Planfeststellung und Plangenehmigung im Wasserhaushaltsrecht

Natur und Recht - Nachdem in NuR (2022, Heft 2, S. 77ff.) die Reichweite des wasserhaushaltsrechtlichen Planfeststellungsvorbehalts sowie Fragen der Verfahrenswahl erörtert wurden, behandeln...     

Revisiting the Feminist Debates on International Labor Standards in the Aftermath of Rana Plaza

This paper revisits the turn of the millennium feminist debates on international labor standards in the aftermath of the Rana Plaza factory collapse of 2013 that killed over 1100 garment workers in Bangladesh. Feminists were divided over the benefits of establishing internationally enforced labor standards and, more generally, on the usefulness of transnational activism and union organizing for garment workers. The arguments of some feminist opponents during and in the aftermath of the debate emphasized the relative advantages of garment jobs, dismissed the importance of union rights, and criticized the labor transnationalism. These arguments have left unchallenged the current regulatory regime in Bangladesh by allaying concerns about poor working conditions. Drawing upon new empirical evidence, the paper shows that export growth under the market regulatory regime has failed to improve labor conditions in the sector. The paper makes the case for the continuing relevance of feminist arguments that favor a more proactive stance to make job growth compatible with wage gains and improved labor conditions. As they argued, the scope of the response has to be international, including solidaristic activism supporting local worker organizations, and the use of wage increases to move Bangladesh on a development path toward a higher-productivity, higher-wage economy.     

The International Finance Corporation and the emerging market funds industry

Linking the world’s core equity markets with semi-peripheral and peripheral equity markets has been a fundamentally different process from linking core markets with each other. International financial institutions have played a larger role in core‐periphery equity market integration, and issues of corporate governance assume greater importance in the core‐periphery cases. Illustrating these differences, this article considers the creation of the Korea fund, one of the early country funds in an emerging market promoted by the International Finance Corporation (IFC). The case shows that increasingly sophisticated financial instruments, like country funds, alter the structure of the international financial system in such a way as to reposition governments in developing market economies with respect to their domestic financial systems; allow for some international capital inflows without loss of corporate control; and make diversification possible for a transnational class of investors. Moreover, the article proposes that international financial institutions like the IFC can alter the structural context of a particular market within which various financial actors later strike deals. In the light of the process of coalition building elaborated here, the article reserves a role for considerations of both multilateralism and a state’s position in the world system in a body of literature heavily concentrated on state-level political activity.     

The decline of an export industry,or the growth of Peruvian sugar consumption in the long run

Growth of domestic consumption of agricultural exportables is a neglected aspect of LDCs’ long‐run primary export performance. Price and income elasticities of local demand for specific exportables vary with economic development, so the Peruvian sugar industry was chosen to illustrate how and why such changes occur. Elasticity estimates for different types of sugar are presented for several time periods between 1913 and 1978. A comparison of these results with those of other researchers suggests that aggregating raw, refined and plantation white sugar consumption may bias income elasticity estimates for refined sugar upwards, and price elasticity estimates downwards.     

Searching for the best structure for American local government

Citizens, practitioners and academicians involved in local government have for decades debated the best structure for local public organizations; at the polar ends of this debate are those advocating rational administration and those advocating political responsiveness. The conventional wisdom equates rational administration with reformed structures like the council-manager plan and political responsiveness with structures which have an elected chief executive officer. The debate is unresolvable within this value-driven framework, and these ideological positions do not seem to be helping in the design of governmental structures which “work” in a practical and meaningful way. The paper argues for a “functional” model of local government structure based on how much citizens and administrators can know and oversee with competence. The analysis leads to a significant rethinking of the role of governing bodies, administrators, and the general management position in American local government.