The future of Fair Trade coffee: dilemmas facing Latin America's small-scale producers

Fair Trade has become a dynamic and successful dimension of an emerging counter-tendency to the neo-liberal globalisation regime. This study explores some of the dilemmas facing the Fair Trade movement as it seeks to broaden and deepen its impact among the rural poor of Latin America's coffee sector. We argue that the efforts to broaden Fair Trade's economic impact among poor, small-scale producers are creating challenges for deepening the political impact of a movement that is based on social justice and environmental sustainability. The study is based on two years' research and seven case studies of Mexican and Central American small-scale farmer cooperatives producing coffee for the Fair Trade market.     

IMMIGRATION POLICY,BORDER SECURITY,AND MIGRANT DEATHS: AN IMPACT EVALUATION OF LIFE‐SAVING EFFORTS UNDER THE BORDER SAFETY INITIATIVE*

Subsequent to U.S. Border Patrol (USBP) efforts to control illegal immigration throughout the 1990s, concern arose over an apparent increase in deaths of illegal migrants as they began to undertake more treacherous routes to enter the United States from Mexico. In response, the Border Safety Initiative (BSI) was created to increase safety along the southwest border. Using multiple data sources, including the USBP BSI Incident Tracking System, this study evaluated the impact of life‐saving efforts performed under the BSI program. Results indicate that there has been no overall reduction in the rate of migrant deaths since BSI has been in operation. However, an evaluation of BORSTAR search and rescue teams and the 2003 Lateral Repatriation Program (LRP), which returned apprehended migrants from Tucson sector to less hazardous places along the border, were found to be effective in preventing migrant deaths. Policy Implications: Critics of U.S. immigration policy claim that the only way reductions in migrant deaths along the U.S.‐Mexico border can be achieved is through liberalization of immigration policy and relaxing of border security. Yet, for more than a decade, U.S. policy makers have increased restrictions on immigration and have tightened security at the borders. Considering this, alternative means must be deployed in order to save migrant lives in the near term rather than waiting for a reversal of immigration policy. This study suggests that proactive life‐saving measures implemented through a harm‐reduction strategy can have some impact on saving migrant lives.     

Scale, technique and composition effects in the Mexican agricultural sector: the influence of NAFTA and the institutional environment

More than a decade after NAFTA (North American Free Trade Agreement) entered into force, the environmental effects of agricultural trade liberalization in Mexico are still controversial, emerging, and not fully understood. This paper contributes to the literature that aims to explore trends in input use in the agricultural sector in Mexico during the post-NAFTA period among both commercial/industrial and traditional/rainfed farmers, and examines the influence of the national and multilateral institutional framework on these outcomes. We decompose the post-NAFTA agricultural production data into scale, technique and composition effects to estimate the impact that trade liberalization has had on the use of fertilizer and land use, two key agricultural inputs for which reliable aggregate data is available. We conclude that among commercial farmers patterns of crop type specialization and significant technological improvements have led to some declines in fertilizer use but they have been offset by growth in fertilizer use associated with growing agricultural output. Among traditional farmers increased output and specialization in land-intensive grain crops are contributing to an increase in land under cultivation and technological improvements show the potential, but not yet not the strength, to counteract these effects. We analyse the environmental institutional framework and rural development plans, observing that institutional weaknesses have, in several instances, reduced the environmental benefit of technique and composition effects. We conclude with recommendations about how the Mexican agricultural sector might reap the environmental benefits of international agricultural trade.     

The Political Economy of Intellectual Property Protection: The Case of Software

The end of the twentieth century was marked by a sea change in global governance in the realm of intellectual property rights (IPRs). Whereas countries historically retained substantial autonomy with regard to what they defined as intellectual "property" and the rights granted to the owners of intellectual property, the 1990s witnessed the establishment of new global obligations regarding national practices. This paper focuses on the case of software "piracy" to assess the mechanisms by which the new global obligations for the treatment of IPRs are transmitted from the international to the national levels. We first consider a set of national-level factors that many scholars have shown to be important determinants of IPR policy. We then supplement the standard emphasis on domestic factors with an analysis of new transnational factors: countries' multilateral obligations under the World Trade Organization's (WTO) Agreement on Trade-Related Aspects of Intellectual Property Rights (TRIPS) and bilateral pressures from the United States to increase the protection of IPRs. Population-averaged panel data models are used to assess the effects of these national and transnational determinants on levels of software piracy in 80 countries from 1994 to 2002. Our results indicate that membership in the WTO and bilateral pressures from the United States—particularly pressures that offer reciprocal concessions—lead to substantial increases in levels of protection in rich and poor countries. There is, in short, a new international political economy of intellectual property.     

Language disorders in disruptive behavior disordered homicidal youth.

Eight homicidal youths were assessed for language disorders and psychiatric diagnoses using a battery of standardized language tests and the Diagnostic Interview for Children and Adolescents. Both language disorders and Diagnostic and Statistical Manual III-R psychiatric diagnoses were present in all subjects.