Fiscal decentralisation and IDC economic growth: An empirical investigation

The impact of fiscal decentralisation on LDC economic growth and development is widely debated in the development literature. Notwithstanding this, there has been little attempt to test systematically this relationship. Accordingly, in this note we present an empirical examination of the relationship between the level of fiscal decentralisation and economic growth rates across a sample of twenty‐three LDCsfrom 1974 to 1991. We fail to find, however, any strong, systematic relationship between the two among our sample of LDCs.     

Administrative ethics and organizational learning in Kuwait and the united states: an empirical approach

This article explores how a sample of public agencies in Kuwait respond to ethics failure. The learning response is examined in detail, in order to understand how these agencies attempt to inquire into the organizational causes of ethics failures and implement organizational changes in response to the inquiry. This study builds upon a previous methodology for measuring the strength of the organizational learning response. The data from Kuwait is compared to an earlier, similar study of organizational ethics learning conducted in the United States. The sampled agencies devote only moderate efforts to learning from ethics failure.     

Secession and Intervention in the Former Soviet Space: The Crimean Incident and Russian Interference in Its ‘Near Abroad’

Following Russian intervention and a referendum held on 16th March 2014, the Ukrainian republic of Crimea became incorporated within Russia. The Crimean episode marked just the latest in a series of situations arising in former Soviet states in which secessionist movements within disaffected territorial units were able to advance their causes aided by Russian external intervention. These situations raise significant international legal issues pertaining to secession by component parts of existing states, underpinned by external intervention. The unwillingness of the international community to recognise Russia’s incorporation of Crimea, similar to its earlier rejection of the purported secession of South Ossetia and Abkhazia from Georgia, reinforces the widely held view that non-consensual secession must be grounded in exceptional circumstances which were found to be lacking in all of these situations. It also reaffirms the principle that territorial changes brought about by external intervention will not be recognised. However, while legal assessments of these incidents may appear prima facie straightforward, they cannot be entirely divorced from the wider political phenomenon of ethnic conflict in former Soviet states and tensions existing in those states between factions seeking to further European integration and those prioritising strengthening relations with Russia. The international legal reasoning employed by the key protagonists must be understood with reference to this wider context.     

Judicial Representations of Scientific Evidence

A critical examination of the way that courts handle scientific expert evidence reveals inconsistency in strategies for validating and legitimating the weight attached to it. This inconsistency is rooted in perceptions of the nature of scientific knowledge. The essay considers the implications of this analysis for the Woolf reforms of civil procedure with respect to expert evidence.     

Raz on Responsibility

Standard treatments of responsibility have been preoccupied with issues of blame and punishment, and concerns about free will. In contrast, Raz is concerned with problems about responsibility that arise from the “puzzle of moral luck,” puzzles that lead to misguided skepticism about negligence. We are responsible not only for conduct that is successfully guided by what we take to be our reasons for action, but also for misexercises of our rational capacities that escape our rational control. To deny this is to lose sight of the ways “moral luck” is an inescapable feature of our agential engagement in the world. The present essay attempts to set out Raz’s argument as sympathetically as possible. Raz’s shift of focus is a powerful counter to current tendencies and points us in new and promising directions. Nonetheless, as it stands, it may just relocate skepticism about negligence to a different place.