Enhancing Livelihoods and the Urban Environment: The Local Political Framework for Integrated Organic Waste Management in Diadema,Brazil

Drawing on a participatory study of integrated organic waste management, this article explores the local political barriers and preconditions for its implementation in Diadema, Brazil. Solid waste management in Brazil is embedded in and mediated by a political framework that is characterised by uneven power geometries. This article explores how the local political context affects the potential for integrated organic waste management in Diadema, paying particular attention to relations between stakeholders. The discussion addresses the contested nature of deliberative decision-making spaces and the need for pro-active socio-environmental policies. The findings underline the importance of a praxis of everyday public participation that goes beyond rhetoric.     

The rule of law ‐ meaning and significance for security policy and reform

Given Russia's history of legal expediency and the emphasis of Western policy on economic liberalization, it is not surprising that Russian reforms have yet to produce a functioning market economy and effective political institutions, including civil‐military control. A Western‐style economic and military model is fundamentally built on the rule of law as a supreme and impartial tool of conflict resolution and distribution of rights and power. Without it, government action cannot be predicted, destroying trust in the institutions and denying private and public activity a basis for long‐term planning which is based on trust and predictability. Without long‐term planning neither companies nor armies can be successful, giving rise to a pseudo‐legal state of de facto laws. For its economic, political and military reforms to be successful Russia needs to emphasize the building of the institutions for developing and predictably enforcing a set of laws, an effort that needs to receive priority support from Western partners.     

Book Reviews

Comparative Civil (Private) Law. G. Eoersi. Budapest. 1979. Akademiai Kiado 651 pp. 850 ft.

Recherches sur l'Histoire des Institutions et du Droit. Ed. late G. Herlea. Association d'Histoire Comparative des Institutions et du Droit de la République Socialiste de Roumanie. Bucharest, vol. II (1978) 195 pp, vol. III (1979) 207 pp.

Manual of Law French J. H. Baker. Amersham; Avebury Publishing Co. 1979,207 pp. £7.50.     

Progressive taxation and tax morale

Due to strong evidence indicating that tax morale affects actual tax-paying behavior, finding the determinants of tax morale could help both to understand and to fight tax evasion. In this paper we analyze the effect of progressive taxation on individual tax morale using a cross-country approach—a research question that has not been investigated in the existing literature. Our theoretical analysis leads to two testable predictions. First, an individual’s tax morale is higher, the more progressive the tax schedule is. Second, the positive impact of tax progressivity on tax morale declines with income. In our empirical analysis we make use of a unique dataset of tax progressivity measures, namely the World Tax Indicators, and follow most of the tax morale literature by employing the World Values Survey to measure individual tax morale. Controlling for a wide range of potential confounders, we are able to confirm both hypotheses in our empirical analysis.     

Private Governance and the South: lessons from global forest politics

Abstract

Private governance beyond the state is emerging as a prominent debate in International Relations, focusing on the activities of private non-state actors and the influences of private rules and standards. However, the conceptual framework of governance has until recently been employed predominantly with reference to the oecd world. Despite this restricted view, a growing number of processes, organisations and institutions are beginning to affect developing countries and new institutional settings open up avenues of influence for actors from the South. In the context of a lively debate about global governance and the transformation of world politics, this article asks: what influences does private governance have on developing countries, their societies and their economies? What influence do southern actors have in and through private governance arrangements? I argue that we can assess the specific impacts of private governance, as well as potential avenues of influence for actors from the South, with regard to three functional pathways: governance through regulation, governance through learning and discourse, and governance through integration. Focusing in particular on private governance in the global forest arena, I argue that, while southern actors have not benefited so much economically from private certification schemes, they have been partially empowered through cognitive and integrative processes of governance.     

The AfPak Campaign and the Limits of Canadian Diplomacy

Initially, recognition of the vital role played by regional diplomacy did not accompany NATO’s substantial commitment to economic and political development in Afghanistan from 2001 to 2014. Pakistan in particular had a major influence on the conduct of reconstruction efforts and NATO’s efforts to lay the institutional foundations in Afghanistan. Canada, an early and committed participant in the International Security Assistance Force, would by 2005 come to recognise the vital importance of the role of Pakistan in the outcome of the mission. However, regional limits to the influence of the United States, the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation, and Canada made comprehensive efforts unattainable.     

Aktuelle Rechtsprechung zum ElektroG

Das deutsche “Gesetz über das Inverkehrbringen, die Rücknahme und die umweltvertr?gliche Entsorgung von Elektro- und Elektronikger?ten” (ElektroG) ist eines der auf europ?ischen Vorgaben beruhenden Rechtsinstrumente zur Vermeidung und Entsorgung von Abf?llen. In letzter Zeit sind hierzu eine Reihe von h?hergerichtlichen Urteilen ergangen, so dass bisher bestehende Unsicherheiten über die Reichweite der Registrierungspflicht beseitigt, sowie mehr Klarheit bei der Gruppenfinanzierungsverantwortlichkeit geschaffen wurde.