The Commonwealth is Getting its Second Wind

This article looks forward to the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting in London, April 2018, in light of reflection on the nature of the Commonwealth (‘club, church or beehive?’) and its legacy. Special attention is paid to the significant anniversaries of 2015—Magna Carta, United Nations, end of the Second World War, London Declaration and 50 years of the Commonwealth Secretariat. The author also considers the agendas for CHOGM and the implications for the Commonwealth of Britain’s exit from the European Union (Brexit).     

An Approach to Speaker Identification

This presentation will provide standards upon which any attempts to meet the challenge of identifying speakers by voice should be based. It is organized into a model based on (i) application of a rigorous research program validating the system, (ii) an upgrading of the organization of the SI area, and (iii) exploitation of new technology. The second part of the presentation will describe an illustrative speech/voice approach to SI development. This effort is also based on an extensive corpus of research. It is suggested that application of the cited standards, plus the illustrative model, will permit reasonable progress to be made. Finally, a number of procedural recommendations are made; they should enhance the efficacy of the proposed approach.     

The Sprawl Debate: Let Markets Plan

Sprawl issues ought not be a federal issue because land-usecontrol is local. Americans have been moving to both suburbanand private communities for many years, an expression of theconstitutional right to travel. They seek more direct controlover their personal property rights. Both trends are at oddswith the desire of planners to impose more controls via land-useand growth controls. Planners base their arguments on the needto control urban sprawl. Examining their arguments one-by-oneshows that they are empirically weak. The controls are ineffectiveand will do little to slow these shifts in residential location.The logic of the planners' position would be to control developmenteverywhere via state and even federal legislation, but thisis undesirable, unattainable, and probably unconstitutional.Sprawl will remain an issue over which state and local jurisdictionswill either continue to fight or find an uneasy accommodation.     

The influence of the Regional Coordinating Unit of the Abidjan Convention: implementing multilateral environmental agreements to prevent shipping pollution in West and Central Africa

The Regional Coordinating Unit of the Convention for Co-operation in the Protection and Development of the Marine and Coastal Environment for West and Central Africa (the Abidjan Convention) has under its wings several multilateral environmental agreements including those addressing shipping pollution. Shipping, potentially, has negative impacts on marine fauna and flora and air quality, with implications for public health. The Regional Coordinating Unit seeks to strengthen implementation of the Abidjan Convention by party-states through co-operation with state actors using various pathways based on its internal resources and competencies but the Unit is also starting to explore engagement with potential non-state actors. The ability of the Unit to exert influence on implementation is constrained by domestic politico-administrative institutions. This paper seeks to understand the influence of the Regional Coordinating Unit on the implementation of the Abidjan Convention in the field of shipping pollution. It uses three theoretical perspectives for the analysis: the influence of international environmental bureaucracies, domestic regulatory-politics and transnational governance. The paper shows how these theories are complementary because the influence of international bureaucracies such as the Regional Coordinating Unit cannot be adequately understood through factors internal to their organisation alone but needs to be analysed in relation also to external factors, both domestic politico-institutional ones in states that international bureaucracies work with, and the role of relevant non-state actors in the implementation of multilateral environmental agreements. It is concluded that, although influence cannot be measured directly, it is likely that Regional Coordinating Unit’s influence through its autonomy-centred efforts are quiet strong but negatively constrained by the traditional state-centric responsibility for implementation of international legal instruments where domestic regulatory-politics lack sufficient political will and support from and engagement with non-state actors.     

Editor's Note

An evaluation approach that is collaborative and elicitive may well serve as a catalyst for transforming relationships of power, standing in stark contrast to more conventional and staid evaluation practices that are technical in nature and actuarial in intent. Election of an orientation is the most decisive and strategic choice that is made in approaching evaluation and articulating value imperatives in fieldwork, coloring as it surely does the pragmatic stages of evaluation and good practice for the peacebuilder.     

Arts Organizations and Branding: Creating a New Joint Brand for Three Arts Organizations

This article investigates brand architecture by analyzing stakeholder perceptions of brand images when a new joint brand is created for the existing brands of three arts organizations. The theoretical framework is based on previous literature on brand architecture and brand image. The empirical study is based on a quantitative, 418-respondent survey among stakeholders of these three arts organizations. The study makes two major theoretical contributions. First, the results show that the new joint brand can be endorsed by the existing sub-brands, contrary to brand-architecture literature. Second, even in the case of a new brand, stakeholders perceive the functional attributes as important.     

Context and Continuity: Philistines,Pharisees and Art in English Culture

Cultural identity is an important facet of globalization, and cultural policy involves an international network of policymakers at the subnational, national, and supranational levels. It is often unclear what cultural identity means and who effects policy change, especially in a fast-changing world. The author examines one of the most important cultural policy conflicts of the last two decades to suggest that the intersections among multiple policymakers led to considerable learning through interaction and clear articulation of policy preferences. The author examines the culture war between the European Union (EU) and the United States over trade in cultural products.¹ The conflict played out in international organizations and allowed the EU to come together to articulate a somewhat coherent cultural identity policy, while the United States realized the difficulty of sustaining cultural exports in the context of provocative cultural identity frames.