shows that these costs escalate with increased fabrication. Thus, freight costs, like “tariffs, retard the growth of processing industries in India. This, plus the fact that India is at a sizeable cost disadvantage relative to its competitors, stresses the need for policies aimed at lowering the incidence of transport costs, or directing future export ventures, to areas where the shipping cost differential is less imposing.